Just in time for Hispanic Heritage Month and the celebration of Mexico’s recent bicentennial, a traveling exhibit by a Lebanese-Mexican artist opens today in the main gallery of the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture.
“Zone,” a colorful mixed-media artwork by Lebanese-Mexican artist Emilio Said, will be on display in the gallery of the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture through Nov. 2. | Courtesy of Emilio Said
The exhibit, Unreal Cities: Informal Architectural Zone by artist Emilio Said, is being sponsored by the Mexican Foreign Ministry, which asked the college to host the exhibit, as part of the bicentennial celebration of Mexican independence from Spain.
Rafael Longoria, registered architect and professor, spoke about the importance of the exhibit for some students within the College of Architecture.
“Interestingly, 53 percent of our students in the College of Architecture are Hispanic,” Longoria said.
Considering this fact, hosting an exhibit by an architect/artist from Mexico City “kind of works,” Longoria said.
“It is always interesting to see the work that is being done in Mexico right now.”
Said released a statement explaining the meanings behind his exhibit.
“The diverse social dynamics that gather in the public field generate mechanic interactions to shape bonds between the city and those who transit in it,” Said said in his statement. “By this way, (the exhibit) is integrated in the urban as a point of common tendency of individual and collective acts, taking multiple readings that allow the audience to make estimative connections of their own experience in such context.”
Said also elaborates on the immense detail in his artwork.
“The pieces are a formal abstraction by different means such as paintings, photographs, architectonic plans and graphics that generate visual fields which give another meaning to the space where they are…and turns it into a metropolis that becomes an abstraction in itself.”
Said will deliver a lecture on the exhibit tonight beginning at 6:30 p.m., which will be followed by a reception in the architecture atrium.
The exhibition, which is also supported by Bank of America, runs through Nov. 20.
