WKU News

Chelsea and Mariano Cortez, the husband and wife team of "The String Project," with Julia King, ESL Art2Dream coordinator at Jennings Creek Elementary School.

The Cuba Amor Exhibition that was on display this spring at WKU’s Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center’s Main and Corridor Galleries as part of the International Year of Cuba has traveled to the Sturgis Library at Kennesaw State University.

The Kennesaw State University Department of Museums, Archives & Rare Books, in partnership with the KSU School of Art and Design, the Division of Global Affairs, and WKU, will be hosting an opening reception from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday (Sept. 19).

The exhibition will be on view at Kennesaw State University during the fall 2019 semester as part of the “Year of Cuba” program.

This exhibit aims to illustrate the stories, images and transcultural synergy between the peoples of the United States and Cuba. The exhibit has three components that reflect the connections between place, identity, and artistic expression:

• Work by Cuban artists express “transculturation,” a term coined by anthropologist Fernando Ortiz Fernándiz that reflects how identity crosses cultural lines.

• Works by children enrolled in an afterschool enrichment program, La Clase Mágica, investigate how art serves as a catalyst for personal and social transformation.

• The String Project, created by photographers Chelsea and Mariano Cortez, invites visitors to take photographs clutching the same white rope in different surroundings.

‘String Project’ team returns to WKU

Chelsea and Mariano Cortez, the husband and wife team of "The String Project," returned to WKU at the beginning of the school year in September. WKU Art2Dream art pre-service teachers worked as a small team at the Russell Miller Theatre after their presentation.

During their four-day visit to WKU, the Art Department reached out to over 1,000 students and adults including two area high schools (Warren Central High and Geo International High), WKU Elementary and Art2Dream pre-service teachers, hosted 50 Jennings Creek Elementary School first grade ESL students to teach an art and literacy lesson about Frank Stella's abstract design, rhyming and singing.

The couple also spent all day Sept. 6 to complete the "String Project Jennings Creek Edition" that included all P-6 students, faculty and school staff. The Art Department thanks Jennings Creek school staff and teachers for the collaboration and beautiful work together, WKU Theatre and Dance for use of Russell Miller Theatre as instructional space, and "Bramham/Collins Fund" from the WKU Art Department for sponsoring their return visit to WKU.

Chelsea and Mariano Cortez are off to a World Tour as of October for eight months to promote the message of the String Project that "We are all connected." Their focus has been on creating a project that connects the viewer to the image in a more tangible way, bringing the photograph to life. In the String Project all of the people hold the same physical string that symbolizes and visually represents a connection that cannot be seen with the naked eye. We are all part of this world: we love, we suffer, these are all things that we have in common, that connect us. The project is a reminder that highlights some of the most valuable things in life: respect, hope, peace, compassion, love, empathy, integrity... authentic and genuine interactions between humans. WKU Art Department and Jennings Creek team are proud to be part of "The String Project" to demonstrate our respect and hope for the better world. For information, visit https://www.thestringproject.org/

For additional exhibition information about Cuba Amor:The Island of My Love at WKU and KSU, contact Dr. Miwon Choe, curator and art education professor at WKU, at miwon.choe@wku.edu.

Contact: Victoria Layne, (270) 745-2314