Soukaina Aziz El Idrissi, a textile artist born and raised in Morocco, travelled to Providence, Rhode Island to participate in The Art in Embassies: Morocco Course at the Rhode Island School of Design. This collaborative project was designed to promote cross-cultural exchange and to recognize and nurture the talents of the next generation of professional […]
In the age of the internet, new relationships happen across long distances everyday. My project, Social Structure II takes as its premise that a work of art can be the materialization of these relationships. Knowing that I would build the piece before I could spend time in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I chose to make the […]
In 2009, Art in Embassies partnered with the San Francisco Art Institute and internationally-recognized artist Pedro Reyes to create an exterior site-specific sculpture for the US Consulate in Tijuana. With Chief Curator Virginia Shore initiating the project and leading the State Department’s involvement, Reyes taught a course to SFAI students which lead them through the […]
During the winter of 2011, the chief curator at ART in Embassies, Virginia Shore, invited me to create a proposal for a mural at the new US Embassy in Bucharest. As I began the preparations and concept sketches, I questioned my approach. Why would I make a work as an individual artist in an Embassy […]
I flew in to Khartoum many times before I got off the airplane. On trips to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a country with which I have a long familiarity, return flights to Europe often stopped at Khartoum to refuel. The country and the city seemed so mysterious. I regarded the passengers getting on at Khartoum with […]
The designer and artist Julie Wolfe visited Ecuador from September 19-27, 2011. During her tour she had the opportunity to share her knowledge and methodologies with artisans in the Ecuadorian Amazon. A group of 15 women participated in a workshop to improve their designs and techniques of jewelry for sale to tourists. This event was […]
Jefferson Pinder visited Khartoum, Sudan from November 24 through 26, 2010. He was invited to the Embassy to explain a work that was stirring up controversy in the community. His visit was punctuated by talks on the piece to which Embassy officials and members of the Sudanese art community were invited. The spirited discussions brought […]
American artist Lucas Reiner visited Riga, Latvia from March 27th through April 1, 2010 during which time her met with member of the artistic community and gave a public lecture at the Art Academy of Latvia. He also met with graphic design professors from the school and at the end of his visit, a reception […]
Maya Freelon Asante traveled to Antananarivo, Madagascar in 2010 to install her work in the new consulate building.
Phil Epp of Newton, Kansas, traveled to Kazakhstan in September 2009 as an American Artist Abroad sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies Program. Mr. Epp, a painter and photographer, visited Astana, Shymkent, and Almaty, Kazakhstan, between September 13- 20, 2009, to engage in programming that included lectures and master classes, with […]
Ceramic artist Ramon Camarillo collaborated with ART in Embassies for his visit to Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2009 from November 6th through the 14th. During his visit he was not only able to observe Bangladeshi pottery making, but also to instruct. Throughout the course of a four-day workshop, Camarillo introduced various methods of firing and glazing […]
Visiting artist Laurie Goddard hosted five days of workshops with public school art teachers and local artists in Manama, Bahrain from September 25 to October 2, 2009 in conjunction with ART in Embassies. Although the artist mainly derived inspiration for her work from her travels in Italy, Japan and New England, her use of encaustic […]
Nasreen Haroon traveled on behalf of Art in Embassies to Algiers, Algeria from November 5 through November 13, 2008. During the visit Nasreen participated in children’s art workshops, she coordinated the painting of a mural at a local NGO for battered women and children. Ms. Haroon also held master classes at the Academy of Fine […]
Art in Embassies, partnering with U.S. Embassy in Amman facilitated Peter Bruun’s visit to Amman, Jordan from January 19-24, 2008. Embassy Amman also partnered with a local NGO, Queen Zein Al Sharaf Institute for Development (ZENID), which works with underprivileged communities in Amman and has affiliate centers in different parts of Jordan, to sponsor an […]
John Domont’s visit to Thailand on behalf of ART in Embassies was marked by his outreach into Thai society. He lectured, taught and demonstrated throughout the country for ten days from November 17, 2008 to November 26, 2008 at seven universities as well as an Islamic high school. He also held workshops for disabled adults, […]
Xu Bing accompanied the ART in Embassies team to Beijing to installat the second edition of “Monkeys Grasping for the Moon” in 2008. This complicated installation required a complete reworking as the first edition hangs in one chain. The second edition hangs in four strands and each strand had to be reconfigured. The process was […]
Mari Gardner traveled to Mbabane, Swaziland from November 8 to November 22, 2008. During her trip she worked with local orphanages and not-for-profit organizations such as the AIDS Support Center to expose as many different sectors of society to her art as her visit would allow. Her visit particularly benefited the women and children of […]
“I have been using scanning technology as a way to mark the passage of daily life. The action of scanning objects serves to archive daily life, at a particular time, and as a way to record our relationships to these objects as containers of our memories. I traveled around Moldova with a wonderful team from the American Embassy in Chisinau. We visited orphanages, schools and public libraries to ask Moldovans to participate in a project that recorded objects, both personal and cultural, from contemporary daily life. In the project, “Objects are closer than they appear,” participants take a moment to record by scanning, objects that are of emotional or cultural importance. Sometimes these objects are gifts, sometimes treasures, sometimes things that are hand made and often simply daily possessions. Participants received prints of their scanned objects.”
