This development is a two-way street - she said that The Exchange was also fortunate to receive a grant from Connecticut’s Department of Economic and Community Development to support its endeavors. She values drawing “new forms” of tourism to Connecticut, and said that SomethingProjects was in part an effort to bolster cities’ economic development. “What people forget is that you don’t have to go to New York and Boston for great artwork.” “There are ways of finding and experiencing art that we often take for granted,” Shutan said, citing walks in the park and family trips as engines for art exploration and appreciation. The product was an artistic treasure hunt that residents could enjoy while simultaneously connecting with nature, an aspect of everyday life that had been largely inaccessible during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. Instead of featuring their artists’ work in “white cube” galleries indoors, he and Shutan wanted to experiment with presentation mediums that could strengthen both interfamilial relationships and the relationships that people had with their neighborhoods. He mentioned that a large motivator behind The Exchange was a desire to subvert traditional models of how spectators enjoyed art. Still, the name “The Exchange” encompasses more than the artist-artist “kind of exchange,” according to el-Yasin. When considering submissions, el-Yasin and Shutan met individually with every artist group to discuss their ideas and offer suggestions on how their projects could be made more interactive to the public. They were happy to see that many of the submissions they received for The Exchange were not individual, but rather team projects that featured the collaborative work of multiple artists, they said. Both artists in the Greater New Haven area, they take pride in sharing the work of local artists whose efforts they said may go unnoticed, as well as helping forge strong connections within the art community. “There are so many artists in Connecticut that don’t really know each other, and The Exchange is a great way for artists to meet each other and have dialogue.”Įl-Yasin and Shutan, who have been friends for about three decades, are no newcomers to the Connecticut art scene. “We wanted to create a project that celebrated the acts of giving, receiving and exchange,” Shutan said in an interview. All participating artists were asked to write creative clues that help guide public visitors to their work, though if a challenge gets too difficult, the SomethingProjects has all the geographic coordinates published on their website. Co-directors Howard el-Yasin and Suzan Shutan hosted 24 Connecticut artists - across mediums and cities - in their treasure hunt, which has been ongoing since Aug. The Exchange is the inaugural curatorial endeavor of SomethingProjects, a program that nurtures nomadic exhibitions of local art and challenges the community to critically explore the social issues that artists convey through their work. Today, their collaboration project, “A Place in Time,” finds itself among the various installations featured in The Exchange, a Connecticut-wide treasure hunt that takes residents from one artistic exhibition to another. Artists Judith Kruger and Joy Bush met about a year ago through a mutual friend - and their common interest in taking nature walks and creating art from an environmental lens quickly striked a conversation.
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