For their collaborative exhibit, We Make the Road By Walking, artists Beth Krensky and Sama Alshaibi explore the ways “that art, both in the process of making it and in the final product, can transcend the political for the human.”1 While accepted social constructs push them to identify themselves and their oeuvres in terms of religious and cultural histories and practices, the artists courageously rebuke the expectation to stereotype themselves, their work, and each other.

The artists use their differences as a point of entry and departure. Krensky and Alshaibi each illustrate her reverence for her ancestral past while simultaneously highlighting the reality that shared experiences in motherhood, family, and peace activism form an inherent and effortless union that takes over where differences leave off.

Beth Krensky’s recent familial history begins with Jewish emigration from Russia, Austria, and Hungary at the turn of the Century. Journey, a compilation of sewn together historical maps, traces the immigration route of her ancestors to America. In this piece, she alludes to the geographical and social distances between where her family was then to where she is today. Her familial exodus continues, illustrated by her son’s footsteps atop of the maps. Krensky is aware that her ancestors’ strides, along with her own, will influence her own progeny. The artist’s appreciation for the freedom she holds to construct ‘home’ for herself and her family is clearly reflected in Journey.

“Bridge III” implies the construction of something new, perhaps her own identity, being a product of the past, present, and future. The piece also suggests that these seemingly broken branches actually form architectural structures that serve to build bridges between then and now, silence and discussion, fear and courage. Sama Alshaibi’s homeland reaches from historical Islamic Palestine and Iraq to the Southwest United States. Thus the artist has her own experience with migrations. Exile, immigration, and the construction of homeland have become a way of life. As she grapples with border patrols and mistrusting stares in her attempt to remain close to her family and friends in both the Middle East and America, she has found comfort in the ironically similar characteristics of these mystical and vast landscapes.

In “Passage,” shot near a border of Palestine and Israel, and “Habitat, Budrus - Tucson,” shot in Arizona, strikingly similar hues of gold, ochre, and green earth frame the artist’s ambivalent gaze and posture. We sense that Alshaibi feels at home amidst the red sand, cool sages, and vast skies, yet political and social complexities confuse her sense of belonging. The artist places herself in familiar and tranquil water in “Red Sea, Hilal.” Against a crescent moon backdrop, Alshaibi’s feminine vigor is unmistakable and of paramount importance as she continues to cross back and forth between borders, boundaries, and homelands.

For this collaborative exhibit, Krensky and Alshaibi have asked themselves and each other to challenge political and social constructs. In that process they have discovered that their physical and spiritual bodies, distinctly layered with history, tradition, and experience, have imprinted the earth’s surface beyond real and imagined boundaries and borders. We Make the Road By Walking beautifully illustrates the notion that through dialogue and exchange, we can move together across divides, discovering common and virginal terrain.
Notes: 1. Beth Krensky’s artist statement