In conversation with live artist Tania El Khoury, we will discuss her art, the role of her audiences, and the political potential of her work: What does it mean to do interactive art? What are the politics of her work? What are the experiences of an Arab feminist artist exhibiting and performing around the world? This conversation is part of a joint CMES Brown University and the Middle East Institute at Columbia University series on gender, art, and body politics in the Middle East and its diasporas. The series examines intersecting inequalities and body politics expressed, represented, and transgressed in both visual and performance art.
Tania El Khoury ─ As Far As Isolation Goes
Tania El Khoury is a live artist whose work focuses on audience interactivity and its political potential. She creates installations and performances in which the audience is a witness and an active collaborator. Tania’s work has been translated into multiple languages and shown in 32 countries across 6 continents in spaces ranging from museums to cable cars. She is the recipient of a Soros Art Fellowship, the Bessies Outstanding Production Award, the International Live Art Prize, the Total Theatre Innovation Award, and the Arches Brick Award. Tania is the director of the OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts at Bard College in New York. She is associated with Forest Fringe collective of artists in the UK and is a co-founder of Dictaphone Group in Lebanon, a research and live art collective aiming at questioning our relationship to the city and its public spaces.