Longtime friends and artists Suzan Shutan and Howard el-Yasin decided to partner for one year as SomethingProjects to create inspiring opportunities and community building for artists through introducing artists to each other and facilitating and promoting their unique approaches to art making.
Through collaborative projects, we bring together people of many different backgrounds- economic, geographic, geopolitical, age, BiPoc and queer and non-binary/gender identities. In spite of Covid, we will be facilitating artists and their works into the public sphere in a nomadic way, outside traditional gallery spaces for exhibitions, helping to promote a stronger arts community while reinforcing the economic value of art makers. As collaborators we are focused on empowerment and solidarity, studio productivity and communication among communities. As visual artists, by nature we tend to make our work in isolation. Art is usually an extremely personal process. However some of the best works are created when two or more creatives come together. The contribution becomes something unexpected.
We are thinking holistically in terms of how a project can impact both an artist, and an audience intersectionality once they engage. How an audience responds to an artwork is immeasurable, the affect can be felt physically or psychologically.
Our audience is all-inclusive. We believe value is highly subjective and our goal is to push how we understand value outside the margins of dominant culture. Artists can be contributors to their community- they are problem solvers with creative ideas that can benefit the development of a town.
SomethingProjects is an opportunity to learn about ones neighbors, different ways of understanding art, acceptance of difference, and things happening within one’s everyday environment.
Our first project, THE EXCHANGE, is generously supported by the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts, which also receives support from the federal ARPA.
SomethingProjects 