In Conversation With Essma Imady and Torey Erin

Please Join us at us Saturday July 20th from 1:30-3pm for a conversation with Essma Imady and Torey Erin and a last look at their exhibitions.

Essma Imady’s multimedia installation Muscle Memory, Syrian Homecomings uses her memories of home as a raw material. Syrian born Imady explores how the concept of home is altered by the elements of time and distance, as well as etched away by the forces of war and political climate. Imady returned to her home of Damascus in 2018 for the first time since 2011. During her two-week visit, she was perforated by a sense of estrangement. This exhibition exposes how even memories that are buried remain in one’s body, a muscle memory that informs how we interact with the world; even when we no longer identify with those parts of our past.

Torey Erin’s most recent installation, Seeming, brings together a suite of sculpture, photography, and film portraying contemplations of mortality, the theater of reality, ritual, and temporality. She examines the poetic nature of the physical world with an installation of “ash capsules” or stone urns with bronze cone shaped caps. The urns were drawn from her late grandmother’s ash burial in a curling rock. They are associated with humility, impermanence. “The birds will not even eat us, we are so full of toxins.”

This event is free and open to the public. For more information on the artists and exhibitions visit:

Essma Imady - www.soovac.org/musclememorysyrianhomecomings Torey Erin - www.soovac.org/seeming

Images Left to Right: Blood Ceremony by Essma Imady and Ash Capsules by Tory Erin