Across the globe, women and girls make up a disproportionate percentage of the millions of people who flee their homes from political conflict, ethnic cleansing and domestic abuse. Faces Seen Hearts Unknown, co-sponsored with The Conflict Lab and presented at Contemporary Craft, explores these issues through two community dialogues on July 10 at 12 PM and August 14 at 11 AM. 

Taken from a Spanish proverb, the expression Faces Seen Hearts Unknown refers to superficial judgments made about people, based solely on appearances, and cautions that to truly know a person or a community, one needs genuine access to their emotions. The Faces Seen Hearts Unknown series, presented on two Saturdays, July 10, 2021 at 12 PM and August 14, 2021 at 11 AM is organized in concert with CC’s current exhibition Searching for Home.  In Searching for Home, Seattle-based, Pakistan-born artist Humaira Abid, presents a human-scaled look at the worldwide refugee crisis. The artworks were created following months of research and interviews by the artist with refugee women who have been resettled in both the Pacific Northwest and Pakistan from nations including Somalia, Syria and Afghanistan. Abid is well known for her unique visual language, which blends the discipline of traditional Mughal miniature painting and sculpture in wood. The beauty and mastery of Abid’s life-size carvings of everyday objects share stories of the violence, cruelty, upheaval, and instability in society, especially that to which women are subject. 

For Faces Seen Hearts Unknown, four individuals from our community have been invited to share personal narratives to help visitors better understand issues of identity, conflict and motherhood, central in Abid’s installation. On July 10, 2021, Fran Flaherty and Amy Bowman McElhone will lead a gallery discussion addressing themes around maternal identities and care culture. Flaherty is a Deaf artist living in Pittsburgh for over 25 years. As a first-generation immigrant from the Philippines, her work is centered in issues surrounding migrant family relations and assimilation, and maternal feminism. McElhone currently serves as the Art Program Director, University Art Gallery Director, and is an Assistant Professor in Art History at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, PA where she curates trans-disciplinary, justice-oriented exhibitions and aims to cultivate the gallery as a space for experimentation and dialogue. 

For the August 14, 2021 program, Jon Rubin and Selena Shultz will talk about cultural exchange and expand on the engagement the public has with Abid’s artworks. Rubin is an interdisciplinary artist who creates interventions into public life that re-imagine individual, group and institutional behavior. He is an Associate Professor and Graduate Director in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. The founder of The Conflict Lab, Shultz is a leader in the field of conflict navigation and dispute resolution, active both locally and nationally in supporting efforts to promote thoughtful approaches to conflict. She is skilled at bringing about people’s best thinking and developing leaders who are conflict competent. 

Both events are free to the public, but pre-registration is required: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/faces-seen-hearts-unknown-tickets-159854574335

Searching for Home is supported by Dawn and Chris Fleischner. General operating support is provided by Allegheny Regional Asset District, The Heinz Endowments, Henry L. Hillman Foundation, The Pittsburgh Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Opportunity Fund, the Elizabeth R. Raphael Fund of The Pittsburgh Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, JENDOCO Construction Corporation, and Giant Eagle Foundation. Media sponsors are NEXTpittsburgh, 90.5 WESA, and 91.3 WYEP.