WORDS FOR PEACE and Karen Finley Set for DWOW Series, 9/11 & 9/18

DiverseWorks has announced its continuing DWOW events as part of its DiverseWorks on Wednesdays series. Details below!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11: WORDS FOR PEACE
6 - 8 PM

On September 11, 2013 DiverseWorks and Voices Breaking Boundaries will revisit Words for Peace.

Voices Breaking Boundaries (VBB) organized the inaugural Words for Peace event on Sunday, September 22, 2002 at DiverseWorks, in response to the increasingly frightening political climate in the U.S. following the September 11, 2001 attacks. The event featured spoken word, dance, and music and included live telephone readings by 1997 Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy, Jewish poet Irena Klepfisz, Palestinian American poet Naomi Shihab Nye and award-winning journalist Ahmed Rashid. It was curated by Troy Gooden, Chuck Jackson, Rich Levy, Sehba Sarwar, Oskar Sonnen, Sandra Tarlin, and Michael Woodson.

The mission of Voices Breaking Boundaries is to cross borders, sustain dialogue, and incite social justice through art.

VBB Artistic Director/ Founder Sehba Sarwar has been leading VBB since its inception. She is a writer, multidisciplinary artist and activist. Her published works include a novel (Black Wings, Alhamra, 2004), and essays, short stories, and poems (in journals, anthologies, and newspapers including the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Callaloo, and Asia). Her video collages have been screened in Pakistan, Egypt, India and around the US. Sarwar has been visualizing and producing VBB shows since 1999, and she produces VBB's living room art productions.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18: KAREN FINLEY
6 - 8 PM

Artist Karen Finley will give a dramatic reading of four selected excerpts from We Keep Our Victims Ready, first performed at DiverseWorks over two evenings in October 1989. About the oppressed in contemporary America, We Keep Our Victims Ready is a confrontational and powerful work of art that Finley has reframed in the context of current social and political issues: war, reproductive rights, freedom of expression, and identity.

Finley's reading will be followed by a discussion and Q & A moderated by DiverseWorks Assistant Curator Rachel Cook and UH Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Jessica Santone.

Karen Finley is a New York-based artist whose raw and transgressive performances have long provoked controversy and debate. Finley was one of four artists whose NEA grant applications were vetoed due to content considered "indecent." Finley and the other three artists sued for reinstatement and won the case in 1993 in the ninth circuit court in Los Angeles. In May 2013, Finley's performance and installation, "Sext Me if You Can," was presented as part of NEA 4 in Residence at the New Museum in New York. For this interactive performance installation, Finley created a limited edition of paintings inspired by "sexts" that she received from participating patrons. Other current projects include "Unicorn in Red" (an ongoing series of performances in which Finley receives automatic messages from those departed and turns those messages into artworks), and Open Heart (a public memorial for children killed during the Holocaust created in collaboration with survivors, children, and locals). Finley is a professor at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in the department of Art and Public Policy.

Presented in partnership with the University of Houston's School of Art and Visiting Assistant Professor Jessica Santone.

DIVERSEWORKS is located at 4102 FANNIN, STE 200, HOUSTON, TEXAS. For more information, call 713 223 8346, visit DIVERSEWORKS.ORG, or email INFO@DIVERSEWORKS.ORG. GALLERY HOURS: WED NOON - 8 PM / THURS, FRI, SAT NOON - 6 PM.

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