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PANEL DISCUSSION
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds for all regions of the world and was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on December 10, 1948, after the defeat of Nazi Germany. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages. It is widely recognized as having inspired and paved the way for the adoption of mor than seventy human rights treaties. The Universal Declaration’s goal was to fend off future authoritarianism, but we are currently seeing shifts towards frightening totalitarianism around the world. If the basic human rights proposed in the Declaration were adopted and respected by every country, would the world be transformed?
A distinguished panel of experts, thinkers, scholars, and journalists will share their experience of encountering seemingly difficult political and polarized situations, and address the question: Are human rights still an effective weapon against autocracy and tyranny? Where do they see hope, and what more do we need to do to protect human rights?
This event is part of Through the Flower Art Space’s current exhibition “Holocaust Project and the Legacy of Genocide.” The exhibition features a unique body of art combining painting and photography that explored the subject of the Holocaust, a subject that is largely absent from contemporary art (outside of the Jewish community) created by renowned artist Judy Chicago and photographer Donald Woodman between 1985 and 1993. This show, along with its educational events, is intended to raise important questions about the human capacity for evil and how to choose hope in a world that seems increasingly dark. Please join us for this important dialogue as we face a global human rights and political crisis. The lecture will be followed by a question-and-answer session.
Seating is Limited. Reservations are Required.
Maryam Ahranjani is the Ronald and Susan Friedman Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law. She specializes in constitutional rights, criminal law, and education law. She has taught at American University and Universidad del Istmo Facultad de Derecho in Guatemala City. Among other positions, Maryam served as a consultant for the U.S. Department of State/Guatemala and U.S. Agency for International Development/Guatemala. From 2009-2014 she was Associate Director of the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, a program that trains law students to teach public high school students about constitutional rights and responsibilities.
Tarrie Burnett, Executive Director, Tomorrow’s Women. Tomorrow’s Women’s mission is to prepare a new generation of Palestinian and Israeli young women for leadership roles in their respective communities. Since 2003, the organization has brought small groups of Palestinian and Israeli women to New Mexico to dialogue and develop leadership skills. Tarrie previously worked with Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, developing nationally recognized mental health and wellness, micro-financing, and sustainable farming initiatives and programs for refugee families. She currently volunteers with the New Mexico Refugee Educational Bridge Project, supporting young women from Afghanistan as they pursue secondary and higher education in the United States.
Michael Nutkiewicz, Independent Scholar. Trained as a historian, Michael taught at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of New Mexico. He served as Executive Director of the Program for Torture Victims (Los Angeles), an agency that provides medical, psychological, and legal services to victims of state-sponsored torture, as well as the manager of the refugee resettlement program at Catholic Charities of New Mexico. From 2001-2007, he was senior historian at the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, the archive founded by Steven Spielberg to film the testimony of Holocaust survivors around the world. He recently published an annotated translation of a 1921 Yiddish memoir of an aid worker in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War.
Simon Romero, New York Times Correspondent for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Located for many years in Albuquerque, Simon recently moved to Mexico City. He is well known for his reporting on US-Mexico border issues, immigration policy, indigenous sovereignty, and topics in climate change. In 2015 he was awarded Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot Prize, the oldest international award recognizing journalists who contribute to Inter-American understanding.
Please join us for a special book event with American feminist and contemporary artist Judy Chicago alongside Russian activist and founding member of Pussy Riot, Nadya Tolokonnikova.
To launch the paperback edition of The Flowering, Through the Flower Art Space will host a discussion between Chicago and Tolokonnikova moderated by Tonya Turner Carroll. The talk will follow a screening of What If Women Ruled the World?; a short film that launched Chicago and Tolokonnikova’s historic participatory project to create change, gender equality and a more equitable world.
2:00pm Documentary From Darkness into Light: Creating the Holocaust Project
This documentary was created as part of the original touring exhibition, Holocaust Project: From Darkness to Light, that premiered in 1993. It takes you into the studios of Chicago and Woodman as they share their journey into the darkness of the Holocaust and out into the light of hope.
2:30pm Talk – Through the Lens of Treblinka: The Changing Relevance of the Holocaust
Presented by Dr. Michael Nutkiewicz
About The Holocaust Project
In 1985, artist Judy Chicago and her husband, photographer Donald Woodman, began a long personal journey to understand the historical ramifications of the annihilation of European Jewy. Though she is the descendent of twenty-three generations of rabbis, Chicago knew little about her Jewish heritage. She and Woodman, also an assimilated Jew, decided to incorporate Jewish ritual into their wedding. Their study with Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and their exposure in 1985 to “Shoah,” the classic film by Claude Lanzmann, stimulated a long period of inquiry into the Holocaust and Jewish history that was guided by Holocaust educator Isaiah Kuperstein. They traveled for two and a half months through the “landscape of the Holocaust,” including France, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the then Soviet Union. Later visits to Hiroshima and Israel were the culmination of their travels. Their scholarly and visual research, however, continued throughout the project.
Through the Lens of Treblinka: The Changing Relevance of the Holocaust
The question 80 years later is why, in an age of media and technology that brings the world into our homes is it difficult for us to grapple with current genocides, mass murder, and human rights abuses that are not hidden from sight? In this presentation we will discuss the proposition and question: We have the examined past, but do we have a useable past?
About Dr. Nutkiewicz
Michael Nutkiewicz earned his Ph.D. in History from UCLA. He taught at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of New Mexico. Michael served as Director of The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, Senior Historian at the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, Executive Director of the Program for Torture Victims in Los Angeles, and manager of the refugee resettlement program at Catholic Charities-New Mexico. He has published in the areas of Jewish and European history, the uses of oral testimony, and social justice education. Michael wrote the teachers’ guide for Judy Chicago’s Holocaust Project. Michael’s annotated translation of an aid worker’s 1921 Yiddish memoir about pogroms in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War was released by Slavica Publishers in October 2022.
Saturday, November 5, 2022, Through The Flower Art Space in Belen, NM will open a timely and thought-provoking exhibition, Lessons for Today: Revisiting The Dinner Party, which will run through the end of March 2023 in celebration of Women’s History Month. The show will be open from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM MST.
The show will consist of illustrated panels about each of the thirty-nine women represented in Judy Chicago’s landmark work The Dinner Party, which is permanently housed at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City, along with several original test plates, drawings, and archival material as well as a virtual tour of The Dinner Party narrated by Chicago.
