To celebrate the Lunar New Year in the community of Rockville, Maryland, VisArts presents an exhibition that reveals a confluence of eastern and western aesthetics created by eight American contemporary artists. This exhibition includes Xiaosheng Bi, Nina Chung Dwyer, Suzi Fox, David Gerlach, Kevin A. Hluch, Sumita Kim, Komelia H. Okim, and Evan Reed. Reflecting their various ethnic origins and different artistic media, these artists express an awareness of their cultural diversity and blend East and West in their own unique artistic styles. This confluence arises from a pervading tendency of hybrids. The term of hybridity usually refers in its most basic sense to a mixture, and it originates from a biological term. Currently, it implies an identity issue and a cultural discussion. A key theorist of hybridity, Homi Bhabha analyses the concept in his book The Location of Culture (1994) in terms of a flow of different cultures that both give and receive from each other. Consequently, it creates “syncretism” or leads to “multiculturalism.”
Exhibition will be on view in the VisArts Kaplan Gallery, second floor.
VisArts at Rockville is located three blocks from the Rockville Metro station at 155 Gibbs Street, Rockville, MD 20850. For information please call 301-315-8200 or visit www.visartscenter.org. Free.
