 Hello everyone, this is Hilary DePolo and this is Art Scene, KUVO's monthly program on the visual arts. Today it is my great pleasure to have with us Cecily Cullen from the Center for the Visual Arts on Santa Fe Drive and you will be opening an exhibit this evening and I would just like to welcome you Cecily to the program. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here Hilary. That's great. So tell us a little bit about the Center for the Visual Arts. How long it's been on Santa Fe and a little bit about its history. Sure. The Center for Visual Arts was established in 1990 by the Metropolitan State University's art department and it was established as a way to bring more contemporary art and artists into Denver to give students an opportunity to interact directly with artists and be able to view the artwork in person. Now is this an unusual thing for a university to have a freestanding art center for themselves? Yes, I think it is really unusual. A lot of universities do have galleries or museums but primarily on campus and so one thing that's really unique about the Center for Visual Art is that we are truly a bridge into the community. We offer the same opportunities to the community that we offer to students in that access. We're free and open to the public. All of our events are free and so we're really bringing that access to artists into the community. That's wonderful. Now when did you move to Santa Fe Drive? We moved in 2010 and that was a really great opportunity for the university to establish roots in the La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood and community and it also established a permanent home for the Center for Visual Art which we had been renting space up until that point. Right and so now you at the university owns the space, is that correct? Yes. That's terrific. So what is the focus of the exhibition that's opening tonight, Cecily? This is an exhibition of photo-based work by artists with roots in the Middle East. So some of the artists are living in the Middle East currently and some are originally from Middle Eastern countries and living abroad in the U.S. or in Canada and then specifically the exhibition looks at the tension inherent in the presence or absence of an individual in a land whether it's their native homeland or abroad. How did you choose these artists? We have I believe 11 artists, 12 artists. 12 artists, okay. And the way they were selected for this particular exhibition I decided to work collaboratively with two visiting faculty members to join me. One was Layla Armstrong and she's a visiting professor in art history theory and criticism with specialization in Islamic art. I see. So she brought in that expertise and then the other co-curator is Natasha Sideneck and she's a visiting professor in photography and as a photographer herself. So both of them brought in different aspects of an expertise that really helped build the exhibition but once we really settled on the theme of the exhibition being presence and what that means to have a presence in a photograph or conversely the absence, we all three of us brought suggestions for artists together and we looked at them as a team and worked on developing a cohesive exhibition that didn't have a lot of overlap, had different voices. The original idea for the exhibition came about two years ago when I was reflecting on my interest in an Iranian artist Shirin Nishat who works in photography and film and specifically is focused on gender roles in the Middle East primarily and so with everything that's happening in the Middle East and how that's affecting the countries around the world I wanted to take a new look at how artists are interpreting their own status in their countries and abroad. Now in this exhibition Cecily it seems that many of the artists are women and when we think about the Middle East you know the common stereotype is that women are in the background and here we have women in the foreground really in the making of this art and I also think of photography as being very male oriented and here we have a lot of women doing this. For this exhibition we have eight female artists and four male and it really wasn't intentional we weren't looking to specifically focus on women artists but I think given the theme that women have a different experience of being present in a place whether abroad or in their homeland and so that may come through more in their work and so really we were looking more at our theme of presence and then also another motif that is found and woven through a lot of the work is pattern and pattern is related both to the cultural heritage and the art history but also comes through in the fabrics that women wear and in the home and so that may be why more women fit into the theme of the exhibition. Okay well if you are just joining me right now we are this is Art Scene and we are speaking with Cecily Cullen who is the Executive Director of the Center for the Visual Arts on Santa Fe Drive. Now you were having a series of wonderful events with this exhibition as well can you tell us a little bit about those? We are we're thrilled to have some of the artists in attendance so for the opening reception on Friday Samira Yamine will be with us and she's coming from Los Angeles and she'll also be taking over some of our social media so that'll be fun to watch over the weekend as she explores Denver and so that's a great opportunity to meet her and see her work and hear directly from the artist and then next week Lale Marin, an artist who lives in Denver, an Iranian American artist who's also a professor at the University of Denver will be given an artist talk on February 8th at 6 p.m. and then in March we are thrilled to bring in visiting artist Gulnar Adili she'll be here March 29th and giving a public lecture at 5 p.m. That's wonderful it is a real immersion experience that you're offering not only the students but the public here in Denver and I congratulate you on that and tell us again the address of the gallery. We are at 965 Santa Fe Drive in Denver okay and where can people find more information your website yes absolutely our website has information about the exhibition each of the artists and all of the events and that is msudenver.edu slash cva all right god remember all those initials okay