NO TRANSLATION REQUIRED / KEINE UBERSETZUNG BENOTIGT on View at Emory University in Atlanta, 2/7-4/6

Emory University's Visual Arts Department presents "NO TRANSLATION REQUIRED / KEINE UBERSETZUNG BENOTIGT: A Visual Collaboration Between Liane Birnberg & Katherine Mitchell," February 7 - April 6, 2013.

Berlin-based artist Liane Birnberg will present new work in visual conversation with her long-time friend, Atlanta-based artist Katherine Mitchell. Birnberg's drawings will be presented at the Visual Arts Gallery on Emory's main campus, and Katherine Mitchell's works on paper will be presented concurrently at the Catherine Hunt Gallery of Candler Hall at Emory's Oxford College. The opening reception is Thursday, February 7 from 7-9 p.m. in the Visual Arts Gallery on the Emory campus, with a talk by Birnberg.

Born in Romania, Birnberg is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, and the harsh realities of their experiences in a Romanian concentration camp inform much of her work. Working in multiple mediums-drawings, paintings, photographs, found objects, texts, music and film-and navigating between realism and abstraction, she explores the roots of memory and identity through the lens of her own heritage. Birnberg's musical background also lends much to her visual art through the abstraction of musical notes and forms.

Mitchell taught drawing and painting for twenty-nine years in the Visual Arts Department of Emory University and retired from teaching in 2009. She has had numerous exhibitions in museums and galleries, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta City Gallery East, Factory Kunst Halle, in Krems, Austria, and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. She has also exhibited at Atlanta's High Museum of Art, the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, D. C., and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in New York City.

In recent years Mitchell's work has continued her long-standing interest in architecture and geometry, but she also has explored the inclusion of various texts embedded in layers of paint. In these texts, partially of her own writing, but with quotations from a variety of artists and thinkers, she has explored the sources of creativity, and the making of works of art, the creative process.

The exhibition "NO TRANSLATION REQUIRED / KEINE UBERSETZUNG BENOTIGT: A Visual Collaboration Between Liane Birnberg & Katherine Mitchell" is cosponsored by Oxford Studio Arts, the Department of Film and Media Studies, the Department of German Studies, the Art History Department, and is supported by a grant from Der Regierende Bürgermeister von Berlin. Hours for the Visual Arts Gallery are Monday - Friday, 10-5 p.m., Saturday, 12-4 p.m., and by appointment. Visit http://visualarts.emory.edu/home/ for details.

Photo Credit: Liane Birnberg. From the book "Because Wings are Made to Fly" by Birnberg and John Berger.