El-Yasin and Shutan.
New Haven-based artists Suzan Shutan and Howard el-Yasin have a vision of creating an art treasure hunt across the state of Connecticut. It’s about opening up private spaces. It’s about pushing back and against commercialism and oppression. But it’s also about having fun, exploring where we live, and tapping into the sense kids have that maybe, just maybe, there’s an adventure to be had around the next corner if we just know where to look.
The project is called The Exchange, “a statewide Art Treasure Hunt with unconventional public exhibition sites,” as the guidelines for the artist call for the project read. Artists — as individuals or as teams — “will create an original installation/artwork (or NFT, QR code, video, sound, documented performance etc.) conveying a story that has subjective value exploring the diversity of the world we live in. We also encourage submissions addressing social issues around oppression: race, gender, climate change, and economic disparity, etc.” Artists can be anywhere in the state of Connecticut.
Shutan and el-Yasin are accepting submissions for pieces through May 22. Once selected, artists’ projects will be entered into geocache/GPS tracking software so the public knows where to go to find it. The pieces should be designed for the public to find between Aug. 15 and Nov. 1.
“The artwork should be presented in an accessible location in your community, however preferably on private rather than public property (not on city or state-owned property so as to avoid liability responsibility),” the guidelines continue. “We encourage you to consider creative ways to avoid liability concerns, such as using a laminated QR code or creating a mailbox-sized installation. This is after all a treasure hunt to engage the public in a fun and meaningful way. All art media will be considered and there are no size requirements for The Exchange, but preference will be given to the feasibility of the artist’s proposal, including public spectator access to the installation/site.”
The idea behind The Exchange — and the collaboration between Shutan and el-Yasin in curating it — is “to encourage artists to embrace and promote curiosity and precarity as action, to support and explore”; “to enliven and challenge the communities at our landings”; “to be the spark that ignites possibilities”; “to dually highlight local artists as well as introducing communities to new viewpoints and practices by national and international artists”; and to “encourage artists to step outside their boundaries and experiment with the intersection of materials, production, presentation and means of engagement with audience and space.”
‘We’re hoping to make this a statewide event, even a tourist thing,” Shutan said of the Exchange. And while there are serious political and social motivations behind it, el-Yasin said, it’s also “meant to be a fun event that anyone can participate in as long as they have a phone.”
At the heart of The Exchange is the friendship between Shutan and el-Yasin, 29 years in the making. They met shortly after Shutan moved to Connecticut, while el-Yasin was working at the Yale University Art Gallery. “Then we did jury duty together, so we sat together for several hours,” el-Yasin said. “Then we reconnected in a more meaningful way when I was artistic director at ALL Gallery” — the Arts + Literature Laboratory — “in Erector Square. That was when we started talking about collaboration.”
“For all these years we’ve been saying that, and then this opportunity came along,” Shutan said of a grant they ultimately received through Connecticut’s Department of Economic and Community Development, funded through the federal American Rescue Plan Act. “I said, ‘Gee, maybe this is the moment to do something together.”
As the two started talking about what their collaboration might look like, “we started talking about telling stories, and how it creates a sense of dialogue and intimacy and exchange, and it went from there,” Shutan said.
“Our interaction is an exchange, and we are trying to inspire art makers to consider the concept as a gesture. We’re trying to infuse something meaningful into the environments that we’re all moving in,” said el-Yasin.
Shutan and el-Yasin have already received about 10 proposals and believe they will end up with about 30 projects included in The Exchange, allowing people who are interested to travel all across the state. While the curators wanted to keep details under wraps, the pieces could range from sculpture and digital art to literary arts and performance pieces. Those pieces could be outside or inside.
“It could be in a storefront window, or a gallery space,” el-Yasin said.
“Some might be in businesses,” Shutan said.
“Some pieces may be on someone’s front stoop, or in their backyard,” el-Yasin said.
“Some will be in a driveway. It’s going to be a broad range of things,” Shutan said. For some pieces, it’s possible that the geocache tag will lead to a short string of clues, in true scavenger hunt style, that leads to the final piece.
As the title of the project suggests, the chance for people to engage with one another and exchange stories, perspectives, and experiences is at the center of the effort, in a few different ways. “It’s a chance for the public to meet the artists,” Shutan said, and for “artists to meet the public — who do you know that might be a supporter of the arts, or interested in the process?” That’s why “most of the things submitted have a participatory component.”
For artists, it’s a chance to try something they may not have done before. “We’re asking the artists to step outside their box of comfort,” Shutan said, “artists who might want to push themselves but aren’t sure how.”
“The ways that we’re asking artists to think creatively about how their art can be visible to the public are exciting to me,” el-Yasin said. “We’re creating new opportunities that are sort of fluid.”
“We also thought it’s a way for artists to get to know other artists in the state,” Shutan said. More broadly, “it’s also a way for families to get together, to pile into the car, and find out what’s there.… We’re going to have a map, and we can have little emoji and clues, so you can get an idea of what you might be looking for. But it’s really about the act of discovery — the exchange is about exploration and discovery.” Not just of the art, either, but of a new town, a new place to eat, new people they might meet along the way.
“I’m interested in calling attention to things you don’t think of as art making,” el-Yasin said. “Even eating can be art.”
”Art is about the process, the making, the doing,” Shutan said. By hunting for the pieces in The Exchange, participants can get a taste of that, and see how the same process appears in their own lives. “The treasure hunting becomes a process — discovering, learning something new.”
For his part, el-Yasin said, “I’m interested in everydayness as an inquiry into trying to understand how people interact, how they’re connected, how their lives are intersected, how they collide and mesh with artmaking. I think artmaking is a way to get people to think about their own situations, their own bodies, their own understanding of the universe. The art is in the in-between space that we use to connect,” he said. “One of the things that we are excited to see is challenging ways to push back against oppression. This project is an opportunity to do that kind of thing in a public space. Public space is often commodified and commercialized.” But also, “we’re trying to keep the possibilities as open and precarious and crazy and silly as possible. We want to keep it open, even if the exchange is a handshake.”
To find out more about submitting a proposal to The Exchange, visit the project’s website. Further questions can be directed to somethingprojects@gmail.com.