smARTalk

Little Gallery, University of Calgary, Canada, 2013

smARTalk is a participatory performance about art theory and how sometimes conversations about art are reduced to the use of quotations about art. The idea came to me when I was an MFA student during the seminars and group critiques. The title “smARTalk” is the combination of the words smart, art and talk to represent this idea.

My colleague, Lamis Adel and I, depicted more than 300 quotations about art and artist by famous artists, philosophers, art historians. Some quotations were put in 100 fortune cookies, some printed and scattered on the floor of the gallery and the rest were marked in books, which were piled up on the desk in the gallery. The audiences were invited to participate in the performance by choosing quotations and reading them out loud. We also prepared a series of panels and hanged them. To prepare these paintings, we played with the phrase “ART WORK”.