Sheryl Oring Writer’s Block
Bebelplabtz in Berlin, 1999, (Photo by Kai Herschelmann)
In the Gallery
September 1- 30, 2018
Lecture and Reception
Wednesday, September 26, 5:30pm
Wilson Hall's Concert Hall
About The Exhibition
The centerpiece of Sheryl Oring's exhibition is a series of sculptures in which the artist has enclosed hundreds of typewriters from the 1920s and 30s in sculptural boxes made of rusty construction steel. By "caging" the typewriters, Oring symbolically takes away the writer's means of expression as a metaphor for censorship, asking viewers to consider their own ideas about freedom of speech. "Writer's Block" premiered on Berlin's Bebelplatz, site of that city's Nazi book-burning, on the 66th anniversary of the 1933 event that destroyed the works of authors ranging from Nelly Sachs and Else Lasker-Schaler to Bertolt Brecht and Arnold Zweig. Oring's work has been shown at the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Dubai; Encuentro in São Paolo, Brazil; Art Prospect festival in St. Petersburg, Russia; the Jewish Museum Berlin; Bryant Park in New York; the 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, CA; the Boston Public Library; and the McCormick Freedom Museum in Chicago. She is based in Greensboro, NC where she is an Associate Professor at UNC.