OUT OF RUBBLE

Symposium: Presentations by Susanne Slavick, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon; Elin O’Hara Slavick, Distinguished Term Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and Megan Nelson, Lecturer in History and Literature at Harvard University.

Out of Rubble features the work of eighteen international artists from more than 10 countries. The exhibition examines many complex issues and contexts surrounding war, from causes and consequences to the possibility of recovery. Curator, artist, scholar and activist Susanne Slavick initially published this collection of works as a book, Out of Rubble (Charta 2011) to consider the devastation in the aftermath of war. The exhibition features photo-derived prints and altered digital construction collages as well as large-scale contact prints made from actual rubbings, photographs of hand-constructed tabletop models, collaborative projects between visual artists and photojournalists, and a video animation that simulates the raining down of rubble.

The exhibition asks viewers to examine the rubble that each war leaves behind and how it physically, psychologically and politically affects present and future societies. Out of Rubble not only faces the failure and wreckage of war, it aims to make sense of the incomprehensible. “Aware of the masters like Goya and Kollwitz whose portrayals of war haunt to this day,” Slavick explains, “I began to seek out contemporary international artists who react to the wake of war—its realities and its representations. I collected some of their invariably somber responses, both tender and unflinching, in a book project, OUT OF RUBBLE. Unfortunately, witnessing and sifting the remains of traumas we inflict on each other, through state-sponsored or individual acts of violence, never seems to end.”

Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon, Susanne Slavick graduated from Yale University in 1978, and received her MFA from Tyler School of Art in 1980. She joined Carnegie Mellon's faculty in 1984, serving as Head of the School of Art from 2000 to 2006. Named 2008's Pittsburgh Center for the Arts “Artist of the Year," Slavick has exhibited work throughout the US, Europe and Asia, and has received fellowships and awards from the NEA and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

This exhibition is supported in part by EPACC, Gettysburg College and Civil War Institute, Gettysburg College.

January 23 - March 8, 2014

Main Gallery

January 23, 5 p.m. - 6 p.m.

Symposium: January 23, 3 p.m. - 5 p.m.