Photographs of Syrian Refugees by Dean Rice

December 4-23, 2015
Photographs of Syrian Refugees by Dean Rice
Opening reception Friday, December 4, 5:00-9:00 PM
Gallery hours: Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM and Sundays, December 6 & 20, 3:30-6:30 PM. Please note, the Emporium will be closed December 24 – January 1 for the holidays. 

The Arts & Culture Alliance is pleased to present a new exhibition of recent photographs by Dean Rice of Knoxville at the Emporium Center. These photographs show the faces of Syrian children who now live in the Zaatari Refugee Camp in the desert of Jordan and children who are orphaned living in Amman, Jordan. “We talk often of instability in the Middle East, and today we struggle with balancing our national security interests with our humanitarian desires to help the helpless,” says Dean Rice. “Through these photographs, however, we see the faces that can bring lasting stability, peace, friendship and gratitude.”

 

Dean Rice is chief of staff to Knox County Tim Burchett and also a member of the national advisory board of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF). In the spring of 2015, he traveled to Jordan to visit the Zaatari refugee camp and meet with various Syrians in exile. The photographs of children in this exhibition are some of those he met. Rice is a Global Security Fellow with the University of Tennessee’s Institute for Nuclear Security and serves as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Tennessee’s College of Communication and Information. In 2013, Rice received the Society of Universal Dialogue’s Atlantic Institute “Peace Award” in recognition of his efforts to promote inter-cultural engagement and dialogue. His photographs and paintings have been displayed in multiple exhibitions. A permanent exhibition of his refugee photos is scheduled to open at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC in January, 2016.