The School of Modern Languages and Cultures' (MLaC) exhibition Where Are We Now? concentrates on places for past present future, looking at themes of dreams, childhood and the everyday. Where Are We Now? was curated by MLaC's MA Visual Culture students and staff using a selection of Durham University's extensive art collection and is currently on display at Elvet Riverside.
This exhibition has provided an extra opportunity for the School's MA cohort to make their mark on the MLaC building, while fully engaging with our fantastic art collection to offer new displays in different spaces.
Helping organize the "Where Are We Now?" exhibition with my fellow classmates, the most memorable aspect for me was when we went to the store together to select potential exhibits and when we discussed the exhibition's arrangement, theme, and structure.
Inspired by the 2023 MLaC conference of the same name which discussed the present and future of Modern Languages and Cultures at a local and global level, Where Are We Now? aims to nurture staff-student dialogue and trigger further conversations with the wider public.
We aimed to make the exhibition critically engaged, visually stunning, and unexpectedly and movingly personal, as it is accompanied by a further dialogue with carefully selected texts and images retrieved from the forgotten art stores.
We have students from all over the world here, but what matters is that we are all here in this moment. Through these artworks, we evoke a resonance with our present experiences.
The exhibition can be visited free of charge on the ground floor and garden at Elvet Riverside and is open and accessible to all in the university and the Durham community as well as future students and visitors. A second part of the exhibition will follow on the second floor at Elvet Riverside during August-early September.
Find out more about Durham University's School of Modern Languages and Cultures.