While Makonga looks outward toward the political and communal, Arash Armin\u2019s vision seems more personal. Armin left his native Iran by hiding with smugglers and living for two years in Turkey before coming to the U.S. as a refugee. His \u201cDream Is Destiny\u201d reveals a dark-haired beauty, a temptress of sorts, whose long hair falls in silky curls. She seems a fantasy. Her body, hair and face are exposed in a provocative manner — horizontally, crossing the picture plane — while a band of black lace covers her eyes. To the artist, surely she represents new frontiers for the women of his country. What a statement is this!\u00a0 When many Iranian women expose only their eyes, this sultry woman hides her desires behind a ribbon of lace.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/womanonhorse.jpg\" "\\"womanonhorse\\"")
<\/a>Woman on Horse by Ali Al Hammashi<\/p><\/div>\n
Ali Al Hammashi comes from neighboring Iraq, and he and his family have been in Utah since 2009. A former member of the country\u2019s Ministry of Education, Hammashi is a sophisticated artist whose bold paintings are a blend of detailed realism and cubist abstraction. His paintings can be either acutely abstract, in a way that represents the heat and the angularity of much Middle Eastern dwelling, or refined evocations of the curving sensuality of a horse or female figure.<\/p>\n
One of the so-called \u201cLost Boys\u201d of Sudan, Atem Aleu fled his country at the age of eight. He learned his skills here (specifically BYU) but Africa remains at the heart of his art. His colorful, expressionistic canvases are full of poetry. \u201cTraveled by Foot\u201d has an alien-like quality, or one that is simply incredibly imaginative.\u00a0 The fuchsia-pink sky is streaked with white.\u00a0 The land below is mango orange.\u00a0 At the base of a fractured and fragmented stump of a tree, the viewer\u2019s attention is caught by the shadowy figure of a young boy, barely discernable, in blue with touches of the brush to create recognizable skin.\u00a0 It is a haunting figure that is eerie when juxtaposed with the surreal landscape.\u00a0 Who this boy is we have no idea.\u00a0 What he is doing crouched beneath this stump we cannot say.\u00a0 How he got there we do not know, and of where he is going we are equally clueless.\u00a0 Why he is there is the most perplexing and disconcerting question and there is a sense of pathos felt for this waif-like figure of a boy, left to the elements in this wild and strange land. What is exceptional about \u201cGlobal Artists Living Locally,\u201d an exhibit sponsored by the Utah Refugee Coalition now up in the atrium of Salt Lake\u2019s Main Library, is that it does nothing to stigmatize the nature of the refugees it showcases \u2013 rather, it casts each artist in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":14445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,19],"tags":[1129,1131,1130,162],"class_list":["post-14431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bytes","category-exhibition_reviews","tag-ali-al-hammashi","tag-arash-armin","tag-atem-aleu","tag-emmanuel-makonga"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/womanonhorse.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-17 20:23:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14431"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70931,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14431\/revisions\/70931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nGlobal Artists Living Locally is co-sponsored by the Utah Refugee Coalition and Art at the Main<\/a>, and hosted by Art at the Main in the Atrium of the Salt Lake Main Library, 210 East 400 South. The exhibit runs through November 29.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"