WORK 08 - Afshan Ketabchi

Name: Afshan Ketabchi
Title: Safavid, Miniature Wadded Robe
Medium: Digital printing with hand color painting on paper
Size: 70 x 50 cm, 2007

B21 GALLERY

ARTICLE 69 - Art finds a way

[October 24. 2009 4:20PM UAE / October 24. 2009 12:20PM GMT] Chris Michael for THE NATIONAL

Thirty years after the Iranian Revolution, artists have learnt to sidestep the rules quietly and find ways to express themselves. At Golden Gates, an exhibition of new contemporary Middle Eastern art that coincides with Paris’s week-long art fair, FIAC, this pressure seems to affect each Iranian artist differently. Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar is a short, slight, soft-spoken and large-eyed guy. As he smokes a tiny Bahman (“Revolution”) cigarette, he speaks so quietly he’s difficult to hear even in the hushed Marais streets.

The authorities leave him alone, he says. “I’m OK, yes. But other artists are not. They’re younger and need help getting started. They put a lot of time, effort and money in, and it comes to nothing because the ministry doesn’t approve their work. It has been OK for me, but not for many others.”

Of course, many of the artists in Golden Gates are not Iranian. Also represented are Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey and the UAE. Huda Lutfi plasters images of Egyptian divas such as Umm Kulthum over mannequin busts, singeing and blackening the images “to convey the experience of how youth turns to ashes”.

Beirut’s Zena el Khalil, whose blog, kept during the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, was widely published and led to her memoir Beirut, I Love You, shows her work Queen and Kings, in which doll heads crown long, flowing dresses, granting the everyday inhabitants of her home city a glamorous grandeur. And Hale Tenger uses miniatures – a tiny parachutist landing on a pillow, a dragon nutcracker chomping on a globe – in an attempt to tackle personal and socio-political anxiety.

Thirty years after the Iranian Revolution, artists have learnt to sidestep the rules quietly and find ways to express themselves. At Golden Gates, an exhibition of new contemporary Middle Eastern art that coincides with Paris’s week-long art fair, FIAC, this pressure seems to affect each Iranian artist differently.

Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar is a short, slight, soft-spoken and large-eyed guy. As he smokes a tiny Bahman (“Revolution”) cigarette, he speaks so quietly he’s difficult to hear even in the hushed Marais streets. The authorities leave him alone, he says. “I’m OK, yes. But other artists are not. They’re younger and need help getting started. They put a lot of time, effort and money in, and it comes to nothing because the ministry doesn’t approve their work. It has been OK for me, but not for many others.”

Of course, many of the artists in Golden Gates are not Iranian. Also represented are Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey and the UAE. Huda Lutfi plasters images of Egyptian divas such as Umm Kulthum over mannequin busts, singeing and blackening the images “to convey the experience of how youth turns to ashes”.

Beirut’s Zena el Khalil, whose blog, kept during the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, was widely published and led to her memoir Beirut, I Love You, shows her work Queen and Kings, in which doll heads crown long, flowing dresses, granting the everyday inhabitants of her home city a glamorous grandeur. And Hale Tenger uses miniatures – a tiny parachutist landing on a pillow, a dragon nutcracker chomping on a globe – in an attempt to tackle personal and socio-political anxiety.

Article Courtesy: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 68 - Why Iran spells art

[October 20. 2009 5:08PM UAE / October 20. 2009 1:08PM GMT] Richard Holledge for THE NATIONAL

Tulips Rise From The Blood of The Nation's Youth (on plinths) and the prize-winning Air Pollution of Iran series by Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar at London's Royal College of Art. Jonathan Player / The National

Shirley Elghanian is in no doubt. What she calls the fantastic art coming out of Iran has been inspired by “the situation” there. “Prior to Ahmadinejad and his election in 2005 there wasn’t much attention given to artists,” says the London-based Elghanian, whose family fled Iran in 1979. “But when these artists started selling at unbelievable prices the authorities woke up and said, ‘What’s going on here? What are these artists doing?’ They clamped down on the galleries and then closed some.

“So what we find increasingly is that the work is an expression of the restrictions that the artists are experiencing. Because we needed to give this art an international stage so that it has the recognition it deserves, we set up the Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Prize as a charity to give them an opportunity to expose their inner feelings without censorship.”

MopCap, as it is abbreviated, has taken 18 months to come to fruition and absorbed the skills of 47 experts from the Iranian and international arts communities, who nominated more than 130 artists and 500-plus works. A jury chose a line up of six finalists whose work went on display at London’s Royal College of Art last week.

The winner was Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar, 32, whose striking Air Pollution of Iran used framed flags dirtied by the pollution of Tehran to hang as memorials to political prisoners. The work was sold for £50,000 before the announcement of the winner was made.

“My main inspiration comes from political and social issues,” says Moakhar, whose prize is the opportunity to stage a two-week exhibition of his works at the Saatchi Gallery next September. “They are direct answers to situations I observe and connections I make with the history of my country. I have a conflict about that because I have always looked to create works that are not concerned with political issues, but I have found it difficult to create artwork disconnected from my surroundings.”

In their different ways and disciplines the work of all six says much about the unresolved stress between the old and the new in Iran. All six have worked with the censor looking over their shoulders.

“Are artists repressed in Iran? Are they censored? Yes.” Fereydoun Ave is one of the nominators and well-established as an artist in Iran, Paris and the UAE ( his work is currently being exhibited at the B21 Gallery in Dubai). In Tehran he runs a space for experimental artists. It is a potentially subversive project in which he determinedly encourages all the emerging talent he can find.

“We are a stubborn and proud race,” he says. “And maybe we work better under pressure, by breaking taboos and finding ways to get past the censors. I don’t think art should be political but the authorities are forcing it to be.

“But just because we had a revolution does not mean we have to cut off ourselves from our roots. It is just a matter of finding a language.

“Art should be subtle, not just a poster. It should have many dimensions.”

The new language of Iranian art is reflected in the booming global interest it attracts. In London last May the Saatchi Gallery held Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East; the Hyatt Regency Hotel, London, is currently showing Iran Unbowed with works by Abbas Kiarostami, Farideh Lashai and Parviz Tanavoli; a display of challenging new media called Facts and Illusions is also on at the Royal College of Art.

However contemporary the works on show may be, traditional influences and values are still evident in the work.

One MopCap finalist, Vahid Chamani, 29, born and brought up in Tehran, directly confronts the gap between modernism and tradition by painting a group of warped and distorted figures who inhabit a time and space between apparition and reality.

“Iran’s present cultural situation is disturbed by the way we have somehow turned away from our traditional culture, but at the same time been left behind by modernism,” he says. “We have distanced ourselves from our beliefs and now stand too far from them to be able to join in the global stream of modern cultures. It seems like we have failed in reaching both of them.”

His female figures wear traditional clothes but sport earrings, necklaces and heavy make-up. He uses the traditional medium of ink combined with oil, although, he admits, “oil always wins”.

The sculptures of Sahand Hesamiyan draw heavily on the tiles and decorations as well as the architecture of ancient mosques.

The carpets and textiles from the Safavid Dynasty, which ended in 1736 have their contemporary resonance in the work of Farhad Ahrarnia, who combines digital mastering of images such as the covers of Time magazines printed on to cotton aida and embroidered with threads.

“I guess it has roots in quite a few different aspects of my childhood in Iran when I was surrounded by objects which were intensely detailed and repetitive in terms of the techniques used,” says Ahrarnia, who lives in the northern English city of Sheffield.

“When I moved here for the first time in early 1970s and then in the mid-1980s I became quite interested in folk art such as cross stitching. It is work that is not really considered as high art but it is very obsessively made. The idea of making something like that impressed me. I became interested in the way it was used as a way of restricting women especially and keeping them busy. There is something quite oppressive about needlework, not necessarily only in relation to women but in the politics of the commercial world and the way people are being exploited in factory-based work.”

He is careful not to be overtly political. “I am not keen to accept the image that my work is subversive or a reaction to a repressive regime. I think some of the other works in the show make a more obvious point about the situation in Iran but some make comments on Iranian culture, whether it is social or political, in a more subtle way.”

Is he looking forward to having his reputation enhanced by appearing in a competition like this?

“Let’s see what happens,” he says. “I don’t want to fall into the trap of just being seen as an Iranian artist. It can be quite limiting. I want to go beyond names and categories. Remember the Young British Art movement? It had a glamour because of the way it was marketed but for some of them it almost became a trap.”

It is unlikely that such glamour will turn the heads of this particular six. Abbas Kowsari, 39, whose entry, Shade of Water, a hauntingly beautiful series of people by the edge of Rezaiel Lake, north of Tehran, has worked for 10 newspapers, most of which have been closed by the authorities. Newsha Tavakolian, 28, a self-taught photographer who began working when she was 16, has worked for nine reformist dailies, all of which have been banned.

Her entry Mothers of Martyrs is a bleak collection of women holding pictures of sons who died in the Iran-Iraq War. The eyes of the young men are fixed forever by their deaths, their mothers’ by their unending grief.

“Art responds to the issues of the time,” says Kamran Diba, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran and one of the judges. “We have to see the works in the context of the 21st century and in the context of modernism and how they fit into the total picture with their relevance and aesthetic values.

“As judges we are keeping politics out of the art. Absolutely. The artists may have a political agenda but we are trying to separate the individual from the work. Political is transitional, art is permanent.”

For Diba, the symbolism of the prize is paramount.

“In Iran we don’t have the institutions in which to stage a thematic exhibition like this. There is not enough curatorial work. All we have are auctions which are nothing more than bazaars. Luckily now in Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Doha we are seeing properly curated exhibitions.

“The problem for Iran is that it is very isolated. Artists have to rely on the internet for contacts and information. They cannot travel so there is a tendency for the art to degenerate.”

As if to prove his point – thanks to the closure of the British Embassy in Tehran – no visas have been granted to five of the finalists. Only one, Farhad Ahrarnia from Sheffield, could be at the prizegiving.

Article Courtesy: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 67 - NY to exhibit contemporary Iranian art

[Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:00:22 GMT]

A work by Saba Masoumian

New York is set to hold an exhibition of paintings by 24 internationally-renowned and emerging contemporary artists from Iran. 1001 Colors, Contemporary Art from Iran will present 50 artworks created in various styles including expressionism and abstract, addressing the interplay between the traditional and modern Iranian culture.

The 20-day event will exhibit works by Sara Abbasian, Pouya Arianpour, Vahid Chamani, Morteza Darehbaghi, Reza Derakhshani, Arash Fesharaki, Sassan Qarehdaqlou, Narges Hashemi, Maryam Javaheri, Reza Lavasani, Parviz Kalantari, Hossein Khosrojerdi, Ramtin Zad, Saba Masoumian, Dana Nehdaran, Mehdi Mirbaqeri, Bahman Mohammadi, Freydoun Omidi, Shahpour Pouyan, Mohammad Rahimi, Rezvan Sadeqzadeh and Sadeq Tirafkan.

Organized and curated by independent art consultant and designer Nina Seirafi, 1001 Colors, Contemporary Art from Iran kicked off on Nov. 2 in a temporary exhibition space on the Bowery and will run until Nov. 22, 2009.

TE/HGH
Article Courtesy: PRESSTV.IR

ARTICLE 66 - Istanbul's summit of contemporary art

[Sunday, November 15, 2009] Hürriyet Daily News

Contemporary Istanbul will meet art lovers and members of the international art world for the fourth time from Dec. 3 to 6 at the Lütfi Kırdar Congress and Exhibition Hall. Sponsored by Akbank Private Banking, the event will bring together national and international contemporary art galleries, artists and artworks

One of Turkey’s most extensive contemporary art events will be organized for the fourth time at the Lütfi Kırdar Congress and Exhibition Hall between Dec. 3 and 6. The Contemporary Istanbul ’09, or CI’09, fair will include works by hundreds of artists from more than 70 Turkish and foreign galleries. The event was launched Friday at a press conference held at the Sofa Hotel with the participation of Contemporary Istanbul Executive Board Chairman Ali Güreli, Director Emin Mahir Balcıoğlu and Fikret Önder, the deputy general director of the fair’s main sponsor, Akbank Private Banking. Discussing the effect of the global crisis on the art sector, Güreli said prices have increased, but purchase and sale volume have not changed. “We have seen recently that contemporary art has gained value,” he said. “The number of collectors is increasing and young collectors are showing interest in the market.” Noting that 56 percent of the total value of artworks displayed at Contemporary Istanbul 2008 had been sold, Güreli said this year’s goal was to reach 65 to 70 percent. He added that the number of visitors is expected to exceed 50,000 this year.

Most extensive contemporary-art event in Turkey

According to Önder, the event is the most extensive contemporary-art event ever held in Turkey. “It is also one of the best examples of cooperation between the worlds of finance and art,” the Akbank executive said. “We enable our customers to evaluate their earnings via different investment instruments.” Talking about the innovations seen at this year’s event, Balcıoğlu said CI’09 would bring together artwork from 306 Turkish and foreign artists and 73 galleries, creating opportunities to promote Istanbul’s 12 leading museums and other arts organizations. “CI’09 has progressed to play a central role in its geography,” Balcıoğlu added. “The event will host artists from many neighboring countries, from Ukraine to Iran, and from Syria to Dubai. Many foreign art lovers and collectors will take the initiative to come to Istanbul in the beginning of December and follow the event.”

No crisis for CI’09

Despite the global crisis, Contemporary Istanbul continues to get richer every year with additional events and is being organized this year with increased interest and participation from galleries. The three-day event will also feature works from 12 art institutes, including the Sabancı Museum, Akbank Sanat, Istanbul Modern Museum, the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, or İKSV, and the Doğançay Museum. By bringing a different dimension to art events in Turkey, Contemporary Istanbul brings the world’s contemporary art scene to the city while at the same time promoting Istanbul’s culture and art to the world.

Three days of events

CI’09 will kick off Dec. 2, preview day, with an opening performance by Aydın Teker titled “aKabı.” During the course of the event, many interesting projects in the fields of painting, sculpture, photography, installation, video art and digital art will be on display, and mini concerts will be held on-site. In recognition of the 20th anniversary of the “Sister City” agreement between Istanbul and Berlin, there will also be special events held with the participation of German galleries and collectors, in collaboration with the Berlin Gallery Owners Association. Interesting work by German contemporary artists will be displayed at “Art Forum Berlin” and six art galleries representing the German capital will participate in the event. CI’09 will not be limited to art from the Western world, as striking work from Russia and the Middle East will be displayed as well. In the “New Horizons” section, which will be hosted each year, art lovers will encounter Syrian contemporary art for the first time this year under the title “Art from Syria.” One of the most significant projects of Contemporary Istanbul has been the “CI Dialogues” that started in September 2008 as part of the Contemporary Istanbul conference series. During the “Art Forum” that will be held as part of the same series, Robert C. Morgan, Hasan Bülent Kahraman and Başak Şenova will discuss contemporary art.

Contemporary art gets economic return

In addition to foreign collectors, Turkish collectors are also showing more interest in contemporary artwork, resulting in Turkish contemporary artwork becoming more valuable in the international arena. Millions are being paid for the work of some of these artists. Last year, artwork valued at $12.5 million was displayed at Contemporary Istanbul and sales were strong. This year, when the sales of Turkish contemporary artwork at both Turkish and foreign auctions is considered, it can be seen that the global crisis has not affected art. As a result, CI’09 organizers are expecting intensive demand from collectors. That contemporary artwork is purchased and sold at high prices shows that the culture and art industry has much to gain from this field.

Children and contemporary art

The CI’09 events will not be limited only to adults, as a special area and education program for children will allow them to connect with contemporary art. Children between the ages of 8 and 11 will be able to create their own artwork during the event and will also receive an art-history book prepared by Akbank Private Banking. During CI’09, news and announcements about the event will be published in 35 magazines and on 10 Web sites from 16 countries, reaching an estimated total of 4 million people, including artists, collectors, gallery owners, curators and critics.

For further information about Contemporary Istanbul, visit www.contemporaryistanbul.com.

Article Courtesy: Hurriyet Daily News

ARTICLE 65 - From chic point to space exodus

[5 - 11 November 2009 - Issue No. 971] Al Ahram

The Institut du monde arabe's current show of work by 19 Palestinian artists challenges preconceptions of contemporary Palestinian art, writes David Tresilian in Paris

Chic Point, Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints (2003), and Exodus (2008)

Intended, according to the show's curator, to suggest the components of a properly Palestinian aesthetic, Palestine, la création dans tous ses états is an exhibition at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris that brings together works by 19 contemporary Palestinian artists. Running until November this year and including works by established figures like Kamal Boullata and Mona Hatoum, both well known outside their native Palestine, the exhibition also presents the work of much younger artists, many of them at early stages in their careers.

Diversity of approach and the use of new and mixed media are motifs of this exhibition, according to the notes provided by curator Mona Khazindar. The use of mixed techniques may, she writes, be a way for contemporary Palestinian artists to suggest that "every type of media, every possible [technique], should be summoned to describe a world in which landmarks, frontiers and reality are slipping further and further away from those trying to hold onto them."

Certainly there is little painting on show in Palestine, la création dans tous ses états, and there is little of the kind of graphic work often highlighted in western exhibitions of modern or contemporary Middle Eastern art. One exhibition referred to in the present show, the British Museum exhibition Word into Art held some years ago in London, focused on calligraphy, for example (reviewed in the Weekly in August 2006). If there is one thing international audiences know, or think they know, about contemporary Arab art, it is that some of it emerges from a tradition of calligraphy, and exhibitions held in Europe have reinforced this idea.

One of the merits of the present exhibition is that it allows audiences to see contemporary Palestinian, and Middle Eastern, art differently. Instead of painting and calligraphic work, there is a lot of challenging and interesting video and installation work on show in the present exhibition, expressing, according to the curator, ideas of traces of the past, displacement and memory. Some people may still prefer Arab artists to produce work drawing on calligraphy, but even they will probably admit that this stimulating and exceptionally well-curated show is all the better for challenging preconceptions of what constitutes contemporary Palestinian art.

The exhibition is housed in the Institut du monde arabe's temporary building, usually used for selling souvenirs and Middle Eastern craft items, but now divided into a series of linked spaces by temporary walls. Each space has been given over to a different artist, and this arrangement, placing all the artists on the same level as it were, avoids any temptation towards narrative. There may well be a storyline at work behind this exhibition; there is certainly a bringing together of generations. The oldest artist with work on show here was born in 1936 and the youngest in 1977.

However, if visitors are intended to notice influences across generations, these are discreet to the point of being almost undetectable. Instead, the curator has signaled her intentions through the choice of artists and artworks, leaving visitors to wander through the exhibition's linked spaces and draw their own conclusions.

The show opens with Sherif Waked's Chic Point, Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints (2003), a digital video that transposes Palestinian daily life on the West Bank, an affair of perpetual checkpoints and security controls, with the rather different circumstances of a fashion show. The models wear a prêt-a-porter collection that reveals parts of their bodies, chiefly backs and stomachs, inviting audiences to check them over for concealed weapons. As the accompanying wall text notes, this material is potentially so overwhelming -- referring to the body searches carried out on Palestinians on a daily basis at checkpoints across the West Bank -- that the only way of dealing with it is to displace it into humour.

Walking into the exhibition, visitors are informed that the often extreme difficulty of daily life in today's Palestine means that contemporary Palestinian artists, rejecting polemic and ideology, often have recourse to the kind of black humour evinced in Waked's work. Chic Point glamourises the humiliations involved in daily body searches by re-imagining them in the camp context of a fashion show, while Larissa Sansour's video piece A Space Exodus (2008), apparently showing an astronaut planting a Palestinian flag on the moon, is described here as an adaptation of Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey transposed to the Middle East. It is, the notes read, "a small step for the Palestinians, but a giant leap for mankind."

Such pieces draw attention to life under occupation and to the fact of dispossession in effective and unusual ways, all the more so for translating such themes into apparently alien media and circumstances. However, sometimes the humour of the pieces is contradicted by the generally far more somber tone of the accompanying texts or the notes of the artists themselves. Raeda Saadeh's piece Who Will Make Me Real? (2005), for example, a large- format digital print showing the artist sprawled on a bed and wrapped in newspapers, has a similar jokey feel, but one that is severely qualified by the accompanying text.

"Women, human beings living in the context of occupation," this reads, "find themselves becoming neurotic in everyday life, creating a kind of barrier against fear for themselves and for those that they love and protect." Viewing Chic Point or A Space Exodus, the one all bling- bling glamour, the other set on the moon, one is never allowed to forget the real circumstances of daily life in Palestine.

Saadeh's piece, like many of the others on show, reminds visitors of the particular effects of occupation on Palestinian women, and eleven of the artists showing work in the exhibition are women, including Emily Jacir, recognised at the 2007 Venice Biennale, and Mona Hatoum. Jacir is represented by her piece Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948 (2001), a sort of tent printed with the names of destroyed Palestinian villages, now in the collection of the National Contemporary Art Museum in Athens, while Hatoum shows a piece entitled Every Door a Wall (2003), a curtain of newsprint hung in front of a darkened doorway.

Both pieces invite reflections on memory and loss, as does Rana Bishara's Homage to Childhood (2008), a memorable installation in which the artist has littered the floor of a room with translucent white balloons containing photographs of childhood. Above them are menacing halos of barbed wire.

All these artists have had significant international exposure, as have Waked, born in Nazareth in 1964, and Sansour, born in Jerusalem in 1973. Waked exhibited at London's Tate Modern in 2006 and Sansour, having studied in Copenhagen, London and New York, has exhibited at the Guangzhou Triennial and the Contemporary Art Biennial in N"mes. Of the 19 artists exhibiting in the present show, a good many, perhaps more than half, trained abroad, and more than half seem to live and work outside Palestine. They bear out another feature of the present exhibition, and perhaps of contemporary Palestinian art more generally, which is its international character.

As Mona Khazindar comments in her curator's notes, while Palestinian and Arab artists tended to spend increasing amounts of time abroad from the 1950s onwards, following the foundation of the first modern art schools in the region in Cairo at the beginning of the century, it has only been since the 1970s that Palestinian artists have really been able to widen their perspectives and enter the international art scene in their own right, rather than being seen, through western eyes, as the representatives of a marginal or ethnographic form of art.

This internationalisation of contemporary Palestinian art has undoubtedly enlarged the iconography and transformed the media available to contemporary Palestinian artists, who are now at least as likely to draw on Stanley Kubrick as they are on the Palestinian landscapes or other subject matter dear to the earlier generations of artists detailed in Kamal Boullata's recent book Palestinian Art from 1850 to the Present, copies of which are on sale at the present show.

Contemporary Palestinian artists are also at least as likely to work in mixed media, installation or video as they are in more traditional materials. However, besides a broadening of horizons and a rethinking of what might constitute Palestinian art, such internationalisation may also have had other effects, one of which is noticeable in the present show.

Some of the work in Palestine, la création dans tous ses états seems to have been carried out with foreign cooperation, notably Fawzy Emrany's Counting Years (2007), an installation in which disembodied voices count off the years from their birth year onwards, and Sandi Hilal's Roofs (2008), a video piece exploring Palestinian women's relationships to space. The former work was made in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan in cooperation with Swiss artists Jorg Köppl and Peter ZaØek, while the latter was produced in a refugee camp in Hebron on the West Bank in cooperation with UNRWA and the University of Stuttgart.

A theme debated in the work of earlier generations of Palestinian artists was the reception of foreign art practices, giving rise to the question of what could be considered properly "Palestinian art." In order to be considered authentically Palestinian, did a work need to draw on indigenous techniques, among them the tradition of icon painting or traditional craft practices, or was it enough for it to have Palestinian subject-matter, in which case was there not a danger of Palestinian art becoming imprisoned in an ever-narrowing circle of motifs?

Contemporary circumstances, in which international contacts have almost immeasurably increased, may have made such national questions redundant, or they may have transformed them, as the present show suggests. According to this exhibition, contemporary Palestinian art, whether produced inside or outside Palestine, with or without the cooperation of non-Palestinian artists and institutions, and in whatever form of media, is always concerned with a set of recurring themes, the components of a Palestinian aesthetic.

On the evidence of this exhibition, such themes include memory, dispossession and exile, and the pain of continuing occupation. However transformed and displaced into the unlikely contexts of rooms full of balloons, a fashion parade, or space exploration, these are expressed with stoicism and humour.

Article Courtesy: AL AHRAM

ARTICLE 64 - DISTINCTIVE CONTEMPORARY DESIGN TO BE FEATURED AT ABU DHABI ART

[Thursday November 5 , 2009 1:35:22 PM (GMT+4)] EYE OF DUBAI


ABU DHABI: Visitors to Abu Dhabi Art, the innovative new platform for modern and contemporary art being held in the UAE capital from 19 to 22 November, will have the opportunity to interact with cutting-edge designers and experience their live work in specially constructed performance studios and interactive workshops. The public will be able to view the movable workspace that a Saudi designer created in his van for his road trip to Abu Dhabi (and see the videos and documents he gathered along the way), watch special events, such as an evening of sand casting on the beach, and even try their own hands at design, in workshops run by leaders in the field. These and other exciting live programmes are all part of a special section on contemporary design, in which outstanding designers from the Middle East and Europe will give audiences a personal glimpse into their ideas and methods.

Abu Dhabi Art will in fact bring together two main design events, in keeping with its character as a new crossroads of global routes in culture and trade. Design Moment will be the first public atelier for emerging Middle Eastern designers, and Design Workshop will provide a series of showcases for exceptional European designers. Both events will take place in a special area of Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace designed by Rami Farook, founder of the multidisciplinary, UAE-based design practice Traffic. The space will incorporate distinct areas for Design Moment, Design Workshop and an installation by Abu Dhabi Art sponsor Audi of the aluminum Audi Space Frame, a sculptural interpretation of a basic element in automotive design. Conceived as an integral part of Abu Dhabi’s long-term cultural vision, Abu Dhabi Art is organised exclusively by Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) and Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & Heritage (ADACH), government entities charged with preserving the Emirate’s heritage and fostering its people’s creativity and engagement with the arts.

Design Moment: Reimagining Local Traditions in the Middle East

Design Moment will take place every day of Abu Dhabi Art, 19-22 November, from 4 pm to 10 pm. Highlighting distinct areas of contemporary design production, the presentations will feature product designer Ahmad Angawi (Saudi Arabia), who will undertake the design road trip in his van as part of his contribution; the partners in the interior design studio Bokja, Huda Baroudi and Maria Hibri (Lebanon), who will present a unique sofa assembled from a composite of around 40 distinct fabrics from different parts of the world; furniture and product designer Younes Duret (Morocco), who mixes customs, colors and objects in his Moroccan pouf chair and Zelli bookshelf; product designer Nedda El Asmar (Palestine, based in Belgium), who will offer a multimedia presentation of past work while showing the process of design of new pieces, from sketches through computer models to finished prototype; and graphic designer Reem Al Ghaith (UAE), who will create a space inspired by traditional designs found on doors and entrances in the region. Working within studios that will be open to the public to encourage dialogue, interaction and even participation, these designers will create new forms of traditional, “made in the Middle East” designs, using local techniques and materials.

Design Workshop: Exploring Techniques in Contemporary Design

Design Workshop will take place on three successive days, 20-22 November, from 10 am to 6 pm. On 20 November, UK-based designer Sevil Peach will demonstrate how a traditional string bag may be transformed through clustering and repetition into an installation exploring space and volume. On 21 November, UK-based designer Max Lamb will hold a day-long workshop in casting small objects in pewter. On 22 November, Netherlands-based designer Maarten Baas will invite participants to join him in creating objects through improvisation, using the simple materials of cardboard and tape.

In addition to these presentations, Max Lamb will give a sand casting performance on the beach on 21 November at 6 pm; and Maarten Baas will give a performance titled Analog digital, 19-22 November from 4 pm to 10 pm, in which he creates an analog/digital clock in real time. On 22 November, from 6:30 to 8:00 pm, Middle Eastern and European designers will join in a panel discussion moderated by Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum in London.

Participant Profiles

Profiles of all participants in the design section of Abu Dhabi Art are available upon request.

Article Courtesy: EYE OF DUBAI

ARTICLE 63 - Global recession makes artworks a buyers' market

[Wednesday, November 11, 2009] Reena Amos Dyes for EMIRATES/BUSINESS 24/7

Though recession has had an impact on the art market worldwide, analysts see it recovering towards the end of 2010. Discussing the impact of recession on the art market, Mathew Girling, CEO, Bonhams, Europe and Middle East, told Emirates Business: "Art is a discerning expense, it is not a necessity. You buy it only as a passion when the rest of the commitments have been met, thus it has taken a hit during the current recession. "In fact, during the past few months there have been a few distress sales of old art pieces in the United States and Europe. And these were not just individuals who sold their art, companies also offloaded their collections. "Companies bought art when the going was good, both to boost their image and as an investment, but when the recession came knocking, the finance directors started seeing the collection as an unnecessary overhead and decided to offload it." He said: "Distress sales are going to happen until the first six months of 2010, especially in the US, where the Madoff investment scandal has wiped out many personal fortunes and people will have to sell.

"The market will recover in the latter half of 2010. It will recover when people feel business and the economy is back on track. Then and only then will they have the confidence to buy art again. "The art market entered the recession later than any other business and will also recover later. The reason was that most people were in denial when the recession hit and were afraid to admit that things had gone wrong. "In fact, even during the height of the recession, artworks did well and fetched record prices. But then it hit the art world." Talking about auction houses, Girling said: "When the art world started to feel the impact of the recession, the auction houses were hurt as well. The reasons were that there were fewer buyers in the market and auction houses depend on people who want to sell their collections.

"During the good days, there was a lot of speculation in the contemporary art market and works were fetching record prices. Now, that speculation has disappeared the market is down. "If you don't have to sell your art collection to bail yourself out, you will not sell during the recession when prices are low unless you are forced to. Thus, we had to trim our budgets and there were few layoffs in the United States and the United Kingdom offices and we are living within our means." Patrick Gallagher, Founder, Decoratives and Design, said: "Just like the financial markets, prices at auctions have also gone down. This is because auction houses placed reserves that were too high on the works. And after the downturn estimates were lowered.

"Speculation has gone out of the market, especially the contemporary art market. So, this is a good time for people who want to build their collections." Talking about the Middle East art market and the impact the recession has had on it, Girling said: "The fledging art market in the Middle East has been hit by recession. It will take a little while to recover from the impact but it will still remain the emerging hub of the art world. All the reasons why the galleries and the auction houses went to the Middle East with their art in the first place have not changed." Listing the reasons why the Middle East is emerging as the art hub of the world, Gallagher said: "There are many reasons why the Middle East is emerging as the art hub of the world. One of them is that it is more economical for people from Western countries to buy art in the Middle East as the taxation policies in their countries make it very expensive for them to buy art there. "For example, the UAE's tax-free position is helping it to emerge as the leading art market for the region as expatriates as well as foreign buyers will save on taxes by buying art here.

"Also, the UAE, particularly Dubai has a great locational advantage as it is poised between the East and the West and thus is accessible to everyone. Earlier the artists had to ship their work off to Paris, New York or London, which was very costly and time consuming. Now everyone in the Far East and Asia will find it easier to ship stuff to the UAE." Talking about the art market in Dubai Malini Gulrajani, owner, 1X1 Art Gallery, said: "The art market in Dubai has slowed down due to the downturn. We are not getting the prices that we used to sell at until last year and we are actually holding on to our paintings as we bought them at much higher prices than what we are getting for them right now.

"It is basically a buyers' market as the artists themselves have realised that the art market is not what it was a few months ago. So, gallery owners have greater negotiation powers with the artists than ever before in terms of pricing. However, the fact remains that there are still buyers in the market. I have some Arab clients who have continued to buy for investments and some homeowners who have big houses and who like to display art there. Then there is a new class of buyers that is emerging and that is the people who are looking for a good deal. "We have taken this slowdown in our stride and are working harder than ever to expand our markets further so that we are ready to take advantage when the upturn comes.

"In fact, we are having a solo exhibition-cum-sale of one of the UAE's best contemporary artists, Hassan Sharif, this Thursday at our galleries. In Dubai, Islamic and Middle Eastern art is really big and sells a lot." Girling said: "Despite the downturn, the fact remains that there are still buyers in the market as there is a certain group of people like collectors and connoisseurs who are bitten by the art bug and can't resist a good piece of art going on sale so they will buy. "In fact, at a recent sale last month in Dubai of artists from the Arab World, Iran, India and Pakistan, I was very encouraged by the turnout as it showed us that there was a return in confidence in the art market in Dubai. "The region has seemingly weathered the downturn in the economic market and collectors were quite enthusiastic to bid for the works of art we had on offer. I am optimistic that in 2010, we shall see the Dubai art market firmly back on the road to recovery.

"The South Asian paintings sold much better than expected. The Tagore Illumination of the Shadow went at 10 times the asking rate. It shows the strong demand in this region. This has given us a platform to work from and we look forward to the next sale in May 2010 with renewed vigour." Gulrajani said: "Even though the art market in Dubai and the Middle East is already seeing an upturn, it will be years before it reaches the levels it was at before the recession hit the world."

Article Courtesy: BUSINESS 24/7

ARTICLE 62 - Arab and Iranian Photography at Paris Photo, Why this Choice?

[Monday, November 16, 2009] Guillaume Piens, Deputy Fair Manager for ARTDAILY

Bahman Jalali, "Image of Imagination 2", 2003. Courtesy Silk Road Gallery, Tehran.

PARIS.- Since the turn of the new century, photography has become the dominant medium on what is an effervescent and very diverse contemporary art scene throughout the Arab countries and in Iran, a scene which is now the subject of growing interest on the part of the international market. There is a multitude of exhibitions and publications dedicated to Arab and Iranian contemporary artists, including a significant exhibition held in London in January 2009 at the Saatchi gallery entitled “Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East.”

It is important to note that contrary to what is often assumed, there is a real fascination in the Arab countries and Iran for the photographic image, and the relationship with this medium goes back a long way. Europeans set out to photograph the “biblical lands” as early as the 1840s. Most well-known among them are Gustave Le Gray, Maxime Du Camp and Felice Beato. Photography studios soon opened in Cairo, Beirut and Baghdad, largely run by Armenians who widely contributed to the spread of the practice throughout the region. The story is somewhat different in Iran where the ruler himself, Nasser Al-Din Shah, who reigned from 1848 to 1896, became passionate about photography. He imported equipment and began to practice this new art himself. He even created a gallery in a wing of his palace in Tehran, the Golestan, to display his collection. The archives belonging to this prince of the Qajar era are still held in the palace to this day. It seems the time is right to pay tribute in a prestigious international arena like "Paris Photo" to what is a historically rich and now booming creative scene.

Inviting Catherine David to act as guest curator for this year’s special spotlight on the Arab and Iranian scene was an obvious choice. Since she directed Documenta X in 1997, she has led and developed a number of projects on “Contemporary Arab Representations” with exhibitions, seminars and publications in several cities around Europe. In particular, in 2007, she organized a monographic exhibition of the work of Iran’s great photographer Bahman Jalali at the Tapies Foundation in Barcelona. She also led a multi-disciplinary event called “Di/Visions: Culture and Politics of the Middle East” at the House of World Cultures in Berlin (Dec. 2007 to Jan. 2008). More recently, she conceived the “ADACH Platform for the Visual Arts” for the Abu Dhabi pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

For "Paris Photo", Catherine David has been entrusted with a project based on three key components. First is the collection of the Arab Image Foundation, an institution created in 1997 in Beirut dedicated to the photographic heritage of the Arab world. The selection of images in the Central Exhibition shows a variety of examples of studio photography from the 1870s to the 1960s. The Statement section is composed of eight galleries from Iran, Morocco, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon who unveil the work of emerging contemporary artists while the Project Room offers a programme of videos which testify to the growing interest among artists of the region for the dynamics of this medium.`

In addition to this platform, a large number of galleries in the general sector have chosen to pay tribute to the work of artists from the region, or to Western artists who have worked in the area, offering visitors a rare overview of historic and contemporary photographic production from and on the Arab countries and Iran.

Article Courtesy: ARTDAILY

ARTICLE 61 - Art works sold during the auction in Dubai collected a total $6.7 million

[Oct 28, 2009] AFP

Art works sold during the auction in Dubai collected a total $6.7 million

DUBAI — Auction house Christie's fetched late on Tuesday the highest price for a work of contemporary Arab art at 662,500 dollars for a double calligraphy by Egypt's Ahmed Mustafa. Art works sold during the auction in Dubai collected a total 6.7 million dollars, double the value reached in the last auction held by Christie's in Dubai in April. The two-day event concludes on Wednesday night as jewellery and watches go under the hammer. Christie's expects total sales to range between 12.9 and 17.8 million dollars. Mustafa's "Remembrance and Gratitude" broke his own record registered in a similar auction in 2007.

Indian artist Tyeb Metha's painting "Untitled (Yellow Heads)" came second with a price of 578,500 dollars, while Turkish Burhan Dogancay's "Rift" was sold for 242,500 dollars, and Iranian Charles Hossein Zenderoudi's "Kharjee Spirit" fetched 218,500 dollars. The jewellery highlight at the auction is expected to be a pair of diamond earrings, each weighing slightly more than 15 carats, with an estimated value of between 400,000 and 600,000 dollars. "Despite the global economic crisis... the appetite for art in the Middle East continues to grow, and also the appetite for Middle Eastern arts," said Michael Jeha, Christie's Middle East managing director. Jeha told reporters that since its first auction in 2006, Christie's sales in Dubai have risen by 400 percent.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.
Article Courtesy: AFP

ARTICLE 60 - Guggenheim to Show Works in Abu Dhabi as Art Fair Starts Up

[Oct. 11, 2009] Farah Nayeri for BLOOMBERG

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York will show works from its collection in an Abu Dhabi exhibition that opens Nov. 17, two days before the inaugural Abu Dhabi Art fair. “The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum” (through Feb. 4, 2010) will mark the first time that the Guggenheim displays masterpieces from its collection in the Middle East, the fair’s organizers said at a London presentation. The show precedes the opening, in 2012-2013, of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum, designed by architect Frank Gehry.

The art fair itself (Nov. 19-22) will bring together more than 50 galleries including New York’s Gagosian Gallery, London’s White Cube, Zurich’s Hauser & Wirth, and Galerie Thaddeus Ropac of Paris and Salzburg. Abu Dhabi is creating a cultural district on Saadiyat Island that will house offshoots of the Guggenheim and Louvre museums, a performing-arts center, and the Zayed National Museum, which is being set up with help from the British Museum.

Hotels, universities, and office and residential areas are also being built, aimed at making Abu Dhabi a commercial and cultural hub. The art fair is one of many strands in the emirate’s continuing arts program.

“It’s not something that we are just doing for four days,” said Rita Aoun-Abdo, director of the cultural department at the Tourism Development & Investment Company, which is steering the island’s projects. “We are preparing the audience of the cultural district.” Aoun-Abdo was speaking after a presentation held in an auditorium of the British Museum.

Also planned at Abu Dhabi Art are: a Louvre exhibition, “Mona Lisa’s Funeral,” showing monumental paintings by artist Yan Pei-Ming inspired by the Leonardo da Vinci portrait; exhibitions of emerging Middle Eastern artists; and talks, including one on Nov. 20 labeled “Collecting Today” with Larry Gagosian, director of the Gagosian Gallery.

HSBC Bank Middle East Ltd., part of HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe’s largest bank, is the fair’s principal sponsor.

To contact the writer on the story: Farah Nayeri in London on farahn@bloomberg.net.

Article Courtesy: BLOOMBERG

ARTICLE 59 - Beyond the exotic

[Saturday 10 October 2009] Stephen Deuchar for The Guardian

Stephen Deuchar welcomes two surveys of an art that matters now more than ever

Contemporary art in the Middle East ... On the Road from Chadornama, by Haleh Anvari. Photograph: Haleh Anvari/Black Dog

One rather unexpected consequence of 9/11 and its political aftermath in Afghanistan and Iraq has been a steadily developing appreciation in the west of the art and culture of the Middle East. Thanks to TV maps and animated battle zones, and a regular supply of incident, outrage and news, the basic geography and politics of the region have become better understood. (Who now would admit to confusing Iraq with Iran, as many in Britain might lazily have done a decade ago?). Meanwhile, bridge-building cultural initiatives by the British Council and other agencies have opened up new channels of communication to compensate for heightening political tensions.

In the professional art world, this has helped nurture a gradual awakening to the range and quality of work coming from regions far from the safe and traditional Europe-US axis around which the history and progress of international art have always been explained. When the Tate recently announced plans for a conference on contemporary art in the Middle East, it sold all the tickets immediately, having to move to larger spaces at Tate Britain and Tate Modern to meet demand. This revealed both a thirst in London for a broader understanding of the Middle Eastern art scene and an evident wish on the part of artists, curators and commentators from the Middle East to bring their work and issues for debate in a European context.

Contemporary Art in the Middle East is a well-timed response to those aspirations, providing a confident but carefully qualified survey of new and recent art from a dozen predominantly Muslim countries stretching from Afghanistan to Morocco.

Actually Morocco is mysteriously excluded from the otherwise helpful map of the region included in the opening pages, though discussion and anxiety about what is and is not the "Middle East" is a habitual part of the curatorial and artistic discourse here. (It certainly featured in debates at the Tate gathering, and was a recurring theme in the varied presentations of Middle Eastern art at this year's Venice Biennale.) Of course not everyone will like the very idea of a category of art defined by a geographical region, and a diffuse and diverse one at that. Artists of established stature such as Mona Hatoum or Shirin Neshat have long-resisted such a straitjacket, preferring instead to operate from a determinedly international stage despite the Middle Eastern inflection of much of their subject matter.

Is the whole idea of "Middle Eastern art" proposed in this book just the serving up of a new slice of exotic oriental culture for consumption in the west rather than the analysis of good art on its own terms? Happily, Paul Sloman and his colleagues are alert to just such a danger, and indeed confront it directly by giving Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) and the controversy it continues to engender several pages of summary and attention in one of the appendices. While this might seem to imply that Said's core proposition – that western interest in the culture of the orient was a form of imperialism – inevitably affects and directs our engagement with all the art on view in the book, it does usefully equip the reader with a concise understanding of the intellectual context within which "cultural relations" of this kind are pursued.

Chapters by Nat Muller, Lindsey Moore, TJ Demos and Suzanne Cotter explore some of the central issues guiding the production and reception of so much of the art in question: war, displacement, exile, gender, mapping, authority. Muller's summary of the art worlds of Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine is considered and probing, and Moore's focus on the Franco-Algerian artist Zineb Sedira is both movingly appreciative and academically rigorous – all too rare a combination in contemporary art criticism. TJ Demos's "Desire in Diaspora" discusses Emily Jacir's celebrated art project of 2003, Where We Come From, in which she asked a number of Palestinian exiles: "If I could do something for you, anywhere in Palestine, what would it be?" and then recorded through photography, film and other media her responses to their various requests – for example, the placing of flowers on a mother's grave in Jerusalem. Cotter, curator of Out of Beirut, the important exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, in 2006, takes the work of Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari as a route to understanding something of the preoccupations of artists working in Lebanon, for so long the locus of a sophisticated but perpetually interrupted art world.

Each essay deftly drills a small area rather than attempting to survey, and the net result inevitably falls far short of revealing Middle Eastern art's full variety and texture. But the subsequent central section, in which examples of the work of 45 artists are illustrated and in some instances briefly discussed, hints thrillingly at the range, quality and latent power of so much of the work that has recently been produced from a great many different geographical and political situations. The photography and sculpture of Shadi Ghadirian, made in Iran; the embroidery and gel paintings of Ghada Amer, born in Egypt and now working in the US; Libyan-born, Canada-based Arwa Abouon's witty Allah Eye Doctor Chart (a provocation about seeing and believing); Palestinian Londoner Laila Shawa's chilling 20 Targets. Some omissions may surprise – where is Mitra Tabrizian, subject of a Tate Britain exhibition just last year? – but this is generally an intelligent and balanced selection, even incorporating the work of Yehudit Sasportas when, given the prevailing tone, it might have been tempting simply to pretend that Israel did not exist.

Art is forever a political instrument, and for this very reason, Sloman's pioneering book – it really is the first of its kind – has potential influence far beyond the curators and collectors to whom it seems primarily directed, not least because of its determination to set out the territory so clearly and unemotively, in a way that is easily digestible by the non-specialist reader.

Kamal Boullata's Palestinian Art from 1850 to the Present (with a preface by John Berger) is no less powerful a publication for taking quite the opposite approach. Billed as "the first insider's study of Palestinian art", its historically detailed and sometimes harrowing narrative of artists' attempts to thrive within consistently oppressive constraints tends to rival the impact of the art itself, including the geometric abstracts (generously illustrated) which Boullata himself has been producing since the 1980s.

It is rare and exciting to find an art book full of persuasive, urgent visual imagery whose language and strategies are ultimately unfamiliar, whatever their surface appearance, to the complacent western eye. And it is refreshing to sense that the pull of much of the work derives from and points back to Palestinian culture itself, rather than being necessarily part of the self-conscious east-west discourse which so preoccupied Edward Said. As such it represents another advance in international understanding of Palestinian history and aspiration, but determinedly through the artist's eye.

Art from the Middle East seems to matter right now, and not just because so much of it is so good. These two books provide the proof.

Stephen Deuchar is director of Tate Britain.
Article Courtesy: GUARDIAN.CO.UK

ARTICLE 58 - Artist Farhad Moshiri at Frieze Art Fair

[14 OCT 2009 02:47:12] Alarabonline

The Third Line will showcase new works by artist Farhad Moshiri at the 2009 Frieze Art Fair, an annual international event dedicated to modern and contemporary art held in London. Moshiri continues to combine humour and cynicism portraying a lighter side away from social and political matters.

Established in 2003, Frieze Art Fair takes place every October in Regent’s Park, London and features over 150 international contemporary art galleries. The fair also includes specially commissioned artists’ projects, a talks program and an artist-led education schedule. The Third Line will exhibit new works from artist Farhad Moshiri with a solo exhibition of paintings entitled Fluffy Friends at booth F17.

Moshiri’s works have been inspired by diverse sources as history, philosophy, politics and artistic expression. His art often takes up activities of normality portrayed with an underlying tone of cynicism. Far away from the politics of society, these recent works do not focus on regional themes but highlights there is much else beyond the patriotic metaphors of clichéd veiled women and calligraphy on hand for inspiration.

A more light-hearted and personal direction has been taken for the subject of these paintings: a kitten, rabbit, tiger and duck. All four images recall childhood memories and moments of innocence referencing fairy tales, nursery rhymes and bedtime stories. With his ability to surprise, Moshiri’s latest satirical interpretation depicts his selection of animals as kitchy, highly animated and cartoon-like. In these works, he continues his practice of coupling mass-produced commodities and ideals with creative techniques and the subtle touch of irony.

With the ability to simplify his subjects through his composition and painting style, Moshiri continues to support his status within the neo-pop movement. Stylistically, Moshiri has continued with his signature icing technique by means of common kitchen utensils. The surfaces of the paintings are covered with the sugary icing texture seen in candy-based and jewelled works - where an individual frosting drop represents a single pixel of the entire work.

The multi-surfaces and layers disclose a patient and truthful relationship between the artist and his works which in turn brings the two dimensional friend closer to ones perception of reality, adding a personal touch of innocence. The simplicity of these portraits plays as an homage to animal lovers and a need for the comfort provided by their fluffy friends.

Farhad Moshiri was born in Shiraz and currently lives in Tehran, Iran. He studied art and filmmaking at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Moshiri received international acclaim with his jar series – paintings of large jars and bowls embellished with highly textured calligraphy and abdjad, an ancient Arabic clerical code, correlating letters and numerals. He was the first artist from the Middle East to set a world record at the international auction level.

Moshiri has since been constantly pushing his materials, using cake icing dispensers, Swarovski crystals, and knives to make paintings that incorporate increasingly textured and sculptural approaches. But it is not Moshiri’s technique that has earned him the attention that he currently benefits from, rather, it is his mastery of Iranian visual vernacular, as well as his acute awareness of popular culture and art history.

Picture 01: Farhad Moshiri, Kitty Cat, 2009
Article Courtesy: Alarabonline

ARTICLE 57 - Abu Dhabi to Host First Exhibition in the Middle East from the Guggenheim

[Tuesday, October 20, 2009] ARTDAILY.ORG

Hilla Rebay, Animato, 1941–42. Oil on canvas, 94 x 127 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By bequest, 49.1315 © 2009 The Hilla von Rebay Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved

NEW YORK, NY- More than fifty masterful paintings from the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, representing the work of over forty of the most important artists of the twentieth century, will be on view in Abu Dhabi from November 17, 2009, to February 4, 2010 in the exhibition "The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum." The exhibition is presented under the patronage of His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces.

"The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum" will be on view in Gallery One at the Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi. Key works from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s collection featured in the exhibition will include Paul Cezanne’s Bend in the Road Through the Forest (1873–75), Willem de Kooning’s Composition (1955), Vasily Kandinsky’s Decisive Rose (1932), Paul Klee’s New Harmony (1936), Piet Mondrian’s Composition 8 (1914), Robert Motherwell’s Elegy to the Spanish Republic, No. 110 (1971), and Jackson Pollock’s Untitled (Green Silver) (ca. 1949).

"The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum" is the first exhibition to be organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in collaboration with Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) as part of a program of art and cultural development leading up to the opening of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum. Accompanying the exhibition will be a full program of educational presentations.

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, which will open in 2013 as part of Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island Cultural District, is being founded to fulfill an educational mission centered on the art of today. The museum will be housed in a distinctive building designed by Frank Gehry, one of the world’s most renowned contemporary architects. Like the Guggenheim in New York, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will build a permanent collection that reflects a specific point of view about the art of our time, namely its essentially global orientation. The new museum will include not only key examples of Western art, but also the rich and diverse fields of Asian, African, South American, and Middle Eastern art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Exhibition Overview
"The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum" charts the history of the Guggenheim’s collection from 1929, when American businessman Solomon R. Guggenheim began to actively acquire modern art, to 1959, when the landmark Frank Lloyd Wright–designed museum building bearing the founder’s name opened to the public. The works in the show reflect the particular emphases of the collection and exhibition program during these formative years, thereby calling attention to the ways in which the time period, place, and individuals involved in the making of a museum have an impact on the mission of the institution. In this way, the exhibition also points toward the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

This exhibition explores the history of abstract painting in Western art during the first half of the twentieth century. The pictures in the first three sections of the show, many of them drawn from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, represent a particularly fertile period in art history. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century, artists associated with the most important movements in the West—among them Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Expressionism, and Neo-Plasticism—broke with the traditional view that visual art should faithfully reproduce the visible world. These artists’ pioneering styles opened up a number of new formal possibilities that radically transformed both the look and content of art and in so doing inaugurated the history of modern art in the West.

This presentation begins with Cézanne and Georges Seurat, who pushed the limits of representation even further than the Impressionists and helped to solidify Paris as the leading center for experimental avant-garde art. The second half of the exhibition considers early-twentieth-century abstraction and Expressionism—represented in the show by Kandinsky and Franz Marc—and its impact on painting in Europe and the United States in the decades immediately following World War II. Pictures by De Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, and Pollock, as well as other leading Abstract Expressionists such as Mark Rothko, are featured in the exhibition’s final section, which provides a rich overview of this watershed chapter in the history of twentieth-century abstract painting in the West.

This serves as a fitting endpoint to the presentation, as many of these artists and some of these paintings were included in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s inaugural exhibition in 1959. By that time, the range of art acquired and exhibited by the Guggenheim had expanded beyond its early emphasis on nonobjective painting, and the institution had begun to signal its interest in a more global orientation through, among other means, the establishment of the biennial Guggenheim International Award in 1956. Even as the Guggenheim underwent these changes, it continued to collect artworks and mount exhibitions that testified to the enduring power of abstraction, a reflection of the institution’s ongoing commitment to its founding mission to educate the public about the art of its time.

The exhibition is also accompanied by a fully illustrated, hardcover, bilingual catalogue (Arabic and English). The 192-page book includes a chronology of the Guggenheim from 1929 to 2009, an essay detailing the three decades (1929–59) leading up to the opening of Frank Lloyd Wright’s museum building, and texts on the developments in art history and the achievements of the featured artists.

"The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum" has been organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in collaboration with the exhibition’s presenter Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC), the Emirate’s leading cultural and tourism asset developer.

Article Courtesy: ARTDAILY

ARTICLE 56 - Inspiring growth

[October 17. 2009 4:57PM UAE / October 17. 2009 12:57PM GMT] Bianca Bonomi for THE NATIONAL

For four days every year, the international art world congregates in London. Collectors, curators and curious spectators unite to determine the forthcoming cultural landscape and the city comes alive with the gossip and enthusiasm generated by the return of one of the world’s most respected art events. It can only mean one thing: the Frieze Art Fair is back, and this year the UAE presence has been stronger than ever.

Showcasing the work of 164 galleries, including market leaders from across America and Europe, over 1000 artists have been represented at the event which ends today. The strength of emerging territories has been reinforced again this year by a significant UAE contingent that included The Third Line gallery making a triumphant debut, two exchange groups visiting London to promote cross-cultural links and Art Dubai organisers mingling with the international art community.

Middle Eastern artists have been well represented. Shiraz-born Farhad Moshiri, who currently lives in Tehran, exhibited bright, loud and quirky canvases. The crowds gathering around his work, shown by Dubai’s Third Line gallery, paid testament to the UAE’s growing stature on the international art market. “We’re really excited to be a part of this”, says the gallery director Claudia Cellini. “I’m feeling more confident these days about our artists and their trajectory. The collector base hasn’t completely spilled, but now it is moving and flowing. People are cautious but optimistic.

“In terms of global recognition our presence at Frieze is very important,” Cellini added. “We want to be taken seriously as an international gallery and not as a gallery from the Middle East that’s ‘sort of exotic’. Our artists deserve to be internationally recognised.”

The Lebanese artist Marwan Rechmaoui also featured heavily and demonstrated the changing perceptions of Middle Eastern art. Represented by the Galerie Sfeir-Semler in Beirut and Hamburg, Rechmaoui’s Monument for the Living (2001–2008) was selected by the Tate’s acquisition team and will now become part of the world-renowned gallery’s permanent holdings.

Elsewhere, a delegation of Emirati women artists arrived in London as part of the Sheikha Manal Art Exchange programme, founded by Sheikha Manal Bint Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Women Establishment and wife of Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs. Designed to foster artistic and cultural ties between the UAE and the global community, participants travelled to Frieze to experience the contemporary art scene in all its diversity and depth.

“Programmes such as these allow talented young women the opportunity to experience artistic expressions of a very high calibre first-hand,” the project founder Sheikha Manal said. “London is a city where contemporary culture plays a decisive role in fashioning the fabric of daily life and we hope that this visit will serve as an inspiration to the programme’s participants to develop their creative abilities in imaginative new ways.”

Six UAE art students have attended the fair as part of another exchange programme, this one organised by Thinking Cloud and supported by the British Council in London. The Thinking Cloud Art Exchange Programme will see a collaboration between the students and six UK artists. The results will be shown during Art Dubai in 2010.

As with London Fashion Week, Frieze isn’t just about what goes on in the campus tents. The influence of the fair can be felt throughout the capital, spawning a heady mix of talks and debates, art and installation, private views and parties.

Off-site, Contemparabia held an event to increase recognition of their unique initiative. A joint project of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage; Art Dubai; the Sharjah Biennial; and the Qatar Museums Authority, Contemparabia offers an itinerary focusing regional and international attention on the quality and diversity of cultural projects underway in the Gulf.

“Highlighting the seriousness of the region’s cultural ambitions, this important collaborative project proved enormously popular with international journalists, collectors, curators as well as benefactors and supporters representing over 80 international museums including the Tate and the Museum of Modern Art, New York,” says Art Dubai director John Martin.

“Art Dubai has been committed to providing an open platform for the region’s most innovative, independent art initiatives and we are delighted that Contemparabia can play a part in bringing greater international attention to the quality of art and art institutions across the Middle East today.”

Back at the Regent’s Park base, Frieze Projects presented a series of site-specific artworks. This year’s initiatives created aesthetic opportunity out of the uncertainty that has become the hallmark of our troubled times; whether taking the form of grand architectural obstruction or finding new ways of looking at our relationship to the objects we make, look at and buy.

One such project involved artist Ryan Gander setting up an instant photo studio to produce portraits of visitors looking at an artwork of their choice. Interestingly, the work itself didn’t feature in the final image, but viewers could possibly gauge something about it from the expression on the spectator’s face or a reflection in their eye. The work is self-reflective and challenges traditional notions of spectatorship. A copy of the work was displayed near the Frieze entrance, while another was gifted to the participant without charge. “It’s not often that you get something free at an art fair,” says Gander.

“There’s a lot of good stuff here and I’m getting a fairly settled, positive vibe about people,” says legendary arts commentator Anthony Haden-Guest. “I get the feeling that people are comfortable here. I’ve seen very little routine work, very little just product,” he said. “Everything seems to have an intention behind it. This place used to be filled with really theatrical work, big theatrical installation pieces. I’ve seen nothing like that.”

Theatrical installation may have been thin on the ground, but Frieze was not without its drama. A monumental sculpture intended to provide a startling entrance to the fair was dismantled before opening at the artist’s request. Monika Sosnowska’s work was designed to appear as if a concrete monolith had crash-landed on a corner of the Frieze tent, as part of Frieze Projects. But the Polish artist said that once realised, the work appeared fake and asked that it be taken down.

A dent in the Frieze tent was the sole physical token of the project. The work survived only in concept and in the memory of those who witnessed its brief presence, becoming an extreme case of the inversion apparent in much of the work at Frieze. The sculpture’s absence left us talking about something that did not exist.

In last year’s ravished economic climate, the dismantling of the work might have been dismissed as profligate. Frieze Projects’ support of the artist’s decision demonstrates that much has changed.

Last year, the fair was awash with false confidence and over zealous salesmanship. This year, the mood was relaxed; defiance had become acceptance. Talk of the recession, which last year left galleries reeling, became somewhat lighthearted, with a large red banner positioned above an exhibit stand reading “Long Live and Thrive Capitalism”. This was art with a sense of humour and its message spilled out onto the growing crowds.

“There’s an incredible buzz about Frieze,” says artist Adam Dant. “You can always discover something new. This year has been great. It no longer feels like a trade fair.”

“There has been less frantic buying this year. But that is positive,” said Louise Blouin of the eponymous foundation, currently exhibiting the Russian Kandinsky Prize nominees in London.

“We need consistent growth, but not exaggerated growth,” she said. “The recession has moderated the market and there is less pressure on the artist to keep producing. The art world is not meant to be a place of mass production. Artists have more time, so the work is of a higher quality.”

With such an air of meritocracy, it was disappointing to encounter works that failed to subscribe to the changing conditions. The celebrity artist Tracey Emin presented Neon Life: A Portrait, where she posed a series of questions to potential buyers. Depending on their answers, Emin promised to create a neon especially and individually for the collector. A framed letter from her studio informed buyers that a sketch of this neon would cost £10,000 (Dh60,096); the finished product, an additional £50,000 (Dh300,500).

“If the recession does anything, let’s hope it helps to weed out authentic art from inflated, media-hyped concepts like this one,” one collector said. “So much of the work here is new and innovative. That’s the kind of artistic sensibility we need to nurture.”

Picture 01: The Frieze Art fair in London attracts visitors and artists from around the world. Linda Nylind / Frieze
Article Courtesy: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 55 - Iranian artists top Bonham's Dubai auction‎

[Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:07:31 GMT] PRESSTV.IR

Iranian artists have topped Bonham's' Modern & Contemporary Middle Eastern & South Asian Art auction in Dubai's Royal Mirage Hotel. An untitled work by calligrapher and painter Mohammed Ehsai topped the sale fetching $132,000 against a pre-sale estimate of $110,000 - 130,000. A work from Afshin Pirhashemi's BMW Series came next with $126,000 against a pre-sale estimate of $20,000 - 30,000. Renowned sculptor Parviz Tanavoli and veteran painter Massoud Arabshahi ranked 4th and 7th respectively. Bonham's international fine art auction house sold over 70% by lot on its Middle East art auction on Oct. 12. The auction achieved total sales of over $1,800,000 comfortably in line with estimates. "I am very encouraged by the turn out at the sale which indicated return in confidence in the art market and in particular the market here in Dubai," Bonhams Chief Executive (UK & Europe) Mathew Girling said. "I am optimistic that in 2010, we shall see the Dubai art market firmly back on the road to recovery." Founded in 1793, Bonhams is one of the world's oldest and largest auctioneers of fine art and antiques, which offers sales through two major salerooms in London and a further seven throughout the UK. Sales are also held in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Boston in the USA, as well as in Switzerland, France, Monaco, Australia, Hong Kong and Dubai. Bonhams has an international network of offices and regional representatives in 25 countries offering sales advice and valuation services in 50 specialist areas.

TE/HGH

Picture 01: Mohammad Ehsai's untitled work topped Bonham's Dubai auction
Article Courtesy: PRESSTV.IR

ARTICLE 54 - Londoners taking a glance at Iranian contemporary art

[October 18, 2009] Tehran Times Art Desk

A painting by Reza Azimian

TEHRAN -- London’s Steps Gallery is currently playing host to an exhibition, during which it intends to highlight Iranian contemporary art. Works by Iranian artists Babak Roshaninejad, Reza Azimian, and Adel Yunesi have been showcased at the exhibit entitled “Point of Departure: A New Beginning in Iranian Contemporary Art”, the gallery announced on its website. Tehran’s Asar Gallery is collaborating with the Steps Gallery on holding the exhibition that is being curated by Satkeen Azizzadeh, a graduate of Sotheby’s Institute of Art.

“Exhibiting contemporary art from the Middle East and Persia, is one of the regional and thematic priorities of the Steps Gallery curatorial line and strategy,” the gallery’s senior curator and Collectors Club manager Sidonio Costa said. “The current exhibition is a first step in a prolonged and engaged effort to exhibit as much relevant fine contemporary art from the Middle East and Persia” he added. “At the gallery we are interested in work that discusses or gives us an insight into life, social and cultural realities from those regions,” he stated.

He described the exhibit as a good start for the strategy of the gallery and added, “We believe that it will provide our gallery’s collectors, clients and friends a great insight into life, social and cultural reality in Iran.” The show opened on October 16 and will continue until November 28.

Article Courtesy: TEHERAN TIMES

ARTICLE 53 - INTERVIEW:Mideast Art Prices Slump 50% Amid Downturn-Bonhams

[OCTOBER 7, 2009, 7:57 A.M. ET] Stefania Bianchi for THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Of ZAWYA DOW JONES

DUBAI (Zawya Dow Jones)--The emergent Middle East art market, once crucial for international auction houses facing falling sales elsewhere, is amongst the hardest hit globally, with prices slumping by more than half, according to Bonhams. "The impact of financial crisis has been much worse here than in Europe and the U.S. as the crust of collectors is much thinner and the art market is very new," Matthew Girling, Bonhams' regional chief executive, told Zawya Dow Jones in a recent interview. "There has been at least a 50% drop in prices." To tap a growing appetite for art, jewelry and other luxury items in the oil-rich Gulf, international auction houses have in recent years moved their businesses to the region.

Dubai has become a center for galleries and auction houses hoping to tap into the region's wealthy. Christie's was the first international auction house to have a permanent office in the Middle East, opening in Dubai in 2005. Phillips de Pury & Co. also has an office in the emirate, while Sotheby's has an office in Qatar. But in recent months, as the global downturn has moved in on the Persian Gulf's boomtown, its auction houses have struggled to drum up interest at art events targeting the mega rich. "The last thing the art market in this region was a downturn and it's been very hard to withstand a knock like that," Girling said.

The 216-year old British auction house, which will hold its fourth Middle Eastern Art auction in Dubai next week, expects that as the global and regional economic downturn eases, the appetite for art in the Gulf region will return, but warns "it could take a while to build back up." Bonhams set up a Dubai office in 2007 and an inaugural sale for contemporary art here in March 2008 took $13 million - almost three times the expected result, with 94% of lots sold. However, at Bonhams' most recent Dubai auction last May only 70% of lots were sold.

Girling says the Bonhams sale of predominantly Iranian, Arab and Pakistani contemporary art on Oct. 12 will "test the waters" for appetite in the region. With the pre-auction estimate at a modest $1.5 million to $2 million for the 100 pieces up for sale, Girling says there are plenty of opportunities for bargain hunters. "Sellers have had to reduce their expectations," he said. "The huge prices we once saw won't come around again quickly." One of the highlights of the sale is an oil on canvas by Iranian artist Sohrab Sepehri which was an estimated price of $140,000. Another is a watercolor by Pakistani artist Abdur Rahman Chughtai with an estimated price of $80,000.

Girling said that amid the downturn, Bonhams' plans to expand elsewhere in the Gulf region are currently on hold. "Our main focus at the moment is being able to stay in Dubai," he said.

By Stefania Bianchi, Dow Jones Newswires; +971-4-364-4967; stefania.bianchi@dowjones.com

Copyright (c) 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Article Courtesy: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

ARTICLE 52 - London exhibits modern Iranian art

[Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:25:36 GMT] PRESSTV.IR

The Steps Gallery has mounted an exhibition of modern paintings by a group of young Iranian artists in the British capital of London. Point of Departure: A New beginning in Iranian Contemporary Art displays modern paintings by Babak Roshani-Nejad, Reza Azimian and Adel Younesi, all of whom come from Iran's western city of Hamadan. The event, which will run until Nov. 28, is the first international exhibition presenting works by artists coming from cities other than Tehran, Fars News Agency reported. The event is organized in collaboration with Tehran's Asar Gallery and curated by Sotheby's Institute of Art graduate Satkeen Azizzadeh. “Exhibiting contemporary art from the Middle East and Persia, is one of the regional and thematic priorities of the Steps Gallery curatorial line and strategy,” Mehr News Agency quoted Steps gallery's senior curator and Collectors Club manager Sidonio Costa as saying. “The current exhibition is the first step in a prolonged and engaged effort to exhibit as much relevant fine contemporary art from the Middle East and Persia.” Costa referred to the exhibition as being in line with the gallery's aims and policies, saying, “We believe that it will provide our gallery's collectors, clients and friends a great insight into life, social and cultural reality in Iran.”

TE/HGH

Picture 01: 'My Generation' by Reza Azimian
Article Courtesy: PRESSTV.IR

ARTICLE 51 - UAE ONLINE ART ARCHIVE IS LAUNCHED ALONGSIDE A NATION WIDE COMPETITION SHOWCASING THE UAES TALENT

[Saturday July 25 , 2009 9:51:59 AM (GMT+4)] EYE OF DUBAI

The art community of the UAE is in for a lavish helping of the Emirates’ most comprehensive online database as the Office for the UAE Pavilion at the Venice Biennale launches the UAE Art Archive, www.uaeartarchive.org. The UAE Art Archive has been developed specifically to offer a platform for people interested in the art scene across the UAE to have a better understanding of art and the cultural infrastructure of the country and to showcase artists’ work. Its launch is complemented by an image design contest that will enable anyone who is resident in the UAE to submit their design for the homepage banner of the art archive, which can be found at www.uaeartarchive.org. Supported by Emirates Airline, who is providing two economy class tickets to Venice, the competition encourages everyone with artistic flair to submit their work.

Commenting on the announcement, Dr. Lamees Hamdan, Commissioner of the UAE Pavilion, said: “The UAE Art Archive provides a unique platform, for the first time, in the contemporary art community where we can all come together and share this vehicle across all seven Emirates. This is a collective space for artists practicing in the UAE to show their work, whereby profiles can be uploaded with a biography, reference to online websites and gallery affiliation can be made and exhibition histories and artwork can be created. The archive is published online and is open to everyone all over the world. This is also an opportunity for UAE residents to participate in an exclusive competition and to be a part of an online community that is really working from a grass roots level for the art and cultural scene across the UAE. This competition, I believe, is one of the most effective paths in which we can engage people’s interests and encourage them to support our own pool of creative contemporary talent.”

Ahmed Khoory, Senior Vice President for Commercial Operations – Gulf, Middle East and Iran, Emirates Airline said: "Emirates is delighted to be a part of this exciting initiative. I hope that the people of the UAE can take inspiration from the majestic beauty of this great country when developing their submissions. The UAE Pavilion has worked hard to encourage UAE residents to embrace and express their creativity and we look forward to continuing our partnership with them for many years to come."

Commencing from July 23nd, the competition will be judged by the Ambassadors to the UAE Pavilion: Sultan Al Qassemi, Alanood Al Warshaw, Jack Persekian, Paula Askari, Hannan Sayed, Nadine Kanso, Rashid Shabib, Ahmed Shabib, Sunny Rahbar and Maliha Tabari. The contest will close on September 2nd and an announcement of the winner will be made on September 16th at a Suhoor during Ramadan to reveal who will be awarded two economy flight tickets to Venice with a three-day stay at a four-star hotel in Venice and two tickets to visit the 53rd Venice Biennale, courtesy of Emirates Airline.

“As an Ambassador to the UAE Pavilion and one of the judges of this competition, I am enthusiastic to see the first glimpse of how the UAE’s art scene has evolved and what our local creative minds have in store. This contest is an innovative way to examine the developments which are currently taking place across the UAE’s art agenda,” Sultan Al Qassemi commented. The announcement comes in the midst of an ongoing international art exhibition in Venice, Italy, the 2009 Venice Biennale, of which the UAE has sent its official contribution to play an integral part. Breaking ground as the first Arabian Gulf state ever to participate since the event began in 1895, the UAE Pavilion was established in recognition of the nation’s emergence as a cultural hub worthy of attracting global attention and was supported by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Community Development.

Universally recognised as the world’s most prestigious contemporary art event, the Venice Biennale currently presents its 53rd International Art Exhibition, which began on June 7 and will be staged through November 22, 2009.

Article Courtesy: EYE OF DUBAI

ARTICLE 50 - Contemporary Art on Show Until Ramadan

[7 August 2009] Silvia Radan for KHALEEJ TIMES

ABU DHABI — Art and cultural events during summer are few and far between, but Salwa Zeidan has decided to go against the norm and keep her art gallery in Abu Dhabi open over the summer months. Until the beginning of Ramadan, the gallery’s permanent collection is on display, featuring a selection of local, regional and international contemporary artworks. Alia Al Farsi, Fatema Al Mazrouei, Hassan Sharif, Benoit Rondard, Mohammed Al Mazrouei and Arman Stepanian are among the dozen artists featured in the exhibition.

“We are a contemporary art gallery, dedicated to promote Emirati artists, but also regional and international ones. We work a lot with young talented artists, for whom we conduct several educational projects,” says Salwa Zeidan, the gallery owner and an internationally recognised artist herself. “Our goal is to see these Emirati artists one day exhibiting in major galleries in New York, Paris or London,” adds Charles Tongue, special projects curator at the gallery. Some of the paintings on display in the gallery now would not be out of place in art environments as prestigious as Guggenheim 
or Pompidou.

Right at the entrance of the gallery there is a simple, yet striking portrait of an Arab woman by Omani artist Alia Al Farsi. The untitled portrait is of a faceless woman, instantly recognisable as an Arab from the patterns and colours of her attire. The featureless face could be a symbol of the veiled woman, only recognisable from certain, but often elusive, details.

The fact that much of the portrait is “dressed” in rich golden colours suggests that she is a woman of stature or perhaps a bride. As Tongue explains, this kind of painting is all about “how much you can take away, but still keep the character.” Another inspiring artist, who shows consistently good work, is UAE’s own Fatema Al Mazrouei. Two very different artworks technically, but part of the same concept are displayed in the exhibition here. One of them is the eye-catching “Hijab in Turkey”, an Arabic text written on a dark green board, with a long female hair wig and a headscarf attached to it.

As both the hair and the scarf have the same length and almost the same shape, the first question that comes to mind is what really is the difference? Or perhaps Fatema suggests that wigs could be an alternative to scarf.

Her second art piece is a mixed media collage, “Woman is simply woman.” Using cut-out pictures, paintings and Arabic writing, this time Fatema tells the story of Emirati women’s fashion, from the traditional past of full cover to modern present day, when the veil is more of a fashion accessory rather than 
a cover-up.

silvia@khaleejtimes.com

Article Courtesy: KHALEEJ TIMES

ARTICLE 49 - The Museum of Arts and Design to Present Winners of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize

[Monday, August 3, 2009] ARTDAILY

Nazgol Ansarinia, Rhyme and Reason, 2009 (detail), Carpet, handwoven wool, silk and cotton, 360 x 252 cm. Photo: Negar Arkani.

NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Arts and Design will present the Abraaj Capital Art Prize and the first exhibition of its prize winners. The Abraaj Capital Art Prize is an award that seeks to raise international awareness of artists from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA). The work of the three winners will be on view from August 26 through October 4, 2009 at the Museum’s Design and Innovation Gallery, which explores emerging trends in art and design through a series of short-term exhibitions guest-curated by leading voices in the field.

The Abraaj Capital Art Prize, established by the Dubai-based private equity company Abraaj Capital, provides international exposure to artists from the MENASA region, aiming to empower contemporary artists from this culturally rich and diverse area. The prize encourages collaborations between the artists and established and internationally acclaimed curators, bridging the gap between Middle Eastern and Western art worlds and offering these artists opportunities to realize ambitious art projects and to gain recognition beyond their immediate cultural environment.

“We are honored to be partnering with Abraaj Capital in presenting this significant art prize,” states Holly Hotchner, the Nanette L. Laitman Director of the Museum of Arts and Design. “The Abraaj Capital Art Prize was born out of an essential need to support artists who have little or no access to the international art scene. It will bring global awareness to artists from the MENASA region who have historically been underrepresented in the Western art world. The work presented emphasizes extraordinary craftsmanship and reflects the Museum’s focus on the ways in which artists from around the world transform materials through innovative processes and techniques. The Museum’s partnership with Abraaj continues our global outreach, represented in our permanent collection and our culturally diverse exhibitions.”

The three winners, whose spectacular art works were unveiled at Art Dubai, the Middle East’s largest contemporary art fair and who each received $200,000, are Iran’s Nazgol Ansarinia, Algeria’s Zoulikha Bouabdellah and Turkey’s Kutluğ Ataman. Respectively, they worked with Leyla Fakhr, Assistant Curator at Tate Britain; Carol Solomon, Visiting Associate Professor of Art History at Pennsylvania’s Haverford College; and Cristiana Perrella, curator of the Contemporary Arts Program at the British School in Rome.

The three winners were chosen from ninety-seven applications selected by an international jury comprised of Ali Yussef Khadra, art consultant and founder and publisher of Canvas, the premier magazine for art and culture from the Middle East and Arab World; Antonia Carver, editor of Bidoun magazine and the Middle East correspondent for The Art Newspaper and Screen International, Daniela da Prato, founder of F & A Financial and Art Advisory Services; Elaine W. Ng, editor and publisher of Art AsiaPasific; Maya Rasamny, an arts advocate and patron of the Tate, The Royal Academy of Arts and Outset Contemporary Art Fund; Savita Apte, director of Art Dubai and Asal Partners; John Martin, co-founder of Art Dubai and London gallery owner, and Frederic Sicre, Executive Director of Abraaj Capital and former MD of the WEF. The Museum’s curator Lowery Stokes Sims will be part of the 2009 jury.

Prize-winner Nazgol Ansarinia, who partnered with curator Leyla Fakhr, offers what seems at first glance to be a classic Persian carpet, rich in color and swirling recurring patterns and shapes. A closer look reveals scenes from local Iranian life woven into and reflecting her interest in pattern and language. Ansarinia, born and raised in Iran, has studied and worked in London and New York and now lives in Tehran.

Zoulikha Bouabdellah collaborated with Carol Solomon from the United States to create a meditative installation entitled Walk on the Sky. Pisces, which references ancient Persian astrology and Arab legend. Bouabdellah, born in Moscow and raised in Algeria, is much attuned to the nuances of cultural identity, but picks and chooses influences and inspirations from wherever is suited to her projects.

Artist Kutluğ Ataman with curator Cristiana Perrella made a recorded performance piece, Strange Space, which was filmed in Erzincan, a small city set high in a north-eastern mountain plateau of his native Turkey. This region is extreme, not only in its physical environment (scorching hot summers, icy winters) and its war-torn history, but more recently in adapting to modernity. His video, based on a Turkish fable of tragic love, looks to illustrate the tension between Turkey’s eastern heritage and its western outlook.

“There has been misunderstanding between East and West in recent years,” said Savita Apte, Chair of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize. “This prize seeks to celebrate the extraordinary talent of artists from countries like Morocco across to India, and show the world what amazing works they can create. Art is also a form that can bring people together, help them understand each other’s cultures and value each other’s differences.”

Abraaj Capital, which was founded in 2002, invests in the growing MENASA region, taking well-run, promising companies and turning them into regional and even global champions. Works of the prize form part of Abraaj Capital’s corporate collection.

Article Courtesy: ARTDAILY

ARTICLE 48 - UAE pavilion unveils new platform for art lovers

[July 23, 2009, 21:23] GULFNEWS

Abu Dhabi: The office for the UAE pavilion at the Venice Biennale has launched the UAE Art Archive. The UAE Art Archive has been developed to offer a platform for people interested in the art scene across the country. It will enable them to have a better understanding of the country's art and the cultural infrastructure while showcasing the work of artists. Its launch is complemented by an image design contest that will enable anyone who is resident in the UAE to submit their design for the homepage banner of the art archive, which can be found at www.uaeartarchive.org. Supported by Emirates, which is providing two economy class tickets to Venice, the competition encourages interested individuals with artistic flair to submit their work.

Dr Lamees Hamdan, Commissioner of the UAE pavilion, said the initiative offered a unique platform where all could come together and share the "vehicle across all seven emirates." She said it was a collective space for artists practising in the UAE to showcase their work and in the process upload profiles with a biography. The initiative also allows referencing to online websites while gallery affiliation can be done, as well as exhibition histories and the creation of artwork. "The archive is published online and is open to everyone all over the world. This is also an opportunity for UAE residents to participate in an exclusive competition and to be a part of an online community that is really working from a grass roots level for the art and cultural scene across the UAE.

"This competition, I believe, is one of the most effective paths in which we can engage people's interests and encourage them to support our own pool of creative contemporary talent," she said.

Ahmad Khoury, Emirates' senior vice president for commercial operations in the Gulf, Middle East and Iran, said: "Emirates is delighted to be a part of this exciting initiative. I hope that the people of the UAE can take inspiration from the majestic beauty of this great country when developing their submissions. "The UAE pavilion has worked hard to encourage UAE residents to embrace and express their creativity and we look forward to continuing our partnership with them for many years to come." Commencing from July 23nd, the competition will be judged by the ambassadors to the UAE pavilion who include Sultan Al Qasimi, Alanood Al Warshaw, Jack Persekian, Paula Askari, Hannan Syed, Nadine Kanso, Rashid Shabib, Ahmad Shabib, Sunny Rahbar and Maliha Tabari.

The contest will close on September 2 and the winner will be announced on September 16th. The announcement comes at the midst of an ongoing international art exhibition in Italy - the 2009 Venice Biennale.

Article Courtesy: GULF NEWS

ARTICLE 47 - Summer of culture

[July 20. 2009 12:36AM UAE / July 19. 2009 8:36PM GMT] Gemma Champ for THE NATIONAL

Image: Urban Break (acrylic on canvas) by Philip Mueller Courtesy Carbon 12 gallery

Hang on, did you say exhibitions? In the summer? Doesn’t the UAE close down in July? Not any more, it seems. While in the past just a few stalwart galleries have kept the flag flying in the hot months, this year, recession notwithstanding, the art scene doggedly continues to be active and most of the spaces in Dubai and the UAE have some sort of exhibition during the summer, whether it’s a solo or group show.

The term “summer exhibition”, though, tends to connote a particular type of exhibition, usually showing the works of several artists already connected to the gallery. Perhaps this derives from the ultimate group exhibition, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London, to which, for the past 241 years, any artist, professional or amateur, has been able to submit work. It’s a sprawling, unfocused but fascinating presentation of 1,200 works, chosen from around 10,000 pieces.

The UAE’s crop of summer group exhibitions is certainly less ambitious, but all the more manageable for that: a wander around the RA in July is an arduous feat, which can take hours and result in glazed-over eyes and a desperate thirst for coffee. Here, instead, a number of private galleries have pulled together some of their favourite artists for small group exhibitions that, in fact, can be a more rewarding experience for the gallery-goer than the solo exhibitions that have so much more credibility. Indeed, while the well-established galleries have their regular visitors, who go to almost every show and may find this sort of thing a tad dull, for the newcomer it is an opportunity to suss out the inclinations of each gallery. Equally, rather than simply using the summer exhibition as a sort of convenient holding room during the quiet season, curators are starting to see it as a chance to set out their stalls, indicating the direction future exhibitions might take. The XVA gallery in Bastakiya, which annually presents a summer show, is doing just that with its current outing, displaying the works of eight international artists, some of whom live in Dubai, and three of whom are newcomers whose works will be displayed in the coming season.

“It can be quite intimidating to go to a solo exhibition, and you might not take to the artists, whereas here the chances of there being something appealing is that much higher. It’s vitality by variety,” explains Rosie Hayes, the director of the XVA gallery. “It’s a mixed bag of new talent and it’s about seeing art in a new way rather than as a single or double exhibition. It’s quite a fun mixture, and that’s the point really: there are all types of art, some of which is very modern, some Warhol-esque, some mixed media conceptual art – there’s just a real combination of different themes and ideas, some more traditional than others.”
Here are some of the highlights of the summer.

XVA gallery

As one of Dubai’s best-known galleries, the XVA in Bastakiya is a pioneer of the Summer Collection here, but this time it has taken a different approach to previous years by including the work of three artists new to the gallery’s roster, Colleen Quigley, Mélanie Sarrasin and Jakob Roepke.

Quigley’s brightly coloured Pop-style installations are quite a leap from some of her previous painted works – she is interested, in her words, in “developing a visual language using ready made (prefabricated) materials that challenge our perceptions of art in a post modern landscape.”

That translates into the work Do whatever you do intensely, a vivid word-based wall sculpture made from a mosaic of brightly coloured pieces of plastic. Sarrasin, meanwhile, is a Canadian painter, whose abstract oil canvases are in a more conventional style, but seem to be informed by her concurrent architectural practice in Montreal. Finally, Roepke is an artist from Berlin, who has made more than 900 of his small, painterly collages since the mid-1990s. With an easy-on-the-eye approach and a humorous, naive style, this could be one of the XVA’s more commercially savvy decisions. Besides the newcomers are the American painter Julia Townsend, the Saudi expressionist Hussein Almohasen, the Syrian abstract painter Thaer Khazem, the Lebanese graphic artist Laudi Abilama and the British artist Jonathan Gent.
Until July 30, then Sept 1-23 2009. www.xvagallery.com.

Boutique 1 Gallery

The ever-stylish Boutique 1 Gallery at The Walk in Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach Residence is a reliable source of desirable art, curated by Fadi Mogabgab, whose own establishment in Beirut is highly rated.

This summer, the first since the gallery opened in November, there are works from the extremely eminent artists already featured at Boutique 1, including the likes of Alexander Calder and Joán Miro, and living artists including the Lebanese photographer Joanna Andraos and the spectacular iris paintings of Georgi Andonov. And if you don’t buy a work of art in the gallery, you can always take a look at those on the racks of the boutique on your way out.
Until July 30, www.boutique1.com.

Ayyam Gallery

Taking the classic approach of a summer round-up, Ayyam’s exhibition, Levant Summer, includes work by each of its regular artists, all of whom, unsurprisingly, hail from the Levant region. Luckily the extensive roster at the gallery in Al Quoz, Dubai, is already fairly diverse in terms of style, so the result is a lively and varied collection of works in a well-planned space – though the emphasis remains on large-scale oil paintings. Particularly appealing are the works of three Syrian painters, Mouteea Murad, Nihad al Turk and Kais Salman. The huge, colourful grids by Murad, whose transformation from an adherent of monochrome to a master of technicolour has been a spectacular success. Al Turk, meanwhile, also an excellent colourist, specialises in angst-ridden still life paintings. I s it possible to have an anguished bowl of fruit? Al Turk certainly seems to think so. Finally, Salman’s semi-abstract figurative paintings are somehow reminiscent of 1960s interpretations of stylised tribal figures, simultaneously ugly, frightening and rather endearing.
Until Aug 15, www.ayyamgallery.com.

Carbon 12

Going one step further than the XVA in a quest for newness, Carbon 12’s summer group show, Seven Positions, features the work of seven emerging artists sought out over the last two years by the Dubai Marina gallery’s curators. In an attempt to mark a shift in the art world as it moves from postmodernism to a new kind of practice prompted by the 21st century’s technology-based social changes, Carbon 12 has picked out artists who engage intellectually with these issues, but who are still young enough to retain some of that energy and idealism that is easily lost in the cynicism of the art world. Among the highlights are the works of Florian Hafele, whose surrealist sculptures are like high-energy, optimistic versions of the mutilated figures of Jake and Dinos Chapman; and the youthful Philip Mueller, a painter whose strangely compelling compositions feature startling but humorous juxtapositions of subject and a pleasingly streetwise technique.
Until October, www.carbon12dubai.com.

Ghaf Gallery

Through the summer, the works of the Ghaf’s owners, Jalal Luqman and Mohammed Kanoo, both artists in their own rights, and the digital artist Sumayyah al Suwaidi will be on show in Abu Dhabi. Both Al Suwaidi and Luqman take a deeply emotional, fantastical approach to their works, which involve digital image manipulation, Luqman’s often including some sculptural aspect as well. Kanoo, meanwhile, has a more minimalist approach, applying his distinctly Pop sensibilities to Emirati icons such as the ghutra.
Until Aug 17, www.ghafgallery.com.

ARTICLE COURTESY: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 46 - British Museum treasures head for Abu Dhabi

[July 26, 2009] Richard Brooks, Arts Editor for THE SUNDAY TIMES

THE British Museum has struck a multi-million-pound deal to help launch a museum in the Middle East designed by Lord Foster. In its biggest overseas venture, the institution will be unveiled tomorrow as the official partner of the national museum of Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich Gulf state. The new building will sit alongside offshoots of the Louvre and the Guggenheim museums. As part of a 10-year contract, the British Museum will lend some of its treasures to the venue and help it set up and curate exhibitions. The museum’s galleries will be based on a number of themes, one promoting “the story of oil”. Critics are likely to argue that the British Museum is being too commercially driven for a publicly funded body.

However, its undisclosed annual fee could help fund a £135m extension in London as government spending for the arts faces cuts. Named after the sheikh who first joined the seven kingdoms of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 1971, the Zayed National Museum will be the “cornerstone project” of a multi-billion-pound cultural development on Saadiyat Island, off the Abu Dhabi coast. The museum is due to open in 2013 and, in line with its British partner, will not charge an entrance free. It will be joined on the island — whose name means “happiness” in Arabic — by the Louvre Abu Dhabi, an outpost of the Parisian gallery, and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, an offshoot of the New York-based museum, which already has a branch in Bilbao. The three museums expect to attract 1.5m visitors a year.

Unlike Dubai, its brash neighbour which has been severely hit by the property slump, Abu Dhabi has a more diverse economy and still hopes to make good on its ambition to become a premier tourist destination. “We never wanted this project to be our outpost,” said Justin Morris, the British Museum’s head of development. “We didn’t want a British Museum Abu Dhabi. Our preferred route is to work with partners and that’s what we’ll be doing here.” The British Museum approached the Gulf state’s tourism development company 18 months ago after learning that it planned to build a national museum. The building will be designed by Foster, the architect behind the British Museum’s Great Court in London, the Gherkin tower in the City, and the restored dome of the Reichstag in Berlin.

Foster, whose Abu Dhabi plans will be revealed later this year, will not be the only architect flying the cultural flag for Britain on Saadiyat Island. Zaha Hadid, who designed the aquatics centre for the London 2012 Olympics, has been commissioned to build a performing arts centre. Although Abu Dhabi’s offshoots of the Louvre and Guggenheim will both include much western art, the Zayed museum will mainly feature exhibits relevant to the region, including items reflecting the life and achievements of its namesake, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan. Its galleries will be themed on the environment, heritage, unity, education and humanitarianism. “What the museum wants to get across is that the area has for centuries been at the crossroads of so much in terms of trading, ideas and beliefs,” said Morris. “Yet it’s really an untold story.”

Artefacts may be borrowed from the British Museum’s Middle East department, which has the largest collection of cuneiform tablets in the world outside Baghdad, consisting of 130,000 texts and fragments. Temporary exhibitions, such as last year’s British Museum blockbuster on the Roman emperor Hadrian, could also be transferred to Abu Dhabi.

Article Courtesy: TIMES ONLINE

ARTICLE 45 - Henri Loyrette on Bringing the Louvre to the Middle East

[Published: July 21, 2009] By Damaris Colhoun for ARTINFO

ABU DHABI—Shortly after construction crews broke ground for the Louvre Abu Dhabi outpost due to open on Saadiyat Island in 2013, ARTINFO sat down with Henri Loyrette, director of the unparalleled Paris institution, to discuss what French expertise can bring to the region and what special considerations apply there.

Why did the Louvre, one of the grandest and most venerable museums in the world, agree to collaborate with a country that has no long-standing history of appreciating the visual arts? What do you think the Louvre can teach the people of the UAE and surrounding regions?

One of the key missions of the Louvre since its creation in 1793 has been to promote and defend art and artistic creation, and to play a key role in education. The Louvre Abu Dhabi will associate the long tradition of culture and education of the Louvre with the living spirit of Abu Dhabi. It will be a new and distinct institution dedicated to culture, education, and aesthetic pleasure. More than teaching them, the Louvre Abu Dhabi will share with the people of the UAE and the surrounding region. It will draw more people to art and to artistic values.

How have you responded to your compatriots who are outraged by the notion of a “second” Louvre?

The Louvre Abu Dhabi will not be a copy of the Louvre but a separate museum that will bear the name of the Louvre as a symbol. Behind the name all French museums will gather to create the new institution in close connection with Abu Dhabi. To bear the name “Louvre” will put the institution among the greatest museums in the world. It will also require it to follow the paths and values of the Louvre.

Were you involved in the selection of Jean Nouvel and the creation of an architectural program for the Desert Louvre? What do you think his design achieves?

Jean Nouvel was chosen by Abu Dhabi before the signing of the agreement with the French government. His architectural project is gorgeous and designed in close relation to Islamic architecture; he associates the dome with the Islamic cupola and uses the Arabic city pattern. It’s one of the most beautiful museum projects of the 21st century.

Abu Dhabi is more progressive than many of its neighbors. Nevertheless, considering the cultural mores of the region, are you concerned that certain exhibitions might alienate devout Muslims?

The very first acquisitions made by the Louvre Abu Dhabi show that the government of Abu Dhabi is keeping an open mind. Indeed, we’ve bought a Christ from 16th-century Germany as well as a Buddha head and a Boddhisatva. This is the best way for the Louvre Abu Dhabi to keep a spirit of freedom and openness.

Finally, are you concerned about reports by Human Rights Watch that the construction workers on Saadiyat Island are “suffering abuse and severe exploitation”? How involved should the Louvre and other institutions building there be in preventing such behavior? Do you see encouraging workers’ rights part of your role as a Western democratic institution?

Of course we are concerned, as is the Abu Dhabi government. TDIC, the company in charge of the Louvre Abu Dhabi building, made a formal and strong statement regarding human rights. Moreover, Jean Nouvel said recently in Abu Dhabi how careful he would be in the choice of building companies, and the Louvre will support him. To create a new museum under the name of the Louvre is a claim for humanism. The presence of museums in Abu Dhabi, the Louvre being the first, underlines the strong will of the Abu Dhabi government to go further in respect to human rights.

Article Courtesy: ARTINFO

ARTICLE 44 - Finding Inspiration in Islamic Traditions

[Wednesday, July 15, 2009] Deepa A - Indian Freelance Writer for ISLAMONLINE

The winning art work 1001 Pages by Afruz Amighi

A plastic sheet is unlikely to be considered a thing of great beauty. But in the hands of a skilful artist, the sheet – a material used in the construction of refugee tents – morphs into an intricate work of art that astonishes and captivates the viewer. This is the effect that the Iranian-born artist Afruz Amighi achieves with her work 1001 Pages, which was recently awarded the first Jameel Prize in London.

Presented by the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in London, the Jameel Prize, worth 25,000 pounds, is an international award for works of art that have been inspired by Islamic traditions. Over 100 nominations were received for the prize, and nine were eventually shortlisted. The shortlisted works, including Amighi’s prize-winning work, are currently on display at a temporary gallery at V&A.

The Exhibits

On a visit to the gallery, one is immediately struck by the diversity of the works on display, a testimony to the varied influences of Islamic traditions. The exhibits range from jewels to photomontage to wood and screen prints; some works reflect on contemporary realities while others seek to illuminate the past.

Amighi’s work draws on the Islamic tradition of using artificial light, as one sees in shadow puppetry, for instance. She has used a stencil burner to hand-cut designs on a thin sheet of plastic, which is suspended from the ceiling. An overhead projector throws light on the sheet, casting a shadow of multiple patterns on the wall. As Mark Jones, chair of the judging panel and director of the V&A, said in a press release, "Afruz Amighi has created something new, something that is skilful but which transcends that skill. The work is both striking and subtle, as well as being beautiful. Its use of projected light and shadow loosens the viewer’s focus on the created object, marking a passage from the material to the immaterial."

Amighi, who lives in the USA, makes use of various elements in Iran’s culture, as seen in the country’s rugs, old miniatures, photographs and drawings. The viewer is immediately drawn, and challenged, by the complexity and intricacy of the images in Amighi’s work. The shadows seem to suggest her own absence from the country where she was born, a dislocation that also offers her a unique perspective – of an outsider who is nevertheless an insider in many ways.

Looking Out, Looking In

Ana (Arabic “Me”) by Susan Hefuna

Susan Hefuna’s works have been inspired by the mashrabiyyahs or the latticed windows in traditional houses in Cairo, through which women can look out without being seen. Her striking piece in wood illuminates patterns on the white platform on which it is mounted, and paying homage to the practice of inscribing short religious texts in Arabic or Coptic on the mashrabiyyah screen, Hefuna uses modern inscriptions in her work.

An artifact by Hassan Hajjaj

Hassan Hajjaj’s work is a powerful commentary on the survival of traditional elements in the face of external challenges, possibly resulting from globalization. His multimedia installation, Le Salon, recreates the atmosphere of a souk through recycled materials. The piece, the artist has said, "highlights the power of the image and branding, juxtaposing the iconography of contemporary culture and consumerism with classical references". Therefore, logos of Western brands appear on traditional items while the writing itself is in Arabic, pointing to the importance of calligraphy in Islamic tradition. Hajjaj, who was born in Morocco, lives in London and Marrakesh.

A work by Hamra Abbas

Contradicting its title, Hamra Abbas’ work Please Do Not Step – Loss of a Magnificent Story takes the extraordinary measure of forcing viewers to walk on what is essentially a work of art. The piece is composed of a floor covering, and the words are written in a font that uses delicate, geometrical Islamic patterns. A description of the piece, exhibited by the work, quotes Abbas as saying, "The work is inspired in part by the feelings of displacement, at personal and collective levels, that have arisen from the increasing anti-Islamic sentiment in today’s world."

The Power of Imagery

One of the shortlisted works by Khosrow Hassanzadeh

Khosrow Hassanzadeh’s work, two acrylic and silk screen prints on canvas, combines Arabic script – used for more than a millennium in Iran – with photography, which came to the country before 1850. In Ya Ali Madad, the background pattern is created by repetitions of Ali’s name while the screen prints themselves are based on old photographs of two wrestlers holding hands, surrounded by a court intellectual, a dervish, a general and a mullah. The wrestlers represent aspects of Iranian culture that are being lost, and through Ya Ali Madad, Hassanzadeh, who lives in Teheran, seeks to remind people of the "beauty, strength and honor" of the wrestlers.

Seher Shah’s drawings in graphite on paper are drawn from Islamic patterns and geometric designs, and her ‘Interior Courtyard’ series moves from Granada and New Delhi to Zanzibar and Brussels. Born in Pakistan, Shah lives in Europe and the US.

Reza Abedini’s work comprises posters that reflect the importance of calligraphy in Iranian culture; one of the most striking aspects of his work is the manner in which he combines a human form with the text, giving life to words and cultures. Abedini, who was born in Iran and works in Iran and in the Netherlands, is credited with playing an important role in the resurgence of Iranian graphic design.

Camille Zakharia’s Division Lines series includes collages that make use of street markings. His designs are influenced by Islamic carpets and tile mosaic, and his collages deal with issues of identity – he left his birthplace over 23 years ago – and diaspora. In his Markings series, he reflects on "how we try to live in harmony within defined spaces set by the other."

Sevan Bicakci’s collection of five rings evokes Istanbul’s cityscapes, and is inspired by tradition without being bound by it. One finds the representation of an entire Ottoman mosque on the body of a single ring, as in the case of Suleymaniye, which shows the Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul. The work Saray Burnu highlights the domed mosque of Ayasofya and the sea wells of Topkapi Palace while Kosk is an ode to the garden pavilions of Ottoman palaces. He uses a range of techniques such as engraving, calligraphy and micro-mosaic setting for creating these rings.

The winning and shortlisted works are on display at the V&A till September 13, 2009.

The Prize as an Inspiration

The Jameel Prize is sponsored by entrepreneur Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel. According to a press release, he conceived the idea for the prize after providing financial support for the renovation of V&A’s Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, which opened in July 2006. To be awarded every two years, the prize aims to "raise awareness of the thriving interaction between contemporary practice and the rich artistic heritage of Islam, and to contribute to a broader debate about Islamic culture", says a press release.

Award-winning architect Zaha Hadid, who is the Patron of the Jameel Prize, said she supported the prize’s aim of exploring the cultural dialogue between Islamic art and contemporary practice. She said, "I hope the Jameel Prize will inspire a new generation of artists, designers and engineers to further this dialogue."

The winning and shortlisted works are on display at the V&A till September 13, 2009. The exhibition will then travel to many cities, including Riyadh, Istanbul, Casablanca, Damascus and Beirut. The V&A’s Jameel Gallery has an extensive collection of Islamic art from around the world.

Article Courtesy: ISLAMONLINE.NET

ARTICLE 43 - An Epistemic Shift in Iran

[July-August 2009] Hamid Dabashi for THE BROOKLYN RAIL

For Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari
In friendship and solidarity
And for having held our hopes high!

About a decade ago, soon after the parliamentary election of 2000 in Iran, I wrote an essay, “The End of Islamic Ideology,” in which I made a twofold argument: (1) there is an inner paradox at the heart of Shi’ism that makes it legitimate only when it is in an oppositional posture, and it thus loses that legitimacy when it is in power; and (2) the age of ideological convictions was over in Iran, and we had entered a post-ideological conundrum up for any grabs. I had borrowed the idea from Daniel Bell’s 1960 classic, The End of Ideology, but radically altered its positivist and functional premise with a dialectical relocation of the argument inside an anticolonial context.

This argument was predicated on my earlier book, Theology of Discontent (1993), in which I had demonstrated in extensive detail the formation of a militant Islamist ideology out of a dialectical force that was predicated on a false but enabling opposition between “Islam and the West.” My argument in that book was that the false dichotomy was the single most creative catalyst of generating an Islamic ideology and then sustaining its political potency. I argued that “Islamic Ideology” was in fact the supreme sign of a fixation with “the West,” a delusional mirage that loses its categorical authenticity the closer you get to it.

The radical Islamization of the Iranian revolution of 1979 had paradoxically turned my own Theology of Discontent into an archeological verification of the exclusive Islamicity of that event, whereas I had in fact written it because that particular militant Islamism was so alien to my generation of activists in the 1960s and 1970s; a mixture of anticolonial nationalism (Nehru, Musaddiq, and Nasser read through Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire) and Third World socialism (Marx read through the Cuban Revolution) defined our perspective. In my Theology of Discontent, I wanted to excavate the hidden and distant layers of an Islamism that was in fact quite alien to my generation of leftist activists—not that we were hostile to it, but that we thought it (foolishly) outdated. In my subsequent work I proceeded to place the Islamic ideology inside a larger cosmopolitan political culture that obviously included Islamism but was not limited by or to a larger historical framework, in which I have always thought Islam is integral but not definitive.

Having concluded that the age of ideology in general and Islamic ideology in particular was over, throughout the 1990s I took a partial leave of absence from Iranian politics, which I found unbearably boring, and took an extended look at Iranian literary, poetic, visual, and performing arts—film, fiction, poetry, drama, video installations, underground music, photography, etc. It was here that I noted that the creative lexicon of a new generation was in full swing. They were dreaming (to me) unfamiliar dreams. When I wrote my Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema (2007), I opted to write it in an epistolary mode, addressing a younger generation that I no longer knew intuitively. I had become, unbeknownst to myself, a father-figure to their dreaming otherwise. I was walking on eggshells.

The work of Shirin Neshat was a path of liberation for me—for in her visual reflections I found a sinuous subway into the subterranean labyrinth of a creative imagination I sensed seminal in what was happening in the post-revolutionary generation. I took the lead from Neshat and worked my way towards contemporary Iranian, Arab, and Muslim artists around the globe. I followed Iranian cinema very closely, read and watched extensively, and wrote widely on its history, politics, and aesthetics. Around and about Iranian cinema, I began following contemporary Iranian art—its visual, performing, and aesthetic imaginary opening onto a whole tapestry of unfolding panorama in front of me. I was now convinced that the children of the Islamic Revolution had left the political hang-ups of their parental generation behind and were sailing into uncharted territories. They remained conscious and cognizant of poets and artists, filmmakers and novelists, that had animated our souls a generation earlier, but they were making their own mark in newer and more exciting registers. For us, Forough Farrokhzad was a poet-prophet who kept us on our toes to reach out to her. For them she was a cute and cuddly grandma who was spoiling her grandchildren. The sheer audacity of these kids, we thought quietly to ourselves, as they were giggling their ways around our revered icon and hanging lovely looking pairs of cherries on her wrinkled up earlobes.

At the writing of this essay, as we are both bruised and enthralled by the presidential election of June 2009 and its aftermath, two almost simultaneous contemporary Iranian art exhibitions, one in New York and the other in London, pretty much sum up the latest that is happening in this domain, where aspects of contemporary Iranian art are on display for the whole world to see—though the operatic panorama of what we are watching in Iranian streets has considerably overshadowed them—for those demonstrations are the variegated vineyard of the wine we are drinking in these exhibitions.

As the colorful drama of post-presidential election 2009 was unfolding in ever more dramatic vistas in Iran, the global media took very little notice of this astounding presence of young Iranian artists in New York and London. Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, the extraordinarily ambitious “Iran Inside Out,” at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York, was only one among a number of other sites in which some of the most poignant samples of contemporary Iranian art was on display. At the nearby Thomas Erben Gallery, another exhibition, “Looped and Layered,” had put together the works of twelve other Iranian artists; and uptown, the works of some forty other artists were also on display in Selseleh/Zelzeleh: Movers & Shakers in Contemporary Iranian Art at Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery. Yet another five Iranians were included among 28 artists in Tarjama/Translation at the Queens Museum of Art. Entirely by serendipity, Americans now had all they needed to know about the civil rights movement in Iran right here in these exhibitions and yet the mass media was chasing after “experts” who had scarcely a clue that these pieces of artwork even existed, let alone what they meant.

Almost at the same time, in London, “Made in Iran,” a timely but mostly overshadowed exhibition, curated by Arianne Levene and Églantine de Ganay, brought the work of a number of Iranian artists to a more global attention.

The trouble with the perfunctory media attention that these exhibitions did receive was that it maintained the habitual false bifurcation art critics make between politics and art—disregarding the far more important fact that the traffic between the two sublates the matter into the manner of a whole different way of seeing things. The operatic drama of the Green Movement in Iran was on full display, running the two complementary/contradictory urges of patricide and infanticide against each other, and yet journalistic art criticism was still caught in the congested traffic of art versus politics.

It was in the course of my getting closer to the contemporary Iranian visual and performing universe that the presidential election of 1997 and then the student-led uprising of the summer of 1997 came to complement what I was sensing in that universe and convinced me that we are witnessing a seismic change in Iranian youth culture—that a new generation of sensibility was fast upon us. The presidential election of 1997 and the student-led uprising of 1999 are the two most immediate antecedents of the current uprising in Iran. When Samira Makhmalbaf was invited to Cannes in May 2000 to participate in a conference on cinema in 21st century, his father and I spent a couple of weeks together in Paris reflecting precisely on this sea change in Samira’s generation. A few years later, in 2003, when I went to Cannes to see Samira Makhmalbaf’s Five O’clock in the Afternoon (2003), I also saw Parviz Shahbazi’s Nafas-e Amigh/Deep Breath (2003). Shahbazi’s film literally frightened me out of my wits and gave me countless sleepless nights. There was a quiet cruelty in that film entirely alien to me, a suicidal serendipity that convinced me we have entered a whole new matrix of existential anxieties in this generation—at once pregnant with possibilities and yet ruthlessly self-abortive. Shahbazi’s film made Camus’ The Stranger or even Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground read like Tintin comics. Fast-forward to June, and the bloody murder of Neda Aqa Soltan will now haunt the nightmares of the Iranian Islamic patriarchy for the rest of history. She has finally given a contemporary feminine face to the masculinist martyrological pantheon of Shi’ia Islam. A young and exceedingly eloquent Iranian-American, Melody Moezzi is her name, was interviewed on CNN after Neda Aqa Soltan was murdered, and at one point she said: “When Neda was killed…she became a martyr…When we [perform any] physical exertion, Iranians say ‘Ya Ali’…and now we’re saying ‘Ya Neda.’” There is a whole theology of discontent, a liberation theology of unsurpassed power, in that very twist of Melody Moezzi.

When in 2008, now deeply drawn to the post-9/11 syndrome, once again I turned back to the political parlance of this post-ideological generation and expanded my 2000 article on “the End of Islamic Ideology” into a book, Islamic Liberation Theology: Resisting the Empire (2008). I was ready to make a case for a political culture in which any claim to a liberation theology had to move towards a theodicy, namely be enabled to account for and assimilate its own shades and shadows, its political nemesis and emotive alterities. The work thus concluded with a chapter on Malcolm X as a figure whose revolutionary authenticity was predicated on cultural inauthenticity—for he kept shifting identity grounds, from a pre-Muslim, to a Muslim, to a post-Muslim, in order to sustain his revolutionary disposition. Sustaining my argument throughout this book was Gianni Vattimo’s revolutionary notion of il pensiero debole/weak thought, and even more than that Emanuel Levinas’ palimpsestic constitution of the face of the other as the ethical foundation of any future metaphysics.

I had come to this conclusion about “the end of Islamic ideology” and the epistemic exhaustion of ideological Islamism based on the argument that the binary opposition between “Islam and the West” had in fact exhausted its creative energies and thematically dissipated. The “West” had imploded by the end of the Thatcher/Reagan era and the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s, which had in turn prompted the publication of Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History?” (1989); the creative crisis of the East and West had depleted itself, and yet within a couple of years Samuel Huntington published his thesis “Clash of Civilizations” (1992) to resurrect an Islamic nemesis for the West. The events of 9/11 were a godsend for Huntington’s apocalyptic vision of not just a clash but in fact the end of civilizations. As the world was distracted by that resurrection of an old cliché, I thought we needed to keep our eyes on the ball inside the emotive universe of the younger generation, for whom the Internet and social networking had brought down all sorts of factual and fictive walls.

What we are witnessing today in Iran is predicated precisely on that end of ideological thinking, the surfacing of a whole new emotive universe, and the commencement, I believe, of a “civil rights movement” that marks a major epistemic shift in Iranian political culture. This, I propose, is not yet another iteration of a revolutionary uprising, as it is first and foremost evident in the collapse of the binary supposition between Islam and the West, the exhaustion of both Islam and the West as potent categorical entities that can generate ideas, sustain convictions, and launch movements in juxtaposition against each other. Bush and Bin Laden, in short, have been protesting too much, and creating a massive smoke screen with their “war on terror” and “jihad,” blinding our insight. The ruling clerical establishment and the younger generation they are trying to chain speak two entirely different languages—one a cliché-ridden language of military coup, foreign intervention, and a manufactured “enemy,” and the other the visual, performing, poetic, and dramatic lexicon of a far more fundamental liberation.

In an instant reaction to what is unfolding in Iran, Slavoj Žižek wrote a useful summary of the most useless and irrelevant readings of the current crisis and then offered his own. Žižek suggests that “the green color adopted by the Mousavi supporters, the cries of ‘Allah akbar!’ that resonate from the roofs of Tehran in the evening darkness, clearly indicate that they see their activity as the repetition of the 1979 Khomeini revolution, as the return to its roots, the undoing of the revolution’s later corruption…We are dealing with a genuine popular uprising of the deceived partisans of the Khomeini revolution.” In other words, Iranians are not going back all the way to the time of the prophet 1400 years ago, but just to thirty years ago, and they have started their march anew. William Beeman, a prominent anthropologist of Iran, has offered a similar reading. He thinks, “People can only imagine what they can imagine. In Iran today both the people and the establishment have only one model for social and governmental change, and that is the original Islamic revolution of 1978-79. Because both sides are working with the same vocabulary of symbolism, they are groping to command those potent images that will galvanize public support in their favor.” Though his vision is foggy by his ethnographic lenses, Beeman at least offers an archetypal and not a reactionary reading: “The master vocabulary of revolution in Iran is the historical Martyrdom of Imam Hossein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, who was killed on the plains of Karbala in present day Iraq in 680.”

Both these gentlemen are out to lunch. Not everything that is round is a walnut, as we say in Persian. This is a post-ideological society: Today’s activists are not trying to reinvent an Islamic revolution that happened before they were born, or reiterating an archetypal martyrdom that has more than one way to skin a cat. Much has happened in Iran between 1979 and 2009, and neither a revolutionary nostalgia nor an anthropological dyslexia can account for it. Beeman is of course correct that “people can only imagine what they can imagine” (a redundant truism), but he has no blasted clue what this young generation has been imagining, and what their imagining has in turn imagined far beyond the distorted images of anthropological ethnography. A much more patient reading of the visual and performing arts of this generation is needed before we know what in the world they are doing as millions pour into the streets of their cities, brandishing their poetry, and sporting their green bandanas. The inherited universe of this generation has been atomized and then radically recast anew. They have re-invented themselves from an emotive ground zero on up. Not just their parental generation and the aging clergy in the autumn and winter of their patriarchy were fast and deep in slumber when they were out playing and acting out their future.

In the resurrected soul of this generation no metanarrative of salvation holds supreme, no sublime supposition of truth holds any water. They have been after the nuts and bolts of a more meaningful life, from which I have concluded that in specifically political terms what is happening today is far more a civil rights movement than a revolution; it is a demand for basic civil liberties, predicated on decades of struggle by young Iranian men and women to secure their most basic and inalienable rights. I might very well be wrong in my assumption, and there might very well be yet another revolution in the offing, countered by a military coup, opposed by even more severe economic sanctions, even a blockade, perhaps even by a military strike by the US/Israel. No one can tell. But the singular cause of civil rights of seventy million plus human beings, I daresay, will remain definitive to this generation. In the course of these thirty years, this generation has learned from its parental mistakes and might be given the allowance that it is marching forward through a major epistemic shift in Iranian political culture—seeking to achieve their most basic civil liberties within whatever constitutional law that cruel fate has handed them.

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Article Courtesy: THE BROOKLYN RAIL

ARTICLE 42 - Canvas, Premier Magazine for Art and Culture from the Middle East, Goes Global with Canvas TV

[Thursday, July 16, 2009] ARTDAILY

LONDON.- Ali Khadra, the Founder and Publisher of Canvas, the premier magazine for art and culture from the Middle East and the Arab world unveiled the logo of Canvas TV, a new global arts network which will go live in 2010. The announcement took place last week in London at The Serpentine Gallery’s legendary annual Summer Party which was sponsored by Canvas TV and is the highlight of the social summer calendar attended by a host of international cultural luminaries, artists and celebrities.

Ali Khadra was co-host of the party alongside Lord Palumbo, Chairman, Serpentine Gallery Board of Trustees, Julia Peyton-Jones, Director, Serpentine Gallery, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director, Serpentine Gallery and Tim Jefferies, Chairman, Serpentine Gallery Summer Party.

For the occasion a spectacular Canvas TV logo designed by Pritzker prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid was unveiled. A life-size sculpture of the logo was the center piece of the Canvas TV mobile film studio. Guests, including Hussein Chalayan, Hassan Hajjaj, Khosrow Hassanzadeh, Damien Hirst, Nadia Swarovski, Mario Testino, Ben Bradshaw (the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport), Sir Peter Blake and Afruz Amighi, were interviewed on the spot by Rory Bremner, Lauren Laverne and CNN’s Monita Rajpal.

The event was held in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designed by the world-renowned architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA. The Pavilion is the ninth commission in the Gallery’s annual series that brings the best of international architecture to London.

Canvas magazine aims to stimulate a broader debate about Middle Eastern art and culture. The next project for Khadra and the Canvas team is a panel discussion as part of Canvas Education - an international initiative that aims to build a platform of informed collectors in the Middle East and also raise awareness of Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art internationally. The first, entitled Gender, Wars and Chadors was held during Art Basel `09 and saw prominent collectors brought together to participate in a lively debate which covered issues of regional stereotypes and national identity. Forthcoming panels will be addressed by curators and artists respectively, with the next talk scheduled to take place in London during October to coincide with Frieze Art Fair at which Canvas are exhibitors.

Article Courtesy: ART DAILY

ARTICLE 41 - Works of art to enrich the summer at home

[14 July 2009 2:28:30] RAYNALD RIVERA for THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The walls of three galleries at the Waqif Art Centre (WAC) are adorned with around 40 paintings by 18 Doha-based artists hailing from 13 countries for the ‘Summer at Home’ exhibition, which opened yesterday. The art collection showcases the heterogeneity of the artists’ backgrounds and experiences, some of which have Arabic influences, with the artists having lived in Qatar for quite some time.

German artist Herbert Froehlich relives the classic tale of Arabian Nights with his two works of art titled ‘The Storyteller’ and ‘Sheherazade’. He poignantly captures in colour and figure the power of the storyteller to bend the unbending through his imaginative weaving of interesting stories. British artist John Sewell, on the other hand, has developed a love for Arabic culture and passion for Islamic motifs – very evident in his geometric designs undeniably Arabic, one of which is mounted on a huge 243.84cm by 122cm board.

“The Train represents the speed of present day Qatar and the Urn and the Pearl the very recent ‘old’ Qatar,” Charlotee Pocock, who has held a number of exhibitions both in her home country UK and Qatar, said about one of her works. Her discovery of warm lighting and the varied colours of the Qatari desert and the emotions they stir have inspired Maribel Di Mambro to create works of art in a country far from Nicaragua, where her penchant for painting awakened.

One of the works by Shetha Faraj Abbo Al Numan, daughter of renowned Iraqi artist Faraj Abbo Al Numan, extols the ‘Deek Al Mhala’ (The Rooster) as one of the important symbols of Iraqi Art, which is believed to keep away the evil eye. Another feast to the eye is Italian Sabrina Puppin-Lerch’s ‘Reach Out’, which shows a mosaic of hands in hundreds that seem to extend toward the viewer with an explosion of bright hues.

The other featured artists are Claire Jackson-Mee (UK), Joy Papprill (New Zealand), Juan Miguel Ramirez Escalante (Mexico), Kathleen Ferguson-Huntington (USA/Ireland), Layla I. Bacha (Syria), Najib Nassar (Lebanon), Nidhi Wiesner (Germany), Rouya Raouf (Iraq), Saba Hamza (Iraq), Thomas Teasdale (UK), Vaida V Nairn (Lithuania), Winnifred J. Bastian (Nederland).

The galleries are open for public viewing every day until August 15.

Article Courtesy: THE PENINSULA

ARTICLE 40 - Abu Dhabi Art to Debut in November

[July 8, 2009] ARTINFO

ABU DHABI—The art world has one more event to add to its fall calendar: This November will see the inaugural edition of Abu Dhabi Art, a new festival to take place annually in the United Arab Emirates’ capital city. Supported by the local government and presented by General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi Art will run November 19–22 and will consist of exhibitions, multimedia performances, and educational offerings such as lectures and discussions, which in the evenings will be complemented by gala events at the Emirates Palace. The featured work will be international, highlighting galleries from the Middle East, United States, and Europe, and displaying major pieces by contemporary American, European, and Asian artists.

Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, chairman of both the Tourism Development & Investment Co. and the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, the organizations which jointly initiated the event, hopes that Abu Dhabi Art will further the city’s emergence as a new cultural center: “Abu Dhabi Art adds a major new component to the schedule of world-class exhibitions, public programs, performing arts events, and more that are already happening in the Emirate, encouraging the growth of our burgeoning arts scene and building Abu Dhabi’s capacity to be a cultural capital for one of the world’s most dynamic regions.”

Article Courtesy: ARTINFO

ARTICLE 39 - Iran opens first mobile art gallery

[Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:43:42 GMT] PRESS TV

‎'Rendez-Vous in the domain of longing notes' by Taha Behbahani

Iran has opened its first mobile art gallery during the country's 16th edition of the International Visual Arts Festival for Youth. The 700-square-meter gallery makes use of the latest exhibition facilities and has been opened to art lovers since the festival kicked off in the northern city of Gorgan on July 11, 2009. The 16th International Visual Arts Festival for Youth opened on Saturday and will run until July 14 in Golestan Province.

According to Tehran Times, the event displays drawings, paintings, calligraphies, miniatures, sculptures and cartoons by some 220 Iranian and 40 international artists from 20 countries including China, Pakistan, Armenia, Kuwait, Senegal, Afghanistan, and Germany. Taha Behbahani, Hassan Bolkhari, Morteza Heidari, Mohammad-Baqer Aqamiri, Abbas Jamalpour, Nasser Arasteh and Masud Zendehrouh Kermani are among the Iranian artists whose works have been display at the festival.

Article Courtesy: PRESS TV

ARTICLE 38 - In Ramallah, art imitates men’s minds

[Last Updated: July 11. 2009 8:54PM UAE / July 11. 2009 4:54PM GMT] Omar Karmi, Foreign Correspondent for THE NATIONAL

Noor Abed's public art installation, Rotten, in the making at Ramallah's Manarah Square. Courtesy Noor Abed

RAMALLAH: Noor Abed no longer walks down the streets of Ramallah without her iPod. She simply does not want to hear the comments from the men on the street. “It could be anything. Some comment on my body or my eyes. Some just shout out their phone number. Every time I walk in Ramallah I feel I am being raped by men’s eyes. It’s shameful and it’s demeaning.”

But it also proved a source of inspiration for the 21-year-old artist.

When she was approached by the local Mahatta Gallery in April to participate in a public art project as part of the festivities associated with Jerusalem: Arab Capital of Culture, she decided she would try to make the young men of Ramallah look at themselves in a different way.

“I wanted them to take a step back and see if they really thought their behaviour was acceptable, or at least notice what that behaviour was.”

The idea behind the exhibit was that the public had to contribute in some way to the creation of the work. Ms Abed decided to place a mannequin in a long white dress in Manara Square in central Ramallah. Then, with two male colleagues, she urged passersby to write comments on the dress. She asked them to write what they might have thought had they seen a woman walking down the street in similar attire.

The comments veered between corny and outright filthy. But almost all had as a common thread: sex, or the desire for it. Thus the rather tame, “I need you”, written in English, competed for space with the more direct, “Without the dress you would be prettier”, written in Arabic. Someone wrote down a phone number. Another wrote “loose” as in loose or promiscuous woman. Yet another, out of tune with the rest, wrote “Obey God”.

The result was an installation she called Rotten, which featured Ms Abed wearing the white dress on a white backdrop in a wooden frame.

Blindfolded and with her arms held behind her, the overall effect was an unmistakably dark statement on gender relations, yet one, she said, she was not sure was understood.

“The idea was to take the obvious symbolism, the purity of the white dress and the blindfold, and contrast it with the comments written on the dress that come from men’s minds, ruining that purity.”

All those who had written comments were invited to the gallery. Ms Abed said she could hear (blindfolded, she could not see) that some had taken her up on the invitation. But they expressed a little disappointment that “she was just standing there, doing nothing”.

“I don’t think they got it. Some of the younger women did. Of course I don’t think it will change anything. But maybe it can open a few eyes.”

Ms Abed admits she has a bleak view of gender relations in the Palestinian territories.

Men, she said, think of women only as sex objects. And while this was the same everywhere, she said social and religious pressures here made it even worse.

“From [the time they are] young there is social and religious pressure to keep boys and girls separated. People tell their sons that it is wrong to even talk to girls. That’s how they are raised.”

It is an attitude that is slowly changing, said Safa Tamish, the head of the Arab Forum for Sexuality, Education and Health.

“There is a big gap between the generations,” said Ms Tamish, who teaches courses on sexuality at schools and universities across the West Bank. “It’s almost like they are two different people. But I think the older generation have slowly realised that their children are sexual beings and that they need a vocabulary to be able to communicate with them about it.”

Ms Tamish said 10 years ago hardly any institution would invite her to come and teach sexuality, but it is now common for her to go even to rural villages in the West Bank. She also said she saw fewer and fewer arranged marriages and more and more choice for women.

She emphasised the current conservatism was a normal response to the socio-economic and political environment. There is “nothing inherent” in Arab or Muslim culture that prohibits relations between men and women, she said, but in closed societies, there will always be “oppression”.

“The Arab world at the moment is witnessing a lot of oppression and that includes of women. But this conservatism is borne of socio-economic factors. Whether in the West or East, a normal response to economic recessions or political disenfranchisement is greater conservatism.”

In addition, in the Palestinian context, the Israeli occupation had also become an “occupation of the mind”.

“People are prevented from travelling and from interacting with other cultures and even with themselves. This naturally leads not only to greater poverty, but to greater conservatism.”

Finally, there is a political element, a “return to roots”. In the Arab context, those roots are religious and, mixed in with politics, the covering of the head becomes a statement of identity.

“In many cases, social conservatism is a way of asserting an identity and negating the West. As a result we see more women wearing the hijab.”

Nevertheless, she said, young Palestinian women, such as Ms Abed, are also becoming more rebellious. This is partly in response to the kind of harassment they encounter on the streets. It is partly a natural cycle.

“I remember when I could walk down the streets of Ramallah even late at night, and no one would look or comment. The situation became more conservative, but it won’t stay the same.”

Ms Abed was less sanguine. There are social double standards, she said, “almost schizophrenic”, where what a man says to a woman on a street would be cause for serious retribution if it was said to his sister.

“If I am not allowed to shake hands with a man or raise my eyes, how can we interact? We live in a time when women and men have to interact. We can’t at the same time bring children up to believe that such interaction is wrong.”

okarmi@thenational.ae

Article Courtesy: THE NATIONAL

WORK 07 - Gohar Dashti

Name: Gohar Dashti
Title: Today's Life and War
Medium: Colour Photographic paper
Size: 50 x 70 cm
Year: 2008
Edition of 7

KASHYA HILDEBRAND

ARTICLE 37 - Iranian Art: Fresh impressions

[10 July 2009] Emily Meredith for WKND KHALEEJ TIMES

A New York exhibit of Iranian artists is changing the perception of Middle Eastern art abroad. Emily Meredith asks if the Big Apple is ready to take a bite

A small brick building in New York City’s Chelsea district is hardly the first place that comes to mind for a new dialogue between America and Iran, but a new exhibit at the Chelsea Art Museum is introducing modern Iran to New Yorkers in a way that many have never experienced.

Iran Inside Out is a new exhibit that — for an American population — had an extremely fortuitous opening, coinciding with massive amounts of media coverage dedicated to following the Iranian election and subsequent protests in Tehran.

The news media coverage has two sides, though, says Sam Bardaouil, the curator for Iran Inside Out. “It’s great because it’s bringing a lot of attention,” he says. “But we don’t want people to miss out on this art as unique; I don’t want the art to become victimised. People are getting too carried away on finding the expression of rebellion, but it’s not only about that.”

The show is presented in several sections, one that deals with infamous Bush-era label of the ‘Axis of Evil’ and another on gender issues that features Abbas Kowsri’s photos of male Iranian bodybuilders juxtaposed with covered female gun-weilding police officers. The Iran Recycled section shows traditional Iranian art reinterpreted by modern artists — the most striking example is a digital and ink drawing by Nazgol Ansarini. The image takes the shape of the patterns found in Persian carpets from afar. Up close though, the image depicts people engaged in fistfights and riding bikes.

Several of the featured artists are part of the Iranian diaspora and their work focuses on the experience of living as an immigrant. Maghazehe Pooneh’s performance pieces are about life as an outsider. Pooneh grew up in rural America, feeling out of place as an Iranian in an area where many people could not place Iran on a map.

The materials the 56 artists have used vary from detergent bottles to film and clay. Bardaouil says the reaction of many people in New York — a cosmopolitan city with numerous neighbourhoods of Farsi speakers and several Iranian organisations — was one of relief.

“When they come to the show and find there’s a lot of humour and flirtation, a lot of pop art and a lot of digital art, they feel a sense of relief. For the first time Americans are seeing that not everybody in Iran is Ahmedinijad.”

For many reasons, few museums have been willing to host exhibits solely focused on the works of Iranian artists. American news coverage of the country has been highly politicised for decades. The overthrow of the Shah of Iran, the capture of the American Embassy in the 1970s and Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear program have all contributed to the perception of the country in the US.

“In the last decade there were no serious attempts at doing something about contemporary art,” Bardaouil says. He worked closely with Leila Taghinia Milani-Heller, a gallery owner who has focused on promoting Iranian art in New York for 25 years.

“The undertone is ‘look, Islam has done such good things in the past.’ It’s like saying, ‘but what has happened now?’” This history of invoking political messages when featuring Iranian and other Middle Eastern art has translated to expectations for that type of content. “You see people sometimes trying to contrive and find political things in works that don’t have political meaning.”

Four of the artists regularly work with the Dubai-based gallery The Third Line. “Visitors who come to the gallery tend to know more about art from the Middle East than those we meet while participating in international art fairs outside of the Gulf,” Katrina Weber, the artist liason at the gallery says, noting that there are excpetions.

“Education and a nuanced presentation of art from the region is critical to avoid a simplistic exotification of ‘otherness’ or a reduction of an artist’s work to represent only a narrow understanding of what art from the Arab world or Iran can be,” Weber says.

Bardaouil echoed this sentiment. The majority of exhibits in the western world that deal with the Middle East in a positive way do so by looking at the centuries-old calligraphic and architectural works. A review of exhibits in Europe and North America shows many still concentrate on the veil: Discarding The Veil in Austria, Beyond Boundaries at the Modern Museum of Art; Unveiled at Saatchi.

“If there’s one more title of an exhibit with a veil in it,” he says, his voice rising as he feigns threat.

Iran Inside Out is at the Chelsea Museum of Art now. It will premier in Dubai during 2010 Art Dubai as part of the Farjam collection from the Hafiz foundation.

Article Courtesy: KHALEEJ TIMES

ARTICLE 36 - Collection

[July 07. 2009 3:58PM UAE / July 7. 2009 11:58AM GMT] Helena Frith Powell for THE NATIONAL

Kourosh Nouri, 37, who runs the Carbon 12 gallery with his partner, talks about his love of art

I left Iran when I was 13 and was brought up in France. I hate politics but I wanted to contribute something after the recent troubles in Iran so I have staged an exhibition of work by the Iranian artist Gita Meh’s called Silent Voices, in honour of those who are not heard. Art can be very loud. It speaks to me. That is how I choose a painting. I go for pieces that talk to me. The first paintings that really affected me were in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris when I was 15. They were works by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix. Then I saw Constantin Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse. There are certain things in life that speak to you; this was one of them.

I started collecting at the age of 26, while I was working for my father in his consulting business in Vienna. I found the world of business deadly boring. One of the first works I bought was by the Iranian artist Rokni Haerizadeh. He is really popular now, but then he was totally unknown. I just knew he was great; I have a very instinctive approach to art, what I call the “eyes to stomach relationship”. Your eye gets trained but you also have to rely on your gut instinct.

I find the process of collecting interesting; from the first time you see a work and think about it, to buying it, bringing it home and talking about it. It is totally addictive.

There are some artists I have been watching for a long time like the Norwegian artist Tor-Magnus Lundeby. Buying his work Refugee Camp felt like such an achievement. I was able to buy it because I have opened a gallery with my partner Nadine Knotzer, so my collecting has a professional side. But I still wouldn’t sell my favourites to just anyone. The buyer would have to share the same enthusiasm for the work as I do.

My father is still astonished at my chosen career. He has a lot of respect for my choice but simply doesn’t understand it. This whole world is a mystery to him.

Here in the UAE contemporary art is still relatively unknown. I get a lot of people looking at my collection saying, “My six-year-old daughter could do that.” It is a totally fatuous comment, but I just smile and try to explain that there are so many elements involved, like how you hold the brush for example, that it would be impossible to imitate. But the contemporary art scene here is like a newborn child. It is still getting there.

Silent Voices will run until the end of July at Carbon 12, The International Artspace, Ground Floor, Marina View Tower, Dubai, 050 464 4392, www.carbon12dubai.com

Picture 01: Kourosh Nouri at the Carbon 12 Gallery in Dubai. Stephen Lock for The National.
Article Courtesy: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 35 - Contemporary art, Islamic tradition

[Last Updated: July 08. 2009 2:56PM UAE / July 8. 2009 10:56AM GMT] Katie Boucher for THE NATIONAL

Afruz Amighi's 1001Pages casts an intricate pattern of shadows against the wall. Courtesy Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

A new international award for contemporary artists and designers inspired by Islamic traditions, and hosted by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, has been awarded to the Iranian-born artist Afruz Amighi.

She earned the Jameel Art Prize for her work 1001 Pages (2008), a series of pieces in which she uses light and shadow to create intricate patterns.

Funded by the Saudi businessman Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel, who also provided financial support for the renovation of the V&A’s Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, the prize aims to draw attention to the increasingly dynamic dialogue between contemporary practice and the rich Islamic heritage. The prize is awarded every two years.

More than 100 artists and designers were nominated last summer. Nine were shortlisted, including Hamra Abbas, Reza Abedini, Sevan Biçakçi, Khosrow Hassanzadeh, Susan Hefuna, Seher Shah and Camille Zakharia. Their works range from intricate pieces of jewellery to photomontage, turned wood and screen prints. They will be exhibited at the V&A along with the winning entry until Sept 13.

For 1001 Pages (2008), the 34-year-old Amighi, who lives and works in New York, used a stencil burner to hand cut a thin, porous sheet of plastic – the same material used in the construction of refugee tents. The work is suspended and illuminated, casting an intricate pattern of shadows against the wall.

Mark Jones, the director of the V&A and the chair of the prize’s judging panel, said: “Afruz Amighi has created something new, something that is skilful but which transcends that skill. The work is both striking and subtle, as well as being beautiful. Its use of projected light and shadow loosens the viewer’s focus on the created object, marking a passage from the material to the immaterial.”

Amighi’s work has been exhibited in New York, Boston and at Wake Forest University, North Carolina. By combining elements of Iranian architecture, myths and religion with textures from Persian carpets, curtains and prayer beads, she explores her country’s tumultuous social and political history.

Work by contemporary Iranian artists has gained increasing prominence in recent years. In Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East, held earlier this year at London’s recently relocated Saatchi Gallery, at least half of the works were by artists of Iranian descent. Of the shortlist for the Jameel Art Prize, three were Iranian, the most from any one country.

Jameel proposed the prize with the aim of revitalising Islamic traditions by integrating them into contemporary art, to inspire a new generation of artists and to provide an infrastructure for contemporary art in the Middle East.

The panel of judges included Ali Yussef Khadra, the founder of the Middle East art magazine, Canvas; and Charles Merewether, the art historian, writer, curator and former deputy director of the cultural district on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island.

The Jameel Art Prize joins several other awards designed to encourage contemporary artists in the region. Though generous, the £25,000 (Dh148,000) prize money is dwarfed by that of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize, the world’s most valuable competitive art award, which was awarded in January to three artist/curator teams, each of whom received around $200,000 (Dh734,600). Their works were exhibited at Art Dubai in March.

The Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Prize, which is open to emerging Iranian artists, announced its six finalists in April. Their works will be exhibited at the Royal College of Art in London to coincide with the opening of the Frieze Art Fair in October. A final winner will then be chosen by the jury and awarded the opportunity for a solo exhibition at a major London gallery.

The Jameel Art Prize, however, is open to artists of any nationality who are inspired by the Islamic traditions of arts and crafts.

The V&A was a pioneer in the collection of Islamic art, and has specialised in its collection since the 1850s. Following an extensive three-year renovation, the Jameel Gallery reopened in 2006 and now houses more than 400 objects, including ceramics, textiles, carpets, metalwork, glass and woodwork, which date from the Islamic caliphate of the eighth and ninth centuries to the years preceding the First World War. The highlight is the Ardabil carpet, the world’s oldest dated carpet and one of the largest and most historically important in the world.

An exhibition of work by the winner of the Jameel Art Prize and eight other shortlisted artists and designers is at the V&A Museum, London, until Sept 13. Visit www.vam.ac.uk.

Article Courtesy: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 34 - More than just pretty pictures

[June 03. 2009 4:23PM UAE / June 3. 2009 12:23PM GMT] Gemma Champ for THE NATIONAL

One of the 24 untitled works by the Iranian artist Ahoo Hamedi on show at the B_asement Gallery in Dubai. Courtesy B_asement Gallery

For some artists and galleries, calling an exhibition accessible, pretty or easy on the eye is considered the ultimate insult: surely art should be opaque, cryptic, challenging and rather baffling? If you actually want to hang it on the wall, it must be (don’t say it) commercial.

Luckily, that is not an approach that the B_asement Gallery takes with its choice of artists, and it’s not something that the Iranian artist Ahoo Hamedi is particularly worried about. The 27-year-old painter creates ethereal figurative works that are, it has to be said, quite beautiful. Soft, inky washes float across the thick, textured watercolour paper, expressively marking out eyes, faces, hair and lips in black, red and delicate oyster pinks. The compositions, whether the sad face of one girl or a dynamic Three Graces-style trio of women, mid-gesture, are harmoniously constructed, filling the frame but with large internal spaces in which what is missing is just as important as what is there. All in all, these pictures are rather pretty.

Crucially, though, they are also evocative, engaging – if not intellectually then emotionally – and heartfelt, far enough from merely commercially pleasing pieces to afford the artist some serious scrutiny and a keen following that has developed over just a few years. Even the fragile beauty of some of those faces, punctuated with strongly painted, expressive eyes and heavily rendered hair, goes beyond a surface attractiveness. The intriguing expressions, the respective strength or gentleness of the lines, the vividness or translucency of the colours all seem to point to some specific meaning, just out of reach of the viewer. Why are these three women locked in a moment of such yearning – and who are they?

They are no one in particular, says the artist: simply expressions of her own feelings as she paints, involving no more intellectual rigour than that. She professes no forethought when she sits down to create a work, simply seeing what develops from the first or second brushstrokes. Certainly, the spontaneity implicit in this approach is evident in each picture, with a commendable freedom of stroke and gestural vivacity.

If the pictures represent anyone, it is Hamedi herself, though each is untitled, perhaps allowing the viewer to project other features on those blank faces. The eyes proliferated on some of the works – particularly on a large piece made from a patchwork of watercolours, which represents her newest work – do indeed bear a resemblance to Hamedi’s own features, and there is no doubt that the work has some element of autobiography, if only in its expression of her subconscious.

For the Iranian artist, the eyes have a special resonance: “When you look at someone’s eyes, you see the whole person behind them,” she says. The concept of eyes as windows to the soul is not a new one, but it is in the pictures that show women wearing the facial veil that it takes on a new poignancy. The first of these pictures came, she says, from her tried-and-tested method of the accidental mark: she painted a line, it washed out and it looked like a hijab. The eyes staring out from above it are strongly rendered and all the more compelling for their isolation from other facial features. In two more paintings along the same lines, she continued the hijab theme, but this time closing the eyes of the subjects, creating a sense of serenity without those anguished orbs.

Hamedi’s sureness of touch is an asset when working in such a loose manner, and though the anatomy of the subjects’ movement is not always entirely successful, there remains nevertheless a sense of the classic heritage of draughtsmanship, with one work feeling rather like a large rendering of a Rembrandt sketch, another calling to mind the bold stares of the women that Manet liked to paint. This painterly technique is all the more effective in those works in which she pares back the visual language to the bare minimum, using a few strokes to evoke a whole subject. Those works in which the brushstrokes are angrily scribbled and scrawled and the reds and blacks are messily combined may take more effort and be more emotive and even cathartic, but they somehow feel less worthwhile, as unrestrained, unedited tantrums on paper. These works are few, though, and the ephemeral lines and vaporous washes of her more successful works clearly point her in a direction that can only lead to more refinement of thought and technique as she develops and matures as an artist. It’s early days for the young artist, but her progress looks likely to be worth following.

Ahoo Hamedi is at the B_asement Gallery, Dubai, until June 13 (04 341 4409).
Article Courtesy: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 33 - An eye for emerging artists

[Last Updated: June 08. 2009 5:56PM UAE / June 8. 2009 1:56PM GMT] Katie Boucher for THE NATIONAL

When Carbon 12 opened last November in a modern, windowless space at the foot of Marina View Tower in Dubai, it was with the intention of showing work by both established and emerging artists. Seven Positions, which opens tomorrow, will feature more than 30 works by a host of young talent, including Florian Hafele, Mathias Garnitschnig, Farzan Sadjadi, Omid Massoumi, Philip Mueller, Alessa Esteban and Bernhard Garnicnig.

“Keep in mind there are millions of artists worldwide,” says the gallery’s Iranian partner and director, Kourosh Nouri, “and out of those millions, there are maybe 50,000 who have a chance at doing something with their careers, which is why we have a strong emerging artists agenda.”

The plan is to put in place a cycle of two-year programmes that will focus on different media. This year’s, for example, will showcase sculpture, media art and painting. Next up are photography and video installations.

In the sculpture corner for Seven Positions are Garnitschnig and Hafele. Garnitschnig, a traditionally trained sculptor, is showing a series of “pillows” and taut, squeezed shapes are a considered play on form and material. Hafele’s faceless human figures, which are carved out of wood before being covered in acrylic, use movement to express human emotion.

“The whole emotion of a person is in the face,” says the 30-year-old Austrian. “And I really don’t want to show emotions on his face. Instead, I like to transfer that to the body.” His figurines are many-limbed, twisted forms, frozen mid-move.

One of the better known emerging artists is Sadjdi, the Iranian painter whose vast apocalyptic landscapes fashioned from household paint show a dark, deserted world almost devoid of human life. Why the special paint? “I like the glossy look of it,” he says. “And you can use it very lavishly.”

Also from Tehran is Massoumi, whose psychological vision is played out via gargoyles and jesters amid swirls of colour.

Other painters include Esteban, whose wide-eyed, childlike subjects are innocent and twisted, and the baby of the group, 21-year-old Mueller, whose crude, ironic depictions of dark-eyed gorillas in human-like poses are a playful but serious look at the collision between humanity and technology.

Representing digital art is Garnicnig, an Austrian. Described as “post-conceptual”, his works use abstract photography and technicolour palettes that challenge perception. “We have chosen to exhibit the most conservative body of his work,” says Nouri, “because I don’t think the market is yet ready for some of more cutting edge conceptual pieces.”

Some names may already be familiar: in December, the gallery hosted Sneak Preview, an exhibition of their work among others, designed to whet the appetite. And Esteban and Hafele already have exhibitions behind them. “The concept of emerging artists doesn’t mean amateur,” Nouri says. “We call them emerging because they are not established like the rest of our artists, and of course the prices are very reasonable.”

With so many works on display, it seems an ambitious exhibition to stage during the notoriously quiet summer months. “I run a professional gallery,” says Nouri, “and my intention is to make amazing exhibitions. Whether people come in one go or three goes or 50 goes, that doesn’t really bother me. A lot of collectors are away in Europe and many people leave Dubai for vacation. But I’m not going to sacrifice three months of the year because a few are not here in Dubai.”

Buying work by emerging artists reflects a love of art over brands, according to Hafele. “Some people love the big names,” he says, “but when you go for this kind of stuff, you are interested in art ultimately, not by names or brands. You’re buying interesting pieces and you’re helping to build a career.”

Nouri spread his net wide when sourcing new artists. “I’ve been a collector for about 12 years and more or less in the art milieu for many years, so curators tell me about new artists. And we have excellent connections with the universities in Europe. We go to the end of year shows, to diplomas and all those things. Eventually, you meet extremely talented people.”

Seven Positions starts tomorrow and runs until October. For more information visit www.carbon12dubai.com.

Article Courtesy: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 32 - Visual memories: a new book on Palestinian artists

[July 07. 2009 3:34PM UAE / July 7. 2009 11:34AM GMT] Bianca Bonomi for THE NATIONAL

Kamal Boullata's latest book, Palestinian Art: From 1850 to the Present, presents a pioneering selection of artwork. Bianca Bonomi for The National

“Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably,” says the artist and writer Kamal Boullata. The words are those of the critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, who, remembering the destruction of the First World War, contemplates the dawn of a second. Like Benjamin, Boullata recognises the importance of the past and its place in the present, and seeks to uncover buried realities in order to restore truth to an unstable future.

The Jerusalem-born Boullata has had a prolific career. Having graduated from the Rome Fine Arts Academy and the Corcoran Museum’s College of Art and Design, he became the recipient of a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship to conduct research on Islamic art in Morocco. His work is held in a number of prestigious public collections, including the British Museum, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the New York Public Library, the Sharjah Art Museum and Monaco’s Bibliothèque Louis Notari.

Boullata combines his passion for painting with a penchant for art writing. His latest book, Palestinian Art: From 1850 to the Present, offers the reader a pioneering selection of artwork, including pre-1948 paintings presented alongside contemporary media works. It highlights the political concerns of Palestinian artists and their contributions to modern Arab culture. Works by artists who live in Palestine are examined alongside those of artists from the Palestinian diaspora.

The challenges of producing a study of this kind are significant. As Boullata argues, the nakba “included the looting of artworks from urban homes. With that, the nascent art movement suffered a fatal blow. Classical rules of art history writing could not begin to describe all of the fragmentations and disruptions in people’s lives, but art continued to unabatedly rise out of the unremitting chaos reigning over Palestinians.

“Over the last 60 years, the uprooting of the Palestinian people, their dispersal and recurring displacement across disconnected territories and the absence of a geographic and cultural centre have been among the key reasons that rendered any sort of linear narrative of Palestinian art almost impossible,” he says.

These external factors were exacerbated by the fact that Arab culture has traditionally prioritised verbal and auditory art over visual forms. Throughout the centuries, Boullata says, poetry was revered as the supreme form of self-expression. The visual arts that penetrated the public and private space, including architecture and objects, were never considered to be personal forms of expression. For centuries, artists and artisans embodied a collective aesthetic sensibility at the expense of individualisation.

During the golden age of Arab history, a miniature artist would have been paid a 10th of the wage given to a copier of calligraphic text. Boullata uses this fact to demonstrate how visual representation has been relegated while verbal expression has been celebrated, and suggests that written art histories in Arabic literature have consequentially been neglected. “With no serious studies of the history of Palestinian art, I needed to start my project from scratch,” he says. “My attempts at writing an art history could only evolve through a critical perspective which involved finding lineages where discontinuities prevailed and recognising affiliations across fragmentation. Only that way could I demonstrate how artists over a century and a half related to each other, without even knowing of each other’s work, and how each responded to their cultural traditions and the challenges of their political plight.”

Boullata’s book, then, retrieves a lost narrative, creating history by unifying disparate, unknown, unappreciated and silent fragments. “I don’t think that you can lead a purely creative life or a purely political life,” he says. “Everything is interrelated, even if we are unaware of that fact. When artists in Gaza were under bombardment and looking after their families, they still kept on thinking about art. They were able to take photographs, make images and create installations even when they were struggling to preserve their own lives.”

By weaving a coherent story, he gives life to the buried and demonstrates that though the world of Palestine is constantly dynamic, its citizens form constituents in the same quest for freedom. As the writer John Berger announces in the preface to the book: “Boullata takes the reader close to the struggle of those visionary, obstinate Palestinian artists who create so that their anonymous heroic land with its ancestral olive trees may survive.”

“I started first by talking to the people I grew up with; my mother and my aunts,” Boullata says of the research process. “They each had their own memories. I always kept a record.” The findings were as personal as they were collective and helped Boullata to trace his artistic growth. “At one point I threw myself into geometric work and started doing sketches based on the grid. I didn’t know where this fascination had come from. Then I remembered that in my childhood my parents had sent me to study with some artists, and one of them was an icon painter who used to do icons based on the grid. That is the method I learnt as a child. The process enabled me to revisit something forgotten,” he says.

In addition to these early findings, Boullata has also tried to support new and emerging artists, including Hani Zurob, whose work was chosen for the cover of the book. “He is a typical Palestinian from the class which has suffered the most,” Boullata says. “His most recent paintings have been made up of bitumen and not paint. I find this very symbolic. Bitumen is the dirtiest of all materials and yet out of this he creates art, producing human faces that look illuminating. He is a guy to watch as he connects with all generations of image-makers.”

Rather than concerning himself with canon formation or encyclopaedic coverage, Boullata has attempted to open up this new field of learning to a wider audience and remains conscious of the huge responsibility that comes with this type of documentation. “I am not a historian,” he tells me. “I am an artist that wanted to give some order to the chaos that Palestinians have been living through. I hope that the book will pave the way for historians. The Palestinians have been silenced and people don’t realise the wealth of what is there in terms of production and creativity. I want Palestinians to be seen, not only as victims, but as artists asserting their creative potential.”

As artists, the Palestinians are part of a wider Middle Eastern creative community, and Boullata is excited about the cultural advances being made in the Gulf. He gives particular praise to creative initiatives championed in the UAE. “What is happening there is very, very special. We have to remember though that the Renaissance in Europe took hundreds of years and though we have all the right ingredients, we are temporally too close to it to really be able to judge.

“It’s also important to remember that art can flourish anywhere,” he says. “In the 1967 Six Day War, a book of children’s art was published. A young Palestinian child had painted a picture entitled Mother Rabbit Giving Birth to Baby Rabbit While the Air Raid Is Going On. I will never forget that. It proved to me that one cannot kill art or the spirit of creativity. It is part of our human continuity, our reproduction, our sense of everything.”

Palestinian Art: From 1850 to the Present is available at www.amazon.com.

Article Courtesy: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 31 - Muslim art in hand of an Armenian

[Friday, July 10, 2009 12:31] HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

LONDON - Iranian born Afruz Amighi has won the new Jameel Prize for her art titled "1001 Pages," with Sevan Bıçakcı, a Turkish artist of Armenian origin, named as one of nine finalists. Hundreds of artists were competing for the Jameel Prize awarded Tuesday. The prize, named after the late Saudi businessman Abdul Latif Jameel, is a new international art award that was launched by the Victoria & Albert Museum, or V&A, in London.

The award aims to raise awareness of the thriving interaction between contemporary practices and the rich artistic heritage of Islam, and to contribute to a broader debate about Islamic culture, in order to provide an exchange between contemporary art and Islamic culture. The prize, which will be awarded every two years, was presented at a ceremony Tuesday at the museum.

The ceremony was attended by artists from various countries. Mark Jones, director of the V&A, presented Afruz Amighi with her prize, worth 25,000 pounds. Bıçakçı, who is known as the "Lord of the Rings" for his jewelry designs, was listed as a candidate for the Jameel Prize by the British Council in Istanbul in August. He was the only non-Muslim member among the finalists. Bıçakçı said he received a special invitation from the museum and became one of nine finalists among 100 candidates.

"Sculptors and graphic designers reflecting the art of Islam in the best way were among the finalists. They chose me in the field of jewelry. This process started a few months ago. I chose the five most special rings that I have never thought of selling for the competition. The rings will be exhibited in Jameel Gallery for two to three months and later on they will be on display for one year in various museums in the Middle East, such as in northern Jerusalem, Jordan and Egypt," Bıçakcı said.

Bıçakçı, who is one of the few well-known names in Turkey in jewelry design, is known around the world. He won the American Jewelry Design "Couture Design Award," which is regarded as the design Oscar, for three successive years.

Article Courtesy: HURRIYET

ARTICLE 30 - Saudi Arabia - MFA - Saudi Ambassador to United Kingdom Attends Award Ceremony for Artists Inspired by Islamic Traditions Held in London

[8 July 2009] Ministry Of Foreign Affairs

London, July 08. Victoria and Albert Museum in London witnessed last night a prize awarding ceremony for the contemporary artists whose products are inspired by Islamic traditions of craft and design. The competition will be held every two years, with a prize of £25,000. The ceremony was attended by Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, the Saudi ambassador to the United Kingdom, and a number of members of the accredited diplomatic corps in addition to officials of museums and persons concerned with urban arts and designs. Mohammed bin Abdul-Latif Jameel, the Saudi businessman, handed over a 25,000 sterling pound worth of prize to the Iranian designer Afruz Amighi. Amighi was born in Iran and now lives and works in the USA. This prize which will be awarded every two years by Mohammed bin Abdul-Latif Jameel will contribute to encouraging the Islamic art.

Article Courtesy: MOFA

ARTICLE 29 - V&A Announces First Winner of Islamic Art Prize

[July 9, 2009] ARTINFO

LONDON—Iranian-born Afruz Amighi has become the first artist to be awarded the Jameel Prize, a new honor to be bestowed biannually to a contemporary artist skilled in traditional Islamic craft and technique. As part of the international prize, launched by the Victoria & Albert Museum and funded by Saudi businessman and philanthropist Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel, Amighi will receive £25,000 ($40,000) and have her winning work, a shadow piece entitled 1001 Pages, displayed with works from eight artists shortlisted for the prize in the new Studio Gallery through September 13. The Jameel Prize, of which architect Zaha Hadid is patron, was created to highlight the marriage of traditional Islamic design and contemporary art.

Article Courtesy: ARTINFO

ARTICLE 28 - Films help Lebanese come to terms with war

[Tuesday, July 07, 2009] By Stephen Dockery - Special to The Daily Star

BEIRUT: At first glance it is difficult to understand what makes the Hangar, a cultural center in the Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik, different from any space like it in Beirut proper. It's uncomfortably warm under its corrugated tin roof in a space that is only about the size of a two-car garage. But it's not the building that makes the Hangar important - it is the ground it's on. The Hangar is hosting the film series, "What is to be done: Lebanon's War Loaded Memory," the seventh part of which was shown Friday night. It is a series that tries to come to terms with the conflicts - confessional, economic and political - that have destabilized Lebanon for many years.

Haret Hreik is a neighborhood filled with memories of recent and past conflicts, and you can't step outside and hide from what makes Beirut's southern suburbs so different from the rest of the capital. It's this location that is what's remarkable about the Hangar, compared to similar gallery spaces.

"We are confronting memories," said Berna Habib, project coordinator at Umam Documentation and Research, the Lebanese NGO that organizes exhibitions at the Hangar.

Umam is currently screening a 10-film series called "Confronting Memories," which analyzes memories surrounding Lebanon's 1975-90 Civil War. The film shown Friday night, "At Day Break" was about a showgirl who left Beirut in the 1970s coming to terms with the city as it is now. The movie had a mixed reception, but the location of the Hangar, a more conservative area, confronted viewers with the differences that have set apart Beirut for so many years.

Habib said making people reconcile with their histories is the idea, "so they can see what happens, they can see how they are living today. So they can comprehend their memory."

Haret Hreik is full of memories. It's a largely Shiite neighborhood that is disconnected from Beirut proper. The lack of understanding between the two areas has led to periods of destabilizing discord. Most recently, in May 2008, on the heels of a government decision to dismantle Hizbullah's private communications network, militants from the party and its allies in the Amal Movement and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party battled in west Beirut with gunmen loyal to the Future Movement and the Progressive Socialist Party.

Harat Hreik was also the site of the heaviest Beirut-area bombing during Israel's summer 2006 assault. Large swaths of the area were flattened during the bombing, because of its centrality to Hizbullah's administrative apparatus.

Lebanon is known for its post-conflict resilience, but the issues that originally created those conflicts are often ignored. Habib said the Hangar is a location that lets people confront with these war scarred memories, particularly the people from Beirut's southern suburbs.

"People need such a place to talk about it for the first time," said Habib. "A lot of things are here for the first time." More details about projects can be found at www.umam-dr.org

Article Courtesy: DAILY STAR

ARTICLE 27 - V&A Announces Afruz Amighi as Winner of the Jameel Prize 2009

[Friday, July 10, 2009] ART DAILY

1001 Pages (2008) is from a series of shadow pieces in which she uses light and shadow to create complex and engaging designs whose precise location can elude the viewer.

LONDON.- Iranian born Afruz Amighi has been chosen as the winner of the first Jameel Prize for her work, 1001 Pages (2008). Mark Jones, Director of the V&A presented Afruz Amighi with the prize, worth £25,000, at a ceremony at the V&A on Tuesday 7 July at 19.30.

The Jameel Prize is a new international art prize for contemporary artists and designers inspired by Islamic traditions of craft and design. Amighi’s winning work is informed by a broad range of Islamic sources, including carpet design, miniature painting and architectural decoration. Aged 34, Afruz Amighi was born in Tehran and lives and works in New York.

1001 Pages (2008) is from a series of shadow pieces in which she uses light and shadow to create complex and engaging designs whose precise location can elude the viewer. She employs a stencil burner to hand-cut the design from a thin, porous sheet of plastic – a material used in the construction of refugee tents. The work is suspended, and an overhead projector illuminates the piece, which casts a shadow of the intricate pattern against a wall.

Mark Jones, chair of the judging panel and Director of the V&A, says “Afruz Amighi has created something new, something that is skilful but which transcends that skill. The work is both striking and subtle, as well as being beautiful. Its use of projected light and shadow loosens the viewer’s focus on the created object, marking a passage from the material to the immaterial.”

An exhibition of work by the winner and eight other short-listed artists and designers opens tomorrow (8 July) and runs until 13 September.

The Jameel Prize aims to raise awareness of the thriving interaction between contemporary practice and the rich artistic heritage of Islam, and to contribute to a broader debate about Islamic culture. The Prize will be awarded every two years.

The winner was decided by a panel of judges chaired by Mark Jones, Director of the V&A. The judges were: Jananne Al-Ani, artist; Khaled Azzam, CEO, The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, London; Ali Yussef Khadra, Founder, Canvas Group, Dubai; Charles Merewether, art historian, writer and curator; Venetia Porter, curator, Middle Eastern Department, British Museum and Parviz Tanavoli, sculptor. The eight other short-listed artists and designers are Hamra Abbas, Reza Abedini, Sevan Biçakçi, Hassan Hajjaj, Khosrow Hassanzadeh, Susan Hefuna, Seher Shah and Camille Zakharia.

Afruz Amighi (b. 1974 Tehran, Iran) lives and works in New York. Amighi received a BA in Political Science at Barnard College and a Master of Fine Arts from New York University in 2007. She has completed a residency program at the School of Visual Arts in New York and was selected for the Aljira Center for Contemporary Art Emerge Program in collaboration with Creative Capital (2006). She is currently working on a solo exhibition at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York (opening spring 2010). Group shows include Just a Ghostly Paper Sigh, 31 Grand Gallery, New York (2007); Please Touch, G.A.S.P. Gallery Boston, Massachusetts (2006); and Young Americans, Charlotte and Philip Hanes Art Gallery, Wake Forest University, Winston Salem, North Carolina (2005). Amighi’s works explore the often-tumultuous social and political history of Iran. Highlighting her own absence from the people and events that shaped these accounts, she casts a unique perspective of modern Iran. Her work references the architecture, myths and religion of present-day Tehran together with textures taken from Persian carpets, beaded curtains and prayer beads.

Article Courtesy: ART DAILY

ARTICLE 27 - ABU DHABI ANNOUNCES CREATION OF MAJOR NEW ANNUAL EVENT DEVOTED TO CONTEMPORARY ART AND DESIGN

[Wednesday July 8 , 2009 3:36:17 PM (GMT+4)] EYE OF DUBAI

INAUGURAL EDITION OF ABU DHABI ART TO BE HELD 19-22 NOVEMBER 2009 IN THE CAPITAL CITY OFTHE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Abu Dhabi to Welcome Top Curators, Artists, Galleries and Collectors to Four Days of Exhibitions, Performances, Presentations, Tours and Gala Events

Abu Dhabi today announced the establishment of a major new annual event featuring international contemporary art and design. Presented under the patronage of His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, Abu Dhabi Art will take place 19-22 November and will celebrate its inaugural edition with an art fair, exhibitions, multi-media performances, presentations, and exclusive tours and gala events at the Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi.

Abu Dhabi Art will include galleries from the Middle East, Europe and the United States, many of which have never before exhibited in the UAE. Internationally renowned galleries will present works of contemporary art and design by international and Middle Eastern artists, with galleries presenting a selection of masterpieces of contemporary European, American and Asian art.

Adding to the vitality of Abu Dhabi Art will be special exhibitions, including a design programme and a monumental installation of large-scale works by Arab artists; an innovative series of performances, discussions and presentations; educational offerings and lectures; private tours of Abu Dhabi Art and of cultural landmarks; and a host of gala receptions and events.

Supported by the Abu Dhabi government, the new Abu Dhabi Art will be a fresh and strongly independent platform, initiated and organised by TDIC (Tourism Development & Investment Company) and ADACH (Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage). Abu Dhabi Art will provide a new perspective on contemporary art and design from the standpoint of the Middle East, while offering visitors and art collectors from elsewhere in the Gulf region and from the world the gracious hospitality of the UAE’s capital city.

“Abu Dhabi Art adds a major new component to the schedule of world-class exhibitions, public programmes, performing arts events and more that are already happening in the Emirate, encouraging the growth of our burgeoning arts scene and building Abu Dhabi’s capacity to be a cultural capital for one of the world’s most dynamic regions,” stated His Excellency Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, Chairman of TDIC and ADACH. “Even as we prepare to welcome the world to the institutions now in development in the Saadiyat Island Cultural District— the Zayed National Museum, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum, and more—we extend a warm invitation to the art world to join us in November, for the first presentation of the new and distinctive Abu Dhabi Art.”

Article Courtesy: EYE OF DUBAI

ARTICLE 26 - New York Exhibits Contemporary Iranian Art

[07 July 2009] Asharq Alawsat

New York, Asharq Al-Awsat - Perhaps it was all down to chance that the opening of a special exhibition of Iranian contemporary plastic arts at The Chelsea Art Museum coincided with the recent events that took place in Iran following the presidential elections that were held on 12 June. The museum hosted 210 art works by Iranian artists based in Iran and others in exile, largely reflecting the changes taking place on the level of cultural debate both inside and outside of the country.

The art works by artists based in Iran are characterized by rebellion against the official institution, in their own style which can only be described as post-modernist. These artists are seeking to demonstrate their vitality and escape traditional [Iranian] art forms which are limited to crafts, calligraphy and decor. At this exhibition entitled ‘Iran Inside Out’ one can distinguish between artists that are based in Iran, exiled artists, and artists who are members of the Iranian Diaspora.

The art works created by artists who are based outside of Iran are characterized by nostalgia, the use of methods and techniques borrowed from Iranian Islamic, popular and cultural history, as well as the use of miniatures, techniques used in calligraphy and décor, as well as some aspects of folklore.

The works of artists based inside Iran appear to be more vigorous and fresh in the way they use post-modernist art techniques. The “inside” works varied as they made the most of the media and new photographic and video techniques. These works sought to affiliate themselves with the “minimalist school” by using as few tools as possible to satirize life under the theocratic regime based on the concept of Waliyat al Faqih.

The exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, photography and video exhibits, as well as installation art. The exhibition contains the works of 35 artists based in Iran, as well as art work from 21 exiled Iranian artists, some of whom have gained a distinct presence within the United States and Europe.

This is the first exhibition to take place in New York to present a complete picture of contemporary Iranian art. The coordinator of the exhibition Sam Bardaouil said, “Some people think that art in Iran is about veiled women and calligraphy. Whoever thinks that has not seen the real art work that is beginning to grow in Iran.”

In the blurbs included in the exhibition catalogue, some of the Iranian-based artists addressed the difficulties they face with regards to censorship, and some of these artists discussed ways of overcoming this.

The exhibition put on show a painting by Mehdi Farhadian of a women’s football team. The picture, characterized by its soft colours, is a protest against the regime that does not allow women to attend football matches.

The exhibition is unique in the way that it brings together diverse works of art, representing a rare moment in which different worlds meet; the world of the Diaspora and that of internal Iran and its art work that symbolizes a protest against the culture of the official system.

The exhibition focuses on the new generation of artists inside [Iran], and succeeds in highlighting the efforts of this generation to provide surprising works of art that demonstrate that the mullah regime and its culture do not represent it. The diversity of this art work seeks to express everyday aspects of a culture that is portrayed as being uniform.

This artwork is characterized by a new energy that is willing to try different methods in order to keep up with the cultural transformations that the new generations in Iran is experiencing. This is reflected in the recent protests that were held in Iran following the elections against the authority and culture of the Wilayat al Faqih.

Article Courtesy: Asharq Alawsat

ARTICLE 25 - Abu Dhabi Art to Debut in November

[July 8, 2009] ARTINFO

ABU DHABI—The art world has one more event to add to its fall calendar: This November will see the inaugural edition of Abu Dhabi Art, a new festival to take place annually in the United Arab Emirates’ capital city. Supported by the local government and presented by General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi Art will run November 19–22 and will consist of exhibitions, multimedia performances, and educational offerings such as lectures and discussions, which in the evenings will be complemented by gala events at the Emirates Palace. The featured work will be international, highlighting galleries from the Middle East, United States, and Europe, and displaying major pieces by contemporary American, European, and Asian artists.

Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, chairman of both the Tourism Development & Investment Co. and the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, the organizations which jointly initiated the event, hopes that Abu Dhabi Art will further the city’s emergence as a new cultural center: “Abu Dhabi Art adds a major new component to the schedule of world-class exhibitions, public programs, performing arts events, and more that are already happening in the Emirate, encouraging the growth of our burgeoning arts scene and building Abu Dhabi’s capacity to be a cultural capital for one of the world’s most dynamic regions.”

Article Courtesy: ARTINFO

ARTICLE 24 - Are we colonialising Middle Eastern art?

[Issue 204, July/August 2009 - Published online 8July 2009] By Anna Somers Cocks for THE ART NEWSPAPER

No one needs western-style “fine art” with some orientalist flourishes

Short-listed for the Jameel Prize: Hassan Hajjaj, Buy Me, 2008

Middle Eastern art is on the rise. There are more countries represented at the Venice Biennale this year than ever before; Middle Eastern art is now visible in New York and London; most important of all, in the Middle East itself, visual art is beginning to be hot, at least with the cosmopolitan elite, instead of lagging far behind poetry and music.

Now there is the jostling for position. Who is going to define what this art should be? Who gets in to the fast track? Curators and critics, auction houses and dealers, foundations and museums are all in the game. There is a lot at stake, because Middle Eastern art is still a fragile plant; it can easily be trained in one direction or another by outsiders. Why outsiders? Because it is still the western art institutions and western money, both pro bono and commercial, that give validation to contemporary art anywhere in the world. A grant from the Ford Foundation, or a showing in the New Museum in New York make all the difference to an artist's career.

The west largely defined the Chinese avant-garde of the last few years, choosing for its museums and market the art that fitted its concept of what an avant-garde should be. It blew up the bubble of the past two or three years, with a corrupting effect on some of the artists, who started churning out formulaic work for the market. Something similar happened in the 18th century when one sort of porcelain was made for export to the west, while a completely different and much more refined aesthetic governed what the Chinese made for themselves. In the visual arts today, the parallel might be with brush painting, which is still what the Chinese themselves like best, but which we in the west tend to dismiss as retrograde, repetitive and lacking in ideas‹all qualities that disqualify it from being "Contemporary", although, of course, it is contemporary, just not our contemporary.

The way the London museums have dealt with these two artistic visions is that the Tate collects western-style Chinese contemporary while Chinese-style contemporary is collected by the British Museum. Now something similar is going to happen with Middle Eastern art. The conceptual work, film and photography are being sought by the Tate, while calligraphic work, the art that has the most deep-rooted following in the Middle East, will go into the British Museum. This sounds very reasonable, except that the market follows the lead of the Tate, not the British Museum, because of the key role the Tate has in the international art system. The decisive power of money will come down behind the Tate's choices, inevitably affecting what artists choose to produce. If this happens we will be artistically the poorer, which is why it is good to hear of a museum initiative that seems to be sensitive to the need to nurture an art that does not just mimic our own.

To stimulate new Islamic design, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London has launched a biennial prize of £25,000 "for contemporary artists and designers inspired by Islamic traditions of craft and design". The winner, announced on 7 July, is Iranian born Afruz Amighi who was chosen for her work 1001 Pages (2008). The sponsor is the Saudi businessman, Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel. The aim here is for designers (and artists, because there is a lot of cross-over between the two nowadays) to draw on this different aesthetic and sensibility, but to make it evolve. It is not about repeating old motifs or, worse still, producing orientalist pastiche, of which there is far too much in the Middle East, especially the Gulf. To prove that it is bang up-to-date, the Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid is patron of the prize. The finalists go on display from 8 July.

But what do the finalists reveal? Only three of them actually live in the Middle East and only four were trained there. Why? Does this reflect the quality of the works submitted, or bias on the part of the judges? Without seeing the rejects, who can tell? What is definitely disappointing is that the finalists are almost all in the "fine art" category, when this prize explicitly invokes the Islamic traditions of craft and design. Is western prejudice about what counts as art making itself felt here too?

There is already the Abraaj Capital Prize for fine art from Islamic countries. For the Jameel Prize to have its own identity it needs to hunt out the designers who come out of different habits of life, just as the Aga Khan Award for Architecture seeks out architecture that answers the specific needs of Islamic countries. Then maybe it will give us in the west something new to look at, while inspiring architects and industrial manufacturers in Islamic countries, and breathing new life into the traditional crafts. What no one needs is western-style "fine art" with some orientalist flourishes. That would be a sad colonialisation of the art of the region.

The writer is the general editorial director of The Art Newspaper
Article Courtesy: THE ART NEWSPAPER

ARTICLE 23 - Face of War Pervades New Beirut Art Center

[July 6, 2009] PATRICK HEALY for THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Beirut Art Center, in a former factory, opened in January. Photo: Bryan Denton for The New York Times

BEIRUT — Along the Beirut River just outside of the city center is an industrial neighborhood of small warehouses and factories, car dealerships and crumbling, squat buildings that bear the scars of bullets from Lebanon’s wars. It is a place, in other words, that would be the perfect home for the art galleries of Chelsea or the meatpacking district — and, indeed, where a cultural space that would be the envy of New York has come to life.

The center is located in a 16,000-square-foot space occupying two floors of a former factory. Photo: Bryan Denton for The New York Times

The Beirut Art Center, a 16,000-square-foot space occupying two floors of a former factory, opened on Jan. 15 with a gala that drew a thousand people, and it has quickly emerged as a popular destination for Beirutis, tourists and art critics at the city’s newspapers and across Lebanon.

Through next Tuesday it is housing a provocative exhibition of work by 20 Lebanese artists titled “The Road to Peace: Paintings in Times of War, 1975-1991,” a collection of pieces that portray the trauma of the Lebanese civil war. Most of the work has not been shown publicly before, the exhibition organizers say, and reflects the art center’s ambitions to become a major cultural player in a modern, peaceful Lebanon.

At the Beirut Art Center: A 1976 work by Abdel Hamid Baalbaki from “The Road to Peace,” an exhibition of works made by Lebanese artists during that country’s civil war, from 1975 to 1991.Photo: Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Planning for the art center began in 2005. Lamia Joreige, right, a visual artist, and Sandra Dagher, left, the center's director, said that the city lacked the museums and cultural spaces worthy of a metropolis of its size and history. Photo: Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Planning for the art center began in 2005. Lamia Joreige, a visual artist, and Sandra Dagher, previously the director of the gallery Espace SD in downtown Beirut, said that they thought that the city lacked the museums and cultural spaces worthy of a metropolis of its size and history. Specifically, they said in an e-mail interview, they saw a need for a contemporary art center that could mount solo and group shows of established and emerging Lebanese artists to complement the permanent exhibitions at government-supported museums in Beirut. The two scoured the city for months for an open space suitable for a large-scale gallery. Early on they found an appealing site but had not raised the money, and then had difficulty finding a location once funds were in hand.

The war between the Hezbollah paramilitary forces and Israel during the summer of 2006 slowed their search too, but eventually they agreed on the factory space in the Jisr el-Wati neighborhood, where construction of residential projects and a municipal school are also bringing new bustle to the streets.

“Although Beirut Art Center has not been open for a long time, it has very quickly become a cultural landmark in the city,” Ms. Dagher said, noting that both local residents and a steady stream of tourists have visited in the past six months.

Mr. Healy writes that the center "has quickly emerged as a popular destination for Beirutis, tourists and art critics at the city's newspapers and across Lebanon." Photo: Bryan Denton for The New York Times

“We are continuously working to widen and develop our audience,” she added, “by upkeeping our growing mailing list, ensuring press coverage of our events, placing posters for our activities in strategic points in the city and offering guided tours to schools and universities.”

The center, a stand-alone building of whitewashed cement, was designed by the Lebanese architect Raed Abillama and financed by a mix of donors, like the prominent philanthropist and businessman Marwan T. Assaf; corporate sponsors like Samsung; and various public and private institutions.

The design includes space for a small bookshop, a cafe, a small theater for lectures and films, and a “mediathèque” of computers where visitors can search the center’s databases of paintings, photographs, audio clips of musical compositions and artists’ biographies.

The title of the current exhibition comes from a series of print drawings by Aref Rayess that depict Lebanese survivors of war. In one drawing a family takes shelter with a gunman behind a brick wall as chaos ensues nearby; in another, shadowy faces with pained expressions are etched into city buildings.

The specter of death suffuses the exhibition. Theo Mansour’s “Mass Grave” blends red, crimson and other bloodlike colors in acrylic forms of corpses and writhing bodies, many with their mouths agape as if screaming. “Blind,” a series of oil drawings by Jean Khalifeh, shows people staring directly ahead with deadened black, blue and purple-colored eyes.

Childlike innocence marks Odile Mazloum’s painting “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Young girls sit in two straight lines, reminiscent of the young Parisian girls in “Madeline,” as an older woman sits near them, looking forlorn; the work uses different hues of blue to create a strong sense of melancholy.

"Through next Tuesday it is housing a provocative exhibition of work by 20 Lebanese artists titled 'The Road to Peace: Paintings in Times of War, 1975-1991,' a collection of pieces that portray the trauma of the Lebanese civil war." Photo: Bryan Denton for The New York Times

There are only a few images that easily resonate with American memories of Beirut in the 1980s but they are transfixing. In the work “The April the Lilies Died” by Mohammad Rawas, etchings and stencil drawings depicting destruction during 1983 include the bombed-out barracks where, in October of that year, 241 Americans who were part of a multinational peacekeeping force were killed. The canvas also features drawings of an American flag and two human hearts.

Nadia al-Issa, the director’s assistant at the art center, said that the title of Mr. Rawas’s work memorialized a close friend of his who died in April 1983. Ms. Issa also pointed out a brief statement by the artist that is posted near the artwork.

“When I came back to Beirut in 1981, I deliberately ignored and avoided working on the theme of war until 1983, when the war had its severe toll on me through the death of a very close friend,” Mr. Rawas said. “The war made me aware of the futility of art whose raison d’être was considered to simply please the eye.”

"Most of the work has not been shown publicly before, the exhibition organizers say, and reflects the art center's ambitions to become a major cultural player in a modern, peaceful Lebanon." Photo: Bryan Denton for The New York Times

He went on to add that he wanted to capture that era through work that was blunt and without pleasing flourishes: a minimal visual composition, unsaturated hues, extensive use of transferred or collaged photographs, and the use of written phrases and text as an adjunct language of expression.

Besides the paintings, four twisting wood sculptures — each broken into two pieces that fit together perfectly — represent the artist Saloua Raouda Choucair’s evocation of fusing the war-torn sections of east and west Beirut back into a whole. Another artist, Ginane Makki Bacho, created several objects made of shrapnel recovered from battle during the civil war.

The most surprising piece of the exhibition is in a small, windowless room off the main gallery space. Three adult-size caskets are arranged on the floor; they are filled with small lighted candles that drip wax and with stacks of books about art and creation; on the top of one pile is a book whose cover simply reads, “Imagination” — a visual cue that stays in the mind of visitors to the art center as they pour back onto the streets of a newly vital Beirut neighborhood.

Article Courtesy: THE NEW YORK TIMES

WORK 06 - HASSAN SHARIF

Name: Hassan Sharif
Title: Spoons 4
Medium: Stainless steel & copper
Size: Work consists of 3 pieces each 45 X 45 X 45 cm.
Year: 2008

HASSAN SHARIF

ARTICLE 22 - Tehran to exhibit German, Iranian paintings

[Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:52:46 GMT] PRESSTV

Iran's Mah-e-Mehr gallery is set to mount an exhibition of works by contemporary Iranian and German painters in the capital, Tehran. Tehran-Frankfurt, Frankfurt-Tehran will display modern drawings by Elaheh Heidari, European realist works by Iman Afsarian, and minimalist paintings by Vahid Hakim. The event will also showcase works by German painter Jorg Ahrnt and Berlin-based artist Michael Hakimi, which are inspired by the information signs at Berlin's Museum of Islamic Art.

Organized by Germany's cultural office in Iran and the Goethe Institute, the event will be held from July 7 to 20, 2009, as a sequel to a similar event which was held in Frankfurt in 2008.

THR-FRA/FRA-THR will highlight the responses of different visitors to the cultural, social and political backgrounds of the displayed works. - TE/HGH

Picture 01: A work by Iman Afsarian
Article Courtesy: PRESSTV.IR

ARTICLE 21 - In search of a place to hang their art

[Jul 04, 2009 04:30 AM] Peter Goddard for THE STAR

Contemporary Palestinian works resonate at bi-annual exhibition

In 'Hannoun,' Taysir Batniji simulates poppy petals by sharpening one drawing pencil after another, a futile exercise signalling preparation for work he’ll never be able to do.

VENICE–An international art fair needs a month or so to allow for an understanding of memorable work, especially after the kind of media blitz that enveloped last month's opening of the 53rd Venice Biennale. Such a post-opening revelation came for this observer amid a first-time pavilion for a nation that officially doesn't exist: the Palestinian installation on the Campo S. Cosmo, about as far from the two main Biennale sites as you can get and still be within the city limits. Even the exhibition's title, "Palestine c/o Venice" suggests displacement. Mail that's addressed "c/o" or in "care of" is intended for someone of no fixed address, in this instance an entire people, it's suggested. "The case of the Palestinian postal service," suggests curator Salwa Mikdadi, "is a metaphor for the Palestinian condition."

Ramallah Syndrome (2008-2009), an audio piece by Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti set in a darkened room, offers a welter of voices of people struggling to comprehend a national identity that's a "fantasy of a co-existence of occupation and freedom," says one invisible speaker named Ale. Mikdadi's entire group show is likewise made up of resentment and confusion coming from "not belonging." And it says more about the workings of the Biennale itself than anything in the 29 official national pavilions in the airy Gardini to the east, or by the 90 or so artists showing in the Arsenale nearer St. Mark's Square. For starters, the Palestinians are housed in the "Giudecca," Venice's old Jewish quarter, on the second floor of a 15th-century building that once was home to Benedictine nuns.

The sombre eloquence of Hannoun (1972-2009) by Taysir Batniji – a Paris-based Palestinian artist forbidden by Israeli authorities to return to his studio in Gaza – delivers the exhibition's message of a longing felt by people while living on land once their own. Unlike the Canadian wilderness, the Palestinian landscape has been drained of any sense of original, primal innocence. Batniji's workspace is shown in a large black-and-white photograph facing a floor strewn with delicate, red-rimmed softwood shavings resembling poppy petals. Poppies – "Hannoun" in Palestinian Arabic – die quickly when picked, as do many of the soldiers wearing them. Batniji's petals come from sharpening one drawing pencil after another, a futile exercise signalling preparation for work he'll never be able to do. Few European cities have had stronger historical ties to the Middle East than Venice, with many borrowings from medieval Arabic architecture still visible along the city's canals. Moreover, a number of Arab countries have made strong Biennale showings in recent years.

In 2005, the Egyptian Pavilion was given a Golden Lion award as the leading national pavilion. This year the United Arab Emirates have made its presence known in the Arsenale, with exhibitions and live performances in the "Jackson Pollock Bar." A good many Middle Eastern artists have likewise been represented in Venice with work sponsored by other nationalities. Two years back Palestinian artist Emily Jacir – included in Mikdadi's show – won a top Biennale prize while being shown in the Italian pavilion.Jacir has since emerged as an international art star. But like the Palestine pavilion itself, her planned citywide intervention has become something left only to the imagination. With stazione (2009), Jacir intended to have each water taxi station along one of Venice's main canal lines be identified by its name written in Arabic, as well as in Italian. The idea was readily accepted by the city – Venetian ties with Arabic literature also run deep, with the city's printers producing Arabic books in the 16th century – but was rejected at the last moment by the company in charge of the taxis. "No reason" was given, as Mikdadi told me in a recent email. Anticipating the rejection, Jacir has printed 10,000 guides ready for distribution, with the Arabic-named stops listed.

Other suggestions that the Palestinians set up camp between the Israeli and American pavilions met with a similar lack of enthusiasm. Yet in 1948, a group of Jewish artists living in then-British-occupied Palestine appeared in an official Biennale pavilion called "Palestine" only to have its named changed to "Israel" after the May 14, 1948 establishment of the Israeli state. Although while not alone in not securing official national recognition at the Venice Biennale – Wales and Scotland remain among the outsiders – the Palestine response these days must be considered unique. Using "Palestine c/o Venice" as a starting point, American-trained, Ramallah-based artist Khalil Rabah is establishing the "3rd Riwaq Biennale 2009 – A Geography: 50 Villages," to take place throughout the summer in 50 Palestinian villages, some of them truly tiny.

Now isn't this "a radical shake-up of the biennale concept" as Rabah suggests?

"Palestine c/o Venice" continues until Sept. 30; info: palestinecoveniceb09.org

Peter Goddard is a Toronto freelance writer. He can be reach at

peter_g1@sympatico.ca

Article Courtesy: THE STAR

ARTICLE 20 - Walid Raad Solo Show as Part of the XV Advanced Course in Visual Arts of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti

[Sunday, July 5, 2009] ARTDAILY

Walid Raad, I could die before I get a rifle, 1989. Galerie Sfeir-Semler-Hamburg-Beirut/Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London. © Walid Raad.

COMO, ITALY.- The XV edition of the Advanced Course in Visual Arts of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti takes place in Como, Italy 1-22 July 2009. The course with Visiting Professor Walid Raad (1967, Chbanieh, Lebanon), artist and visual arts professor living between Beirut and New York, is entitled We Can Make Rain but No One Came to Ask.

The course, directed since 1995 by Annie Ratti, is curated by Anna Daneri and Cesare Pietroiusti with the coordination of Karen Tomatis. This year's course will investigate the theme of violence through the analyses of artworks, writings, and concepts dealing with events of extreme physical, psychological, and other forms of violence. In particular, the workshop will concentrate on the philosophical, historical, political, economic, and formal assumptions that informed Walid Raad's art projects, and on Jalal Toufic's concepts, especially 'The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster.'

2 July Walid Raad will be at the centre of two events open to the public: the opening of his first Italian solo show at the Spazio San Francesco and an introductory lecture presenting the work on show.

The lecture/performance, entitled Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: A Preface will take place at 6.00 pm in the premises of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti. During the talk the artist will present his exhibition project, discussing the various events, situations and considerations that motivated his on-going work on the history of art in the Arab world.

At 8.00 pm, following the conference, there will be the opening of Walid Raad's first Italian solo exhibition, Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: A History of Art in the Arab World, Part I _ Volume 1 _ Chapter 1: Beirut (1992-2005), open until 30 August at the Spazio San Francesco.

The show in Como is part of the research and art project that Walid Raad initiated in 2007 about the history of contemporary and modern art in the Arab world which is also entitled Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: A History of Art in the Arab World. Raad's project explores the recent emergence of a new physical infrastructure for the visual arts in the Middle East and the Gulf. In a context where cultural tourism has become an instrument of economic growth and power, Raad's project leans on the ideological, economic and political dimensions of this phenomenon to ask whether andhow culture and tradition in the Arab world may have been affected, materially and immaterially, by the various wars that have been waged there by native and external powers.

Scratching on Things I Could Disavow expands upon the intensive, research-based methodology of Raad's 15-year art project The Atlas Group that examined the social, political, psychological, and aesthetic conditions of the Lebanese wars. This new project marks a critical juncture in Raad's practice, at once a departure from The Atlas Group while expanding its historical and theoretical framework.

In his exhibition in Como, Raad presents three works form his new on-going project Scratching on Things I Could Disavow. The three works are titled: The Atlas Group (1989-2004); On Walid Sadek's Love Is Blind (Modern Art, Oxford, UK, 2006); and Index XXVI_Artists. Raad refers to these works as the stage-sets from a forthcoming play about the history of art in Beirut between 1992 and 2005, the so-called post-war period in Lebanon.

During the opening, and until 23 July, it will be possible to sign in for walking tours of the exhibition with Walid Raad, intended as previews of the play that is yet to be written and which the Lebanese artist is currently developing.

The publication documenting Walid Raad's projects will be presented in October during the end of course exhibition in Venice in collaboration with the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa.

Walid Raad is an artist and an Associate Professor of Art in The Cooper Union (New York, USA). Raad's works to date include mixed media installations, performance, video and photography, and literary essays. Raad's recent works include The Atlas Group, a fifteen-year project between 1989 and 2004 about the contemporary history of Lebanon, with particular emphasis on the Lebanese wars of 1975 to 1991. Raad's works have been shown at Documenta 11 (Kassel, Germany), The Venice Biennale, The Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin, Germany), The Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), Homeworks (Beirut, Lebanon) and numerous other museums and venues in Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Walid Raad is also a member of the Arab Image Foundation (Beirut/New York).

Article Courtesy: ART DAILY

WORK 05 - Ayman Baalbaki

Name: Ayman Baalbaki
Title: "Abbas Al Mousawi" St., Yassine bldg.
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 280 x 200cm
Year: 2008

AGIAL ART

ARTICLE 19 - Beirut Art Center to throw summer fundraising party

[Thursday, July 02, 2009] Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: "Turn 100,000 LBP into art!" is the tagline for the Beirut Art Center's first ever fundraising party. The art space, located near Jisr al-Wati, is throwing open its doors on July 16 for a night of revelry in order to help the center sustain its activities. The Beirut Art Center (B.A.C.) is a non-profit, non-governmental association, space and platform dedicated to contemporary art in Lebanon.

One of the main aims of the center is to support local and regional contemporary artists, who face great difficulties due to the lack of financial and institutional support available. For the price of 100,000 LBP, the benefactor gains access to an open bar and the opportunity to groove to the tunes of DJs Dalila, Ziad Nawfal, and Mayaline. The video jockey known as Essabbagh will be projecting moving images.

In its press release, the B.A.C. also promises the chance to "hobnob with artists and art-lovers." Since its opening in January 2009, the B.A.C. has staged four exhibitions, including "Exposure 2009," featuring the work of six emerging Lebanese artists. The current exhibition, "The Road to Peace," displays works made between 1975 and 1991 in response to Lebanon's Civil War.

Article Courtesy: The Daily Star

WORK 04 - Reza Aramesh

Name: Reza Aramesh
Title: Between the eye and the object falls the shadow
Medium: B & W silver gelatin print
Size: 124 x 157 cm

REZA ARAMESH & B21 GALLERY

ARTICLE 18 - Book: New Perspectives in Contemporary Iranian Art

[Nargess Shahmanesh-Banks] WALLPAPER

It is near impossible to write a book on contemporary art in Iran without establishing a socio-political foundation. In a country where all aspects of life have been politicised in the last 30 years – that is since the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the Islamic Republic – the visual arts, in particular have been reflecting, analysing and attempting to make some sense of the complexities of this ancient land.

Much has been written about the Iranian ‘new wave’ cinema. Films by such directors as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf have won awards at international film festivals and have become part of the vocabulary of contemporary world cinema. With such public and critical success one can be justified in asking why so little has been written and exhibited on Iranian contemporary art. The latest book on the subject ‘Different Sames: New Perspectives in Contemporary Iranian Art’ aims to change all this.

Artist and historian Hamid Keshmirshekan sets the scene for this 300-plus page visually and intellectually stimulating book by tracing the foundation of a contemporary art movement in Iran to the late 19th century when a number of intellectuals travelled to the west and came under its influence.

The trend peaked in the 1960s under the influence of the last king; Mohammad Reza Shah’s aspiration to create the ‘Great Civilisation’, a rather superficial western-orientated art movement, was actively encouraged by the court. This gave rise to an art movement ith a rather limited indigenous flavour, only accessible to the privileged classes.

The Islamic Republic, which took power in 1979, immediately rejected all modern art as decadent, excluding any discourse. It didn’t help that most forward-thinking artists immediately fled the country for Europe and the US. What replaced the vacuum was reminiscent of Socialist Realism, an art form dominated by the large propaganda murals that for years decorated the urban landscape. This so called ‘Irano-Islamic’ art also included the return of calligraphy, albeit using only religious texts.

Action 28: You were dead, theirs was the future … Homage to Robert Mapplethorpe’ by Reza Aramesh, 2007 - C-Type print mounted on aluminium

Contemporary Iranian art was born at the close of the 20th century under the reformist president Mohammad Khatami. He actively encouraged an external dialogue with western artists as well as with the large Iranian diaspora, for example inviting New York-based artist Shirin Neshat to exhibit in Iran. The internet opened the window for Iranian artists to join the global debate. A new generation of artists, many of them women, emerged and began expressing themselves through other mediums such as video installation and art photography.

Which brings us to the present. The current art scene is dominated by a younger generation - who incidentally make up over 60% of the population. However, unlike their contemporaries, and the diaspora, they are unconnected with the revolution as they have little or no memory of a pre-revolution Iran. According to Keshmirshekan, these artists are depicting their own biography within a society undergoing radical change rather than making a political statement like their predecessors.

Miss Hybrid 6, by Shirin Aliabadi, 2006. Inkjet print on plexiglass. Courtesy of Shirin Aliabadi and the Third Line Gallery in Dubai

The author says that many reject a ‘fixed, unified identity’ opting instead for a hybrid, negotiable one. They are determined to address the issues of their Iran, not of its ‘Persian’ past. Their references to traditional and cultural values are often tongue-in-cheek and satirical – and the images at times a kitsch interpretation of traditional Iranian forms.

This is incidentally the same young generation that are at the forefront of the current social unrest in Iran. Their campaign for reform is intimately linked with new technology - hence the ‘Twitter revolution’. Their struggle isn’t necessarily about ‘isms’ and ideology but about being part of a connected world, and of course being free.

From the ‘Fashion’ series, by Peyman Hooshmandzadeh, 2008

Different Sames is an A-Z of the work of over a hundred contemporary artists working both in and out of Iran. The choice is interesting and represents a mix of emerging and established artists sourced by the editor Hossein Amirsadeghi and curatorial director Maryam Homayoun-Eisler, herself an avid collector of contemporary art.

The visual element is contextualised by essays by art historians, as well as interviews with some of the more prominent artists, collectors and curators. Different Sames joins the recently published Iranian Photography Now and Urban Iran, all part of an ongoing desire to explore Iran through graffiti and street art, photography and other forms of visual arts. Ultimately, this is a culture eager to form its own visual language.

Article Courtesy: WALLPAPER

WORK 03 - Amal Kenawy

Name: Amal Kenawy
Title: Booby Trapped Heaven
Medium: Video - Photograph
Year: 2006

AMAL KENAWY

ARTICLE 17 - UAE's oneness

[RAJAB 8 1430 A.H./TUESDAY JUNE, 30 2009] Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi

I was amongst the fortunate people who attended the UAE's debut at the 53rd edition of the Venice Biennial, without a doubt a very prestigious event. It was a milestone for a country that has come so far not only in terms of economy, business and trade, but now in terms of culture and the arts. From the two-decade-old Sharjah Biennial to the weekly Dubai Art Exhibition openings and the upcoming Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi, the UAE is now challenging the traditional art centers of the Middle East, including Cairo, Tehran, Istanbul and Beirut and is placing itself firmly on the global art map.

Seeing the UAE banner and Emirati volunteers working diligently left an unforgettable positive impression on all of us who traveled for the event. It was a surreal moment, a proud moment but ultimately it was a bittersweet moment. The positive energy of the Zayed University female volunteers, working hand in hand with each other was almost overshadowed by one drawback. Unlike every other country that took part, the UAE was the only one that was officially represented in two separate pavilions across a canal from each other. The issue of conflicting identities has always been an unwanted presence in the psyche of Emirati nationals. Are we one country or seven states within a federation, or are we a bit of both? Lately, it seems that there has been a tug going on within the country and I thought it had never clearly manifested as it did during the Venice Biennial.

On the one hand, the UAE Pavilion organized by the Ministry of Culture featured not only Emirati artists like Lamya Gargash and Ibtissam Abdul Aziz but also UAE-based artists such as Tarek Al Ghoussein, a Kuwaiti of Palestinian heritage who lectures in the American University of Sharjah, while on the other hand, the Abu Dhabi Authority on Culture and Heritage (ADACH) had its very own pavilion that also featured Ms. Abdul Aziz and Hassan Sharif, another artist that was represented in the UAE pavilion. I thought that featuring Al Ghoussein was a testament of the inclusive nature that lies within the spirit of the UAE. The question everyone was asking in private was "why two pavilions?" Now I am asking it in public: Why two pavilions? Does the federal government know about this? And if so what is their position? To be fair there were other "special cases" like a dedicated Venice Pavilion in addition to an Italian one, but that can be attributed to it being the host city. Additionally, Australian artists were represented in two pavilions but the second was an individual effort not an official government initiative.

It hit me hard when I saw the European Nordic countries participate in one pavilion, and so did a country that no one hears of today Czechoslovakia -- yes, indeed, I had to rub my eyes to believe it myself. The truth is that had the UAE's contribution been divided under a single banner by allocating video art, installation art, or photography and painting in separate pavilions it would have made sense. But not only did both pavilions feature the same art forms, they even featured the same artists. What really got under my skin was the fact that we are in an international arena and we must be represented as one nation. Keep in mind that there are some instances in which a federation's components can participate individually; one example is football in Britain where England, Scotland and Wales participate separately in European Championships and internationally. But it would seem mighty odd if England had a team and Britain had a team in the very same competition.

One major solace was the fact that Sheikh Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, Chairman of Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority and the emirate's Tourism Development & Investment Company, which oversaw the ADACH pavilion visited and inaugurated the UAE Pavilion first along with Dr. Lamees Hamdan, commissioner of the UAE Pavilion, a gesture that resonated in the hearts and minds of many who were present. The best example to draw from for the future is the UAE's own experience. As one nation, under one flag, with one people, including our expatriates, we are stronger, we are better and our prospects in competing with the rest of the world are greatly enhanced. So whoever is responsible for our participation in the next Venice Biennial in 2011: please make sure the official UAE pavilion is held under one banner no matter in how many locations it is held at because under one flag, we are stronger, we are better and our prospects in competing with the other pavilions are greatly enhanced.

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi is a UAE-based art collector and co-founder of Meem Gallery in Dubai. Source: www.arabnews.com

Article Courtesy: TRIUMPH NEWSPAPERS

ARTICLE 16 - Iran's hybrids unveiled

[27 June 2009] Katherine Butler for THE INDEPENDENT

Women in the Islamic Republic are mixing east and west in their battle against the chador, as a new exhibition of female artists shows

One morning this spring I spent four pre-dawn hours in Tehran's Imam Khomeini international airport waiting for a flight back to London. Far from an inconvenience, the delay was an opportunity to attend a visual pageant, to conduct unscientific anthropological observation of Iran's young women and their particular way of dressing or making themselves over. The ones that fascinated me were not so much the severe-looking girls in full chador, devoid of makeup, bags jutting out under the all-encompassing cloak. No, I was staring at the women whom the religious girls dismiss as "extremists".

Four in particular caught my eye as I sipped my coffee. They were waiting for their flight to Dubai, one of the few places to which Iranians can travel freely and where many of them go – metaphorically at least – to let their hair down. Excited about their trip probably, they were in high spirits as they sipped juice drinks. But they had also, even at that ungodly hour, gone to extraordinary lengths to get into character. The heels on their boots were sky high, their wrists draped in gold bracelets, nails painted; on their laps perched Louis Vuitton bags. Over their skinny jeans (skirts are a no-go area in Iran) they wore skimpy shirt-waister tunics, belted tightly around their stick-thin waists but cut to the upper thigh to preserve their modesty or to preserve the honour of Iranian men, as the revolutionary law requires.

For Islamic veils, mandatory by law at all times in public, they wore silk squares of lime green, shocking pink or electric blue, tied under the chin like a Fifties housewife, and tilted back at an angle. There was so much hair on show that the scarves not only constituted "bad hijab", in other words, contravene Islamic standards, but they defied gravity. They were there, you had to conclude, not out of any conviction in the ideals of the Islamic revolution, but purely for legal reasons. From under the scarves loomed big hair, dyed (or maybe bleached) blond, but so groomed and sprayed and backcombed and beehived that they could have been wearing wigs.

It wasn't just the hairdos that looked artificial – they themselves looked unreal, like Sindy dolls, or extras from the set of The Stepford Wives. There was something else. Underneath the layers of foundation and eye shadow, their distinctive Persian features had been airbrushed away. Probably by a plastic surgeon. Tehran can lay claim to being the rhinoplasty capital of the world. And it is possibly also the bee-stung Botoxed lip capital of the world. You see the walking wounded everywhere, surgical tape criss-crossing the nose, not that it looks as if it is providing any medical function, but almost like a bandage in a cartoon. The first time you see the nose tape you think you've just seen somebody who walked into a door. But then you realise they're worn openly, proudly, a badge of honour, money or status or maybe a badge that says "I can look Western".

Appearance has been a battle ground in Iran since Ayatollah Khomeini's 1979 Islamic Revolution. In the early days, lipstick was an outrage, an insult to the blood of the martyrs. Ties on men were equally reviled, too Western for the devout bearded ones. Now, at least to the eye of the outsider, there seem to be two extremes of womanhood, the chador wearer, or the other revolutionary, the woman who has grown up on satellite TV shows from the West, and who deploys her hybrid glamour to defy the clerics and morality police while staying within the law – just.

The airport princesses might have been posing for Shirin Aliabadi, an artist born in Tehran in 1973, who uses her photographic art to explore the politically charged choices of such women as well as having a go at our Western perceptions of Iranian women as repressed, downtrodden creatures. Her women are exaggerated but, like the reality on the streets of north Tehran, have staged a cultural rebellion, often using blond highlights and blue contact lenses as props in this pursuit. The collision of Islamic rules and an extreme interpretation of what is fashionable in the West is puzzling, mildly disturbing, just as it is when you see it in the flesh.

Are these Iranian women just expressing themselves like members of a youth subculture anywhere in the world, or are they intentionally building a new image, a different identity, one that is in conformity with and at the same time utterly at odds with the expectations of the repressively conservative theocracy in which they exist? And if it's the latter, have they unwittingly fallen into another trap, mocking the shackles of chadors "manteaux" and hijabs but substituting them for the tyranny of perpetual grooming, dyeing, plucking, nipping and tucking, all to achieve a "Western" ideal of beauty?

Some of Aliabadi's works can be seen in Made in Iran, a group show featuring an exciting new generation of contemporary artists in Iran. Also exhibiting is the 39-year-old Simin Keramati, whose portrait Make Up features a veiled, mute woman with her eyeliner and lipstick smeared and smudged, as though after violence. "Make Up is a painting from the series 'self portrait'; all the works are about objections I have to the society I live in," she says. "This portrait shows a woman with closed lips the colour of blood. She wants to say something." They are artists who have had to circumvent the heavy hand of authority and find novel ways of self-expression, just like the women.

Made in Iran, to 4 July, at Asia House, 63 New Cavendish Street, London W1

Article Courtesy: INDEPENDENT

WORK 02 - Nja Mahdaoui

Name: Nja Mahdaoui
Title: Calligramm on parchment
Medium: Indian ink and acrylic on parchment
Size: 90 x 73 cm
Year: 2007

Galerie El Marsa

ARTICLE 15 - New Book on Contemporary Art from the Middle East

[28 June 2009 10:20:06]

Entitled "Contemporary Art in the Middle East", the book is published by renowned London-based publishing house, black dog publishing as part of their ARTWORLD series. Showcasing the most explosive, dynamic and provocative art coming out of the region, Contemporary Art in the Middle East shatters common stereotypes and presents a new way of looking at one of the most complex and misunderstood areas of the world today.

Artists from opposite ends of the spectrum come together in a vivid confrontation of diverse styles across boundaries; from the brash pop art of Shirin Aliabadi to the restrained calligraphic minimalism of Golnaz Fathi; from the provocative conceptualism of Mona Hatoum to the vibrant installations of Farhad Moshiri; from the slick beauty of Yousseff Nabil to the edgy realism of Afshin Dehkordi. All feature together in a formidable collage of artistic expression.

Set to be released on July 9th, the publication aims at assembling a survey of contemporary art from the region, featuring the most influential artists working today, from hardwearing artists such as Mona Hatoum, Ghada Amer and Shirin Neshat to others who have recently been gaining ground on the art scene such as Amal Kenawy, Hrair Sarkissian, Laila Muraywid, Youssef Nabil, Tarek Al Ghoussein, among many others.

The book also includes an introduction to artistic practice from the region written by independent curator Nat Muller and an extract of Edward Said's hugely influential Orientalism along with a series of interviews with art personalities operating within the region.

Lavishly illustrated profiles of the most influential artists working today are supported with essays by writers who represent the diversity of voices from this region: Suzanne Cotter has curated exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery and the Serpentine Gallery, Nat Muller is an independent curator and the first curator-in-residence at the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, Lindsey Moore author of Arab, Muslim, Woman and TJ Demos lecturer at University College London. Contemporary Art in the Middle East provides a new way of understanding the Middle East outside the headlines and through the engaging medium of art.

Copies are available for sale at the Gallery.

Article Courtesy: Alarabonline

ARTICLE 14 - Painting exhibition at Al Markhiya Gallery

[29 June 2009] THE PENINSULA

DOHA: An amazing assortment of some of the best works by the featured artists of Al Markhiya Gallery is on show at the gallery in Souq Waqif this summer. Simply dubbed “2009 Summer Collection”, the painting exhibition features dozens of paintings by renowned contemporary Arab artists from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar, and Egypt, among others.

Visitors will enjoy a journey into the variety of styles of the new breed of painters representing the diversity and breadth of the region’s exceptional artistic culture. Qatari artist Faraj Daham expresses his passion for art through his sketches of figures corresponding to the human form, incorporating detailed scaling using various lines to achieve perfection.

Priced at QR33,000, the most expensive painting on display by Egyptian artist Adel El Siwi provokes deep thinking in the viewer as he presents a lady’s face smeared with colours and mysterious shapes.

A couple of identical paintings by Fathel Neema from Iraq draw every viwer’s attention for the powerful use of green, black and red colours in forming a combination of abstract shapes. Mohammad Al Wahibi from Palestine employs traditional Arabic designs in creating his paintings in which gold and silver hues are made dominant. Complementing his works are Arabic calligraphic paintings by Zaman Jassim and Sarmad Al Mussawi.

Article Courtesy: THE PENINSULA

WORK 01 - JEFFAR KHALDI

Name: Jeffar Khaldi
Title: State of Wishful Thinking
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 95 x 86 inches
Year: 2008

THIERRY GOLDBERG

ARTICLE 13 - Abu Dhabi's fortune favors the bold

[June 28, 2009] CHRISTOPHER HAWTHORNE, Architecture Critic

MARITIME MUSEUM: The planned facility on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, designed by Pritzker-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando, would be joined by several other museums. Tadao Ando Architects & Associat.

A waste-free, green-tech city on the sands of the Arabian peninsula? A Gehry Guggenheim and mini-Louvre to anchor a $27-billion cultural center? It's a paradoxically forward-thinking vision.

Reporting from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates -- The longstanding sibling rivalry between the two biggest members of the United Arab Emirates, always complex, has taken a remarkable turn in recent months.

For years, as its neighbor on the Persian Gulf, Dubai, engaged in a frenzy of construction and deal-making, Abu Dhabi -- the capital of the UAE and owner of its deepest petroleum reserves -- was mostly content to keep its ambition in check. Its caution underscored old stereotypes about its role as the wary, wealthy older brother to an aggressively ambitious emirate next door.

Now, as Dubai struggles to recover from the dramatic collapse of its real-estate market, Abu Dhabi is taking advantage of the downturn to savor a moment in the spotlight. The emirate is actively promoting its 2030 Plan, a wide-ranging blueprint for growth unveiled in 2007. It is also moving forward on a number of big-ticket urban initiatives that it has the luxury of financing to a significant degree from its own coffers.

Two in particular, both in the early stages of construction and both located on the edges of Abu Dhabi proper, are drawing interest from around the globe. The first is Masdar City, a $22-billion development that was designed by Norman Foster's huge London firm and aims to be the world's first zero-waste city. The other is Saadiyat Island, a $27-billion collection of housing, office space and cultural facilities that will include a Guggenheim Museum by Frank Gehry, a branch of the Louvre by French architect Jean Nouvel and a maritime museum by Japan's Tadao Ando.

These projects are far more ambitious culturally than any initiative Dubai has launched -- and therefore full of potential pitfalls for Abu Dhabi's ruling family. They aim to make this closed, religious, autocratic society a new center for the arts and for green-tech research, and as such raise a series of tricky, potentially intractable questions: Does it still make sense to hire celebrity architects from the West to put a non-Western culture on the global cultural map? Will Abu Dhabi allow the Saadiyat museums to show politically or sexually charged artwork -- and if so, will that openness lead to cracks in the emirate's air-tight political structure? And finally, is it possible for a government to save the planet from ecological damage while neglecting human rights, or even energy-efficiency, at home?

Glimpses of the future

Early one rainy morning, looking to explore those questions on the ground, I left Dubai, my home base on a recent reporting trip to the UAE, and traveled southwest by taxi along the shores of the Persian Gulf to spend the day in Abu Dhabi. My first stop was the muddy future site of Masdar City, on the eastern flank of the emirate, where its ruling sheiks, with assistance from scientific and engineering experts from around the world, are hoping to build a community that will operate both as a perfectly sustainable civic organism and as a laboratory for new green strategies that can be exported to other nations. In theory it will be a kind of self-contained Silicon Valley for eco-research, housing several thousand green-tech companies and 50,000 or so residents. Students are expected to begin enrolling at the Masdar Institute, a science and engineering academy operated in part by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this fall.

After arriving at the Masdar building site, I hopped into a Land Rover with John Shenton, a British architect who is Masdar's senior development manager. As we drove, he quickly and candidly made the project sound like a comedy of errors. The soil, Shenton said, was terrible: waterlogged and high in saline content. On top of that, dust kept collecting atop the solar-panel arrays, among the first parts of Masdar already in operation. That led to a conundrum: Wash the panels regularly, therefore using more water than planned, or allow them to operate far below peak efficiency.

Shenton's list of complaints was not done. Masdar's remote site, once home to a municipal nursery that grew palm trees to line Abu Dhabi's grand boulevards, was hardly ideal. And there was not enough wind, he said: "All these lovely concepts in the beginning showed a city with wind towers everywhere, and we were going to have giant turbines to help generate electricity. It's all died a death because we have no wind."

After a few minutes, I realized that his pessimism was in part an act, or least a tic that seemed deeply British, and that he believed firmly in Masdar's larger goals. And yet his comments did make clear some of the project's fundamental oddities, starting with the fact that if you wanted to create a zero-carbon city and give it a reasonable chance of success, you'd likely put it not in the United Arab Emirates, which suffers from severe heat and humidity, among other climate extremes, but somewhere like Northern California.

Later, in a phone interview, Gerard Evenden, the senior partner who is overseeing Masdar for Foster and Partners, told me that such extremes actually make the site an ideal testing ground for sustainable technologies. If green-tech systems are battle-tested here and succeed, he said, they'll be ready for export around the world.

He added that the striking form of the city -- its buildings and streets huddled together in the center of the sprawling Masdar site, as if for protection, leaving the bulk of the acreage open -- was the key to its sustainability. It is certainly the heart of its graphic and architectural appeal, a kind of anti-sprawl throwback to the shaded, dense corridors of ancient Middle Eastern cities.

Still, it remains striking if not paradoxical that the capital of the UAE, a country that consumes more energy per capita than any other and exports more oil than all but two nations, is now pursuing a zero-carbon project of Masdar City's scale. It's as if Abu Dhabi, having run up a remarkable record of environmental profligacy, were bent on turning guilt into green technology. In a Muslim country, I realized, there is something Catholic about Masdar.

Still reeling from the strangeness of the Masdar tour, I found myself by midafternoon on a speedboat bumping over turquoise waters and headed for Saadiyat Island. I soon arrived at a group of makeshift offices and climbed into an SUV for a trip, chauffeured by a pair of Saadiyat representatives, around the project site, which will include not just cultural facilities but offices, golf courses and retail districts, along with housing for as many as 160,000 residents.

Cranes moved mounds of sand on the horizon. In a few places, palm trees had been planted in neat rows. But for the most part the enormous site had a moonscape emptiness about it. Every once in a while a group of construction workers filed past, wearing fluorescent safety vests over purple jumpsuits. Eventually we made our way to the northwestern tip of the site, where the star architectural attractions of Saadiyat Island will be welcoming visitors as early as 2012. If there is a focal point for Abu Dhabi's efforts to recalibrate its global image, it is located here. Gehry's Guggenheim, covering more than 300,000 square feet, will occupy the end of a peninsula. Nouvel's dome-covered Louvre will jut out into the water just a few hundred yards away.

Purely from an architectural perspective, I am eager to see both museums built. Each is a bold yet thoughtful design, and as a pair they will play off one another with remarkable vitality -- Nouvel's protective dome, sending filtered light into open-air lobbies, a unified contrast to the jumbled energy of Gehry's collection of gallery blocks and soaring entry cones. It appears their construction remains on track -- as does that of the Sheikh Zayed Museum by Foster and Partners -- even as doubts remain about the viability of a performing arts center by Zaha Hadid and Ando's maritime museum.

But as cultural institutions they are fraught with unanswered questions about the range of exhibitions they will be allowed to organize or put on view. Representatives of the Guggenheim and the Louvre have maintained that they will be free to show the same artworks they display back home. But that would mark a significant departure from existing UAE practices.

In recent weeks, these questions have been complicated by a pair of news items from Abu Dhabi that suggest a troubling underside to the emirate's generally placid surface. About six weeks ago, a videotape from 2004 was leaked to the worldwide press showing a member of the emirate's ruling family, Sheik Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, appearing to torture an Afghan merchant, beating him with whips and nail-studded boards, stuffing his mouth with sand and driving over his ravaged body with an SUV. The tape has thrown a wrench into negotiations in Washington over a pending nuclear-arms agreement between the U.S. and the UAE.

Around the same time, Human Rights Watch issued a stark report, building on earlier research, condemning working conditions on Saadiyat Island. The report singled out the Louvre and Guggenheim projects, urging the museums to take stronger steps to make sure that laborers on the island were not being mistreated.

Difficulties ahead

At a time when so many other mega-developments around the world have come to a sudden halt, Abu Dhabi has risen to a new level of global prominence simply by plunging shovels into the sand at Masdar and Saadiyat Island. And yet each project suggests that the character of the emirate's newfound ambition may lead it into a thicket of problems. Unlike Dubai's recent troubles, these are unlikely to be financial. Instead, they may begin to upset the careful balance Abu Dhabi has long maintained between growth and prudence.

It is one thing to try, as Dubai has, simply to expand at whatever headlong pace new investment will allow. It is quite another to link new initiatives with claims about cultural freedom and environmental justice. In essence, Abu Dhabi is attempting to carve out "free zones" for the arts and green development in the same way that Dubai has done for media companies and high-tech entrepreneurs.

This promises to be a hugely complicated task: At least from a Western perspective, cultural openness can be expected, eventually, to create hunger for the political variety. But this is the world we now occupy: Many of the globe's most ambitious states -- economically, politically, culturally, even architecturally -- are also the most closed and autocratic ones. China has been a leading example of the shift, as has Dubai. Now it is emerging -- with a high-design, eco-friendly twist -- in Abu Dhabi as well.

That makes the construction sites for Masdar City and Saadiyat Island more than mere test beds for green-tech and high-art ambition. It also makes them a proving ground for an experiment in forging a new, hybrid civic culture -- a kind of Enlightenment Authoritarianism. And if you believe in the power of culture -- or more grandly of knowledge -- to spawn political change, these initiatives arguably constitute a bolder, riskier strategy than anything Dubai has yet tried.

christopher.hawthorne@latimes.com

Article Courtesy: LA TIMES

ARTICLE 12 - In Chelsea, Art Intersects With Reality of Iranian Conflict

[Published: June 26, 2009]RANDY KENNEDY for THE NEW YORK TIMES

Newsha Tavakolian’s photographs are part of a show at Chelsea Art Museum

It takes very little time to get a sense of the spirit animating an ambitious show of Iranian and Iranian-American artists that opened on Friday at the Chelsea Art Museum. As you walk in, the first room you see is sardonically titled “In Search of the Axis of Evil.” And in another section not far away, a bright, Photoshopped self-portrait of the young Tehran artist Vahid Sharifian shows him, with a big Afro and ’70s sideburns, in alarmingly intimate contact with a bored-looking lion. (The lion was one of the emblems of the Iranian monarchy before the Islamic Revolution.)

A show of Iranian and Iranian-American artists is running at the Chelsea Art Museum. Above the work of documentary photographer Newshe Tavakolian. Photo: Michael Nagle for The New York Times

“Vahid is like the Jeff Koons of Iran,” said Sam Bardaouil, one of the exhibition’s curators, looking over other photographs of Mr. Sharifian — boxing with a stallion, leading a herd of reindeer through a sleek kitchen and blowing flames from his mouth at a bald eagle. “It’s hilarious and strange in a powerful way.” And fully intended, he added, to grab the attention of Americans who probably have a hard time envisioning a Koonsian temperament at work in Tehran — particularly these days.

The artist Faarideh Lashai in front of her work. Photo: Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Mr. Sharifian will not be in New York to see the exhibition, “Iran Inside Out,” which runs through Sept. 5 and includes 35 artists living in Iran and 21 who live elsewhere or travel regularly back and forth. He is not allowed to leave Iran because of his refusal to serve in the military. And one of the last times Mr. Bardaouil tried to contact him, Mr. Sharifian was unavailable to talk about his artwork because of the protests that erupted after the disputed election.

The photographer Alireza next to his work in the show. Photo: Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Mr. Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, the museum’s managing director, said that they were vaguely aware of the election when they began planning the show last year. But they did not schedule it to coincide with the vote, they said; they wanted to ensure only that the show happened around the 30th anniversary of the revolution, which took place in early 1979.

The artist Pooneh Maghazeag with her work. Photo: Michael Nagle for The New York Times

So over the past several days they have found themselves and their artists in an unexpected whirlwind of attention as life has intersected with art in ways it rarely does in the white-cube world of Chelsea.

The show includes 35 artists living in Iran and 21 who live elsewhere or travel regularly back and forth. Photo: Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Most of the artwork coming from galleries and studios in Iran left only days before the unrest began and would have been hard to get now, said Mr. Fellrath, the show’s other curator. Communicating by phone or e-mail with artists in Iran — many of whose work has not been seen in New York before — has also grown difficult, he said. Even when phone lines or the Internet are working, he added, “We have to be very careful about what we are saying because you never know what’s being monitored — it’s a very dangerous time.” (Although several artists who live full-time in Iran had been trying to come to New York for the show, only one, Farideh Lashai, was able to. Ms. Lashai, who was said to be wary about the effects any comments would have on her return, declined to be interviewed.)

A piece by the artist Shoja Azari. Photo: Shoja Azari

Mr. Bardaouil, who is half-Lebanese and taught for many years in Dubai, said the idea for the exhibition grew partly out of his interest in the thriving, very diverse and young art world in Iran. More than half of the country’s population is under 30, and in Tehran gallery-hopping has become an increasingly popular social rite among the young. Many Iranian artists, while having to play cat-and-mouse with censorship inside the country, are showing work outside, in Dubai, Europe and New York, that squarely takes on government repression, the role of women, homosexuality and many other facets — good, bad and indifferent — of contemporary life in Iran.

Shirin Aliabdai and Farhad Moshiri, "We Are All American Operation Supermarket Series," 2006. Photo: Shirin Aliabdai and Farhad Moshiri

“More than anything else we wanted to show works that didn’t fit the neo-Orientalist stereotypes of calligraphy and veiled women that so many people think of when they think of Middle Eastern art,” Mr. Bardaouil said. “No more ‘behind the veil’ or ‘taking off the veil’ or titles like that. No more veils.”

Farideh Lashai's "Pomogranates." Photo: Farideh Lashai/Chelsea Art Museum

From a group of more than 100 artists whose work was considered, the curators narrowed the show to 56, a group that includes established stars like Shirin Neshat and her partner, Shoja Azari, who live in New York. But many of the artists, like Pooneh Maghazehe, 30 — who lives in Brooklyn, was raised in Levittown, Pa., by Iranian parents and travels to Iran often — are little known. Ms. Maghazehe, who stood atop a ladder the other day helping to install a work, a brightly colored, piñatalike hanging sculpture, explained that as conventional as it might look, it could never be shown in a gallery in Iran because of the materials she used: hundreds of tampons, soaked in acrylic paints whose colors create a complex three-dimensional representation of how Iranians receive information from the Internet and how little of it is in Farsi, a particularly relevant subject at the moment.

Pooneh Maghazehe's "Hell's Puerto Rico Performance Still." Photo: Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery

Of her materials, Mr. Maghazehe said she did not choose them with a particularly subversive intent. “I just kept looking at tampons I had in my studio, and I liked the shape and then what you could do with them,” she said. “And then they just turned into something else for me.”

Bita Fayyazi's "PlayGround Installation at Espace Louis Vuitton." Photo: Kamran Diba

Another artist, Abbas Kowsari, who works as a photo editor at a newspaper in Tehran (9 of the 14 newspapers he has worked for have been shut down over the years by the authorities) presents photographs that show male Iranian bodybuilders, glistening and preening over their appearance, contrasted with training photographs of female Iranian police officers sheathed in black chadors, wielding guns and rappelling, SWAT team-style, down walls.

The show’s organizers said they had struggled with how to respond to the events in Iran, seeing them as an opportunity for the work to resonate more than it might have — “I think the semantics of many of the pieces has tripled or quadrupled in power,” Mr. Bardaouil said — but not wanting to be seen as exploiting them.

Leila Heller, whose Upper East Side gallery represents more than a dozen of the show’s artists, canceled a dinner to celebrate the exhibition. Dressed in black with a bright green scarf — the signature color of Mir Hussein Moussavi, the main challenger to Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — she went instead with Mr. Fellrath and others to a candlelight vigil in Union Square on Wednesday to commemorate the victims of the recent violence.

“We feel very strongly that the show is a way to send a message too,” Mr. Fellrath said. “It’s another form of peaceful rebellion, through these very limited channels that artists have available to them, especially those in Iran.” He added, “We only wish they could all be here to see it.”

Other Shows With Iranian Artists

“Iran Inside Out,” at the Chelsea Art Museum (556 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, 212-255-0719, chelseaartmuseum.org) through Sept. 5, is one of several shows in New York with works by Iranian contemporary artists. At Thomas Erben Gallery (526 West 26th Street, fourth floor, Chelsea, 212- 645-8701, thomaserben.com), “Looped and Layered” offers pieces by 12 artists working in Tehran through July 10.

About 40 artists are represented in “Selseleh/Zelzeleh: Movers & Shakers in Contemporary Iranian Art” at Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery through Aug. 20 (39 East 78th Street, at Madison Avenue, third floor, 212-249-7695, ltmhgallery.com). And 5 Iranians are among the 28 artists from the Middle East and Central Asian regions and diasporas in “Tarjama/ Translation,” through Sept. 27 at the Queens Museum of Art (New York City Building, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, 718-592-9700, queensmuseum.org).

Article Courtesy: NEW YORK TIMES

ARTICLE 11- Louvre Abu Dhabi: The French Art of Foreign Policy

[Published: June 1, 2009] Damaris Colhoun for ARTINFO

A rendering of the exterior of the Jean Nouvel building. Courtesy Agence France-Muséums

ABU DHABI—Last Tuesday, May 29, the governments of the United Arab Emirates and France officially launched the “Desert Louvre” project, scheduled for completion in 2013. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahayan were in attendance at the ceremony, which took place at the grandiose Emirates Palace Hotel. Under an agreement signed two years ago, Abu Dhabi will pay $555 million over 30 years to the state-run Agence France-Muséums for the use of the Louvre’s name, as well as for special exhibitions, loans, and management direction. Together Sarkozy and the sheik unveiled a preview exhibition called “Talking Art: Louvre Abu Dhabi” at the hotel, which includes 19 new acquisitions in addition to loans from the French national museums, including the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, le Centre Pompidou, the Musée du Quai Branly, and the Musée Guimet. The ceremony in the grand marble foyer seemed worlds away from the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s construction site on Saadiyat (Happiness) Island, where the temperature just before 9 a.m. had already reached an oppressive 104 degrees and was still rising. In that endless sandy gray landscape, broken only by the shimmering turquoise waters of the Arabian Sea in the distance, the traffic of dump trucks and swirling cranes were the sole signs of life. At the hotel, as if to compensate for the chill of the air-conditioning, waiters carried trays of cappuccinos capped with staggering peaks of foam, while live Arabic music drifted through the room. “This is the first universal museum in this region,” Henri Loyrette, director of the Louvre in Paris, said in his introductory remarks to a room full of international press, especially French, and local dignitaries. “It celebrates the openness of the UAE and the tradition of France.” Loyrette made clear that the Louvre Abu Dhabi would not be a photocopy of French museums but rather an original institution with no cultural boundaries.

Afterward, the crowd flowed into the exhibition space for a tour with Laurence de Cars, the curatorial director of the Agence France-Muséums. “Arabia has always been a crossroads, and all cultures will be present at Louvre Abu Dhabi,” de Cars said. He called Jean Nouvel’s domed roof an “echo of Arabic architectural forms.” That roof will float above the 260,000-square-foot complex of pavilions, plazas, alleyways, and canals, conceived to resemble a city floating on the sea.

A mini-prototype for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the “Talking Art” exhibition jettisons the idea of compartmentalizing artworks according to period and geography, and instead mixes up the pieces to spark “a dialogue.” In one room, a white marble head of Buddha from North China (A.D. 550–577) sits catty-corner to a newly acquired section of the Mamluk Qur’an, from the 14th century, and a Middle European life-size figure of Christ from the 16th century.

A major feature of the space will be a constantly shifting light-filtration system meant to recall water or shadows from a tree or trellis. Courtesy Agence France-Muséums

If the exhibition makes a powerful statement about the scope of the Louvre’s vision, so do many of the new acquisitions, which include Manet’s The Bohemian (1861–62) and works from the Yves Saint Laurent sale at Christie’s Paris in February, among them Composition with Blue, Red, Yellow and Black by Piet Mondrian (1922), which fetched a record-breaking €21,569,000 ($27,908,129), and Pierre Legrain’s African-style stool from the 1920s, which made €457,000. The new museum has an acquisitions budget of more than $56 million a year. “We are sending strong signals to the world that this acquisitions department is serious. It is a key part of building a national museum,” de Cars said. So too is the development of an Emirati staff.

The Louvre is a linchpin in the Emirate’s plan to transform the desert Saadiyat Island into a major cultural and tourist destination, complete with a Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a maritime museum, a performing arts museum, and a national museum, all designed by mega-watt architects. The $27 billion development on the island is also to feature a golf course, hotels, apartment complexes, pavilions, and a lush lagoon district.

“We are building the walls and spirit of this museum,” said Bruno Macuart, director of Agence France-Muséums. “And we are thinking of the future of a nation at the end of oil in 40 or 50 years… It’s the gift of one generation to the next.” However, it was not cultural gift-giving that had brought President Nicolas Sarkozy to Abu Dhabi. He had arrived in the UAE capital four days before to chair a security conference and to open France’s first new overseas military base in 50 years. The Gallic nation has long had strategic interests in the UAE and plans to build two nuclear reactors there.

Article Courtesy: ARTINFO

ARTICLE 10 - Made in Iran unveiled at London gallery

[Friday 26 June 2009 18.51 BST] Nosheen Iqbal for GUARDIAN.CO.UK

From sub-cultures to cityscapes, young Tehrani artists explore the everyday realities of modern Iran in a surreal and witty new exhibition

'Dyed-blond hair and surgically miniatured noses' ... Shirin Aliabadi's Hybrid Girl 6, 2008. Photograph courtesy of the artist

A 5ft painting of a desperately melancholic face, heavily made up with lipstick bloodily smeared across her mouth, hangs against the Daz-white backdrop of a gallery wall. The work, by Simin Keramati and part of a group showcase of new Iranian art, isn't particularly subtle. Using the metaphorical notion of "war paint" to lament female power and identity, it torpedoes the viewer between the eyes. But its unnerving frankness establishes a theme for the show

Made in Iran, a small exhibition composed solely of artists living and working in Tehran, couldn't have arrived at a more poignant and timely moment. Its curators, Arianne Levene and Églantine de Ganay, insist "it isn't supposed to be political", but they also claim that none of the work they've chosen is obvious or mimetic, preferring to view the art as "loosely connected" in "presenting the lesser-known reality of everyday Iran".

The picture of Iran currently dominating headlines is obviously, and deeply, politically charged, teetering between rigid defiance and precipitous tumult. The Iran seeping through the work exhibited here is no less complex – but a touch more nuanced. Fashion, food and cityscapes preoccupy these seven artists. Like most big group shows – particularly those lumped together by geography rather than theme – the works are hit and miss, but they unravel intriguing contradictions in Iranian society.

Shirin Aliabadi's photography, for one, pops with colour and a whisper of subversive cheek. Her hypersexualised portraits of Iranian women straddle western constructs of beauty – all dyed-blond hair, blue contact lenses, surgically miniatured noses; with Islamic codes of social propriety, through dress and pose. Faintly cartoonish, they poke fun at a sub-culture of young Tehrani women who cover their bodies but emphasise their faces. Like Shadi Ghadirian, a photographer recently included in the major Saatchi Gallery staging of Middle-Eastern art – Aliabadi's series, Hybrid Girls, questions the traditional role of women, albeit a little less loudly.

Levene, who spent 18 months researching and putting the exhibition together with de Ganay, explains that they wanted to find and give a platform to lesser-known Iranian artists. "We deliberately set out not to choose work from the established galleries and visited countless studios in Tehran," she said. "There's a real sense of camaraderie amongst these artists, it's a close-knit community".

Levene and de Ganay won't be drawn into the political statement the show makes. However, for Keramati, it's impossible for artists based in Iran not to be influenced by the politics of the country. "An artist here has something very different to say than someone from Europe – it's obvious and it's what the audiences are looking for." She adds: "Society here is very complicated, and so the works that come out are very complicated too. This lie we hear from the government and the reality: these two sides always directly affect the works and the minds of the artists."

Arash Hanaei, an artist whose cool graphic lines depict Tehrani towers and high-rises, is less candid: "I am a photographer, and I am interested in social documentation." Hanaei graduated in Photography from the Azad University of Art in 2002, having been taught by photojournalist Kaveh Golestan – Iran's equivalent to Don McCullin – and simply says his aim is "to present my work in a neutral manner and let the audience draw its own conclusions".

Hanaei's Capital series neatly captures Iranian society's push-and-pull tussle between western capitalism and religious conservatism. His monochrome digital drawings depict giant city billboards, brashly advertising electrical goods, flanked by buildings painted with tower-high murals of the country's religious martyrs. It's a quirky quip, rather than a pointed criticism, reconfiguring what Tehranis see, but don't actively observe, in the city's streets every day.

Elsewhere in the exhibition, food is the focus. It might be the closest parallel one can draw between Iranian art and American pop culture's fascination with the white picket fence: the disturbed hysteria lurking beyond its border, subverting an everyday cultural norm like the Iranian dinner table into the sinister "other".

Vahid Sharifian's Pop Art series of eerie holographic prints reinterprets images of a pouty Sophia Loren from a 70s cookbook (giant forks and spoons abound in a Koons-esque fashion), while Behrouz Rae superimposes himself on to a print, gorging at an empty dinner table. The overall effect is lightly surreal, but witty and compelling.

It is often, of course, all too easy to objectify non-western artists in shows like this, stripping them of individuality and treating them as a collective mouthpiece for their nation. Levene and de Ganay are aware of Orientalist cliches and the dangers of stereotyping, which is partly why they're keen to promote the exhibition as one of contemporary new work, rather than one representing the state of the nation in the wake of its presidential election. "I'm as opportunistic as the next person," says de Ganay, "but it would have been impossible to predict that this would happen at the same time as us putting together an exhibition … the work of these artists isn't that obvious, or that political. It stands on its own."

Made in Iran
Asia House London
W1G 7LP
020 7307 5454
Until 9 July 2009
Asia House
Article Courtesy: GUARDIAN.CO.UK

ARTICLE 09 - Chelsea Museum Hits the Mark With “Iran Inside Out”

[June 26, 2009] Robert Ayers for ARTINFO

Shirin Aliabdai and Farhad Moshiri, "We Are All American" (2006) from the series "Operation Supermarket" 2 © the artists, courtesy Chelsea Museum of Art

NEW YORK— The hottest ticket on a warm evening in Chelsea last night was for the invitation-only opening of “Iran Inside Out” at the Chelsea Art Museum. Guests in their best art world finery began arriving before 6, and by 8 a line stretched down 22nd Street, made up mostly of folks intent on explaining why their name wasn’t on the guest list.With remarkable, though obviously unplanned, topicality, this is a show that — as its mouthful of a subtitle explains — sets out to present “influences of homeland and diaspora on the artistic language of contemporary Iranian artists.” The fact that it manages not only that but a far broader perspective on art’s intersection with politics is not entirely due to the fact that the show opens as Iran burns.

There is nothing theoretical about how art might engage with politics for the 56 artists included here, 35 of them living and working — though mostly unable to exhibit — inside Iran, the rest of Iranian birth or background but living scattered throughout the world.

Dorothea Keeser, CAM’s president, told ARTINFO that the museum had originally planned to bring half a dozen artists over from Iran for the opening and give them the chance to talk openly about the situation in their home country. But given the current political upheaval, she said, only one was able to make the journey: the erudite and inventive Farideh Lashai, whose video projection on painted canvases, I Don’t Want to Be a Tree (2008), with its complex references to Iranian legend and to Manet’s Déjeuner sur l'Herbe, is one of the most striking pieces here. The museum also had to consider carefully how much media attention it gives artists who are still inside Iran, Keeser said. (She once worked on a show of Iranian art with a curator whose father was imprisoned in Iran, she explained, but canceled the project in its early stages when word crept out that he was suffering worse torture as a consequence.)

This time around, the organizers have kept their nerve. “We wanted to overturn some of the redundant stereotypes that are still embraced in the West,” the show’s co-curator (and CAM Managing Director) Till Fellrath told us, and in that regard “Iran Inside Out” succeeds remarkably. It might come as a surprise, for example, that a country that, according to its disputed president, doesn’t have homosexuals provides 600 licenses a year for sex-change surgery under Sharia law, as the show’s other co-curator, Sam Bardaouil, explained.

This provides the autobiographical subject of Maria (2007), a beguilingly forthright series of photographs by Newsha Tavakolian, a sometime truck driver and now female café waitress. These hang next to Abbas Kowsari’s only slightly less surprising photographs from the series Masculinity (2006) and Women Police (2007). Their uniforms shrouded under full chadors, these women rappelling down buildings or aiming their handguns out of the windows of speeding police cars make for bizarre sights.

It’s hardly surprising that the interplay of appearance and reality, or of reality and disguise, is one of the recurrent themes for artists in or from a country where so much, including most artistic expression, is suppressed. In Islamic Carding (2007), Shahram Entekhabi, who works in Europe, takes the postcards that London hookers leave in telephone booths to advertise their services and overpaints them to grant their subjects proper Islamic modesty. Conversely, Shirin Fakhim, who works in Tehran, uses a range of found objects and cast-off clothing to make an assortment of life-sized Tehran Prostitutes (2008). These are absurdly caricatural, but possess a real haunting presence and draw attention, if nothing else, to the fact that, despite the posturing of the Iranian state, there are actually something like 100,000 prostitutes working in its capital city.

Elsewhere, and very differently, Shirin Aliabadi and Farhad Moshiri’s Operation Supermarket series (2006) of photographs is genuinely tragic-comic: cleaning products that spell out on their labels “We Are All Americans” and a Tony the Tiger cereal box that reminds us that “Families Ask Why” are presented in some of the most eloquent pieces.

“Iran Inside Out” is a must-see, broad-ranging and consistently provocative in both medium and subject matter. There a lot of references here that the non-Iranian viewer has to work pretty hard at, but the Chelsea Art Museum has done a splendid job with its wall texts and catalog, and you’ll come away from this show knowing and thinking about things that had never occurred to you before. At a moment of crucial political imbalance, what more might you ask of an art show?

Article Courtesy: ART INFO