A provocative conceptual exhibition, presented by and at Deborah Colton Gallery, that introduces to a diverse American audience multimedia artworks from the perspective of three lauded Arab-world artists. The exhibition featured paintings, photography, works on paper, video works and installations and opened on Saturday, September 20th, 2014. This was the first exhibition concept developed by Theresa Escobedo for Deborah Colton Gallery as Assistant Director.

Exhibition Premise
Mapping Strife, as its title suggested, checked the pulse of the charged geopolitical, sociopolitical, and humanitarian crises proximate to the three exhibiting artists, Khaled Hafez (Egypt), Ferhat Özgür (Istanbul), and Mahmoud Obaidi (Iraq), and highlighted the great divide between public perception and the “reality” of represented social climates, as influenced by the global politico-media complex.

The artists, through a variety of conventions of representation, presented works that were unfiltered, if not uninfluenced, by the media-propagated agenda that shapes public awareness and reinforces popular opinion. While their works ever allude to the traumatic events that have defined their respective artistic orientations, their artworks ultimately suggest, under the guises of nostalgia, humor or irony, transformation and link the past to the present in a thoroughly contemporary fashion.

Mapping Strife encouraged its audience to consider the indeterminate boundaries of perception and reality as well as mass-media influence upon collective consciousness. This exhibition insinuates that, if perception is reality, alternate realities exist… and some are manufactured.