For this Artists at Work, ISCP artist-in-residence Nardeen Srouji will be joined by curator Sara Reisman. Srouji will present on her practice and speak with Reisman about her engagement with the dualities of material and site, and the ways she challenges perceptions of history and form through her site-specific architectural interventions. They will also discuss Srouji’s recent, ongoing Re-Thread-ing project that investigates the visual culture of embroidery to understand the complex nature of cultural memory, and how it is simultaneously and continually being dismantled and rebuilt. A Q&A with the audience will follow.

Nardeen Srouji, a Palestinian artist, delves into the gaps between stability and instability, placement and displacement, familiarity and estrangement. Transitioning between sculpture and installation, she appropriates familiar objects, images, and sounds from her surroundings, transforming them into interventions that challenge viewers to reconfigure their understanding and relationship with the world. Recently, her focus has shifted to site-specific art, exploring how processes take form within the multilayered dynamics of the body in relation to place, space, and time. Srouji has exhibited work at A M Qattan Foundation; Haifa Museum of Art; and Tel Aviv Museum of Art, all in Israel and in Palestine, among others.

Sara Reisman is a curator, educator, and writer based in New York City, currently working since 2021 as Chief Curator at the National Academy of Design. From 2014 to 2021 she was Executive and Artistic Director of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and from 2008 to 2014, she was Director of New York City’s Percent for Art program at the Department of Cultural Affairs. She has curated exhibitions for the Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery, Futura Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague, Queens Museum of Art, Socrates Sculpture Park, Cooper Union School of Art, Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, Momenta Art, Smack Mellon, and LaMaMa Galleria, among others. Reisman has taught art history and contemporary art issues at the University of Pennsylvania, SUNY Purchase School of Art + Design, and, since 2016, is on the faculty at the School of Visual Arts’ Curatorial Practice Masters Program. 

This program is supported by Artis; Hartfield Foundation; James Rosenquist Foundation; Joe Sultan; Lèna Saltos; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso; New York City Council District 34; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; Dr. Samar Maziad; Sarah Jones; van Beuren Charitable Foundation; William Talbott Hillman Foundation; and Woodman Family Foundation.
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UPDATE: This event will not be live-streamed.

Accessibility information: Please note that the entrance to ISCP has seven steps and a ramp, which is ADA compliant. There are seven artist studios and one exhibition space which can be accessed on the first floor of ISCP. There is an accessible bathroom on the first floor at the end of the hallway, up one step, where the artist studios are located. To access the second floor there is a staircase with a grab bar installed on the right side with 22 steps. The second floor has 22 artist and curator studios, one exhibition space, and a lounge where remarks by our guest speaker will take place. To access the third floor there is a staircase with a grab bar installed on the right side with 24 steps. The third floor has five artist and curator studios. ISCP  can access a freight elevator to bring visitors between the first and second floors on request.

ISCP can offer two reserved parking spaces on request for people with disabilities. Please email programs@iscp-nyc.org to request a parking space and/or freight elevator usage.