41 Franklin Street
[email protected] 1 Stamford, CT 06901 www.franklinstreetworks.org 2 “In this place where the guest rests” is sponsored by The Andy Warhol Foundation IN THIS PLACE for the Visual Arts. In-kind sponsorship by Purdue Pharma LP and Hampton Inn and WHERE THE Suites, Stamford. GUEST RESTS 20 January–13 May 2018 Exhibiting Artists: Yael Bartana, Christina Battle, Brendan Fernandes, Ken Gonzales-Day, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Jumana Manna, Divya Mehra, Sherry Millner, Daniel R. Small, and Addie Wagenknecht 3 Curated by Jacqueline Mabey Introduction Terri C Smith, Creative Director, Franklin Street Works IN THIS PLACE WHERE THE GUEST RESTS It’s significant that the starting point for guest curator, Jacqueline Mabey’s exhibition, “In this place where the guest rests,” was the history of Stamford’s witch trials. Mabey draws a parallel between the test by water in these seventeenth-century witch trials and the fraught experience of many refugees fleeing their countries on boats today. In the witch trials if a person floated they were deemed a witch and then punished, but if they didn’t float and died, they were a victim. Similarly, refugees often endure a test of water. If they arrive to their destination (float) they often are seen as intruders and treated as criminals and/or turned away, but if they die while trying to escape their country (drown), they are I seen as tragic victims of circumstance. With this exhibition, the site-specific history of Stamford is conceptually tethered to the current, ever-shifting global refugee crisis via contemporary works dating from 2006–2017.