Post Digital Printmaking Practice and its impact on artists in the United Arab Emirates
Presented by Karen Oremus, Chair of Department of Fine Arts, Winthrop University
Wednesday February 13, 6:30pm
20|20 Gallery, 5th Floor
Recent trends in interdisciplinary practices coupled with ongoing technological developments have infused the profession of printmaking with renewed life and vigor. While maintaining its rich history complete with well-established and codified practices and guidelines it nevertheless is rapidly assimilating new methods including but not limited to: 3D/installations; diverse matrix and substrate materials; and animation/video.
New communication technologies have also supported collaborative interdisciplinary and cross-cultural partnerships that has been particularly relevant to the artists in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who have fully embraced these developments.
This lecture explores the key factors and contextual features that have contributed to the accelerated rate by which these artists create, expand, reinterpret and redefine the medium of printmaking in their society.
Karen Oremus is an artist who merges traditional printmaking with new technologies. Through her creative research Karen explores the unpredictability and fragility of life from both a universal and personal perspective. This is emphasized through her examination of the concept of physical and environmental decay brought about by the passage of time. Place, family, heritage, memory and history also motivate her work. She deals with issues such as war, illness, human metamorphosis, and both natural and man-made disaster and death. The aforementioned concepts are expressed metaphorically in a variety of manifestations, which are created through a hybrid of traditional and non-traditional printmaking techniques, mainly utilizing etching, screen-printing, digital print and photography and drawing, that incorporate various other media such as printed embroidery, animation, video and laser cutting and engraving technology.