“VOYAGER: Migrational Narratives" UMF Emery Community Arts Center Jan. 30–March 6 ARTISTS: Arturo Herrera, ACC alumni Firoz Mahmud, Mohja Kahf, Nayda Cuevas, Leila Hernandez, Josephine Lee, Éireann Lorsung, TeaYoun Kim-Kassor. FARMINGTON, ME (January 15, 2020)—The UMF Emery Community Arts Center is proud to present “VOYAGER: Migrational Narratives,” an exhibition of more than a dozen artists and authors—all of whom have experienced migration firsthand. VOYAGER will be on view from Jan. 30 to March 6, 2020. Gallery hours are Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. An interactive opening reception, Thursday, Jan. 30, from 4-7 p.m., will feature a performance by visual artist Arturo Herrera. Additionally, documentary filmmaker Daniel Quintanilla and collaborators Shuab Mahat and Hilowle Aden will present their pop-up virtual reality experience, “A Shared Space: Lewiston.” Viewers will have the opportunity to put on an Oculus Rift and experience the stories of two immigrant fathers raising their families in Lewiston. The exhibition and opening reception are free and open to the public. Faculty, student clubs, local schools and community groups may contact Ann Bartges, ann.bartges@maine.edu, about holding class sessions, workshops and other events in the exhibition space. Interweaving performance, photography, painting, video, sculpture, textiles, poetry and prose, this group exhibition explores themes of home, distance, craving, belonging, dreaming and more. As the title implies, VOYAGER honors the narratives of people moving places. This aim is echoed in the gallery with the ethereal audio-recording of Mohja Kahf’s poem, “Voyager Dust,” as it plays from overhead speakers. The poem beckons our senses with the scent of Syria in a mother’s scarves and the softness of a sweater stitched in China. Similar to the exhibition, these clothes contain the “dust” of departures and arrivals—the ongoing journeys of various voyagers. Like Kahf’s poem, many of the works on exhibit convey sentiments of loss, longing, hope and possibility, alluding to complex patterns, histories and causes of migration. In Nayda A. Cuevas’s mixed-media collage, “Adios: Puerto Ricans Always in Migration,” the image of an embrace foregrounds a map connecting the island and mainland. Cuevas’s collage visualizes the cyclic longing of those who leave, remain and return only to leave again. In Firoz Mahmud’s series “Soaked Dream,” the artist creates photographic portraits of families who work in factories. Parents and children peer out of fantastical green glasses crafted from their tools. Recently selected as a finalist for the COAL prize in France, Mahmud’s work speaks to the aspirations and uncertain futures of displaced persons in Bangladesh and South Asia, more broadly, due to natural and social disasters. More info: https://www.umf.maine.edu/2020/01/umf-emery-community-arts-center-presents-voyager-migrational-narratives-exhibit-jan-30-march-6/