To launch the latest volume of Visual AIDS’ DUETS publication series, curator Dean Daderko and artist Elaine Reichek will discuss the art and life of Nicolas Moufarrege (1947–1985) in a conversation moderated by Visual AIDS Programs Director Alex Fialho. An Egyptian-born Lebanese raised in Beirut, Moufarrege lived briefly in Paris before landing in New York in the early 1980’s. He molded a complex mixture of his cultural roots into idiosyncratic embroidered artworks and a distinct curatorial and critical writing sensibility that are highlighted in the DUETS publication through an interview between Daderko and Reicheck. Artist LJ Roberts writes the publication’s foreword and archivist Sur Rodney (Sur) contributes the afterword.

Visual AIDS initiated DUETS to foster dialogue between artists, writers and activists about their creative process and issues around HIV/AIDS, including maintaining the legacies of those like Moufarrege lost too early to AIDS.

Dean Daderko is curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Daderko first encountered Moufarrege’s work in the exhibition The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984 and was entranced. After researching his work and contacting the artist’s family members, Daderko included a selection of Moufarrege’s works in SIDE X SIDE an exhibition he guest curated for Visual AIDS at La MaMa La Galleria. His recent exhibitions include Double Life (2015); LaToya Ruby Frazier: Witness (2014), which traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and Parallel Practices: Joan Jonas and Gina Pane (2013). In 2008, Daderko guest-curated SIDE X SIDE for Visual AIDS at La MaMa Galleria, an exhibition that included paintings by Nicholas Moufarrege, alongside works by Scott Burton, Kate Huh, Martin Wong, and Carrie Yamaoka.

Elaine Reichek is an artist based in New York. Reichek and Nicolas Moufarrege were artist colleagues and dear friends, and Reichek was one of the curators of Nicolas’s memorial exhibition at the Clocktower, the Institute for Art and Urban Resources, in 1987. Reichek has exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad for more than forty years, including solo shows at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Jewish Museum; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; Tel Aviv Museum; Stichting De Appel, Amsterdam; and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Her work is in the collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, Philadelphia; and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, among many others. Her most recent solo exhibitions include “Minoan Girls” at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica (2016), and “Swatches” at Zach Feuer Gallery, New York (2015).