Artist Dina Abdulkarim, in collaboration with the Southland Institute, will discuss her training in architecture and planning to explore themes of home, citizenship, and identity exchange that she presents in her work. She will focus on the visual and cultural influences that have shaped her appreciation of patterns and the institution of their collective meaning. Abdulkarim will describe how, through distinct architecture and specific interiors, the use of patterns, materials and textures form the shared social aesthetics of the very personal space of the home. She will also speak to the experience of living and studying city planning and urban design in the U.S., and how it added a new set of patterns and meanings to her concept of home. In her large-scale paintings, Abdulkarim overlaps different geometries of arabesque motifs and aerial views of suburban communities to represent the cultural, spiritual, and everyday realities of the places that represent home, going beyond the simple distinction of East and West to be complex, organic, and constantly in flux.