Unknown 3

photo by Steve Menzel

Private / Public Conversations

Artist Ethan Shoshan is interested in the relationship between the public and the private. For NOT OVER he explores this relationship through a series of conversations with strangers during the run of the exhibition.

In these one-on-one conversation, participants and Ethan will meet at the gallery and spend 30-45 minutes together, letting conversation flow organically. The time spent together will be archived through Ethan’s notes, drawings, and an audio recording, informing future work. In this way, a private conversation becomes public. Participants may request to use a pseudonym for recording purposes.

To sign up for a conversation email Visual AIDS at tkerr@visualaids.org. Space is limited.

From the Artist: I am drawn to conversations with friends and strangers as a performative art practice. My previous exhibitions were an exploration of these kinds of conversations between people and objects, time and places. I make a conscious choice to share intimate talks where I am not guided by my own preconceived ideas rather, with someone else, we work to dissolve our egos in order to learn something new about each other and ultimately ourselves.

More about the Artist: Ethan Shoshan is a social ecologist who also engages in aesthetic philosophical visual inquiries, highlighting the importance of everyday gestures. For the last 2 years, Shoshan has been working with personal archives, relationships of the collection to community consciousness, personal identity and cultural understanding to help develop and preserve experiences within queer identity.

He has collaborated with Carlo Quispe and other artists; exhibited and performed on the streets and at the Kitchen, Aljira, PØST, Envoy Enterprises, Commonwealth & Council, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Le Petit Versailles, and other venues. His previous projects have been reviewed in The New York Times, Art In America, LA Weekly, Huffington Post, BlackBook, Art Quips, The Brooklyn Rail, Artforum, The Washington Post, and have aired on Public Access TV.

Shoshan’s projects bring back art, life, and experiences to something that is inherent in our human condition—the need to share and connect to the deeply personal, and in that a process of learning, exploring and archiving alternative histories that are experiential and heartfelt.