The projects from the 2012 Abraaj Capital Art Prize winners have been revealed at Art Dubai. Since I couldn’t make it, I’m reliant upon what’s coming up online to feed my curiosity. Thankfully, there are some great resources this year and I have been able to find some information and images. I will be sharing these works over the next week as I try to find more images and context to the works.
Spectral Imprints
Curator Nat Muller had a vision of curatorial unification of the collective works of the winning ACAP artists for the first time in ACAP history. Spectral Imprints focuses “on the preoccupations the five projects share with narrating the past and the difficulties of representing something tangible of a moment in time.” (ACAP) I’m looking forward to seeing the catalog produced by Muller in collaboration with renowned designer Huda Abi Smitshuijzen Fares, Director of the Khatt Foundation, Center for Arabic Typography, The Netherlands. I’m sure it will explore this connection more deeply.
Raed Yassin, China
Now, everything we use is produced in China, it’s the place you produce everything for the whole world, so why not reproduce my Lebanese Civil War there too? And then it will be like a mass-produced item that everybody could have in their homes and then maybe we could come to a point where we are fine with the issue. (Disposable Memories)
Like Ibn Battuta before him, Yassin traveled to China to explore, examine, and document, and the end result is China. In the city Jingdezhen (China’s capital of porcelain) he worked with master artists to render key battles of the Lebanese civil war, amongst them, War of the Hotels (1975-1976), the Battle for Tal al-Zaatar (1976), the Israeli invasion of Beirut (1982) and the so-called War of Liberation (1989), creating 7 vases in total. The battles were all monumental in shaping the Lebanon of today in more ways than one, and that ongoing element, no beginning or perhaps more importantly to Yassin, no end-point, is reflected in the infinite roundness of the objects.
After extensive research and interviewing, as well as viewing archives of historical photographs, Yassin commissioned Beirut artist and cartoonist Omar Khoury to create the initial depictions of the battle scenes that would later be interpreted and executed on porcelain by Chinese master artists. The name of each battle is written on each vase in Chinese, along the with the name of the master and his stamp.
Image Source: Ibraaz interview Disposable Memories. Click the image to see more images and read the full interview with Raed Yassin and Nat Muller.
As usual, this project has strong elements of collaboration and exploration of the boundaries of creativity/creation/thought:
“Another layer of the project was that I didn’t want to do it myself. I wanted to commission [craftsmen] to do it, to work with masters of different cultures to see how they perceived an idea that they have nothing to do with, a war that’s not theirs, a country that they really don’t know.”
I find it quite interesting to mix history, craftmanship, collaboration, and collective memory with mass production, consumption, and decorative items to think through what it might take to smash through the past, freeing up that energy to tackle other issues that could shape a much different future.
Taysir Batniji, To My Brother
In 1987, Taysir Batniji’s brother was killed by a sniper in the First Palestinian Intifada. Just two years earlier, he had celebrated this same brother’s wedding in Gaza. These images, 60 inkless prints, depict those happier times. While discussing his work in an interview with the UAE’s Art In the City, he shared that his work revolves around themes of disappearance and displacement, fluctuating between global/big picture issues while staying close to his heart and personal experiences.
“To My Brother is a fragile and poetic work which requires an intimate relationship with the viewer: stand too far away and the drawings appear as blank sheets of paper, stand closer and you will be able to trace the contours of the human shapes inhabiting these drawings, the artist’s memories, and the thin lines between an ephemeral presence and a permanent absence. Stand closer and you will be able to discern that Batniji has left out certain details, or has emphasized others. As the title indicates, this series is a dedication to Batniji’s late brother Mayssara and a commemoration of his untimely death. However, this very personal history ties into a wider political context of strife in the Middle East, and shows how personal experiences ultimately, in some way or other, become part of a collective narrative.” (Abraaj Capital Art Prize)
‘Speaking about his inspiration for the execution project, Batniji refers back to the fact that hours before his death, his brother had made some drawings on a sketch pad of Batniji’s which had then been erased. The faint impressions remained though, as a last trace of his brother. Much of the artist’s work has dealt with the idea of disappearance and how we can relate this ephemeral experience, and this is perhaps his most intimate artistic exploration of this concern.’ (Art in the City)
If you think you can’t enjoy Art Dubai because you couldn’t make it to Dubai this year, think again. Thanks to social media and prolific publishing, we can all participate in one of Gulf’s most exciting art events.
My favorite published piece coming out of Dubai is Canvas Daily. These mini-magazines are great reading with high quality images of select art works, summations of daily art sales, interviews with persons-of-interest, and short stories related to participants, events, and artists.
With so many things going on at Art Dubai and for Art Week, the Canvas Guide makes it all a bit more accessible by wrapping it up in a neat little consumable package, enabling visitors and spectators alike to get a mental grip on a massive event with many moving parts.
The guide is posted online daily throughout the event.
Note: Images are links to the downloadable PDF
Daily Canvas One
Highlights Include: Interviews with Art Dubai director Antonia Carver and Global Art Forum 6 leader, Shumon Basar. It also includes overviews of some other Dubai Art Week events like Design Days and the Sikka Art Fair.
Daily Canvas Two
Highlights: Overview of Indonesian Art in the Marker programming, a look at Art Dubai’s Artists in Residence, an interview with gallerist Chantal Crousel on her video art exhibition, and an overview of Performance Art at Art Dubai, including Carlos Celdran’s work Livin la vida Imelda.
Daily Canvas Three
Highlights: Wow! This is a GOOD one…I found the reading brief, but meaty and substantial. Great reading on the India art market, including insights on the museums, contemporary and modern master artists, and art fairs of India, a spotlight on Saudi Art, an interview with the super awesome Chinese artist Zhang Huan (love his work!) and curatorial insight on select works by Curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath.
Daily Canvas Four
Highlights: Art and the Arab Spring.
Canvas guides are available in print at Art Dubai, or online, in both Arabic and English:
I’ve been following Negar Azimi since 2006, one year after I returned home from a three-week driving tour of the Islamic Republic of Iran with a group of 13 other students and travelers.
During one of our long bus rides from one city to the next, my professor/our guide and Iran expert Jerry Dekker, regaled us with stories about his time in Iran, and history beyond the history books. He told us about the Shah’s extravagant 2,500-year anniversary party at Persepolis in 1971, celebrating the long history of the Persian empire. Professor Dekker also mentioned that Persepolis had been the site for an annual avant-garde art and performance event, Shiraz Festival of the Arts created by Empress Farah Diba Pahlavi, in 1966.
Upon my return to the USA, and in the comfort of my own home, I started googling Shiraz Festival of the Arts, but I found very little in English that I could go on. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that it is difficult, even in the best Public Library, to find relevant and timely information on Middle Eastern artists/movements/history, which is why I believe publishing on the web is so important.
“…the circulation of images and ideas that tend to perpetuate the image of a victimized people. Prominent amongst these ideas is the notion that Iran is sealed in a vaccum of repression, and therefore, that any art production emanating from within its bounds is a hysterical reaction to that reality, in other words, cry for us because our fates are so bad.”
Outside of Bidoun Magazine, where she is a senior editor, I had never seen a piece of writing like that. Not only had she armed me with names, dates, and projects that yielded results from search engines, she alerted me to a way of thinking about Iran that seems to be a reflex among foreigners…oh, poor Iran! I honestly believe that exposure to that idea really changed the way I think and opened my mind to the possibility of seeing artistic production from the Middle East in a more unfettered way. (The reflex doesn’t go away, but my awareness of it is a critical component of transcending past/present socialization that embed the poornographic perspective in my psyche.)
Azimi has studied at a Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia universities. She has been published in The New York Times/Magazine, The Nation, Harper’s, Frieze, and of course, Bidoun. Whenever I see a fresh, witty perspective on the Middle East surface in the mainstream media, it is often Azizi’s work. She has been prolifically using her fancy education, sharp prose, and images from the Middle East to get something much needed in the mainstream media: perspective.
Projects
In addition to her writing work, she is also a curator, frequent speaker on Middle Eastern art and politics, and is a member of the Arab Image Foundation.
The Arab Image Foundation is a non-profit organization established in Beirut in 1997. The Foundation’s mission is to collect, preserve and study photographs from the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab diaspora. The Foundation’s expanding collection is generated through artist and scholar-led projects. The Foundation makes its collection accessible to the public through a wide spectrum of activities, including exhibitions, publications, videos, a website and an online image database. The ongoing research and acquisition of photographs include so far Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Mexico, Argentina and Senegal. To date, the collection holds more than 400,000 photographs. (Source: Arab Image Foundation)
Becoming Van Leo: a work in progress
In conjunction with the Arab Image Foundation, Azimi curated the photography exhibition Becoming Van Leo, on the work of the Armenian/Egyptian photographer Van Leo, a work in progress since at least 2002, when it showed at the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo. The last exhibition, in November 2011, was organized as a part of the International Art Programme in Amsterdam of the Prince Claus Fund and the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, curated by Azimi and Karl Bassil, Arab Image Foundation.
The Bidoun Library, founded in 2009 by Bidoun Projects, is a mobile library consisting of books, magazines and other printed matter. If you ever have the chance to see this, I highly recommend it!
Since the turn of the last century, the term “Middle East,” which was coined in the West, has existed more as a subject for discussion and study than a geographical area. Bidoun Library is an attempt to survey this territory through its printed matter. Books, magazines and other materials are treated as objects in which complex and historical facts and ambitions meet. They are not amongst the most representative or refined objects from the Middle East—they are cheaper and more perishable. Bidoun Library acquires a new form everywhere it stops. (Source: Bidoun Projects)
Here, Negar Azimi and fellow Bidoun-er Babak Radboy discuss with CNN collecting materials for the library, and the latest issue of Bidoun (#25-a special report about the revolution) in Cairo over the summer of 2011.
Writings
To put it simply, Negar Azimi writes things that I want to read. She’s highly intelligent, obviously clever, knowledgeable on art and politics, and she wraps it up with outstanding storytelling. It’s understandable why her work is published in the world’s leading publications, and I’m so thankful that it is.
Introduction to the article: The Egyptian revolution is over, the army wields power and the new government is in disarray. Tensions between Christians and Muslims are ascendant and members of the elite are leaving the country in droves while those who remain bemoan the masses as ignorant ideologues. This is the Egypt of Waguih Ghali’s “Beer in the Snooker Club,” a coming-of-age novel set in 1952 that, much like “The Catcher in the Rye” in America, articulated the identity crisis of a generation. Ghali’s characters — young, precocious, cosmopolitan — are lost in the bewildering aftermath of the military coup that overthrew the pliant boy-king Farouk. They pine for the easeful gambling, womanizing and drinking of the past even as they scorn both the ancien régime’s sordid pretensions and the new regime’s inability to deliver on its vaulted promises; “We have the worst of both systems,” one of them declares, exasperated. Ghali, who published his novel in 1964 and committed suicide five years later in the bathtub of his British editor’s Primrose Hill apartment, took the fall of the monarchy as his subject. Still, his tale presents uncanny parallels to today’s Egypt, where artists, intellectuals and youth at large are beginning to fashion a new cultural republic of sorts even as they also struggle to find their bearings. Keep reading……
Introduction to the article: The first time I met Ayman, he insisted on picking me up in his shiny black Chevrolet sedan outside the King of Shrimp, a popular fish restaurant in the Cairo neighborhood of Shobra. It was April, and he had just returned from Berlin, where he attended a conference on tourism (“the world’s biggest”) for his job. A brand new “I Love Berlin” key chain dangled from his rearview mirror. Also dangling was a small metallic cross, along with “I Love London” and, of course, “I Love New York.” As a procurement manager at a multinational company, he travels a great deal. “I have a busy passport,” he told me during that first meeting, handing me his overfull visa pages to inspect. Keeping reading…..
Introduction to the article: The Egyptian entrepreneur Ahmed Abu Haiba isn’t having a good day. A Saudi columnist has accused him of corrupting the country’s youth. A music video he has been working on for months is behind schedule. He hasn’t had time to prepare for his weekly talk show, an Islamo-Egyptian version of “Dr. Phil.” Worse, one of the program’s financiers has become upset because there was to be a woman on the show — unchaste behavior, to some. We’re driving along Sheik Zayed Road in the desert outside Cairo on a bright day as the radio plays Sami Yusuf, a saccharine-sweet Muslim pop star based in London. Abu Haiba theatrically throws his arms in the air to perform his frustration. At the age of 42 he is tubby and, as a sign of his deep faith, has a large zabiba — a dark smudge on his forehead born of rubbing his head repeatedly on a prayer mat. And yet he is not a conventional man and certainly not a conventional Muslim. Today he looks more like a hip-hop mogul, with a black knit golf cap on backward and a suit of all black. And a pink tie. Keep Reading…..
Teaser from the article: Like many Iranians of his generation, Ganji was at one time an ardent follower of the late Ali Shariati, a fiery and charismatic figure who put forward a reading of Shiism that evoked Marxism and shades of revolutionary Third Worldism. Shariati flourished in the heady climate of early 1960s Paris, as France’s turbulent war with its Algerian colony raged. He collaborated with the Algerian National Liberation Front in its revolutionary struggle, was coddled by Marxist scholars, translated Sartre into Farsi and cavorted with Frantz Fanon. He returned to Iran in 1965 and soon thereafter began delivering rousing lectures to budding revolutionaries at Husseinieh-e Ershad, a blue-domed religious institute in central Tehran that has since become inextricably tied to Shariati’s image. Shiism, Shariati told his listeners, has a core set of values that stands to resolve many of society’s ills. He distinguished this original Shiism from the pernicious faith he saw propagated by the clerics around him, what he contemptuously referred to as “Safavid Shiism,” after the Safavids, who established Shiism as Iran’s state religion in the sixteenth century. Cassettes of Shariati’s lectures were distributed en masse, and Shariati, inadvertently or not, became a primary intellectual architect of the Islamic revolution to come. Keep reading…..
Teaser from the article: But still, something has changed when it comes to contemporary art’s preoccupation with the political – especially when it is produced in the West. It is more topically driven, more blithely anti-hegemonic and more consensus-driven. It is often borne of an idea rather than a lived reality. The stakes have changed, too; there is no draft now in most countries, or (again, in the West), no war and destruction at home or no aids crisis for that matter (if you’re able to afford antiretrovirals). This has managed to create a comfortable distance between politics as manifest in social relations involving authority and power – as a site of real, live action – and politics as a site of performance. Instead of marching to war or even marching in a demonstration, we perform our political credentials in a variety of ways: by how we vote (Democrat), what we wear (green ribbons in solidarity with Iranians), how we shop (Fair Trade), the causes we write cheques for (gay rights in Zimbabwe?) – and by the kind of art we consume (‘engaged’). Keep reading…..
Negar Azimi: Brooklyn or Manhattan?
Maya Arulpragasam: Brooklyn.
NA: Bill Cosby or Yasser Arafat?
M.I.A.: Yasser Arafat.
NA: Dodi or Princess Di?
M.I.A.: Princess Di. You know, I predicted her death.
NA: No!
M.I.A.: On the day she died, I went to this party and fell asleep at my friend’s house. I woke up at four in the morning and I’d dreamt that I was on a motorbike and I was getting chased by all these people and then I crashed, and it was, like, loads of people trying to take photos of me and stuff. The whole thing was the same except for—instead of Princess Diana, it was me. And I woke up and I said, “Oh, my God, I just had a dream that I died!” And we were, like, well that’s crazy, and I told my sister, she was there, too, and then we all went back to sleep. Four or five hours later we woke up and the first thing we heard on the radio was about Princess Di.
Teaser from the article: Like Bon Jovi, Margaret Thatcher, and Don Johnson, the Iron Sheik is a product of the 1980s. The 80s were his decade, his coming out, his alpha and his omega. On December 26, 1983, not three years after the release of the last of the American hostages in Tehran, an Iranian would take home the crown jewel of the wrestling world in a title bout that would change the sport of wrestling forever. It took all of ten minutes. The Sheik slammed, suplexed, clotheslined, pinned, washed and dried six-time reigning world champion Bob “Howdy Doody” Backlund until his manager threw in the towel, leaving the former champion splayed out motionless on the sweat-drenched mat. “Victory!” cried the Sheik’s manager, “Classy” Freddie Blassie, as he leapt up into the ring. The audience was aghast. It was the dawning of a weird and occasionally twisted age that wrestling’s most ardent fans still refer to as “the golden era.” Keep reading…..
Note: Though this interview is from 2006, it still provides useful insight on Negar Azimi and Bidoun Magazine. Keeping reading…..
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One of my favorite film series, Bridge to Iran on Link TV, is currently featuring some excellent Iranian-made documentaries that address female political engagement in Iran. We Are Half of Iran’s Population, provides unparalleled access to the voices of Iranian women talking about what they consider important issues to society and women in Iran before the 2009 elections. In The Queen and I, two women on opposite sides of the 1979 Islamic Revolution share with us, and each other, how their lives unfolded after the revolution. Both women went into exile, each lost at least one family member in the struggle, each triumphed in building a new life, but still, unanswered questions from the revolution haunt their lives today.
Introduction to Bridge to Iran
BRIDGE TO IRAN is Link TV’s unique series of documentary films and engaging conversations which carries viewers into the lives of Iranian citizens and into the heart and soul of Persian culture. BRIDGE TO IRAN presents memorable characters, confronted with a wide range of obstacles and opportunities as they navigate their lives through a changing social and political landscape.
BRIDGE TO IRAN is a direct response to the cultural misunderstandings and political tensions that have developed between Iran and the US since the Iranian revolution. The series fills a knowledge gap by providing Americans with informed, insider’s views on modern Iranian society, through documentaries made by Iranian directors, living both inside Iran and within the Iranian diaspora. The series avoids simplistic categorizations and stereotypes about Iran to provide new insights and understandings of a nation, a people, and culture that most Americans know so little about.
Watch Online
Click the image to go to the Link TV website to watch this film.
Three months before Iran’s presidential elections Iranian women’s rights activists — consisting of a vast spectrum of different points of view from religious to secular and ordinary women — are filmed posing their questions to the ten candidates and three of them discuss their opinions after watching the film. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, however, is not willing to take part in the film or to respond.
By the time the film is finished, three individuals who have taken part in the film are thrown in prison, falling victim to the massive post-election detentions. This film sheds light on the reality of the situation of Iran. (Source: Link TV)
Click the image to go to the Link TV website to watch this film.
Two women on separate sides of massive upheaval that changed both their lives forever. In the Queen and I, two women come together to discuss the past and the paths their lives have taken since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Farah Diba Pahlavi was the Empress of Iran until her husband’s regime was overthrown by an uprising of the people, she is now exiled in France. The film’s director and co-star of the film, Nahid Persson Sarvestani, was a young communist who helped overthrow the Shah’s regime. Many lifetimes later, a filmmaker and a former empress unfold parts of their shared past, with each telling her personal experiences of tragedy, triumph, and survival.
World Cinema, News, and Music
After watching one or both films, take advantage of Link TV’s other online programming. They offer many wonderful programs from around the globe. Another personal favorite is Cinemondo World Cinema, which often streams critically acclaimed international films.
I chose Taraneh Hemami as the second woman to profile for International Women’s Week because she is an exciting, dynamic, cross-cultural artist whose work is as thought provoking and relevant in the San Francisco Bay Area, her home-base since the early 90′s, as it is in the Middle East or Europe, places that also have high numbers of Iranian émigrées, and unique relationships with immigration and representation. She is an important voice and collaborator operating in international contemporary art today, and through her work, we have a glimpse of the hopes, dreams, histories, voices and experiences of contemporary exile.
It speaks to generations of Iranians exiled after the 1979 revolution, as well as to many others around the world displaced from their homelands, seeking or required to forge new identities for survival. It is fitting that her works scales from personal to political, and back, because exile is both personal and political, and in the case of an Iranian exile, the situation is exceptionally nuanced.
What is particularly important about her work is how her creative journeys to create personal and collectives feelings of belonging, she has humanized and materialized Iranian-Americans experiences, creating pictures for us that are very different from the mainstream point of view.
Her work Hall of Reflections, below, was presented in 2003 at the Sharjah Biennial in a smashed manner. The mirrors are personal images, collected from other Iranians in exile, scattered amongst the rubble.
While the Western media paints the picture of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 in terms of its own grabs for power, Hemami reminds us that the revolution was and is about the lives of the people. And the people, the Iranian diaspora, are her collaborators.
“My work has become the means by which I create connections to the place, the people and the culture I left behind when I immigrated to this country more than twenty five years ago… I have used the motifs and patterns of my culture as well as looked to the stories of my people to create works that reflect our collective history.” (Source: Creative Work Fund)
Her work also challenges politicized representations (or false representation) of Middle Eastern people.
Currently, Hemami is part of the Luggage Store Projection Space: International Women’s Day (SF) curated by Eliza Barrios, taking images from her series Most Wanted, which investigates the nature of perception, recognition and representation while examining the construction of the image of the new enemy. Interpretations of a series of faceless portrayals of the most wanted terrorists contemplate the ways in which stereotypical perceptions of people are created while pondering the relationship between image and identity. (Source: Taraneh Hemami)
This video by SPARK is the perfect introduction to Taraneh Hemami.
Taraneh Hemami on Spark:
Iranian-born painter, installation and conceptual artist Taraneh Hemami has two homes — and she also has none. When Hemami came to the United States in 1978 to attend the University of Oregon at Eugene, she had little idea of what the future held. Within a year of her arrival in this country, the Iranian Revolution had changed her homeland forever and prevented her from visiting for more than a decade.
As an Iranian living in the United States, it’s not surprising that Hemami’s art would explore her complex relationship with the concept of home and her struggle to secure a sense of belonging from both her country of residence and the country and culture of her youth. In many ways, Hemami’s art is her home. “There is a sense of satisfaction in placing myself within the walls that I create,” says Hemami. (Source: Spark)
Select Works of Taraneh Hemami
Free @ the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, August 20, 2011 – August 31, 2013
A neon sign repeats the word in English and Arabic in a circular shape, as in a Sufi prayer, an incantation, a chant, a declaration. It shines on intricate mirrored vinyl patterns, interacting with the architecture, integrating with the structure, as it alters the identity of the building.
The setting of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts building allows for a public platform, to celebrate the open spirit of San Francisco, which continues to welcome new perspectives, celebrating cultural diversity, and giving voice to the marginalized–while creating an opportunity for echoing the call for freedom across the globe. (Source: Taraneh Hemami)
In 2012, Hemami was awarded the coveted Creative Capital Grant for her on-going project, Theory of Survival: Fabrications. Click the image to go to the Creative Capital website.
Theory of Survival: Fabrications makes visible the otherwise absent histories of dissent in Iran through the production and presentation of collected historical archives, hand-crafted reproductions, print and web-based materials. This work will culminate in multidisciplinary installations that include a retail shop, a library and a story booth. Since 2007, the Theory of Survival project has amassed historical archives from multi-generational local communities and the web through residencies and collective efforts. This material includes decades of otherwise banned and censored printed matter belonging to the Iranian Students Association of Northern California which was active from 1964–84 and reflects the political sensibilities of its time. (Source: Creative Capital)
In 2008, Hemami acted as artist and curator for Theory of Survival at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She presented her own work beside those of Iranian diaspora artists Reza Aramesh, Gita Hashemi, and Leila Pazooki. Below are images from Hemami’s work in the exhibition.
Homes, Taraneh Hemami & Mohsen Emami-Nouri
Homes project enters the private world of Iranian families living in the Bay Area, creating physical and virtual spaces that narrate stories of their everyday lives through portraits of space, objects, and people. Audiences` interaction with the archives interconnects the stories of these individual homes. (Source: Taraneh Hemami)
Silent Tears
The work comprises of seven ceramic tears mounted strictly vertically on a wall, which acts as the face down which the tears are running. The act of weeping has strong connotations when considering the part of the world Hemami originates. It is common for Western news reports to accompany stories of violence in the Middle East with footage of wailing women mourning the death of a loved one. Hemami references this female emotional outpouring to express the mourning for the home she has left behind.
Each tear is covered with text from the Qu’ ran, however the clarity of the letters is obscured by a layer of clear wax. It is as though the words have been silenced, in the same way as the people living in exile are silenced through their absence. (Source: Taraneh Hemami)
Silent Tears is part of the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Not only is Nat Muller my first woman to be profiled for International Women’s Day, she is also the curator for the Abraaj Capital Art Prize 2012.
Introduction
If you are looking for a guide to enrich your understanding of artistic production in the Middle East, look no further than Nat Muller. She is an independent curator, critic, organizer, and cultural advisor in the EU. She is the author of countless articles and publications, her work informed by years of working with artists and organizations throughout the Middle East and Europe. She introduces audiences to new artists, ideas, aesthetics, and movements, giving a knowledgeable, sensitive, insider’s-point-of-view to an area of study that is plagued by preconceived, and often untrue political/historical baggage, and an overall ignorance of art/history.
I appreciate her work so much because it is through her devotion to artists and sharing information that we have the opportunity to view art from the region with a more authentic perspective and proper knowledge in mind.
She was chosen by the Selection Committee as guest curator for the Abraaj Capital Art Prize for 2012 and is working closely with the artists in supervising the production of the artworks, their display at Art Dubai, and the publishing of an annual catalogue which will be designed by renowned designer Huda Abi Smitshuijzen Fares, Director of the Khatt Foundation, Center for Arabic Typography, The Netherlands.
Getting To Know You: Works by Nat Muller
Select 2012 Works
Egyptian Timelines, Power Cuts Middle East at the International Film Festival Rotterdam
Egyptian Timelines, curated by Muller, was a special program of the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January 2012, taking its inspiration from “the year of revolutions across the Arab world.” Muller curated a selection of films comprised of 20 works varying from a few minutes to feature length, under three programs called “Egyptian Timelines” and a fourth called “Egyptian Frame.” Click the image below to view the PDF program and read Nat Muller’s curatorial statement for Egyptian Timelines.
Below, a preview of the internationally acclaimed film, The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni, a film by Raina Stephan, featured in “Egyptian Frame” program.
Lacoste’s Act of Censorship: Interview with Larissa Sansouran
Note: Larissa Sansour is an artist Muller has written about and worked with over the past several years. You can read about the scandalous censorship of her work in December 2011, with well-detailed explanation of her current projects, including Nation Estate, a sci-fi photo series conceived in the wake of the Palestinian bid for nationhood at the UN, the “too pro-Palestinian” project censored by Lacoste Elysée Prize, below, as well as in a discussion about her work and practices in the context of mobility, time and power, in the 2010 piece Tampering with the P(e)ace of Stasis : Artistic Practices of Trespassing in the Work of Larissa Sansour, later in this post.
Muller’s introduction to the piece: “On December 20th Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour issued a press release that her nomination for the prestigious Lacoste Elysée Prize awarded by the Swiss Musée de l’Elysée was revoked on grounds that her work was ‘too pro-Palestinian’. Regretting Lacoste’s censorship, the Musée de l’Elysée had offered Sansour a solo of her work. Following a barrage of articles in the art and mainstream press, the Musée de l’Elysée caved in and cancelled the whole prize. Nat Muller caught up with Larissa Sansour now the dust has slightly settled.”
Click the image below to read the rest of the article…….
Select 2011 Works
Lost in Translation: Reading the Arab Spring from the Streets to the Arts.
As the world scrambles to make sense of post/trans-revolutionary state happening in parts of the Middle East, Muller looks at the Arab spring from multiple angles. She shares an enlightened point of view about the Arab Spring’s immediate appropriation by local and international art organizations and artists, and how art was part of the movement in the streets.
Emancipated Art, Tunisia Interventions on cars burnt during the Tunisian revolution. Art project with artists and neighbours. By Faten Rouissi, April 2011 Image: Nafas, click image to visit website and see more work.
This piece also looks at the 2011 Sharjah and Venice Biennials in light of political events. Muller reminds us that the Sharjah Biennial Curators Suzanne Cotter, Rasha Salti and Haig Aivazian “dedicated the biennial to the winds of change in the region, but also expressed skepticism and reservation towards the role of art in turbulent times. They stressed the importance for art to reach the streets and reach out, without becoming outreach, a veiled warning to all cultural institutions capitalizing on the revolution. In other words, they posed the thorny question of how and when art and politics relate to one another, and when that relation becomes skewed. “
Muller’s Introduction to the piece: Similar to the media, the art world loves a good revolution. It provides fuel for a well-oiled machine, always on the lookout for the new, always searching to interpret or translate. In times of revolt, upheaval, global political and economic duress, the idea of »patience« is not a particularly popular one. In art as in diplomacy, it seems immediate action is the most adequate response to societal urgencies. Enter the Arab Spring.
Click the image below to read the rest of the article……
The Inner World of a Post Civil War Generation
In this piece, Muller reviews the work of Mounira Al Solh and her alter-ego, Bassam Ramlawi at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Muller’s Introduction to the piece: In the past decade, Lebanese artists known as the post-civil war generation, have made a furore in the international art world. These include the likes of Walid Raad, Akram Zaatari, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Lina Saneh, Lamia Joreige, and Rabih Mroué. In their work these artists, who all came of age during the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war, have been predominantly occupied by an individual and collective history, memory and amnesia, and the politics of representation.
Recently a younger generation of Lebanese artists, all in their early 30s, have stepped in. Building on the thematics and visual language of their slightly older colleagues, these artists bring humor, pop culture, and a saviness of the expectations and pressures of the contemporary art world into the mix.
Click the image below to read the rest of the article……
Select 2010 Writings
Tampering with the P(e)ace of Stasis : Artistic Practices of Trespassing in the Work of Larissa Sansour
In this piece, the second on Sansour by Nat Muller in this line-up, she discusses Sansour’s work in-depth and discusses themes, practices, and theory around Palestinian art and artists.
Quote from the article: Larissa Sansour’s video art pieces rely on a mechanism of saturating the viewer with a hyperreality. As Hamid Dabashi points out in relation to Palestinian filmmaking : “What happens when reality becomes too fictive to be fictionalized, too unreal to accommodate any metaphor?” The only way of affecting the viewer comes by way of hyperbole.
Click the image to read more….
I love Larissa Sansour’s video work. She has a few videos posted on Vimeo. Here are two of my favorites:
If you’ve been following my Abraaj Capital Art Prize writing, then you’ve already been introduced to the Rabih Mroué in the work of Joana Khajithomas and Khalil Joriege, I Want to See. Rabih is a very exciting artist/actor/director/etc, in this piece Muller reviews Mroué’s exhibition, I, the Undersigned.
Quote from the article:I, the Undersigned, Mroué’s first solo exhibition as a visual artist, brings together four existing and two newly commissioned works, installed over BAK’s two floors. It addresses, as many of his plays and performances do, the issue of responsibility within larger artistic and historical-political frameworks.
Select 2009 Works
In the Middle of What Exactly?
In the Middle of the Middle was a 2009 show by French curator Catherine David in Lebanon for the Lebanese/French gallery Sfeir-Semler, Beirut.
Introduction to the article: Exhibition titles are always interesting indicators to assess a show. Ideally they express or capture the curatorial gesture, and give a hint of the show’s flavour. Titles are in that respect bearers of expectation: soft signifiers of what there is to come. What then to make of as opaque a title as “In the Middle of the Middle”? And how to position the show within its temporal and geo-political coordinates:
a show of artists from the Middle East region
in a commercial German-Lebanese white cube gallery
located in Beirut’s Karantina area, the site of multiple massacres during Lebanon’s 15-year long civil war (1975-1990)
seizing the moment when all things Mid-East or Arab are en vogue within the international art world
Read more by clicking on the image below…
Ashkan Sepahvnd
Ashkan Sepahvand is a writer, researcher, translator. Here Muller and Sepahvnd discuss his series of led-tours in the National Museum of Beirut, Other than someone, there was no one.
Similarly engaging with the relationship between memory and history as well as how both enter representation, the Iranian-American author Ashkan Sepahvand led a series of tours in the National Museum of Beirut under the title Other than someone, there was no one. Supported by a professional museum guide and a local theater group, Sepahvand developed a narrative thread throughout the museum in which a selection of exhibited objects acted as departure points for individual associations, moving beyond their standard perception as objective witnesses to a past reality. Such a mixing of fact and fiction not only made the construction of history evident, rather it allowed for dynamic discussions spanning a range of topics to open up – on, for example, how a nation identifies itself vis-à-vis its cultural heritage.
Read the interview by clicking the image below:
Select 2005 Work
[Re]tribute Beirut
This is one of my favorites pieces of the bunch. Muller shares her thoughts and experiences on visiting Beirut in 2005.
Did you know that March 8th 2012 is International Women’s Day? I’ve been so busy writing and mommying that I forgot until one of my favorite organizations posted a link on Facebook, promoting their programming in honor in IWD. They had a nice selection of video highlighting women’s stories from around the world. As I browsed the titles, I noticed a trend: “The Other Side of the Burka” and “The Most Dangerous Place in the World for Women” were a few of the titles that addressed women of the Middle East/North Africa/South Asia.
There is a tendency for the West to hyper-focus on the politics of the veil and barbaric practices, and ignore almost everything else happening across the region(s), including the stories of powerful, dynamic, game changing women from and working in the Middle East.
I so often find myself blown away by the accomplishments of women working across the Middle East. The Arab Spring was/is a time and space that prompts the American media to broadcast a rarely seen view of Arab women, including veiled and religious, as powerful agents of change. In reality, there are countless women living, working, thriving, and achieving great things across the region, and we rarely hear their stories. I want to see more balanced and empowered perspectives in the media and support for those women and their projects from those in power who claim to care about “the future of the Middle East.”
In honor of International Women’s Day, I will be writing about 4 women who are shaping the future of art in the Middle East. They are all cultural innovators, and treated as thought leaders and respected authorities in their fields. They function as creators, leaders, educators, and rabble rousers. They are building real things that help artists, and as an extension, benefit the public, and ensure the Middle Eastern art boom will above all else create something long-lasting and tangible for the artists and art/culture luvahs of the region.
This isn’t a list of the best, or the most famous anything. These are women that I follow; women who inspire and challenge me to work harder and never stop trying to live an artful life.
The series kicks off March 1st with Abraaj Capital Art Prize Curator, Nat Muller!
Born in Gaza in 1966, Taysir Batniji studied art at Al-Najah University in Nablus on the West Bank from 1985-92. In 1994 he was awarded a fellowship to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Bourges, France, where in 1997 he graduated with a DNSEP (Higher National Diploma in Plastic Expression).
Since then he has divided his time between France and Palestine, developing an interdisciplinary practice including drawing, painting, installation and performance often closely related to his heritage.
Since 2001 Batniji has focused on photography and video. He has participated in numerous international exhibitions in Europe and beyond, in 2011: ‘Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial)’, Istanbul, Turkey; ‘Future of a Promise’, collateral event of the 54th Venice Biennale, Italy; ‘Seeing is Believing’, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany and ‘Le monde n’est pas arrive’, Galerie Eric Dupont, Paris, France. Previous exhibitions have included: ‘This is Not Cinema!’, Fresnoy, France (2002), ‘Contemporary Arab Representations’, the 50th Venice Biennale, Italy (2003), ‘Transit’, Witte de With, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2004), ‘The World is a safer place’, Globe Gallery, Newcastle, UK (2005), ‘Wanderland’, Kunstmuseen, Krefeld, Germany (2006), ‘Heterotopias’, Thessaloniki Biennial, Greece and Sharjah Biennial, UAE (both 2007). During the 52nd Venice Biennale Batniji was part of ‘Palestine c/o Venice’ (2009) and the following year ‘La Biennale Cuvee’, Linz, Austria (2010). Taysir Batniji is represented by Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Hamburg/Beirut and Galerie Eric Dupont, Paris. He lives between Paris and Gaza. (Source: Abraaj Capital Art Prize)
Key Works
GHo809
GH0809 takes the brutal 2008-2009 Israeli assault against Gaza and resulting destruction as its point of departure. The images, homes destroyed or damaged during the bombings, are displayed like real estate postings, giving the viewer “an invitation to contemplate a reality far from the familiar, and beyond the scope of a journalistic report.”
The title of GH0809 is an abbreviation of ‘Gaza Houses 2008–2009’; its letters and numbers resembling an illusory real estate company.
The project was conceived after the army of the Israeli occupation launched a war on Gaza in 2008–09. This war claimed the lives of many Palestinian civilians, most of them children, caused by the widespread destruction of houses and facilities.
A large percentage of Gaza’s inhabitants live below the poverty line. To build a house takes someone’s entire family’s savings; it is likely the most important achievement of their lives. From the beginning, the Israeli occupation has deliberately used the destruction of homes as a means of collective punishment for Palestinians, thus destroying the inhabitants’ memories, and causing displacement and massive upheaval.
As I have been denied access into Gaza since 2006, I delegated the task of photographing the houses to the journalist Sami al-Ajrami. In a documentary or ‘neutral’ way, we gathered specific data on these houses to accompany the pictures, presenting each just as in the window of a real estate office. We were able to gather more than 150 images, and facts about 33 houses, some of which had been completely destroyed, and some damaged.
What concerns me here is the treatment of the topic, as is always the case in my works that take on the situation in Palestine. I use a visual frame derived from daily life by evoking commercial advertising, but with altered content. In this contradiction between form and content is an invitation to contemplate a reality far from the familiar, and beyond the scope of a journalistic report.
My works are perhaps less concerned with a specific topic or situation, and moreover an inquiry into representation itself, testing new forms and techniques, or reappropriating existing forms, in an attempt to challenge familiarity, whether the image in question is journalistic, documentary or ‘artistic’. (Source: Art Territories)
Drawings
I have had some difficulties in finding information about Batniji’s drawings, but I want to include some samples because I really love them. I’ve looked at pieces from these bodies of work many times now on Batniji’s website and I’ve become very curious about them. It seems he uses drawings in the same way he uses photography and video, as a part of a documentary ritual, capturing his surroundings and getting closer to reality. (Source: Art Palestine)
Pixels 2011
Untitled, 2010-2011
I can’t lie, I have a soft spot for sketches and drawings. I’m so attracted to these macabre still life sketches.
Untitled Gaza 2004
These drawings have a snap-shot quality about them that I really like. There is a mystery in these drawings; with their documentary feel, are they real moments or imagined… fact, feeling or vision?
Video
Me 2
Me 2 is a video shot at after US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” plays at a street fair while Batniji spins around his apartment.
I’ve taken “I Will Survive” as an a personal-anthem many, many times. I remember putting it on in 1993 for my college roommates first night out in drag, and again on many tipsy nights dancing and cosmically directing those words at some boyfriend or crush who had broken my heart, things that threaten emotional security, but not necessarily physical. Because of the personal connection to this song, watching this video for the first time was like getting punched in the heart…. experiencing the horrific and seemingly unstoppable nature of the war-beast and subsequent disorientation and terror, while channeling the powers of self, the only thing we truly have agency over.
(There’s something in this project that has me thinking about the Native American Ghost Dance, a 19th century movement in the American Indian tribes of dancing ecstatically until collapse to summon the spirits of ancestors to restore the Indian nation, replenish the buffalo, and bring peace with the settlers taking over their homeland.)
(You can view this work and the one below by clicking on the images below, and then clicking on the image beside the description of the work on Batniji’s website, launching the video player.)
“This video is a superimposition of two simultaneous shots. I turn while looking at myself turning. I’ve chosen this impromptu movement as a personal reaction against the war and its violent, even immoral, representation by the media.”
Transit
The video Transit by Taysir Batniji tackles the issues of borders. The Palestinian artist presents a silent slide show, made up of photographic images, that he made clandestinely at border passages between Egypt and Gaza. The photographs of people waiting are alternated with black screens, metaphors for emptiness and the passing of time, reflecting the difficult and often impossible conditions of mobility for today’s Palestinians. The video addresses notions of travel and displacement as well as the situation of being between two cultures and identities.
What is your artistic approach and how is it influenced by the diverse media you use? My work is open to all media. I do not limit my creativity to specific media because I believe all disciplines allow me to express my ideas. As a Palestinian living between Gaza and France, my work is greatly influenced by the current context of my homeland.
Personal vs. Collective: what do you want to impart to the audience through your work? I am trying to find a connection between my life as an artist and the present situation in Palestine. At once a personal as well as a collective experience, many of my projects use Palestine as a departure point. It is personal because I experience the situation on a daily basis and it is collective because what is taking place in Palestine has affected a multitude of people. Through my work as in my life, I am consistently moving between two worlds and two ways of life. The personal is affected by the collective. We are living in a different context in Palestine. It is a very contradictory situation but it is inspiring at the same time for my art because it is has a deep human dimension.
How does it feel to be a recipient of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize? For me it is a really great opportunity considering the recognition of the award and the possibility that the work gives me now to be able to do my work. The Prize also provides me with financial help in order to be able to create. I have many other projects the same time so it will be a very busy period over the next few months. I feel a lot of pressure but also great pleasure in winning this award.
The 2012 Chinese New Year Parade through San Francisco celebrated happiness, prosperity, sincerity, togetherness, rebirth and fertility. The star of the show is the famed Gum Lung, a 250-foot dragon carried by over 100 men.
Hello, Bon Jour, Marhaba...thanks for stopping by. I am a photographer and art blogger who blogs about local and global art, culture, travel, and sustainability with the sensibilities of a restless & curious wanderer.
I love to explore and photograph cities, nature, and people, and I often share my photo stories on here on Diary of an Art Luvah. Take a peak to see people, places, events, artists, art, landscapes, and many other things I find beautiful, inspiring, and note worthy.
