Announcements

"Horizon to Horizon" Art Project Transcends Borders

Public Art, Public Spaces initiative introduces newest project

Horizon to Horizon is a collaborative art project that connects high school students from East Palo Alto, California and Khorramabad, Iran together in dialogue. Curated by artist and lecturer Ala Ebtekar, the project was led by this year’s Art, Social Space and Public Discourse Artist in Residence Minoosh Zomorodinia and her collaborating partner Tara Goodarzy. They worked in parallel over the last year, facilitating discourse between two groups of students and empowering them through technology to work as a team with peers from across the globe. 

Students responded through text and textiles to prompts from Minoosh and Tara that involved prescient matters affecting each of the two groups on a local as well as a global scale.  The students provided articles of clothing or textiles from home that had an intimate, familial story.  They then constructed physical spheres made with this material, considering the body and the movement of these shared, celestial orbs. 

Furthermore, they set up a framework for students to chat in real time and in recorded messages passed back and forth, all steered by their own questions intentionally kept separate from the instructors.  This studio, built from conversations, resulted in a series of performances that are still growing in tandem. Projects like these are perfect examples of citizen diplomacy that can lead to more understanding in these fraught times.

Part of the Public Art, Public Spaces Initiative.