Staging Public Memory: A Conversation with Artist Marysia Lewandowska

Marysia Lewandowska’s Cinema Island project explores archives, memory, and history and highlights the important role of arts institutions in bringing attention to these topics. Through this collaboration with members of the UAE community, oil-company documentaries are intercut with home movies by Emiratis, which are narrated by women whose voices point to what cameras cannot capture. Whereas professional images produce orientalist narratives of modernization, often including only Emirati and British men, private film footage allows more complex stories to emerge. This way, as Lewandowska notes, “all the members of the family are included.” 

Speakers

• Hind Mezaina, Artist, Writer & Film Programmer, Zayed University
• Marysia Lewandowska, London-based Artist, Zayed University
• Woodman Taylor, Professor of Art History, Zayed University

Moderated by

• Dale Hudson, Associate Teaching Professor of Film and New Media and Curator of Film and New Media, NYUAD

Hosted by

• NYU Abu Dhabi Institute