Jersey City, U.S.A. — The Middle East Center for the Arts (MECA) is pleased to present Conversations Rough Cut, a new exhibition by Israeli artist David Wakstein, featuring video interviews with contemporary visual artists living and working in Israel.

For over ten years, David Wakstein has documented his friends, colleagues, and students as they reveal their innermost thoughts and feelings about art, politics, Arab-Jewish relations, and the ubiquity of Middle Eastern culture. The artists are captured against a simple backdrop with little to no objects or artworks to distract the viewer from their poignant words. Unless he is interviewed himself, Wakstein is not seen on screen. Yet, his voice is often heard ‘behind the scenes’ asking questions and probing deeper into his subjects’ psyches.

The show offers a purview of talent ranging in age, religion, and cultural backgrounds. These include Anisa Ashkar, Yaacov Dorchin, Yair Garbuz, Farid Abu Shakra, and Chen Shish, to highlight a few. Taken together, their words create a resounding statement about the nature of life in one of the world’s most complicated regions.

Conversations Rough Cut opens to the public on Sunday, November 4, 2012, 1:00 to 5:00 PM. MECA is located on the third floor of Mana Contemporary at 888 Newark Avenue, Jersey City, NJ. Free transportation will be provided from and to Manhattan. For more details please visit www.themeca.org/exhibitions/conversations

MECA is a nonprofit exhibition space providing an equal-opportunity platform for artists, curators, scholars, and institutions –– based in the Middle East and its Diasporas –– to showcase new and influential works of art. MECA’s core mission is to broaden the perception and educate the greater public about the Middle East. With a yearlong program of events, exhibitions, film screenings, and lectures, MECA creates an exciting forum for cultural exchange by combining divergent philosophies that would otherwise not meet.

Image Courtesy of  arindambanerjee / Shutterstock.com

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