People are constantly reading and using cultural symbols to make judgments about places at which they eat or sleep or how they interact with one another. In turn, symbols communicate a lot about a society’s set of values by reinforcing whether certain behaviors are seen as having a positive, neutral, or negative effect on the perpetuation of that society’s particular value system. However, because there are universal components to the human experience, symbols aren’t always arbitrarily paired with content, like, say, a dove with peace. The three-story art exhibition “Signs of Oneness” will explore such symbols and various cultural iconography as “projections into the consciousness of society.” Works will deal with ideas of body, technology, traffic signs, music, myth, and religious figures. One mini-exhibit will compare the “Heritage of Diaspora” within Caribbean and Jewish iconography, the first show in the United States to do so.

The show opens Saturday at the Broward Art Space Project Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts (1310 SW Second Court, Fort Lauderdale) and continues through June 13. The month-long exhibit will include artist talks, film screenings, performance master classes, and seminars. Admission is free. For more information, visit sailboatbendartists.com, or call 954-467-8460.
May 16-June 13, 2009