This exhibition, on display at Schmucker Art Gallery on the Gettysburg College campus, features the work of contemporary photographers Manal Abu-Shaheen and Aisha Mershani who examine how specific locations in the Arab World are marked by social, political, and environmental changes. Taken together, their photographs of architectural ruins, commercial billboards, border walls, and empty streets – all broadly understood as landscapes without human subjects – attest to a shared impulse to document the consequences of violence and occupation in the region.
Jan. 25 through March 3, 2023; Schmucker Art Gallery, Schmucker Hall, 300 N Washington St., Gettysburg PA 17325
This exhibition is co-sponsored by the following departments and programs: International and Global Studies, Public Policy, Cinema and Media Studies, Public Policy, Cinema and Media Studies, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, and EPACC, Gettysburg College.
There will be a panel discussion with the artists moderated by Professor Stephen Sheehi in Bowen Auditorium, McCreary Hall, on Friday, February 3, from 4-5:30 pm. A reception will follow in Schmucker Art Gallery until 6:30 pm.
Stephen Sheehi (he/him) is the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Middle East Studies in the Asian and Middle East Studies Program and Director of the Asian and Pacific-Islander American Studies Program at William & Mary, where he also is the founding Director of the Decolonizing Humanities Project.
Image: Manal Abu-Shaheen, Beirut/Big Ben. Dbayeh Suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, 2014