New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, University of Southern Indiana proudly presents Encountering: a three-person exhibition reflecting on themes of cross-cultural trade, exchange and diasporas. With an opening reception on Saturday, March 1st from 3-5 PM CT, the exhibit features works by Io Palmer, Pavlina Vagioni and Anna Tsouhlarakis. Encountering explores intersectional identities and cross-cultural frameworks over time: both themes concomitant with the overlapping histories comprising present-day New Harmony, Indiana. Works on view encompass sculpture, collage, assemblage and non-traditional art materials, foregrounding the ways in which approaches to material culture shift over time. Encountering offers timeless yet interconnected perspectives on identity, investigating both the tensions and possibilities existing at global crossroads and the complexities that necessarily result.

From the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean to the global trade networks existing today, commerce and cross-cultural exchange have always offered opportunities for economic growth and the global transmission of knowledge. Cross-cultural exchange in the ancient Mediterranean spanned civilizations across the Near East, Africa, and Europe, continuing onward to East Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The volume of trade and complexity of trade routes such as Persia’s Royal Road – later transforming in part to become the Silk Road – presaged today’s international trade systems. In 2020, scholars participating in the Archaeological Institute of America webinar, ‘Teaching Race and Material Culture in the Ancient Mediterranean,’ reflected on the nuances of identifying civilizations such as ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt held intersecting identities as both an African civilization and a Mediterranean one. The ancient Mediterranean as a region also served as a microcosm of complex notions of identity and diaspora common today, with panelist Bet Hucks remarking, “third culture kids existed even in the ancient Med.”(1) Where exchange of goods and ideas was most active, complex notions of identity necessarily arose: impacting the aesthetic of the resulting material culture. From Io Palmer’s enticingly textural mixed-media sculpture to the genre-bending conceptual practice of artist Anna Tsouhlarakis to Pavlina Vagioni’s multi-media, site-specific investigations into topography and the subconscious, Encountering asks how the desire for goods has led to a multi-cultural materiality informed by diasporas and intersectionality: forces that exist today with as tenacious a hold as they exerted in ancient times.

(1) Nakassis, Dimitri et al. “Webinar 2: Teaching Race And Material Culture In The Ancient Mediterranean.” Archaeology TV YouTube. Accessed December 5, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9b2sf7BGeE.

New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, University of Southern Indiana

506 Main Street
PO Box 627
New Harmony, IN 47631

Exhibition Opening on Saturday, March 1st, from 3-5 PM

On view from March 1 – April 12, 2025