CONVERGENCE / PHX – BG
ASU Art Museum International Artist Residency Gallery at Combine Studios
Phoenix, Arizona, USA
November 7 – December 22, 2014
Curator: Maida Gruden, Belgrade, Serbia
Artists: Aleksandrija Ajdukovic, Nidaa Aboulhosn, Edgar Cardenas, Sean Deckert, William LeGoullon, Goran Micevski, Ivan Petrovic, Stefana Savic, Nina Todorovic, Mihailo Vasiljevic, Ryan Parra, Claire A. Warden
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Convergence / PHX – BG is an exhibition of photographic works by artists from Phoenix and Belgrade. During her five-week stay at the ASU Art Museum International Artist Residency Program, Maida Gruden (art historian, curator, and CEC ArtsLink Fellow for 2014) had the opportunity to meet a number of local artists and ASU students to view and learn about their work and processes. This short but eventful time has brought the opportunity for Gruden to develop an exhibition at the Combine Studios gallery based on her interaction with photographers from Phoenix and recent collaborations with photographers from Belgrade.
The exhibition represents a generational cross-section of artists from their twenties to their forties. It indicates a first step in connecting the artists, audiences, photographic processes and people from two distant towns. The title Convergence / PHX – BG is intended for the viewer to consider similarities but also to raise interests for differences that enrich and intrigue our local perspectives. The same exhibition will be presented at the Students’ City Cultural Center Gallery in Belgrade at the beginning of 2015. The effects of this convergence will be to create a space for personal encounter and dialog of artists from Phoenix and Belgrade, to help develop collaborative and exchangeable projects in the future.
The artists from Belgrade whose works are presented within the exhibition were participants in a summer 2014 photo colony titled Dislocations, in Orlovat, Serbia, that was initiated by the curatorial duo maramaida of Gruden and her collaborator, Mara Prohaska Markovic.
