Clark University will host David Feinberg’s “Voice to Vision,” an expansive mixed media exhibition that narrates the experiences of genocide survivors from around the world, in multiple sites on campus beginning Thursday, Feb. 16. A gallery talk with Holocaust survivor Fred Arman will mark the opening of this exhibition, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. in the Schiltkamp Gallery, Traina Center for the Arts, 92 Downing Street.

A film screening and conversation with project director and documentary film creator, David Feinberg, is planned for Thursday, February, 23, at 4.30 p.m. in the second floor lounge of Dana Commons.  Feinberg will explain the project, and how survivors share their experiences verbally and collaborate with teams of artists to produce works of art (including sculpture, painting, collage and mixed media) that communicate their stories.

“We like to start them out without having any idea which direction it’s going to go – very much like the survivors’ experience. The survivors didn’t know the destiny; the artwork doesn’t know its destiny. It happens as it happens.
You make decisions based on what’s in front of you,”
said Feinberg.

The exhibition will be on display on the Clark University campus in three venues: Feb. 16 – March 1 in Dana Commons; Feb. 16 – April 8 in the Traina Center;  Feb. 16 – April 16 in the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Feinberg is an associate professor of art at the University of Minnesota. He earned an MFA degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He created the Voice to Vision project in 2002, and since that time he has made seven video documentaries with survivors and/or descendants from the Holocaust, Rwanda, Sudan, Cambodia, Tibet, Armenia, Bosnia, Laos (Hmong), and Native American atrocities. The Voice to Vision artworks’ and documentaries have been exhibited in colleges, universities, and art and
community centers throughout the United States.

The exhibit is free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored by the Higgins School of Humanities, the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, and the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. For more information, email Lisa Gillingham or call her at 508-793-7479.

This exhibit is part of the Difficult Dialogues Spring 2012 Symposium on “Agency: authenticity, power and action.” The series of events place emphasis on the power of the arts — film, narrative, visual arts, place-making, design — to provoke, educate, enlighten, re-envision, inspire, heal, and transform.

It is also sponsored by the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark, a program that trains students, educators, and activists to develop a sophisticated understanding of genocide. Offering the nation’s sole doctoral program in Holocaust History and Genocide Studies in conjunction with Clark’s history department, a new doctoral program in Psychology of Genocide in conjunction with the psychology department, and a rich undergraduate program, the Strassler Center’s program is interdisciplinary in nature.