These commemorative plates recognizes the April 19, 2013 lockdown of thousands of Watertown residents, including the artists Mike Mandel and Chantal Zakari.
A Boston art gallery will show a set of plates created by two Watertown artists who were inspired to make the commemorative plates after being in the shelter in place while authorities searched for the second Boston Marathon Bombing suspect.
The Miller Yezerski Gallery, 460 Harrison Ave. in Boston, will show Mike Mandel & Chantal Zakari’s “Shelter in Plates” from Oct. 3 to Nov. 4, and an opening reception will be held on Friday Oct. 3 from 6-8 p.m.
Mandel and Zakari were ordered to shelter in place while hundreds of police officers and other law enforcement personnel searched homes in their area searching for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the accused Boston Marathon Bombers.
“Mandel and Zakari watched through their windows while SWAT teams methodically searched every yard, under porches, and in some areas inside homes, as well. These plates commemorate the people of Watertown living under siege,” said an announcement for the exhibit.
Mandel is an American photographer who has published photo-based books since the early 70’s. For the past 30 years he has designed both temporary (billboards) and permanent (tile mosaic) artworks specifically for public sites.
Chantal Zakari is a Turkish-Levantine artist and a recent U.S. citizen, who trained as a designer and an artist. She published “The Turk & The Jew”, in 1998 with Mandel, and in 2005, using a pseudonym, she self-published “webAffairs,” a documentary of a web community.
In 2010 the couple authored and self-published “The State of Ata” a visual book about contemporary Turkey, and a portrait of the body politic: that of the secular revolutionary hero as well as the Islamic scarf. In 2012 they authored “They Came To Baghdad” available on Lulu.com.