During Immigrant History Week, visual artist Pablo Helguera (left) will present Paging Through the Dictionary, a free evening event at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

Helguera’s performance will incorporate readings from the book version of A Dictionary of Foreign Time, an art installation currently on view in The Tenement Windows. The installation, which was developed in collaboration with students who participated in The Tenement’s “Shared Journeys” ESOL program, (English for Speakers of Other Languages), explores the dual translation that operates in the process of interpreting a historic museum about immigration: in the relationship between past and present, and in the relationship between different cultural realities. Paging Through the Dictionary examines how art can transform and influence perceptions of the past.

The workshop and panel discussion will examine how art-making bridges gaps created by history’s unanswered questions. The evening’s guest panel includes poet Monica de la Torre and Shelley Bancroft and Peter Nesbett, co-founders and co-directors of TripleCandie, the only non-profit contemporary art space in Harlem. Pablo Helguera will serve as the workshop moderator. The event will also premier the limited-edition artist book designed in conjunction with Helguera’s exhibition at the Tenement Museum.

Monica de la Torre is a poet and translator. She is the author of the poetry collections Acúfenos and Talk Shows. She co-edited the anthology Reversible Monuments: Mexican Contemporary Poetry with Michael Wiegers. She is pursuing a Ph.D. at Columbia University. She is the poetry editor of The Brooklyn Rail. She also is co-editor of Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (Copper Canyon Press). Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Fence, 26, Superflux and Bomb Magazine.

Shelley Bancroft and Peter Nesbett are co-founders and co-directors of TripleCandie, the only non-profit contemporary art space in Harlem, known for its experimental exhibition strategies and its interest in history. Bancroft has been curator at the Boston Center for the Arts. Nesbett is the worldwide authority on the work of Jacob Lawrence. They are also co-owners and editors of Art on Paper magazine. The exhibitions at Triple Candie have received international attention by publications like the New York Times, Flash Art International and ArtNews.

Pablo Helguera was born in Mexico City in 1971; he currently works in New York. His multi-disciplinary work combines narrative grounded in history and fiction to provide larger reflections on culture, memory, and perception. Recently Helguera was the recipient of a Creative Capital Foundation Grant under which he developed “The School of Panamerican Unrest,” a traveling public art project which toured the Americas. Currently he is an artist in-residence at the Center for Book Arts in New York.