Fold: Art, Metaphor and Practice

Phase I: February 2–April 1 
International Museum of Art & Science (IMAS) 
Artists: Laleh Mehran, Sibel Kocabası, Giannina Coppaino Dwin, and Anja Marais

Phase II: February 15–March 29 
Visual Art Gallery at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) 
Artists: Linda Behar, Isabel Gouveia, Rojhaneh Hosseini, Dorotha Grace Lemeh, and Amber Scoon

Phase III: February 27–March 30
Visitors Center at UTRGV
Artists: Misoo Filan, Gulia Huber, Sibel Kocabası, and Golnar Shahyar 

Performance: February 26 
Performing Arts Complex at UTRGV 
Artist: Niurca Marquez | Flamenco Dancer Jose Luis de la Paz | Guitar

Panel discussion: Unfolding Social Issues: February 27 
Visitor Center at UTRGV, Edinburg 
Panelists: Dr. Young Rae Oum, Dr. Ruby Charak, Dr. Cathryn Merla-Watson, Dr. Mariana Alessandri

Fold: Art, Metaphor and Practice
A Topology of Identity

The International Museum of Art & Science (IMAS) along with the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), is pleased to announce a mega-exhibition curated by the Iranian-American curator and educator Raheleh T. Filsoofi, presenting a phantasmagorical artistry of aesthetic, scholarship and expertise. Fold: Art, Metaphor and Practice is a multi-faceted exhibition held in conjunction with the FESTIBA gala, covering a full range of practice from fine arts, panel discussions and performance at UTRGV opening on February 2, 2018 and closing on April 1.

As an homage to the distinguished French philosophers Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze and the latter’s book The Fold, the all-female exhibition is in fact a continuation of a dialogue formerly introduced by the aforesaid intellects. The all-inclusive project intrigues viewers to delve into the artists’ practical and conceptual response to the subjectivity of the word “fold,” its relevance to all aspects of the everyday life and the inherent historical and traditional bias against women beyond the so-called allegorical and geopolitical borders.

Filsoofi artfully enfolds her personal struggles as an immigrant, an artist and a woman in her unprecedented curatorial project: an illusory folded reality which is nothing more than a fold of the outside. Fold invites its audience to a discursive dialogue on identity, atemporal multi-universes of disciplines and acts of renewals beyond the memory of the outside, beyond the brief memory inscribed in strata and archives, beyond the relics remaining in the diagrams.

The exhibition will feature three phases presenting 13 female artists, a female performer and a panel discussion consisted of seven scholars from different disciplines: philosophy, psychology, social history, history of art and literature and women’s studies, creating an environment of color, form, concept and illumination with an emphasis on fold and its extended consideration of physicality, identity and idiosyncrasy.