Victoria Block, Ehab Lotayef and Helga Schleeh As We Are

Victoria Block, Ehab Lotayef and Helga Schleeh As We Are

Vernissage: Monday, June 28 at 6 pm
Artist’s Talk: Thursday, July 8 at 7 pm

Exhibition Press Release:

The McClure Gallery is pleased to present three artists – Victoria Block, Ehab Lotayef and Helga Schleeh. All three artists have worked and continue to work “in community” with “dialogue” and interfaith groups. The photographs of Ehab Lotayef, a practicing Quebec Muslim, deal with both local and Middle Eastern issues. Victoria Block and Helga Schleeh utilize light as a medium in their work, serving to underscore the idea of unity beneath the diversity of cultures and religions.

The artists frequently employ their artistic interventions as mediation tools for conflict resolution, as a process through which to effect greater understanding amongst diverse cultural religious groups and to shed light on issues usually ignored.

A common theme throughout the work of all artists is the underlying touchstone of human fragility. How is such fragility made manifest, assuaged, protected. How is it given voice as the commonality of human experience? The work in this exhibition will bring forward, through the relation of one to the other, these issues as the artists continue the process of understanding through their own artistic practice.

Victoria Block is a landscape painter from Ithaca New York who lives and works in Montreal. Her work is in many private and corporate collections, notably Canadian Embassies in China, Florida, Mexico, Zimbabwe and Guatemala.

Ehab Lotayef is an established poet and photographer living in Montreal. His advocacy for social justice is evident in his works. His poetry collection “To Love a Palestinian Woman” was recently published by TSAR.

Helga Schleeh has over 50 exhibitions to her credit, including at the United Nations in New York, Beijing, Washington, and Miami. She has worked with the World Council of Churches for the UN, and presented an art video on the beauty of the Planet to the United Nations conference on Climate Change in Montreal.