Small Worlds featured artist Mohamad Hafez will share his presentation, HOMELAND inSECURITY, at the Fleming Museum of Art on Wednesday, March 20, starting at 5:30PM.

When Damascus-born Hafez was an undergraduate architecture student at Iowa State University, unable to visit home under the terms of his student visa, he began constructing miniature recreations of Syrian façades to combat his homesickness. Now his models represent the destruction wrought by the Syrian Civil War, as well as signs of life and hope, including sounds that Hafez recorded during his last visit to Damascus in 2011, in the last days of peace. Hafez will give a talk on his work, followed by a conversation with Fleming curator Andrea Rosen and Pablo Bose, UVM Gund Fellow, Associate Professor of Geography, and Co-Director of the Global Studies Program.

Hafez work can be viewed in the current Fleming exhibition, Small Worlds: Miniatures in Contemporary Art, on view through May 10, 2019.

With support from the following UVM Departments and Programs: Global Studies, Religion, Middle East Studies, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Geography, and the Center for Cultural Pluralism.

Image: Mohamad Hafez, Hiraeth, 2016. Plaster, paint, antique toy tricycle, found objects, rusted metal, and antique wood veneer, 61 x 35 x 21 inches. Courtesy of the artist.