Alina and Jeff Bliumis: Receiving the Stranger

 by Adam Kleinman

 

"Often to be a foreigner means that one doesn't understand very much, yet there is also a naivety and a kind of freshness inherent in this strangeness. When approached openly, this lack of understanding can foster an eagerness to communicate. In the work of Jeff and Alina Bliumis, this desire to share goes well beyond a simple hunger for acceptance. As visitors in new lands, they propose gestures that people intimately associated within a given culture would never consider. In this way, they have found a way to exploit "foreignness" as a generative and constructive principle." Excerpt from Introduction / Receiving the Stranger by Adam Kleinman.