In celebration of Mary Ann Peters: the edge becomes the center, join exhibiting artist Mary Ann Peters and Curatorial Assistant Alexis L. Silva for a spirited conversation exploring nearly forty years of Peters’s art making. Centering around this trembling turf and the impossible monument series, the evening will address how peripheral narratives often inform migration histories as revealed through Peters’s research-based work.

Discover how uncovering our own buried histories can strengthen our communities through examining the stories missing from our contemporary conversations. After the discussion, audience members are invited to ask questions to the artist, who is deeply rooted in the Seattle community.

This talk is part of Ripple Effect: Northwest Contemporary Art Then and Now, a larger series of conversations centering artists practicing in the Pacific Northwest and the history of the art community that has shaped today's contemporary arts scene. Register for the full series.

About the Artist

Mary Ann Peters is a second-generation Arab American multimedia artist based in Seattle. Her work acts as a social and conceptual response to issues and histories in the Middle East. Through a distant but personal filter, she seeks to understand, interpret, and highlight dismissed or undermined diasporic narratives. Her work is research driven and employs painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation. She has been a practicing artist and an artist-activist for four decades. Her awards include a McLaughlin Foundation Fellowship at Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA (2022), an Artist Trust Visual Art Fellowship (2021), the Camargo Fellowship in Cassis, France (2017), the Beirut Art Residency, Lebanon (2016), the Stranger Genius Award in Visual Art (2015), an Art Matters Foundation Research Grant (2013), and a MacDowell Colony Pollock/Krasner Fellowship (2011). She is a current board member of the performance venue On the Boards and a former board member and president of NCFE (National Campaign for Freedom of Expression), a decade-long commitment focused on First Amendment rights for artists.