The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts invites you to an evening discussion between curator and writer Deena Chalabi & Scholar and writer Rijin Sahakian. The two will be speaking to and as part of our Hiwa K Research Season. 

Deena Chalabi is an independent curator and writer, and currently a Visiting Scholar at the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley. She is the former Barbara and Stephan Vermut Associate Curator of Public Dialogue at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and previously Head of Strategy at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar. She has organized events about art, literature, culture and politics in several countries including the US, UK and Japan and has spoken widely on related subjects, including at Stanford University, Oakland Museum of California, Kenyon College, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New Museum.

Rijin Sahakian uses writing, art-making, and teaching to examine the relationship of images and rhetoric to experiences of violence. She founded Sada, an arts education initiative for Baghdad-based students, operating from 2010-15. Sahakian has lectured extensively on critical issues in the arts, organized public exhibitions and seminars, and was a visiting professor at the California Institute of the Arts. She has contributed texts to e-flux Journal, n+1, Artforum, Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, Warscapes, and World Records, and created an anthology film with former members of Sada for documenta fifteen.

6:00-8:00 PM

This event is not taking place inside the Wattis Gallery.