The Mashrabiya Project – Seeing Through Space Artist Talk: Susan Hefuna

The Mashrabiya Project – Seeing Through Space Artist Talk: Susan Hefuna | Wed. March 22, 2023 | 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EDT | LIVE on ZOOM

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The Museum for Art in Wood is proud to present a series of free virtual lectures with artists featured in the upcoming exhibition Seeing Through Space, opening March 3, 2023, and running through July 23, 2023. This series is meant to connect the public with the artists and engage in thoughtful discussions about mashrabiya in the context of architecture, art, craft, and community. Our second lecture will feature artist Susan Hefuna.

Portrait of Susan Hefuna in the Studio. Courtesy of the Artist and The Third Line

Susan Hefuna was born in Germany and grew up in Egypt. In 1992, she completed a postgraduate degree in multimedia arts at the Institut für Neue Medien, Städelschule, Frankfurt. She lives and works in Cairo, Düsseldorf, and New York. In drawings, installations, performances, photographs, sculptures, and videos, she draws on her mixed heritage to ponder the intersection of location and identity. For over 30 years Hefuna has been fascinated by the mashrabiya and has brought their gridded geometries into her work; initially inspired by her connecting the gridded streets of New York City and modern urban architecture with mashrabiya matrices and their complex latticework, she began using them as a way to speak through her work, often weaving text–in English and in Arabic–into her handmade, wooden, window-scaled screened wall works. Hefuna continues to explore the power of the mashrabiya to discuss women’s experiences, the invasiveness of the gaze, and cultural boundaries in her work. She has exhibited internationally and her work is held by many public institutions, including the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, LACMA, the Sharjah Art Museum and Foundation, the Art Institute of Chicago, the V&A, and Centre Pompidou, among others.

This event is free to the public. The Museum for Art in Wood interprets, nurtures, and champions creative engagement and expansion of art, craft, and design in wood to enhance the public’s understanding and appreciation of it. A suggested donation of $5 per person enables us to provide programs and exhibitions throughout the year.

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Questions? Please contact Katie Sorenson, Director of Outreach and Communications, at [email protected].

To learn more about The Mashrabiya Project and Seeing Through Space, click HERE.

The Mashrabiya Project has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

Special thanks go to:
Bresler Foundation
Rockler Tools for in-kind support

The exhibition program at the Museum is generously supported by members of the Cambium Giving Society of the Museum for Art in Wood, the Bresler Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, William Penn Foundation, and Windgate Foundation.

Corporate support is provided by Boomerang, Inc., and Sun-Lite Corporation.