Qais Assali & Frankie Symonds: Fall Of The Roman Empire

In this first iteration of Fall Of The Roman Empire, a collaborative touring exhibition project between Qais Assali and Frankie Symonds, Boston’s place in the colonial history of the United States will serve as a loose metaphor for European colonialism as the current status of The Roman Empire. The main unifying theme of the project is European colonialism’s influence on the world. Intended to be serious and tragic, but also humorously loose and free-associative, this exhibition will take historic Boston-area events and figures, such as the Boston Tea Party, Mayor Thomas Menino, Louise Woodward, the Catholic sex abuse scandal, the murder of Carol Ann Stuart, the Boston Massacre, the Great Molasses Flood, and so on, to create a surreal, fractured narrative that traces back to the Roman Empire’s influence in West Asia and North Africa a few thousand years ago, and its present-day echoes.

Using a variety of media, the artists will use the walls of the gallery as the pages of a contemporary audiovisual history book meant to both disorient and inform the viewer. Sounds, images, and objects emanating from corners of the gallery will call into question the ideal environment for following a historical narrative.