Cultural Exchange Rate

In “Cultural Exchange Rate,” Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury recreates a family diary of the borderlands. Her unforgettable installation reveals that the cruelest of borders are invisible to the naked eye, even as they persist across everyday life. “Cultural Exchange Rate” draws on recorded interviews with El Khoury’s late grandmother, oral histories collected from her village in Lebanon, and the discovery of lost relatives in Mexico City. In this interactive multimedia experience, audiences are invited to engage with an astonishing collection of sensory artifacts that collectively trace more than a century of border crossings.

El Khoury’s work has been translated to multiple languages and been shown globally in settings ranging from national museums to fishing boats. El Khoury is the Distinguished Artist in Residence and Director of the OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts at Bard College.