The lines of my hand - Exclusion II (The trace of memory) , 2021
42 x 60 cm (h x w)
1800 USD
archival pigment print,  
for sale
[A25]

Muriel Hasbun
Through an intergenerational, transnational and transcultural lens, Hasbun constructs contemporary narratives and establishes a space for dialogue where individual and collective memory spark new questions about identity and place.
Hasbun is the recipient of numerous distinctions, including: a FY21 AHCMC Artist Scholar Project Grant, 2020 Sondheim Prize and 2019 Trawick Prize Finalist, a 2019 Archive Transformed CU Boulder Artist/Scholar Collaborative Residency, Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awards in Media (2019 and 2008) and in Photography (2015, 2012), CENTER Santa Fe 2018 Producer’s Choice and 2017 Curator’s Choice awards, a FY17 Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County Artist Project Grant, a 2014 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, the Howard Chapnick Grant of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund for laberinto projects (2014); a Museums Connect grant of the U.S. Department of State and the American Association of Museums (2011-2012); Artist in Residences at the Centro Cultural de España in San Salvador (2016), and the Escuela de Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (2010); the Corcoran’s Outstanding Creative Research Faculty Award (2007) and a Fulbright Scholar Grant (2006-2008).
Hasbun’s photo-based work has been internationally exhibited. Venues include: Art on paper with RoFa Projects ( 2020), George Mason University with RoFa Projects (2019), Brentwood Arts Exchange (2019), Turchin Center for Visual Arts, the Athenaeum (2018); Betty Mae Kramer Gallery, MICA Meyerhoff Galleries (2017); PINTA Miami and Civilian Art Projects (2016); American University Museum (2016, 2008); Centro Cultural de España in San Salvador (2016, 2015, 2006); Smithsonian American Art Museum (2013, 2011); the Maier Museum of Art (2012); Light Work, Mexican Cultural Institute (2011); the MAC-Dallas and Michael Mazzeo Gallery (2010); NYU’s Hemispheric Institute at the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires (2007); Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego (2007); Houston’s FotoFest (2006), Corcoran Gallery of Art (2004); 50th Venice Biennale (2003); Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City (1999); Musée de l’Arles Antique at the 29ème Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles (1998).
Similarly, her photographs are in numerous private and public collections, including the Art Museum of the Americas, D.C.Art Bank, El Museo del Barrio, En Foco, Lehigh University, Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Turchin Center for the Arts, University of Texas-Austin, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Building upon her socially engaged art and teaching practice, Muriel Hasbun is the founder and director of laberinto projects, a transnational, cultural memory and education initiative that fosters contemporary art practices, social inclusion and dialogue in El Salvador and its U.S. diaspora, through exhibitions, art education, artist residencies and community engagement. She is professor emerita at the GWU Corcoran School of Arts & Design and visiting artist/distinguished practitioner with the Nomad MFA program at the Hartford Art School. Previously, she was professor and chair of photography at the Corcoran College of Art + Design.
Hasbun received a MFA in Photography (1989) from George Washington University where she studied with Ray K. Metzker (1987-88), and earned an AB in French Literature (1983), cum laude, from Georgetown University.
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Muriel Hasbun’s expertise as an artist and as an educator focuses on issues of cultural identity, migration and memory.
Hasbun’s artistic language is characteristically a form of collage, in which elements of different places, times, and mediums are brought onto a single surface, but the photographs have more in common with the phenomenon of
pentimento, in which old oil paint fades to reveal an earlier layer of drawing underneath. The difference between the drawing and the painting on top of it is thought to represent the painter’s change of mind, or “repenting.”
In Hasbun’s case, we might think of pentimento as a metaphor of memory, of the intimate distance between the tracings of personal history that families carry from generation to generation and the fuller, more dimensional and multi-hued constructions of individual identity that we create from those barely discernible lines.
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The Lines of My Hand (or The Imprint of Memory).

When I was 13 years old, a family friend and poet read my palm a couple of times. An intense curiosity would always envelop me upon absorbing Claudia’s mysterious words, of wanting to know my future and understand myself better…

Years went by and I became an artist. The different ethnicities and cultures that run through my veins, and the construction of an identity through photography would become the central theme of my existential search.

After 30 years of working, I can say that I achieved a certain measure of internal peace by accepting the complexity of my multivalent identites (Jewish, Palestinian, Christian, Latina, Salvadoran, French, etc.) --that the world considered “Other” and that at some point I also called “irreconcilable.” I developed my skills and channeled my efforts to forge connections with and between all those identities, hoping to find the gift of understanding and belonging.

With these photographs, I revisit a 2004 self-portrait (“The Imprint of Memory – Hand”), that I made after having finished three bodies of work in which I explored the history of my family. I play digitally with the negatives and photograms made intuitively in the darkroom and I create new images with filters named “Exclusion” and “Difference.” The irony does not escape me, and I smile. Voilà, again, my offering.

Exhibited by:

Artfocus Latinoamérica

Other works by Muriel Hasbun

The lines of my hand - Exclusion (The trace of memory) , 2021
42 x 60 cm (h x w)
Archival pigment print.
Artfocus Latinoamérica
USD
1800.00
The lines of my hand - Difference (The trace of memory) , 2021
42 x 60 cm (h x w)
Archival pigment print.
Artfocus Latinoamérica
USD
1800.00
The lines of my hand —Ixcanal (The imprint of memory) , 2021
41 x 56 cm (h x w)
archival pigment print
Artfocus Latinoamérica
USD
1800.00
Scheherazade or (Per)forming the Archive , 2016
20 x 35 in (h x w)
Video Still
Muriel Hasbun
Pulse: La declaración (Homage, Miguel Antonio Bonilla ) , 2020
40 x 60 in (h x w)
archival pigment print
Muriel Hasbun

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