The Hartford Art School Galleries are proud to announce a new publication commemorating the monumental Body Quilt: A Fire for Peace, a community-based artmaking project and performance carried out by contemporary Iranian artist Minoo Emami at the University of Hartford in the fall of 2023.
The Harrison Libraries at the University of Hartford will hold a book launch on the one-year anniversary of the performance, Monday, Nov. 11, 2024, from 4 p.m.–5 p.m. Emami will be present for a conversation and book signing. Remnants of the burnt quilt will also be on display.
In conjunction with the artist’s retrospective exhibition Minoo Emami: Under My Veil, held in the Hartford Art School’s Joseloff Gallery from Sept. 21 to Dec. 16, 2023, the public was invited to join the artist in the Silpe Gallery over four weeks, to suture together 22 paintings from Emami’s War Collection series into a new large-scale collage entitled Body Quilt. Then, on Nov. 11, Emami set fire to the paintings on the Harry Jack Gray quad, symbolically sacrificing her intellectual and artistic being in a cry to end all war and conflict.
The book launch and signing event, on Nov. 11, is free and open to the public.
The exhibition, programming, and book project were funded by a grant from the Connecticut Humanities Council and the Joseloff Gallery Programs Fund held by Hartford Art School Endowment, Inc.