A collaboration between the Orlando Museum of Art and the American University in Cairo, A Boundless Drop to a Boundless Ocean, presents artworks by 21 US-based artists of Arab and Iranian heritage. Curated by Dr. Shiva Balaghi, with support from Coralie Claeysen-Gleyzon, the exhibition will be on view in galleries at OMA and AUC’s Tahrir Cultural Center from January 29 through May 2, 2021. The exhibition’s title, taken from Kahlil Gibran’s bestselling book, The Prophet, describes an immigrant’s transformation from “a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.” The show begins with a drawing by Gibran. The immigrant artist’s journey entails a creative negotiation between the past and the present, between here and there. Along the way, diasporic artists create their own visual language that can convey meaning across cultural, linguistic, and social borders.
Kahlil Gibran described an immigrant’s passage as a transformation from “a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.” I conceived of the exhibition A Boundless Drop to a Boundless Ocean as a kind of visual narrative, one that sheds light onto the diverse, complex, and layered histories of the American immigrant experience. Each of the 21 artists on view has developed a distinct visual vocabulary. They draw on color and design, technique and materials, composition and iconography to convey meaning.
Artists
