Assistant Teaching Professor of the Comparative Study of Religions Dr. Diana Murtaugh Coleman and Regents’ Professor Dr. Björn Krondorfer will both present public talks in November 2023 as part of the exhibit Tom Kiefer: El Sueño Americano / The American Dream at the Coconino Center for the Arts. His work is a photographic documentation of the personal belongings carried by migrants and those seeking asylum that were seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at a processing facility near the artist’s home in Ajo, Arizona, about 40 miles from the U.S./Mexico border. U.S. border agents deemed these belongings as non-essential or potentially lethal. Kiefer asks the viewer to consider these photographs as untold and unknown stories, markers of human journeys cut short, creating a personal connection for the viewer that extends compassion and empathy to those who make the dangerous journey across the desert to seek a better life. NAU’s Martin-Springer Institute partnered with CCA to bring the exhibit to Flagstaff.
Dr. Coleman will present the public lecture “Climate Disaster, Militarism, and Displacement in the Americas” on Thursday Nov. 9 at 6:30 p.m. at CCA. She exposes connections between global warming (climate disaster) and militarism within the Americas, and how displacement and subsequent migration render certain populations vulnerable.
Dr. Krondorfer will present the public lecture “The Aesthetics and Ethics of Representation” on Thursday Nov. 30 at 6:30 p.m. at CCA. He will reflect on photojournalism, art photography, and found-objects and how to think about them in relation to individual stories within violent-traumatizing contexts.
Learn more at https://coconinoarts.org/exhibitions/tom-kiefer-el-sueno-americano/.