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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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‘Coexistence’ exhibit focuses on understanding
Wednesday 16 June @ 12:56:18 |
 by Mark Connor
The St. Paul leg of the “Coexistence” international art exhibit opened Monday evening at the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul, sponsored by the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts. The exhibit, created to foster tolerance and equality, opened with speeches from local dignitaries, including St. Paul State Representative (and artist) Cy Thao, and a proclamation from Mayor Randy Kelly’s office.
 The exhibit began the first leg of its Twin Cities appearance outside the Hennepin County Government Center on May 1, and will be on view in Rice Park and on the east side of Landmark Center through July 6.
Comprised of work by 42 artists from 19 countries, the exhibit consists of 38 9-by-15-foot images dealing with differences between people and cultures. Museum on the Seam in Jerusalem created the exhibit, and since its debut there it has toured through Europe and Capetown, South Africa, before coming to the United States.
Stephen Feinstein, director of CLA’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, was very influential in bringing “Coexistence” to the Twin Cities, according to Kelly O’Brien of the University’s Regis Center for Art.
“The issue of Coexistence relates to the issue of what constitutes a civil society and how one maintains it,” he said in the organization’s press release. “In Europe the issue is called ‘globalization,’ with many nations now asking ‘who is a Frenchman,’ ‘who is a Swede’ and so forth after witnessing waves of new immigrants from the Muslim world, Asia and Africa. The Twin Cities is undergoing the same changes as Europe [and] there is a very high level of intolerance and racism.”
 The tour met with some resistance during its Florida run. All of the works were “either slashed or painted with racial epithets prior to its grand opening celebration in St. Petersburg,” organizers say. “Event organizers decided to leave the exhibition as it was (although covering the epithets) as a statement about why the exhibition was needed in the first place.”
Addressing the gathering, Thao spoke of being in a refugee camp before coming to the United States, explaining that he was among the Hmong majority sharing the camp with Thai and Lao people. He said he and his friends at the time picked fights with Lao “because we could,” but then he found out what it was like to be on the receiving end as a minority in St. Paul. 
“I had to take it for a long time,” he said of the discrimination and vulnerability he faced, emphasizing that the experience reminds him of how necessary an exhibit like “Coexistence” is. The celebration also included performances by City Songs, a multicultural singing troupe of inner city youth, and Northern Lights School of Strings from the St. Paul Jewish Community Center.
Further information can be found on the web at http://www.chgs.umn.edu/coexistence.
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