PAST CONVERSATION
interthread Panel Discussion with Rana Abdallah and Roma Patel
Date:
Artist:
PAST CONVERSATION
interthread Panel Discussion with Rana Abdallah and Roma Patel
Please join us on Saturday April 27 at 11 AM for a panel conversation featuring YoungArts Baxter St Artist in Residence, Zayira Ray, art therapist Rana Abdallah (MPS, LCAT, ATR), and curator Roma Patel on the occasion of Ray’s solo exhibition interthread. The event will begin with a viewing of Ray’s Palestine Tapestry Project which will be followed by a panel discussion discussing Ray and Abdallah’s collaboration on the film as well as Ray’s practice more broadly. The event will be followed by an open question and answer period with an opportunity for guests to reflect on the exhibition.
In interthread, Ray documents her subjects against hand-painted canvas backdrops, capturing moments of tender intimacy. These constructed canvases act as sanctuaries, in which Ray expands her lens-based practice, envisioning new ways of forging connection. “Here, the photographic backdrop, associated with traditional portraiture, evolves into a vehicle for reconciliation,” she says. “As layers of paint intertwine, so too do the cultural narratives of past, present, and future.”
Romantic couples, familial units, tight knit friends – the subjects in Ray’s images span generations, genders, and national origins, and yet they all share the bonds and burdens of global modernity. Ray’s images are both staged and candid. She has trained her lens on the nuanced and layered relations that form in Brown communities spread throughout the world by choice or by force. In doing so, this body of work celebrates Brownness amidst widespread societal narratives of subjugation and fearmongering.
In the Palestine Tapestry Project, the canvas backdrop is reimagined as a vehicle for community-building in the face of profound loss and displacement. Ray documents two groups of four Palestinian-American women as they create their own canvas “tapestry” with the guidance of art therapist Rana Abdallah. The work acts as an embodiment of Palestinian community, solidarity, and remembrance in response to widespread censorship and erasure. The tapestry hangs down an entire gallery wall, accompanied by three portrait photographs and a short film that documents the process of the canvas coming alive. The tapestry is not only a physical artifact, but also a lifeform that weaves together threads of memory, identity, and resistance. With each indelible marking – Who wins in war? Where do we go from here? –the lifecycle of the canvas stands as an honoring of Palestinian existence.
Rana is a Lebanese-American woman bringing first and foremost, her grandmother’s teachings of altruism, universality and advocacy into her work as an Art Therapist. She lived most of her life in Lebanon, and Art Therapy was a great surprise that she stumbled upon during one of the hardest times of her life. For the past 10 years, she has worked with individuals of all cultures and ages in NYC. Rana feels lucky to have had her art therapy journey engulfed with rich and diverse life experiences from multiple cultures around the world. Working in schools, universities, hospitals, medical programs, and child welfare; every client, patient, and student has made an impact through her sessions and lessons. She is an advocate of knowledge, and hopes to plant seeds in safe spaces that may take root and grow into healthy coping skills to use in this whirlwind that we call life.
Based in New York, Roma Patel is an emerging curator of modern and contemporary South Asian art. Her work engages with postcolonial and diasporic discourses, as she explores modes of seeing, collective memories and dreams, and the visibility and visuality of self in the Global South. She is the founder and archivist of @thesouthasianamericans, an Instagram-based digital archive that invites South Asian Americans to engage with the ongoing resonances of photographs from their family albums. She received her BA from Boston University, where she studied art history as well as legacies of empire in India. Roma Patel is presently a second-year student in the MA in Modern & Contemporary Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies Program at Columbia University, and she has previously held positions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Phillips.
Zayira Ray (b. 2000, New York City) is an Indian-American portrait photographer and artist. Rooted in themes of love, community, and belonging, Ray’s portraits span culture, religion, and socioeconomic strata, highlighting diverse and soulful visual stories from all walks of life. Her commitment to exploring the un-represented, the under-represented, and the mis-represented has led to the creation of arresting and ethereal portraits, devoid of convention and rich with a vivid wonder.
Ray’s work encompasses the realms of contemporary portraiture, classical representation, and mythology, with a keen interest in stories from the South Asian diaspora. Through the intersections of gazes – particularly between herself as a brown woman and with those of her subjects – she documents stories of love, heritage, and sacred bonds, exploring the ebbs and flows of human connection: relationships both familial and familiar, potent and gentle. By constructing tangible “safe spaces” that serve as refuge from the outside world, her photographs highlight our interior spaces: sensibilities and aesthetics, fantasies and desires, moments of both solitude and solace, and the preservation of self.
Ray’s photographs have been published in Vogue India, Vogue Magazine, The New York Times, ELLE, People Magazine, Architectural Digest, and ESSENCE, and exhibited at PHILLIPS Auction House, MoMa PS1, and Photoville, among others. She has received recognition and awards from YoungArts, the Dedalus Foundation, and NASDAQ. Ray is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts in Photography & Imaging.
YoungArts and Baxter St have joined in a multi-year partnership. Together, the organizations developed the YoungArts Baxter St Residency, building on shared values and expanding Baxter St’s efforts to support emerging artists at critical points in their educational and professional careers. At the core of this partnership is a joint fellowship to support and mentor the next generation of lens-based artists. Created in 2019 and funded by the 7|G Foundation, this residency invites emerging, lens-based, YoungArts award winners living in New York City to apply for two months of workspace access at Baxter St, an artist stipend of $3,000 plus production costs, and mentoring sessions with Baxter St’s Art Advisory Committee members. As residents, artists gain hands-on experience presenting their work, professional development, counsel, and support from experts in their field of study. The residency culminates in a solo show at Baxter St.
Established in 1981 by Lin and Ted Arison, YoungArts identifies exceptional young artists, amplifies their potential, and invests in their lifelong creative freedom. YoungArts provides space, funding, mentorship, professional development and community throughout artists’ careers. Entrance into this prestigious organization starts with a highly competitive application for talented artists ages 15–18, or grades 10–12, in the United States that is judged by esteemed discipline-specific panels of artists through a rigorous blind adjudication process.
Past YoungArts award winners include Daniel Arsham, Terence Blanchard, Camille A. Brown, Timothée Chalamet, Viola Davis, Amanda Gorman, Judith Hill, Jennifer Koh, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Andrew Rannells, Desmond Richardson and Hunter Schafer.
For more information, visit youngarts.org, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, or X.