Conversation with Judith Barry

Judith Barry will talk about what led her to create the latest work on the Gardner's Facade, untitled: (Global Displacement: nearly 1 in 100 people worldwide are displaced from their homes. Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/05/key-facts-about-the-worlds-refugees/).

Barry chose to work with some of the hundreds of drone images circulating on the World Wide Web depicting people fleeing their homes and seeking a new life elsewhere. Looking up, these asylum seekers greet the seemingly effortlessly hovering drone with a mixture of relief and elation–even though the drone is unmanned and not human, and even though the resulting encounter is no guarantee of a rescue or of entry into another country. By orienting one of these boats vertically and populating it with the upward turned faces taken from these photographs, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Façade can act as a beacon: the faces forming a procession, illuminating the sky.

This Gardner Museum Façade is presented as part of a citywide partnership of arts and educational institutions organized to recognize the outsized role greater Boston has played in the history and development of technology. The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston has initiated this partnership to link concurrent exhibitions and programs related to the themes of the exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, on view at the ICA from February 7 - May 20, 2018. Information on all the exhibitions and programs can be found at: aiai.icaboston.org

Event admission is free, but registration is required.

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