M E C A

SanctionedArray - Open Call for Video Art Related to US Sanctioned Countries

2011-03-24T19:24:00.005+04:00

SanctionedResolution by CHOKRA, 2011

SpecifyOthers issues a new call for SanctionedArray - the online video art database, for a series of curated exhibitions and screenings entitled CuratorsArray. From 2011 through 2012, CuratorsArray series shall focus on video art engaged specifically with the US sanctioned countries - Belarus, Cote d'Ivoire, Congo, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Myanmar/Burma and Zimbabwe. Each array is specific to each sanctioned country and shall be screened and exhibited in its origin as well as at museums and galleries around the world. New submissions to the database should relate to these countries; this relationship is entirely self-determined. Each array shall feature both curated selections and open call entries.

The open call for videos related to Belarus, Burma, Syria, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Cuba are now open!

We are also accepting early submissions for Cote d'Ivoire, Congo, Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Lebanon.

Submit your video entries online at www.sanctionedarray.specifyothers.com/submit

SanctionedArray - COME PLAY WITH US

2010-10-02T00:15:00.024+04:00

25th October 2010, 4:30-9 pm: Launch of SanctionedArray curated by SpecifyOthers and reception, BIG SCREEN PROJECT, 6th Avenue and 29th Street, New York City

CHANGE OF PROGRAM

WHITE BOX has had to reschedule screening and roundtable as follows (previously announced to take place 26th October 2010, 6-10 pm):

November 2nd 12-10 pm, and November 3rd, 11-7 pm: interactive screening of 100 jury-selected videos, WHITE BOX, 329 Broome Street, New York City

November 2nd at 7 pm SanctionedArray roundtable discussion at WHITE BOX, 329 Broome Street, New York City

SanctionedArray is an online database of video art conceived in response to the restrictions of artists' submissions to The Guggenheim Museum's and YouTube's video biennial, Play (www.youtube.com/play). Artists' submissions to Play were limited by OFAC sanctions (www.ustreas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/programs/) - citizens or residents of Belarus, Cote d'Ivoire, Congo, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Myanmar/Burma and Zimbabwe were not eligible to submit their work. We maintain that the application of OFAC sanctions to virtual transmissions of video art perpetuates the conditions that led to the imposition of these sanctions. In protest to the continuity of such restrictions, artists of any origin - including those from the sanctioned countries – were invited to submit their work to SanctionedArray in an open call for video entries that endede October 22nd. Submission guidelines to SanctionedArray followed online video formats proposed by YouTube and The Guggenheim, except for Eligibility 1.d. (www.sites.google.com/site/ytplayterms/all).

SpecifyOthers are pleased to announce CuratorsArray, an ongoing series of video exhibitions and screenings by invited curators utilizing and expanding SanctionedArray database, to be presented at museums and galleries around the world and online. The first iteration of CuratorsArray is Others2Specify, a playlist of 50 videos curated by SpecifyOthers from the first call for submissions to SanctionedArray. It was first presented at Big Screen Project, 6th Avenue and 29th Street, New York City on October 25th, 2010 (http://www.bigscreenproject.org/), and will be screened again at WHITE BOX on November 2nd, 12-10 pm and November 3rd, 11-7 pm

One hundred of the most notable and varied video entries will be selected for the SanctionedArray online database and announced on November 2nd on http://www.sanctionedarray.specifyothers.com/. An interactive screening of all 100 SanctionedArray’s selected entries will be held on November 2nd from 12 to 10 pm and November 3rd from 11 to 7 pm at WHITE BOX, 329 Broome Street, New York City, with a roundtable November 2nd at 7 pm, including Wafaa Bilal, artist; Hamid Dabashi, author and professor, Columbia University; Shayana Kadidal, attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights; and Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga, artist; moderated by SpecifyOthers. SanctionedArray events shall coincide with Play biennial at The Guggenheim New York, extending representation of video entries considered not eligible by Origin, by YouTube and The Guggenheim, and challenging a status quo.

At SanctionedArray, we look forward to having "everybody play."

Conceived and organized by SpecifyOthers, New York City & United Arab Emirates (http://www.specifyothers.com/) in collaboration with WHITE BOX, New York (http://www.whiteboxny.org/) and co-presented by ArteEast (http://www.arteeast.org/).

ARTICLE 86 - Art Dubai Appoints Antonia Carver as Its New Fair Director

2010-06-20T18:58:00.000+04:00

Based in Dubai for the past eight years, Carver has been a member of the renowned Middle Eastern arts organization Bidoun since its inception in 2004.

DUBAI.- The Board of Art Dubai has announced the appointment of Antonia Carver to succeed John Martin as Fair Director of Art Dubai. Antonia Carver is a writer and arts administrator, and has been widely recognized as a leading advocate of contemporary Middle Eastern art. She has been working in the arts for the past sixteen years, and brings to the fair a broad base of experience across both the commercial and not-for-profit sectors.

Based in Dubai for the past eight years, Carver has been a member of the renowned Middle Eastern arts organization Bidoun since its inception in 2004, and is currently editor-at-large of Bidoun magazine and director of Bidoun Projects, responsible for overseeing a dynamic programme of artists’ projects, commissions, exhibitions, talks and educational events. Bidoun Projects was the curatorial partner of Art Dubai in 2010. In these roles, Carver has worked with some of the Middle East’s best-known as well as emerging artists, complementing her knowledge of international contemporary art.

John Martin, who remains on the board of Art Dubai, commented: “We are delighted that Antonia Carver has accepted the role of fair director. Her appointment underlines the Board’s commitment to build on Art Dubai’s exceptional worldwide reputation for innovation and quality. Antonia’s experience internationally and in the region will strengthen the core values of the fair, ensuring it continues to be a significant driving force in the growth of the region’s art scene.”

The fifth edition of Art Dubai takes place in March 2011. Coinciding with Sharjah Biennial 10, the UAE will become the destination for collectors, curators and art lovers from around the world. With the deadline for gallery applications closing at the end of June, the fair has seen a surge of interest from international galleries wishing to participate, as well as applications from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon and key art markets around the MENA region.

Commenting on the prospects of the fair next year, Carver said: “Art Dubai’s success is built on its engagement with the MENASA region, its great roster of leading galleries and the support of dedicated collectors from the UAE and beyond. The innovative programme of artists’ projects and the Global Art Forum have made Art Dubai a particularly popular and dynamic event. I’m delighted to be joining the fair at a time of unprecedented homegrown support for artists from the Middle East, and when international interest in the region has never been higher. I’m aiming to work with galleries, collectors, artists, institutions and professionals to strengthen the role the fair can play within the region whilst continuing to develop the enormous international support that the event has always enjoyed.”

Bidoun Projects’ programmes in 2009-10, directed by Carver, included a touring library of Middle Eastern art books and music; a course of workshops and seminars in critical writing; and curating a dynamic set of international film and video programmes, talks, and artists’ commissions. Recent collaborating partners include the Sharjah Art Foundation, the New Museum, TDIC, Townhouse gallery, LACMA, the Cinematheque de Tangier, Galerie Sfeir-Semler, the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture), and the Emirates Foundation.

Carver was a correspondent for the Art Newspaper and has contributed to journals, newspapers and exhibition catalogues worldwide. As a film curator, she is a member of the programming teams for the Dubai International Film Festival and Edinburgh International Film Festival, specializing in Arab and Iranian cinema.

Carver graduated in 1994, and has worked in publishing and visual arts ever since – in Sydney, Australia, and in London at G&B Arts International and contemporary visual arts magazine; the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva), and as an editor at Phaidon Press.

Article Courtesy: ART DAILY

EXHIBIT 04 - EFEM CURATED BY SIDHANT BHAGCHANDANI

2010-06-14T21:17:00.008+04:00

EFEM curated by Sidhant Bhagchandani

17 JUNE 2010, 7 – 11 PM

Featuring:
Must Burn Books, Samuel Consiglio, Andrea DiStefano, Kathryn Garcia, Trenzinfizting, Nickolaus Typaldos and Amanda Wong.

LIVE PERFORMANCES AT 8 PM

EFEM curated by Sidhant Bhagchandani is an electronic and live programme of process and return mediated through systems and methods of underground currents. Featuring the multi-discipline works of Must Burn Books, Samuel Consiglio, Andrea DiStefano, Kathryn Garcia, Trenzinfizting, Nickolaus Typaldos and Amanda Wong, EFEM configures in its own asynchronous and reflective currency adapted ports of video, transmitted sound and performance at The Garment Room on 17 JUNE 2010 from 7 to 11 PM.

With an imperative to consider function, EFEM shall pull into an integrated geometry an overlay of production. At EFEM the art duo Must Burn Books will present a threefold video of instructables channelling the intimate and permanent/impermanent variant of the handmade book. Fluid scripts are then alleviated from texts to be slowed down for a constructed ritual of human significance in a video work by Nickolaus Typaldos. Kathryn Garcia simultaneously presents the associated gender in a cosmetic collapse of an in between or electronic inter net. Andrea DiStephano would present a mediated work of material and object with bodily components present in proximate enclosures. While Amanda Wong shall present in a two-channel video and sound work a considerate electronic utility of rotting and lifeless animal bodies. Samuel Consiglio shall contribute to EFEM with an FM of radio transmission a 10 part a-musical “I Know I’m Not Wrong” and Trenzinfizting shall fizt with uncustomary trenz in an integrated live performance of soulless knowing and aggressive HOT talk.

THE GARMENT ROOM
112 Greene Street
Between Prince & Spring
New York, NY 10012
Tel: 347 581 7930
http://www.thegarmentroom.com/

EXHIBIT 03 - WHATEVER WE HAD TO LOSE WE LOST, AND IN A MOONLESS SKY WE MARCHED

2010-04-06T12:49:00.017+04:00

25th of March-10th of May 2010
Recent works by Sara Rahbar

Exhibition Text by Shaheen Merali

Beyond the moral crossroad of war, atrocity and surveillance the exterminating angel looks on...

Rahbar’s passionate encounters seem to overflow from the pages of her notebooks, which resemble an ethnographer’s sketchbook, to the folds, straps and stripes that make up her predominantly textile assemblages. The need for the term, “Predominantly”, can be attributed to the fact that textiles form only a part of the everyday and everywhere that finds itself caught in the crossfire of these magnificent and beautifully observed, layered works. Flags form the basis of much of her work and, increasingly since 2007; she has worked with embroidered cloth in the form of rectangular pieces. All of these embroideries have their origins either in domestic usage or are employed ritually in ceremonies for the family, tribe or nation or on religious occasions. The fact that they form a basis for the concept of identity in her furtherance of their role and purpose in her artworks imbues them with even greater significance and appeal as we ultimately recognise ourselves within them.

The flags and these embroidered pieces both provide a loaded plane, a cultivated form, of difference but definitely recognisable as heritage; they allow the viewer to identify their place of origin, possibly arousing the first stirrings of prejudice. To a lay-person, the embroideries seem to reflect a certain type of Middle - Eastness or a part of central Asia, in the way the motifs, colours and stitches crisscross the moody background hues to make abstract shapes informed by land and natural forms. A prime example is the textile work I wait for the sun to return, and for another birth, which from its title symbolically asks for a regeneration and the notion of waiting and time. It seems that Rahbar, like many artists of our time, is in this limbo of observing an unleashing with unpredictable results; one that is affecting the global standard like a virus. In the work mentioned above, small groups of similar people enact similar, often violent, acts on each other. Hooded and masked men look out from their work in postures of a heightened masculinity, carrying their weapons of choice, guns, sticks and rocks. The viewer is left to question - are these protestors or civil police? Against a gory backdrop of a diagonal grid that resembles a sun-kissed mosaic, a kaleidoscope of terror and terrorists becomes an ingrained pattern like that of eventualities, which are currently working on creating a new cold world.

In the cases of the flags, prejudices are frighteningly mixed with a sense of patriotism (depending on who and where you are)- of the reality of nation states that seem to be on the verge of war, if not disturbingly close to the vacuity of a stand-off that has already succumbed to a diplomatic disaster. The two countries implicated in the work are, of course, the two places that Rahbar inhabits as an artist, a citizen and as an observer- the USA and the Islamic Republic of Iran. A duelling treatise indeed.

The work, flag# 41 what ever we had to loose we lost, and in a moonless sky we marched, is another typical use of morose wit within a poetic stoma as a title for her work. The main subjects of this work are the iconic beauties of the American democrats, the assassinated presidents- the Kennedy brothers, JFK and RFK. They feature as portraits in a heavy, dark, nearly pomegranate red background of stitched saddle-bags and gun belts. In the midst of this portraiture a flying eagle tries to land on the White House, whilst, in one corner, a crucifix with army appellations hangs sadly over the whole composition. Rahbar has a penchant for dramatic compositions that are blazoned with the symbolic glaze of Americana, where violence contrasts with the folkloric, almost innocuous, richness of tribal artefacts from Iran. These flags are territorial markers of her understanding of a fractious history between the two nations, which now remains encased like the basis for the designs and symbols, employed in a hidden past of violated glories and inexperience of global domination. These textile works like seepages, numbered as this one is as #41, forty first evaluations of past specters that have come to haunt contemporary atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and nearby Iran.

The final suite of images is a recent series of photographs, all against a dark, barren, black background. Here the subject is the artist herself - to be more precise the artist’s back is the subject. Dressed in a number of differing costumes, a continuous obsession with texture, destiny and design is further explored by a series of performative poses, using a number of props and stylisations. Similar to the flags and embroidered textile works, the title for the series prepares the viewer for its intent. I lay in the darkness of an anonymous grave, stripped of you, I remain is at first glance a pared-down, quieter, even meditative work in its relationship to the busy overbearing of the textile work. On closer inspection, the photographic works carry an amended set of information but still flex within an existing, if not a heavily symbolic, space of motif that carries on playing an important port of carriage for Rahbar. The visual, which leaps between flags and embroidered spaces, allows the viewer to fix and multiply meanings in those contradictory procrastinations that appeal to our temporal senses of space, in relation to these spectral times. A further reasoning is quietly introduced in these photographic revelations of a female back, its face turned, its identity no longer of value whilst a striking intention of time develops. They are symbolically reminiscent of the famous 1988 painting by Gerhard Richter, Betty, - a romantic but powerful portrayal of his daughter looking out of the frame and into time itself. Like Rahbar’s work, Betty, is adorned by a richly embroidered jacket that becomes as important as the mystery of the averted gaze.

The sartorial rage.
In folding all her works into this trifocal embrace, Rahbar makes apparent that she is, after all, a product of an unevenness that has exploded in our faces; an inequity of disruption and uncertainties that evaluates us as we try to comprehend how it ‘plays’ with our lives and values. Her explorations in all three medias, textile works, new embroideries and photography allows a space in which to evaluate her notion of aesthetic continuity within a context. For Rahbar, like many of her contemporaries, this context is mindful and interested in asserting its right to speak freely and openly about the advancing strategies that no longer upgrade freedom or values of democracy but rather strangulate peace. These works speak of the processes that have currently been fortified within a shock doctrine that is burying long-fought battle cries that had seemingly permitted civility and diplomacy.

Her work is important for it acts like a witness box, informing us of the shameful reversal of fortunes, Like a visual human cry, leaping between the incensed anxieties of un-belonging and the dark clouds remaining over our heads, her work captivates us with its devilish intentions.

CARBON 12 DUBAI

WORK 12 - Raed Yassin

2010-03-17T07:48:00.005+04:00

Name: Raed Yassin
Title: The New Film
Medium: Video, Duration 12 MIN, Edition of 3, 2AP
Year: 2008

THE GUILD NY

WORK 10/11 - Ramin Haerizadeh

2010-03-17T07:32:00.003+04:00

Name: Ramin Haerizadeh
Title: Oh Iran, My Bejewelled Land
Medium: Mixed-media and collage on canvas
Size: 200 × 220 cm
Year: 2009

Name: Ramin Haerizadeh
Title: Dance Me to the End of Love
Medium: Mixed-media and collage on canvas
Size: (tetraptych 250 x 400 cm), each panel 250 x 100 cm
Year: 2010

~~B21 Gallery~~ Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde

ARTICLE 85 - Art Dubai: the big fair with an international flair

2010-03-17T07:21:00.005+04:00

[March 17. 2010 1:40AM UAE / March 16. 2010 9:40PM GMT] Tahira Yaqoob for THE NATIONAL

Abir Fawaz, right, 22, a senior design student, and Sharmeen Syed, 24, a senior architecture student, from the American University of Sharjah. They are participating in an internship programme with Art Dubai. Nicole Hill / The National

DUBAI: Five hundred artists, 70 galleries, more than 15,000 visitors expected over four days and hundreds of potential collectors.

As the showplace that is Art Dubai rolled into town, its organisers declared it to be the “biggest platform for contemporary art in the Middle East”.

Artists, curators and gallery owners said yesterday one of Art Dubai’s greatest achievements in its four-year history has been uniting those creating art with possible patrons. The international art fair was launched yesterday by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

The support network that has helped give birth to a lively arts scene in Dubai will be recognised for the first time since the event started with the inaugural Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Patrons of the Arts Awards tomorrow.

Regional and international patrons who make financial contributions of at least Dh50,000 (US$13,600) to Dubai-based artistic initiatives will be recognised in a special ceremony, with a distinguished patrons category for anyone investing at least Dh5 million over three years.

Saeed al Nabouda, of Dubai Culture and Arts Authority, said: “The support of these patrons has played an instrumental role in enriching and evolving the cultural scene.”

At the launch party were the three winners of the world’s biggest cash trophy for art, the Abraaj Capital Arts Prize, which grants Dh750,000 to each of them to create original work as part of Art Dubai. They were Hala Elkoussy from Egypt, Kader Attia, an Algerian, and Marwan Sahmarani from Lebanon.

Elkoussy, 35, whose work is also on show at Manarat al Saadiyat, said: “This is a glimmer of hope in a scene of desperation. Things are changing for the better but it is so important to have local patrons as opposed to the situation before, when we would produce art which would then be exported abroad.

“Before, any discourse about art from the Middle East was coming from the West. Events like this are the beginning of change but there is a long way to go. We need to create a local discourse in Arabic, the language of the people.”

Ben Floyd, the co-founder of Art Dubai, said the emphasis for event was Middle Eastern art. “People are coming from all over the Middle East, not just from the UAE.”

One of the most important functions was to bring together local artists with international gallery owners or collectors who could project their work onto a global stage, organisers said.

Among the success stories are Rami Farook, 29, the Emirati owner of Traffic, a concept furniture store and gallery, and the American installation artist James Clar, 31, who is now his artist-in-residence and the focus of Farook’s stand at the fair.

“We work together,” Farook said. “He creates and I advise. I have no influence on his work and would never tell him what to do but we have conversations about this region and culture. He feels our frustrations and that comes through in his work.”

Clar said that his three years in Dubai had given him an insight into Arab culture and the Islamic faith which he had been oblivious to while living in the US: “My perception of the Arab world while living in America was totally different to what it is now, so I suppose in that way I have been influenced.”

Artwork on sale at the fair ranges in price from less than Dh3,673 to more than Dh3.7m for a giant metal sculpture by El Anatsui.

Elsewhere in the event, which opens to the public today and runs through Saturday, rising Emirati talent will be the focus of a number of workshops and projects.

Dozens of UAE residents in their 20s have been recruited into a group called Young Associates of Art Dubai, made up of volunteers who help ensure the fair runs smoothly and are rewarded with trips to international art fairs and advice in starting their own art collections.

Among them will be Fatima Yousef, 22, an Emirati graduate in visual communications from the American University of Sharjah. She said: “Traditionally women have not been accepted in this field. Here we have the opportunity to be exposed to art and design from the outside world.”

Sales from Art Dubai plummeted by a quarter last year from the Dh73.5m made in 2008. Organisers said they were “confident” they would pick up this year.

The director John Martin said: “There is a lot of interest in Middle Eastern art right now and galleries are starting to get the confidence to show that sort of work.”

tyaqoob@thenational.ae

ARTICLE COURTESY: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 84 - 2010 Abraaj Capital Art Prize Works Revealed in Dubai

2010-03-17T07:17:00.000+04:00

[Wed Mar 17, 2010] EMIRATES NEWS AGENCY

WAM Dubai, 16th March 2010 (WAM) - The 2010 works of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize were revealed to the public in Dubai today at Art Dubai, six months after the winners from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA) region, were announced, and started working on their projects in secret.

Celebrated Algerian artist Kader Attia, working with curator Laurie Ann Farrell from the United States, presented History of a Myth: The Small Dome of the Rock.

A video installation, this project's focus is on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, a structure of enormous historical and contemporary significance. A subtle combination of image and sound evokes the feelings the artist experienced when he visited the monument, creating a deep impression on the viewer.

Hala Elkoussy is an Egyptian artist for whom the archival history of modern Cairo is of utmost importance. She presented The Myths and Legends Room: The Mural, an epic 9 m by 3 m mural that references commemorative propaganda art. The mural is a dazzling, action-packed display, with many narratives vying for attention. Working with Dutch curator Jelle Bouwhuis, this is a new an exciting development in Elkoussy's career.

Marwan Sahmarani from Beirut is best known for his vibrant, highly-charged paintings. Working with curator Mahita El Bacha Urieta (Spain/Lebanon), Sahmarani presented The Feast of the Damned, an entirely new body of work incorporating oil-on-canvas, watercolour and ink-on-paper, ceramics and a video projection, all displayed in an atmospheric interior. The work is inspired by Hell: Fall of the Condemned Ones by Rubens, and deals with age-old themes of martyrdom and expiation in its narratives, themes that still resonate today in the Arab world.

Frederic Sicre, Executive Director at Abraaj Capital and a member of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize Selection Committee said: "Each year we look forward with anticipation to the time when the winners of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize unveil their vision to us. That time has come and it is truly exciting. The prize is part of our commitment to being a patron of the arts in the MENASA region. Through this prize, we seek to empower potential, and give talented artists in this region the opportunity to break new ground, and showcase the rich artistic and cultural heritage of this extraordinarily diverse part of the world." The three works-of-art represent a new stage of evolution for the artists and the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA) region, from which they come. In each of their projects, the artists examine a theme that is specific to their experience living in the MENASA region but that also has universal application.

The Abraaj Capital Art Prize, which is globally unique in that its awards are given on the basis of proposals rather than completed works, is now in its second year. It has quickly gained widespread recognition due to the high quality of the winning works.

Through a People's Choice, the public this year has the opportunity to pick their favourite of the three works. Votes can be made via SMS, online, email and physically at Art Dubai. Photos of the unveiling will be seen first on the Abraaj Capital Art Prize fan page on Facebook.

About the Abraaj Capital Art Prize Announced in 2008, at US$ 1 million in disbursements, it is the world's most generous art prize. Annually it rewards chosen artists from the MENASA region on the basis of a proposal rather than completed works-of-art. The winning artists then go on to create the works. It is aimed at curators and artists working together as opposed to a single artist. To date there have been six winners (3 in 2009 and 3 in 2010). The 2009 winning artists were Nazgol Ansarinia, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, and Kutlu? Ataman. The 2009 works are currently on display at Maraya Art Centre, Al Qasba, Sharjah until April 25th.

ARTICLE COURTESY: WAM/TF

ARTICLE 83 - Art Dubai features works of more than 500 artists

2010-03-17T07:11:00.002+04:00

[00:00 March 17, 2010] Fatma Salem, Staff Reporter for GULF NEWS

Event adds to emirate's vibrant cultural life

His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, inaugurated Art Dubai 2010 in Madinat Jumeirah on Tuesday. Shaikh Mohammad toured the exhibition halls and galleries and stopped at the Poetry of Time hall, presented by the world famous French jewellery house Van Cleef and Arpels, and Al Jawhara Hall where he inspected the latest creations of watch and jewellery designers. Image Credit: WAM

Dubai: Works of more than 500 artists are on display at the fourth edition of Art Dubai, which opened yesterday.

His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, officially inaugurated the event. Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Shaikh Maktoum Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Shaikh Majid Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairman of Dubai Culture, were also present.

In pictures: Art Dubai

The four-day show, one of most significant contemporary art events in the Middle East, is being held at the Madinat Jumeirah. Artworks of over 500 artists, showcased by more than 70 art galleries from China, Chile, Australia and US, as well as Middle East are on display. The event will feature over 25 solo exhibitions. The 2010 Abraaj Capital Art Prize will also be given away at the event. Curators and collectors from all over the world have gathered to interact and exchange knowledge.

Ahmad Humaid Al Tayer, Governor of Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), said: "Art Dubai contributes to Dubai's efforts to vitalise the city's cultural life and integrate art and culture more closely into Dubai's social fabric."

Shaikh Mohammad tours the exhibition with Shaikh Hamdan, Shaikh Maktoum, Shaikh Majid and organisers of Art Dubai on Tuesday. Image Credit: WAM

Programming mix
Director and Co-Founder of Art Dubai John Martin agreed. "In our fourth year, we have deliberately chosen a programming mix that will present an exciting diversity of contemporary art from around the world to appeal to new audiences while stimulating a creative environment and new discoveries for experienced art professionals," he said. "For four days, Art Dubai showcases the very best of what the Middle East and wider global market have to offer in terms of contemporary art. It is a snapshot of the growing importance of the region as an arts hub and a key international platform for artists, curators and galleries."

Art lovers and commentators will take part in debates at the Global Art Forum, supported by Dubai Culture. Art Park will feature works presented by Emirati, Iranian and American artists.

An exhibition by Marwan Sahmarani called The Feast of the Damned. Art Dubai 2010 is hosting works from over 70 galleries. Image Credit: Francois Nel/Gulf News

Art Dubai

WHAT: The fourth edition of Art Dubai WHERE: Madinat Jumeirah WHEN: March 17-20

ARTICE COURTESY: GULF NEWS

ARTICLE 82 - Art Dubai 2010 Opens Its Doors For The Biggest Contemporary Art Event In The Middle East

2010-03-17T07:00:00.000+04:00

[16 March 2010] DUBAI CITY GUIDE

Event to be Held Under the Patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Organisers anticipate record visitor numbers over the course of the fair.

Under the patronage of UAE Vice-President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Art Dubai officially opened today with the most extensive contemporary art event to be held in the Middle East. Open to the public from Thursday, 17 March until Saturday, 20 March, Art Dubai brings together artists, gallerists, curators and collectors from around the world to experience over 80 separate exhibitions presented by leading international galleries and institutions and featuring more than 500 artists, including solo exhibitions, installations, performances, talks and screenings.

Art Dubai’s organisers are anticipating a substantial increase in its 2009 attendance figure of more than 14,000 visitors, reflecting the growing enthusiasm in the arts from all sectors of the local community, as well as a worldwide international following and a programme that is designed to appeal equally to the first time visitor as well as the seasoned art professional.

“Art Dubai is the tangible representation of the value that cultural investment and development bring to emerging economies such as Dubai. From the economic benefits of cultural tourism that Art Dubai delivers to the perception of the region that is taken away by the scores of regional and international visitors, to the community benefits that Art Dubai provides as an educational and family-centric platform, Art Dubai 2010 is a Middle East-born success story that appeals to, informs and entertains the broadest demographic range,” said Ahmed Humaid Al Tayer, Governor, DIFC.

Amongst the highlights of Art Dubai’s comprehensive programme of events:

• The works of more than 500 artists represented by more than 70 regional and international art galleries from China to Chile, Australia to USA, and galleries throughout the Middle East.

• More than 25 solo exhibitions, installations, and special projects, including the unveiling of the 2010 Abraaj Capital Art Prize, the world’s most generous art prize.

• Rub shoulders with the leading protagonists and commentators of the art world at the Global Art Forum, with four days of talks, presentations and panel discussions supported by the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture).

• Specially-commissioned artworks and video installations for the Art Park curated by Bidoun Projects by UAE national, Iranian and American artists, among others, with the support of the Emirates Foundation.

• Community and family-orientated programming including graffiti workshops and large-scale collaborative painting with START, the non-profit initiative that links child development with arts education.

“For four days, Art Dubai showcases the very best of what the Middle East and wider global market have to offer in terms of contemporary art – it is a snapshot of the growing importance of the region as an arts hub and a key international platform for artists, curators, galleries and for collectors to discover the rising stars of tomorrow’s art world” said John Martin, Director and Co-Founder of Art Dubai. “In our fourth year, we have deliberately chosen a programming mix that will present an exciting diversity of contemporary art from around the world to appeal to new audiences whilst stimulating a creative environment and new discoveries for experienced art professionals.”

Highlights of Art Dubai include artworks created by the winners of the 2010 Abraaj Capital Art Prize. The hotly-anticipated pieces are History of a Myth: The Small Dome of the Rock by artist Kader Attia and curator Laurie Ann Farrell; Myths & Legends Room: The Mural by artist Hala Elkoussy and curator Jelle Bouwhuis; and The Feast of the Damned by artist Marwan Sahmarani and curator Mahita El Bacha Urieta.

In addition, visitors to Art Dubai will be the first in the region to view the Van Cleef & Arpels exhibition The Poetry of Time, covering almost a century of watchmaking creativity and expertise. The Poetry of Time at Art Dubai 2010 traces the evolution of watchmaking at Van Cleef & Arpels through emblematic timepieces and includes a special workshop installation featuring master craftsmen at work.

Tickets will be available at the door during Art Dubai. They are priced at AED 50 each and entry for children 12 and under is free.

Art Dubai is a subsidiary of the Dubai International Financial Centre and is held in partnership with Abraaj Capital and sponsored by Van Cleef & Arpels. Madinat Jumeirah (www.jumeirah.com) is home to the event and HSBC is the official banking partner of Art Dubai. Canvas magazine will produce Canvas Daily, the official daily supplement for Art Dubai 2010.

ARTICLE COURTESY: DUBAI CITY GUIDE

ARTICLE 81 - Middle East's biggest art fest is back

2010-03-17T06:44:00.003+04:00

[Wednesday, March 17, 2010] Keith J Fernandez for EMIRATES BUSINESS 24/7

A total of 25 new galleries are exhibiting at the Art Dubai fair this year. (XAVIER WILSON)

Despite the lingering effects of the global recession, this year could be a watershed for the region's art market, believe organisers of the annual Art Dubai fair.

John Martin, Director and Co-Founder of the event, says visitors can expect to be wowed both by the quality and quantity on offer, with a wider range of artworks from more galleries than ever at the fair, which opens to the public tomorrow and runs until Saturday at Madinat Jumeirah.

"The international art market is riding high following robust auction results and spectacularly successful sales at the Armory Show in New York, the barometer of market sentiment for the important US market," he tells Emirates Business in an e-mail interview ahead of the event.

"The confidence in the art market worldwide is beginning to be felt at home with collectors seeing the region offering exceptional quality at comparatively low prices and an unprecedented opportunity to expand existing collections," he says.

"Every day, we are notified of more and more private and museum collectors booking to come to Art Dubai from around the world. Combined with the exceptional work on display, I am confident that this year's fair will be a turning point in the fortunes of the region's art market."|

Seventy-one galleries from 31 countries will be present at the event, with more than 500 artists represented, including 30 in single-artist, solo exhibitions. And with four days of talks, performances and film screenings, Martin says Art Dubai 2010 has the most extensive programme the event has seen in its four years.

"Every year the fair changes completely," he says.

"Visitors expect us to be innovative. Each aspect is reconsidered and reinvented. This year, a completely redesigned layout of the galleries gives visitors a more relaxed experience."

One such innovation is a greater emphasis on solo exhibitions so collectors have a greater understanding of the work of individual artists in artist-focused stands.

Up to a quarter of the galleries at the event are exhibiting in this format, offering visitors a progression in a specific artist's work over time, creating a greater sense of depth and meaning rather than a quick snapshot of several artists represented by the gallery. Among those artists being treated in this way are modern Indian and Egyptian masters such as MF Hussain and Adel El Siwi as well as more up-and-coming artists from Korea, Chile, Peru, Spain and Sudan. A total of 25 new galleries are exhibiting at the fair this year.

"We have three galleries from South America, Contrasts from China and Sun, Lee Hwaik and Hyundai from Korea. Pakistani art is well represented with Grey Noise, Gandhara-art and Rossi and Rossi presenting a solo show of Naiza Khan. I am a big fan of the Nessim and Viltin galleries from Budapest and Dea Orh from Prague," says Martin.

Galleria Continua is featuring major new work by Lebanese artist Mona Hatoum and October Gallery will present one of [the Ghanian artist] El Anatsui's most significant new works, the immense In the World but don't know the World.

Finally, Martin says look out for the work of Aboriginal artist, Tommy Watson, presented by Agathon Galleries from Sydney.

Access for all

Meanwhile, Bidoun Projects, the not-for-profit curatorial wing of arts organisation and publisher Bidoun, will continue its partnership with Art Dubai with an extensive line-up of art events and exhibitions at the fair to support the region's artists.

A key feature will be the Bidoun Projects exhibition, A New Formalism, which takes as its starting point the subtle articulation of four works that share a space.

"The exhibition will complement the rest of the programme, which looks at the spectacular and temporal nature of art fairs.

"A New Formalism brings together a precise selection of works by Hazem El Mestikawy, Iman Issa, Mahmoud Khaled and the collective U5 that together pose an expanded understanding of formalism," says Antonia Carver, Director, Bidoun Projects. "It is destined to be one of this year's highlights," says Martin.

Art Park, the converted car park underneath the galleries at Madinat Jumeirah, returns for the third year at Art Dubai and will foster discussion with a range of talks and performances.

Film programmes curated by Bidoun Projects and guest curators Masoud Amralla Al Ali, Aram Moshayedi, and duo Özge Ersoy and Sohrab Mohebbi will be screened at the event.

Multidisciplinary UAE artist and writer Ebtisam Abdul-Aziz will display a new work, specially commissioned by Bidoun Projects for the fair, outdoors at Art Dubai, in which she will re-imagine a map of the Arab World according to a set of numerical codes.

The fair also attempts to reach young people through a series of creative and educational opportunities. As part of Art Dubai's CSR venture Start, talented children and teenagers will have a chance to work alongside practising artists such as Emirati designer Noor Al Khaja and graffiti artist Mohammed Ali, also known as AerosolArabic, with a wide range of workshops that cover photography, graffiti, design and large-scale drawing.

Also on show will be artworks created by the winners of the 2010 Abraaj Capital Art Prize, among them are History of a Myth: The Small Dome of the Rock by artist Kader Attia and curator Laurie Ann Farrell; Myths & Legends Room: The Mural by artist Hala Elkoussy and curator Jelle Bouwhuis; and The Feast of the Damned by artist Marwan Sahmarani and curator Mahita El Bacha Urieta.

Finally, jewellery major Van Cleef & Arpels is presenting a mesmerising display of its greatest jewellery and watches, including the chance to see its master watchmaker in action.

The Poetry of Time is a journey into the century-old brand will explore its legacy and legend, through archives, family photographs, advertisements and original drawings.

High attendance

All of this, Martin says, will boost attendance at the event, which is designed to be accessible to all sectors of the community, from art professionals to first time visitors and young people.

"Art Dubai has successfully anchored itself in the city's consciousness and this year we are expecting to see record attendance figures, possibly as high as 25 per cent up on last year," he says.

For buyers looking for trends, Martin refused to be drawn on movements or the kind of genres investors should be looking at.

"Indian art is hot; Middle Eastern art is white hot, South American and Australian art is on fire. Pakistani art is off the chart, and don't write off Western artists just yet," he says.

"The point is to come here and enjoy what you see and make your own discoveries; the best collectors collect great art they don't follow trends or get tied up."

Tickets are now on sale, and cost Dh50. Call: 04 210 8567

TALKING ART

Running alongside Art Dubai is the Global Art Forum, which brings together leading arts professionals to discuss pressing issues that affect art today and that define its future.

Under the banner of Crucial Moments, this year's forum addresses the practical outcomes and theoretical concerns of key themes shaping our contemporary culture.

Supported by the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture), the forum's four-day programme began in Doha on March 15 at the Museum of Islamic Art. The forum offers thought-provoking concepts, such as imagining an ideal future art school, exploring the global trend for temporary museums alongside intimate interviews with international superstar artists, including Indian painter MF Hussain and Iraqi artist Dia Azzawi.

From today through to Friday, the event returns to its home at Madinat Jumeirah complex for three more days of lively conversation.

Today's panel begins with a discussion centred on cultural practitioners who feature historical and archival aspects in their work. This panel, composed of top artists and curators, features 2010 Abraaj Capital Art Prize recipient Hala Elkoussy, whose winning project will be on display at Art Dubai.

The programme will also address an impending crisis in global arts writing, with international writers and editors exploring the very real challenges facing media today.

Meanwhile, in what promises to be an inspiring discussion, three of the original movers from the vibrant art scene of 1970s Tehran, Tony Shafrazi, Fereydoun Ave and Kamran Diba will reminisce about the days of artistic energy and innovation and the legacy they exert on today's generation of Iranian artists.

Day three, tomorrow, spotlights current trends in art patronage, with a keynote address entitled Building Regional Patronage in a Post-Crisis Moment by noted art patron Omar Ghobash, UAE's Ambassador to Russia.

Two other panels run tomorrow, dedicated to both public and private patronage, highlighting the latest patterns in collectors' markets from a global array of expertise including Maria Baibakova, Moscow; Dr Farhad Farjam, Dubai; Mohammed Afkhami, Dubai; Alistair Hicks, London; and Michael Danoff, New York.

The day also features a rare opportunity to witness the legendary sculptor El Anatsui discuss his astonishing work and career in an intimate conversation with curator Okwui Enwezor.

This is followed by an intriguing debate over perceptions of art in Palestine, a 'Palestine Syndrome', questioning how preconceptions and prejudices affect the region's art and how artists within the country relate to each other across geographical and ethnic divides.

The fourth and final day, Friday, starts with another Modernist moment, this time recalling the world of 1970s New York, when artists Vito Acconci, Dennis Oppenheim and Alice Aycock collaborated at 112 Green Street, a seminal space that pioneered performance and installation art practises.

Friday's programme revisits the notion of patronage, through a fascinating conversation with Don and Mera Rubell, regarded as two of the most prolific and prescient collectors of the past 40 years.

They are followed by a panel scrutinising the relationship between patrons and institutions, and how those relationships will shape the growth of museums in the Middle East over the next few years.

The 2010 Global Art Forum will conclude with a final presentation by 5000 Friends After the Rolodex, as Shumon Basar and Haig Aivazian discuss the outcomes of their performative mapping project.

What to look out for this year

A decisive decade 1966-1976 by Qatari-Indian artist MF Hussain, courtesy of Grosvenor Vadhera, London

70 Bananas in One Hour by Iranian painter HazalKhatibi, courtesy of the Aaran Gallery, Tehran

Bug War Over Two Blue Mountains by Kate Eric, courtesy of the Frey Norris Gallery, San Francisco

My Land Escapes by Iranian artist Ala Dehghan, courtesy of the Aaran Gallery, Tehran

Al Watan Al Arabi, The Arab Nation by Chant Avedissian, courtesy of the Rose Issa Gallery, London

Article Courtesy: EMIRATES BUSINESS 24/7

WORK 09 - Jinoos Taghizadeh

2010-03-04T05:43:00.006+04:00

Name: Jinoos Taghizadeh
Title: Rock-Paper-Scissors (01)
Medium: Collage on offset lenticular print
Size: 50 x 35 cm
Year: 2009
Edition of 7
~~B21 Gallery~~ Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde

EXHIBIT 02 - DISORIENTATION II

2010-01-14T06:52:00.005+04:00

Disorientation II * looks at the era of Egyptian President Jamal Abdel-Nasser as a moment of rupture when the repercussions of the failure of his pan-Arab unity plan and the ensuing Arab nationalism fractured fragile structures meant to stand up and endure in the face of outside hegemony then, and in its wake shattered in a succession of breakdowns, wars, displacement, and miseries.

Disorientation II counterpoints a utopian era with the reality of today. The fragile watercolour renderings and nostalgic photographs, images and settings from the sixties and seventies, seen as one is ushered into the exhibition, are juxtaposed against an imposing body of sculptures, monumental photographs and installations, somber videos and performances that follow, and project a certain disdain for the helpless, unforgiving situation of loss and conflict experienced in the Arab world today.

This text does not try to explicate the various artworks and projects that the artists have contributed towards Disorientation II, and in no way does it attempt to untangle the complex and knotted history that brackets this exhibition. It is simplya series of syncopated thoughts that try to negotiate a path through the labyrinth of the artists’ thought provoking and intricate series of articulations and representations that comprise the show.

The exhibition opens with a flashback in time with Hala Elkousy’s work On red nails, palm trees and other icons; an intimate room full of hundreds of images, video screens, side lamps and chairs, all reminiscent of a time some half-a-century ago, when visual representations reflecteda certain utopia, similar to JamalAbdel Nasser’s Pan-Arab unity vision. One cannot stop the feeling of nostalgia for those days, for an era when hope of salvation from occupation and western hegemony was still possible. Art of the era and most other forms of visual representation showed and expressed optimismfor the possibilities of freedom: liberated societies, equality and justice for workers and farmers, and democratic rule. We see inone of the newspaper clippings hanging in Hala Elkousy’s room the legendary Che Guevara posing for a picture with farmers. Elkousy tells that during that period the likes of Che Guevara, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir would visit the villagers and farmers in Egypt, not only the city of Cairo as is the case today.

As we leave this room, Ali Jabri’s sketchbooks, drawings and renderings [from the earlyseventies] paint an outsider’s perspective of Cairo; Elkousy’s hometown. Yet he still captured the moment when Egypt in general, and Cairo in particular, was at the center of the Arab consciousness, embodying the values of unity, selflessness and revolution. Jabri, like an anthropologist, archeologist, architect and sociologist, all in one, uncovers the intricate details and subtleties that made that place and that period in time so special. The popular saying goes “the devil is in the details” but Jabri’s work tends to chime more with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s “God is in the details”. Yet a shift took place in Jabri’s collages from the eighties. Driven by a series of disappointments, saddened by the wars in the eighties and let down by the duplicity of politicians and leaders, Jabri’s collages from this period depict the hypocrisy, disjointed lives, abundantlies and anguish of the time.

Closure for the period comes with Wael Shawky’s Telematch Sadat. The title and staging of the work reference the world-famous German television competition “Telematch” broadcast in the seventies and eighties where teams from different German towns played games in costume. For Telematch Sadat Shawky asked children of a village to reenact the Anwar Al Sadat assassination of 1981, which symbolically marked the end of the period that defined Egypt as a leading force in the Arab world and ushering in fragmentation and disillusionment that became the currency of the day. Egypt’s expulsion from the Arab world’s political arena commenced in 1978 when Anwar Al Sadat signed the Camp David Peace Accords with Israel. Egypt was suspended from the League of Arab States whose headquarters were moved to Tunis.Yet more importantly this period was to define a decade of bloodshed, wars, losses, displacement and instability. The Iran-Iraq war cameat a great cost in lives and economic damage to be followed by the invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi army in 1990. The civil war in Lebanon, interjected by the Israeli invasion, destroyed the entire country, wasted many lives and resulted in the expulsion of the PLO to Tunis, thus crippling its influence and operations, and definitely leaving the Palestinian people living under the Israeli occupation feeling stranded and in a state of bitter defeat. The Sabra and Shatilla massacre come to top everything, as the final nail in the coffin. The death of Algerian President Houari Boumédienne in December 1978 signified, in one way or another, the opening of a Pandora’s box, the ramifications of which would spill a lot of Algerian blood and destabilize the country for more than two decades. The way the Syrian regime dealt with the Muslim Brotherhood’s armed insurgency (1976 - 1982) in Hama put a definite end to any challenger to the Baath party rule there. Jordan witnessed the most severe protests and social upheavals in its history during the 1980s, and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen sustained some 60,000 casualties in the violent clashes of 1986. Sudan witnessed two coup d’états and the escalation of the civil war between the south and the north. And these are only a partial account of what happened in the eighties. The nineties witnessed still other horrific stories, catastrophes and fiascos but no less than those of the last decade. Hopelessness, helplessness and a very bleak prospect, if any, for a better future leaves many people in the Arab world desperate and angry, resentful and, if not bitter, deeply cynical at the very least.

There are several references to monuments in this exhibition and each one is saturated in its own way with the prevalent sense of disdain, conflict and division. Beirut Caoutchouc by Marwan Rechmaoui is fraught with these divisions, and the societal fragmentation of Lebanon. A map made of thick, flattened rubber is etched to divide it into 60 pieces, not simply to delineate different neighborhoods of Beirut, but to delve deeper into the history of the sociopolitical, and economic causes of the movement, settlement, and division of this complex urban cartography.Rechmaoui investigates architecture and cartography to try to make sense of demography and society, working like an anthropologist, to reveal strata after strata of the city’s pseudo-unity. Rechmaoui’s second work in the exhibition, A Monument for the living is a three-dimensional human-size scaled replica of Burj Al Murr, a skyscraper at the edge of Beirut that was left unfinished dueto structural weaknesses, and used by various militia factions during the civil war in Lebanon as a sniper’s nest, a prison and a place to hold hostages. The building, a landmark in the city in a strategic position, was left unused and dilapidated after the war, with its tower too tall to knock down and too dense to implode. Thus it became an indestructible monument of a civil war that has never been resolved or reconciled, living on as a hulking memorial in the city’s horizon. The monument becomes a monument not for the dead of the civil war, but for those who survived, and in recreating it Rechmaoui speaks to the different power manifestations a monument can allude to, or inhabit.

Beirut is almost a miniature model of Arab countries where different classes, ethnicities, and religions seem to collide in their attempts to reconcile, where migrants and refugees - Armenians, Palestinians, Iraqis and others - are in constant flux, and where corruption and power struggles are at play. Yet it is very important here to halt the flow of the exhibition, to interrupt this evolving quasi-narrative of the contemporary history of the Arab world. One pauses as if to observe the minute of silence demanded from an audience in honour and memory of the dead and the martyred in any other public event. In Disorientation II we are silent in memory of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. There is no need to explain the background and tell the story of the massacre in this text, but it is very important to mark this event which so poignantly encompasses the plight and calamities of refugees and migrants, while also marking a pinnacle of achievement for the juntas in their struggle for power. Monika Borgmann’s film Massaker allows us this possibility, for thefirst time, through the confessions of the perpetrators. Six people who took part in the massacre of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps’ Palestinian inhabitants, “both on orders and on their own personal initiative” as we learn in the film, narrate the particularsof their heinous acts. They also reveal details of the relationship between the Lebanese Forces Christian militia who perpetrated the massacre - the six protagonists of Borgmann’s film were members- and the Israeli army which was in control of Beirut in September, 1982, and which surrounded the camps and provided protected entry for the Lebanese Forces Christian militia to carry out the genocide.

Beirut is not the only site of conflict though. We learn from Hriar Sarkissian’s ExecutionSquares that other places that might at first glance seem tranquil and serene are fraught with power struggles and extremes. Sarkissian’s photographs depict a number of urban squares in three Syrian cities, Aleppo, Latakia, and Damascus, where public executions of civil criminals take place. These landscapes in the early morning give a sense of foreboding, and in contrast to the busy clamor of the day, the squares are empty and tense. The untraceable ending of lives in those squares comes as a counterpoint to Rechmaoui’s Monument for the living. HereSarkissian attempts to represent those whose lives have been taken, using the monumental photographic format of emptiness. We know that the squares and streets will soon be filled with life; yet there is a certain eeriness to the photographs in places which at this early hour instead of portraying the dawning of a new day ironically represent the ending of life. Along comparable lines, Rochers Carrés, the photographic series by Kader Attia, investigates the human interaction with an architecture fraught with a history of colonialism, a present cursed with poverty, and dreams of a future that may never be fulfilled. Rochers Carrés is a breakwater beach constructed by the administration of Algerian President Houari Boumediene, of huge concrete blocks whose sides can be as high as 3 or 4 meters. Attia explores the meaning of boundary, the space that separates the young people who sit staring at the sea from the prospect of a better life in the continent beyond the vast sea. It is ironic, Attia writes, that the young Algerians’ exasperation atRochers Carrés is not so different from that in the French banlieues where most emigrants from Algiers end up living, with “the same lack of hope in the future, same sexual misery, same frustration, same lack of social acknowledgement, same feeling of failure and same suffering.”

Boundaries, borders and delineated territories are an important part of the construct of Disorientation II. As is the case with Marwan Rechmaoui’s Beirut Caoutchouc - a map trampled with factional divisions and social fragmentation - Mona Hatoum’s Present Tense speaks of the map awarded to the Palestinians as part of the interim agreement in Oslo. A simple look at Present Tense says it all. Drawn on olive oil soap, a perishable material, it alludes to the fact that as a foundation for the map it is destined to dissolve. And it may also allude to Pilate’s washing his hands with the soap, as if declaring, “I have nothing to do with this arrangement or agreement. I wash my hands of it.” What seems at first to be a strange disease that disfigured the surface of the soap is actually tiny red glassbeads outlining the areas that were handed over to the Palestinians to control. These red circles form the Palestinian Authority territories on the ground, and they come across with a single glance at the map as totally disconnected, forming a noncontiguous group of scattered islands in a vast sea of land occupied by Israel. The soap should have had some scent to it, reminiscent of childhood and home when the odor of olive oil, the foundation for the only soap available then, brings to mind a feeling of warmth and belonging. But one soon notices that time and age have taken their toll and now the scent is only a memory fading by the day along with hope.

Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri take us to investigate the Palestinian territories. For their project What everybody knows, they travel across the country talking and video-recording conversations with a good number of people over a 16-day period. The people they meet are from many backgrounds - a professor, a former detainee, a geographer, a Bedouin, an architect... The outcome is presented as 16 one-day trips or journeys which together outline a map “about the social, psychological, and political dimensions of contemporary life for Palestinians in occupiedPalestine.”

Zooming in on one particular location in Palestine, Wafa Hourani recreates a model of Qalandia refugee camp from cut-out photographs and cardboard boxes. Qalandia, situated north ofJerusalem, gained infamy from one of the main checkpoints situated at its entrance connecting Ramallah and its vicinity to the east and south of the country. Yet Hourani’s Qalandia 2047 brings with it a twist. His model attempts to representthe Qalandia refugee camp in 2047, one hundred years after its original inhabitants were expelled from their homes following the 1948 war, to find on this spot of land a temporary refuge, hastily setup at that time by the UNRWA, which tragically appears now more like a permanent arrangement. Hourani’s satirical solution to the claustrophobic situation in the camp is to devise mirrors on the separation wall that towers over the camp and suffocates its residents, thus giving the illusion of an uninterrupted skyline and an infinite open space. In the context of Disorientation II, this work can be seen as a monument to the steadfastness of all those living in refugee camps who are determined not to leave their arduous living conditions for a temporary, comfortable life outside the camp; instead, they stand by their resolve to go only to the homes they were driven from in 1948.

Tarek Al Ghoussein picks up on the ramifications of the events in 1948 and addresses some of the UN resolutions pertaining to the Palestinian cause in his most recent work (D II series). In contrast to Hourani’s attempts to address issues pertaining to refugees and displacement, Al Ghoussein inserts himself in the work as a son of diaspora Palestinians who is not permitted by the Israelis to enter Palestine. In this way he creates a certain tension between the still, desolate landscape, the sun-weathered inanimate objects, and his intervention, which together with the industrial-looking green fabric he brings along represent a disquieting interference. A level of dislocation ensues from his presence and his actions, and yet in aggregate it doesn’t alter much in the vast, uncompromising landscape. It is only a matter of time before a sand dune will swallow hatever trace he leaves behind. One wishes to see it otherwise -but the sign that he holds with the number 181 is just a trace of one of many UN Resolutions pertaining to the Palestinian cause, which seem now to be weathering away. Soon they will be swallowed up in the heap of many other unfulfilled UN Resolutions, drifting, formless, flattened and scattered by the strong winds of a dictated, compromised and forced solution that will fall from above.

It is leaders and officials who come up with these parachutedin solutions and resolutions that impose certain realities on people and concoct illusions. Grigori Potemkin, a minister during the reign of Russian Empress Catherine the Great, concocted a brilliant illusion in 1787 when Catherine the Great visited Crimea, which had been annexed by Russia four years earlier. In order to show her that these lands, part of a peninsula in present day Ukraine stretching south into the Black Sea, were worth something, he erected a series of fake, prosperous settlements along the Dnieper River which were really nothing more than facades of buildings and strategically-placed fires that could be seen during the night when the Empress would be less likely to spot the fakes.

Yto Barrada’s Gran Royal Turismo partakes in a somewhat similar deception when a convoy of three black Mercedes cars, obviously carrying officials, passes through a little treeless town with dirt-ridden sidewalks and walls. Palm trees suddenly pop up and the sidewalks and walls flip to reveal fresh paint and clean surfaces draped with flags. When the convoy leaves town, the trees, flags and fresh paint disappear and the town is back to its sad and dirty old appearance. The beauty of Barrada’s Gran Royal Turismo is that it’s constructed as a circular racing track, creating an infinite hollow notion of repetition without any possibility for real change, thus alluding to tactics that some countries and authorities use when the country’s own leader, the one and only person with the power to effect change, visits a poor area or a rundown part of town. Instant cleanup disguises dismal living conditions, and then to the great disappointment of the residents, all the dress-up weathers and disappears soon after the official is gone. There are times and places when authorities actually remove palm trees they planted in order to save them in fresh condition for the next visit.

The element of circular movement and the notion of hollow infinite repetition in Barrada’s Gran Royal Turismo makes a subtle connection with Diana Al Hadid’s work, which echoes a rotary movement with a spiral in a dilapidated Babel-like sculpture. Her Portal to a Black Hole consists of a spiral staircase made of organ keys positioned in the center of the sculpture leading to the oculus of the dome. The oculus in the Pantheon was the only source of light other than the door and represented a central sun within a concrete sky. It was originally a temple to all gods, but it was converted into a church. It is generally credited to Apollodorus of Damascus, a Greek architect, born in Damascus, Syria. Al Hadid’s sculpture is conceived as a pseudotemple, or an “architectural black hole” that emits the sounds of B Flat, which cannot be heard by the human ear. Al Hadid states “My structure, while culling from the architecture of Greek temples and Gothic Cathedrals, purports to form a line, not to God, but to another undiscovered, impossibleto reach location - a black hole, a hypothetical place completely cut off from our world and our history. The ruined structure appears to have been operational one day, but is now silent and dysfunctional.” The spiral black hole in which Al Hadid depicts this church is perhaps ominous as to the unpromising future ahead, and a commentary on a nihilistic view of history.

Where are the Arabs? asks Samah Hijawi in a performance, taking us back full circle to Jamal Abdel-Nasser’s era, to the beginning of the exhibition, to that utopian and glorious moment when Arab nationalism and unity was still a possible dream. However, repetition is imbedded in her oratory, identified in the recurrence of certain ideas throughout the length of the speech, and even though in the Arabic language and culture repetition is normally used to emphasize conviction, in her case it can only allude to emptiness, boredom and futility of the performance of certain political figures, as is also manifest in the circular movement of Barrada’s piece and Al Hadid’s dilapidated spiral staircase that leads to a black hole.

And history repeats itself. Tarek Atoui Undrum II: the Chinese Connection ends with the lowest point humanly audible in the musical scale, creating a challenging connection between the practices of several popular political movements in the Arab world and the trials of opera, music and art masters who were adjudicated and condemned by the youth of the Chinese communist party during the Maoist revolution. His physically challenging sound performance mirrors his personal struggle with the flux of unsettling political, social and cultural changes, as rough, dense and distorted electronic sound textures collide with the sounds of trials and Maoist propaganda. We can stretch our imagination to place Hijawi’s speech performance next to Atoui’s sound performance in a twisted, complimentary way, as if one leads up to the other and possibly feeds from the other.

Disorientation II follows a circular path, emphasizing the notion of repetition of familiar shortcomings, the squandered opportunities and violent power struggles that lead to wasted lives, bitter societies and the betrayal of human values. If only Ibn Khladoun’s theory on the movement of history as exemplified in the life of a city, would hold in the 21st century, for us to witness the inevitable defeat of rampant corruption, injustices and discrimination and the reappearanceof people with higher morals, ethics and values.

* This second edition comes as a continuation of Disorientation – contemporary Arab artists fromthe Middle East, which was held at the House ofWorld Cultures in Berlin in 2003.

Disorientation II: The Rise & Fall of Arab Cities

NOW RE-OPEN AFTER MAINTENANCE

22 November 2009 - 20 February 2010

4pm-10pm, Sunday to Thursday, 2pm-10pm, Friday to Saturday

Jack Persekian, Artistic Director of the Sharjah Biennial, will curate Disorientation II, an exhibition of works presented by artists from Middle Eastern countries, which explore Arab cities from the perspective where both unity and division co-exist. The exhibition also looks at Jamal Abdel-Nasser’s period as a moment of rupture, when the repercussions of the failure of his pan-Arab unity plan and Arab nationalism had fractured the then fragile structures.

Participating artists: Tarek Al Ghoussein, Diana Al Hadid, Ayreen Anastas & Rene Gabri, Tarek Atoui, Kader Attia, Yto Barrada, Monika Borgmann, Hala Elkoussy, Mona Hatoum, Samah Hijawi, Wafa Hourani, Ali Jabri, Marwan Rechmaoui, Hrair Sarkissian, Wael Shawky

This exhibition is in Manarat Al Saadiyat, a new cultural venue located on Saadiyat Island, home of the Cultural District.

From Abu Dhabi take the Corniche Road towards Meena, then follow signs to Yas Island, take Sheikh Khalifa Bridge onto Saadiyat and follow the signs.

From Dubai take the exit sign to Yas Island from the highway, follow the road straight through to Yas Island and onto Saadiyat where you will see signs to Manarat Al Saadiyat.

For more information please call 02 6908207.

ARTS ABU DHABI

ARTICLE 80 - A ‘proper artist studio’ in Musaffah

2010-01-14T06:45:00.003+04:00

[December 31. 2009 11:52PM UAE / December 31. 2009 7:52PM GMT] THE NATIONAL

The Art Hub concept came about through Tini Meyer’s challenges finding a space to paint. Delores Johnson / The National

ABU DHABI: A Dh6.5 million (US$1.8m) project to build an “art hub” in the Musaffah industrial zone that will provide artists with affordable studio space has attracted attention from the capital’s Urban Planning Council. But the plan has lost the support of Tini Meyer, the local artist who helped develop the concept. Billed by its developers as a potential solution to the scarcity of low-rent workspace for painters, sculptors and other artists, Art Hub is scheduled to open early this year. Groundwork on the approximately 3,000-square metre site is 30 per cent complete, according to Ahmed al Yafei, the owner and head of Osan Properties.

The Urban Planning Council, which ensures all new developments in the emirate fall in line with Abu Dhabi’s urban structure framework, confirmed that a member of its policy team met several weeks ago with Ms Meyer. The council declined to discuss details of the talks because the proposal was still under review. But Ms Meyer said the discussions were about how to develop the proposal.

Ms Meyer is no longer working on Art Hub because of disagreements over the creative direction of the project. She said, however, that she still believed in the concept of “setting up a proper artist studio centre”. Each of the 16 work studios at Art Hub will be 36 square metres and include sinks and running water, Mr al Yafei said. He said rents would be affordable, but he would not reveal the rent structure.

Mr al Yafei characterised the Musaffah site as a pilot project for a franchise of Art Hubs. He envisioned branches on the Corniche and on Saaidyat Island. “The UPC is working on the Corniche development and they are interested to see if they can give us a branch on the Corniche,” he said. Mr al Yafei has already submitted a proposal for an Dh89m Art Hub on Lulu Island that will offer 42 art studios on a 21,600 square metre area. A warehouse connected to the main building would serve as an art gallery and exhibition space. He said he had also had interest in his proposal from the Tourism Development & Investment Company.

With the success and interest around the recent Art Abu Dhabi fair, Ms Meyer said she believed there was demand for studio space, and that workspace was a recurring topic among artists in the UAE. “There are so many people in Abu Dhabi who are proper artists or have a passion for creating art, but they don’t have a proper workspace,” she said.

The Art Hub concept came about through Ms Meyer’s challenges finding space to paint. Sculptors resort to working in their kitchens or clearing space in their bedrooms. Her first art installation, to premiere this month at a women’s exhibition in Sharjah, involves hundreds of real fish eyeballs contained in glass jars. “Can you imagine being in a home with fish eyeballs and glass containers everywhere? The space is really important to provide for the studio,” she said.

Johanna Klein, a sculptor from the Netherlands, is familiar with the problem of finding affordable studio space for artists in the capital. Sculpting from clay or soft stone at home was “impossible”, she said, due to the dust and stone chips, the noise from carving machines, and the absence of a kiln. “I just had to give up the idea of sculpting in Abu Dhabi and started painting instead, which is easier to do at home,” she said.

Mrs Klein would welcome a creative arts centre, whether it be Art Hub or another venture. “I’ve joined a group of artists in Abu Dhabi all struggling with the same problem: Rent is too expensive to afford studio space,” she said. “And they all juggle around in bedrooms converted to some kind of workspace, with problems of ventilation.” Artists thrive on social interaction and are often inspired by having other artists nearby, even if they work with other media, she said. Bringing that kind of buzz to Abu Dhabi would be exciting.

“Like Paris in the beginning of the 20th century, or New York from the 1950s on, a living artist community can add to the character of a place,” Mrs Klein said. “It’s hard to exactly name it, but it’s a certain something in the air. Something of flamboyance and fire that inspires and makes a city become truly alive.”

mkwong@thenational.ae

Article Courtesy: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 79 - Art's new direction

2010-01-14T06:41:00.003+04:00

[Monday, January 11, 2010 19:57 IST] Riddhi Doshi / DNA

A city-based art gallery is popularising new media art. Curator Andre Lee explains its nuances.

Mumbai: Many believe that new media art is still not very well received in Asia. In an effort to popularize the art of the new media, a group exhibition at Sakshi art gallery is showing some very innovative new media works from across Asia.

The nine artists belong to different countries in the sub-continent, from Iran, Japan, Turkey and Indonesia. Shilpa Gupta represents India.

The exhibition is titled The Tradition of the New and is curated by Taiwanese writer and museum manager Andre Lee. Andre says, “Most art markets of Asian countries are dependent on the western markets, especially that of new media. People in Asia, if I may say, are biased to the traditional art. So this exhibition is to promote new media art and bring about an exchange of artistic ideas between different Asian countries. That is very important.”

The Tradition of The New focuses on the idea that people of the contemporary world are still entangled with the traditions of the past though they may not be aware of the same. Andre explains, “People believe that we are far off from our tradition but that’s not true. If you will look carefully, today’s world is a mix of both the new and traditional. And the works in this exhibition reflects the same thought.”

As soon as you enter the gallery you will be welcomed by an antique wheel by Tu Wei-Chang. But when you go closer you find images of helicopters, a computer mouse and other synonyms of modern life.

The show-stopper is the video art by Wuchi-Psung. You first see the old Chinese sketch art and then gradually this is transformed into a work of modern art. A closer look at the machine and you will see just a netted sheet of metal attached in front of the projector. The simplicity of making of the art and then later what it projects is what makes it so impressive.

Article Courtesy: DNA INDIA

ARTICLE 78 - Iran’s top clerics concerned about art

2010-01-14T06:35:00.004+04:00

[Thursday, January 14, 2010] Tehran Times Culture Desk

TEHRAN -- Iran’s top clerics expressed their concerns about Islamic art during separate visits Iran’s Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Hosseini paid to them in the city of Qom on Thursday.

Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli and Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi talked about their worries and put forward proposals during the visits. Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi called Iran’s modern art a copy of Western art and said, “Today’s art is totally driven by Western theories and is a copy of them.”

Mesbah Yazdi, director of the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute in Qom, regarded the scope of culture as very broad and continued saying, “All activities of the country must germinate within the Ministry of Culture (and Islamic Guidance). “If we are going to do something, it must be studied very carefully. We need to have some sort of technical programming. “The Islamic society of today faces issues that were not even imagined in the time of the shah’s regime. New strategies for planning and analysis need to be developed, and the decision makers and designers need to buy into them.” He also stressed on social activities saying, “Social issues need to be examined carefully and we can’t simply focus on the short-term.”

The culture minister also met with Ayatollah Javadi Amoli on the same day in which the top cleric asked for the establishment of a university of Islamic art supervised by the culture ministry. “We must realize that art becomes Islamic when one can really feel it, and thereafter the product will be Islamic cinema and a TV series like “Prophet Joseph (AS).” Directed by Farajollah Salahshur, the TV series details the life of Prophet Joseph (AS) and was aired on Iran’s national TV channel over the past year.

He later pointed to the TV series “Imam Ali (AS)” by director Davud Mir Baqeri as an example of a production not related to Islamic cinema and added, “The TV series ‘Imam Ali (AS)’ is a rozehkhani (narration of tragic events in the history of Islam). It is more like a modern tazieh (passion play). “Actors who do not pray and do not fast are entangled in fantasy and do not attain wisdom. An artist has a responsibility to play a nurturing role in society,” he remarked.

Ayatollah Javadi Amoli next referred to the role of an artist in the Islamic society and said, “An artist should be able to analyze social issues, so we need to educate those who can understand that as long as the art produced is genuine, it would not be un-Islamic.”

He continued saying that our universities are indebted to Western universities, adding, “The Westerners plagiarized our experimental sciences and wrote them down in their textbooks. We translated the Western texts and then handed them over to our university students to study here. So how can we expect our students to learn how to pray and fast?

“A country can stand up on its own two feet when its people are led by discerning leaders and those leaders are led by an even more discerning individual. “If you want to stand on your own, treat the discerning ones well and act with the most discerning individual with even greater care,” he concluded.

Photo: The Culture Ministry delegation visits Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi at his office in Qom on January 6, 2010. (Mehr/Mohammad Akhlaqi)

Article Courtesy: TEHRAN TIMES

ARTICLE 77 - Directing Iranian Art

2010-01-14T06:32:00.002+04:00

[1 January 2010] Raziqueh Hussain for KHALEEJ TIMES

A specialist on the art of Iran and Central Asia, Dr Ladan Akbarnia has become the new executive director of Iran Heritage Foundation in the UK.

The Iran Heritage Foundation is a charity organisation and is the leading supporter of Iranian studies in the UK. Its mission is to preserve and promote the history, languages, and cultures of the Iranian world and to make Iran’s heritage accessible to diverse audiences.

The IHF promotes academic research through fellowships, grants, scholarships and publications. In association with museums and leading cultural institutions, the Foundation also organises exhibitions and convenes conferences on the history and contemporary culture of Iran. About the challenges that she is facing in her new role, she says, “As someone who has been situated in the academic community and museum world, I was already familiar with IHF’s mission to preserve and promote the history, languages and cultures of the Iranian world; I was less familiar with its local programmes, events and community development as I did not live in London or even the UK,” she says.

Part of this first phase of her transition has been to learn about the inner workings, the day-to-day running of the foundation, while continuing to develop the types of programmes, fellowships, and conferences and trying to engage curators to do ‘behind-the-scenes’ workshops or tours, bringing specialists to London to talk about Iranian culture and oral history, plan more programmes that engage youth and contemporary culture she says.

The Iran Heritage Foundation supported the first exhibition of contemporary Iranian art in the United Kingdom and, in the West, in London at Barbican Art Galleries in 2001. In contrast to some contemporary Iranian or Middle Eastern art exhibitions, where the art works on display are often also for sale, this exhibition sought solely to celebrate Iranian art in its diverse forms and covered the 20 years before and after the Islamic revolution of 1979. “I know that this area of contemporary art currently enjoys a great period of vitality in the Gulf region, but I cannot speak as much to the Middle Eastern context as I can to the European or, especially, the American one. Just last summer, between June and August 2009, three museums in New York City alone had exhibitions including or exclusively featuring contemporary Iranian or Middle Eastern art. One was ‘Tarjama’ (meaning translation) at the Queens Museum, another was ‘Iran Inside Out’ at the Chelsea Art Museum, and the third was a show that I curated, ‘Light of the Sufis: The Mystical Arts of Islam,’ at the Brooklyn Museum, which incorporated contemporary Iranian art into an exhibition of works ranging from the *ninth through the 19th century,” says the doctor of Islamic art history.

Although Akbarnia was born in the United States, she moved to Iran at the age of three, and she left Iran a few years later, just after the Revolution and at the beginning of the war with Iraq. She was eight when she returned to the States, “That journey, although it will probably sound cliché, had to have affected my life and thinking in some way. It is likely to be what inspired me to come full circle by pursuing a doctorate in Islamic (specifically, Iranian) art and ending up where I am today, speaking to you as the director of an important foundation dedicated to promoting and preserving Iranian culture,” she says.

Akbarnia is currently in the process of writing a catalogue for the exhibition she organised at the Brooklyn Museum, now scheduled to go to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in May 2010; the catalogue shares the title of the exhibition, ‘Light of the Sufis: The Mystical Arts of Islam’. She has also contributed to and edited several exhibition catalogues for the Aga Khan Museum collection, currently based in Geneva and has written on medieval Mongol art of Iran and Central Asia as well as on contemporary Iranian artists such as Shirin Neshat and Pouran Jinchi.

Her first job that sparked her interest in the art world was one that she held as a research assistant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She also sings and plays guitar, and used to write songs to ‘get me in the mood’ to write papers in grad school. “I am devoted to two causes in particular, other than the preservation of Iranian culture (of course!), the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and the Growing Spine Foundation,” she says.

Since it’s a truly exciting time for contemporary Iranian and Middle Eastern art, so many artists may have opportunities now that they might not have enjoyed even a decade ago. There is more exposure to the market and more exposure to the world at large. “It is critical that curators organise well thought-out exhibitions with specific ‘stories,’ so to speak, so that we are not just being introduced to a group of artists from Iran, or to a group of artists from the diaspora. I would encourage and challenge future artists and curators alike to produce shows that are even cleverer and more focused than the best exhibitions out there, so that the bar continues to be set higher and higher,” she says.

raziqueh@khaleejtimes.com

Article Courtesy: KHALEEJ TIMES

ARTICLE 76 - Muhammad images removed by NY museum?

2010-01-14T06:28:00.003+04:00

[13 January 2010, 16:22]Ynet - Israel Culture

New York Post reports Metropolitan has chosen to pull prophet's pictures, apparently in order to avoid tensions with Muslim population. Museum spokeswoman says controversial images 'under review'

The Metropolitan Museum in New York is considered one of the most important art museums in the world with one of the biggest collections. Its Islamic art collection includes 60,000 pieces, but now it appears that the institution's managers are trying to avoid tensions with the Muslim population and have chosen to pull images of Prophet Muhammad from the collection.

The New York Post reported Sunday that the museum said the controversial images were "under review". According to critics, however, the Metropolitan has a history of dodging criticism and avoiding controversial issues. Conservative Muslims who say their religion forbids images of their holy founder.

A source with inside knowledge of the museum said it likely wanted to escape the kind of outcry that Danish cartoons of Muhammad caused in 2006. "This is typical of the Met – trying to avoid any controversy," the source said.

According to the New York Post, the Metropolitan currently has about 60 items from its Islamic collection on temporary display in a corner of its vast second-floor Great Hall while larger galleries are renovated, but its three ancient renderings of Muhammad are not among them.

Museum spokeswoman Egle Zygas explained, "We have a very small space at the moment in which to display the whole sweep of Islamic art. They didn't fit the theme of the current installation."

But Islamic art experts are not certain Muhammad will go on display when the Metropolitan finishes its $50 million renovation in 2011. Kishwar Rizvi said the museum, which has one of the world's best Islamic collections, has nothing to fear from Muhammad.

"Museums shouldn't shy away from showing this in a historical context," said Rizvi, historian of Islamic Art at Yale University.

Just recently, the Metropolitan decided its highly anticipated "Islamic Galleries" will be given an awkward new name ahead of the 2011 opening. Visitors will stroll around rooms dedicated to art from "Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia," according to a museum press release.

Rizvi said it was "a shame" the museum dropped the word Islamic from the title. "It's cumbersome and problematic to base it on nationalistic boundaries," the historian said.

Article Courtesy: YNET NEWS

ARTICLE 75 - UAE leaves a mark at Venice Biennale 2009

2010-01-14T06:23:00.003+04:00

[00:00 December 19, 2009] By Fatma Salem, Staff Reporter, Gulf News

Pavilion showcases series of artistic activities, capturing the attention of international audience

Dubai: UAE's recent participation in the Venice Biennale 2009 has left an enormous impact on the country, positioning it as a hub of cultural dialogue — one which brings the east and west under the same umbrella of art.

The UAE pavilion was initiated and supported by Abdul Rahman Mohammad Al Owais, UAE Minister of Culture, Youth and Community Development, the Emirates Foundation and the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority.

Dr Lamees Hamdan was elected the commissioner of the event which aims to promote the UAE as a platform for vibrant cultural exchange.

A significant part of the mission was to help people develop a better understanding of art, and to provide infrastructure to support the nation's diverse and thriving art scene.

This was demonstrated in the establishment of the UAE pavilion volunteer programme, which sent over 40 UAE-based volunteers to Venice with the support of the Emirates Foundation, Takatof programme and Emirates airline.

The volunteers donned the role of cultural ambassadors for the UAE and were granted free admission to several historical museums in Venice.

The huge success has attracted over 200 media outlets from across the world to cover the six-month long exhibition.

Home grown

The UAE pavilion showcased a series of artistic activities that have succeeded in capturing the attention of international audience.

Lamya Gargash — a well-known Emirati artist — was selected to head the show at the UAE pavilion. She created a seminal series of 31 photographs titled ‘Familial', documenting one-star hotels in the UAE. There were a number of promising artists such as Tarek Al Ghoussein, Hassan Sharif, Huda Said Saef and Ebtisam Abdullah, among others.

An online portal aims to provide a platform for people who have an interest in the art scene across the UAE. It allows artists to showcase their work with information on artists, art organisations. Additionally, it offers a network through which the contemporary arts community can communicate.

A video featured the ‘Nation Builders' installation by Berlin-based artist, dramaturge and curator Hannah Hurtzig.

The installation featured conversations with key figures in the cultural panorama of the UAE such as Dr Arif Al Shaikh, Dr Anna Klingmann, Armen Vartanian, Sooud Al Qassimi, among many others.

Design

The UAE pavilion was designed by UAE design gallery Traffic and Belgian architectural collective D'Haeseleer & Kimpe & Poelaert.

The unique space allowed for experimental presentation of material.

This ranged from artists' works, architectural models of various cultural structures (both existing and planned for the UAE), to a performance space that housed the Jackson Pollock Bar rendition of the initial press announcement for the UAE pavilion last year.

Article Courtesy: GULF NEWS

ARTICLE 74 - UAE charity brings art to Palestinian children

2010-01-14T06:13:00.003+04:00

[December 26. 2009 12:33AM UAE / December 25. 2009 8:33PM GMT] Mya Guarnieri for THE NATIONAL

Michael Cooper, the head of the art programme at Repton School in Dubai, conducts a lesson at Hermann Gmeiner School in Bethlehem on Wednesday. Twelve volunteers took part in the Start project. Ahikam Seri for The National

BETHLEHEM: Bent over her desk in concentration, the little girl swept a green pastel crayon across the paper with a look of delight. Under the watchful eye of Michael Cooper, a volunteer, the six-year-old Palestinian was making her first piece of art. Mr Cooper, 30, crouched next to the little girl. Using his fingers, he was teaching her how to blend one colour into the next. Her small hand followed his. Along with 11 other volunteers from a Dubai-based charity that stages workshops for disadvantaged children across the Middle East, Mr Cooper arrived in Bethlehem on Wednesday.

They will spend the next week donating their time, energy and enthusiasm to 70 Palestinian children who attend the Hermann Gmeiner School. About half of the children are part of SOS Palestine, a programme that provides a home and education to youth from troubled backgrounds. Some of the children are orphans. Some have been abandoned, abused or severely neglected. One child, cheerfully adding streaks of yellow to white paper, is the son of a drug-addicted father and an impoverished mother. Another was orphaned by her father and ignored by her mentally handicapped mother; authorities found her wandering in the street, barefoot and alone, when she was a toddler.

“They need a lot, they are deprived,” said Grace Matar, the assistant principal.

The week-long initiative was organised by Start, the charitable arm of Art Dubai, which brings art education to children facing a variety of difficulties, from learning disorders to poverty, throughout the region. Most of the volunteers, like Mr Cooper, who heads the art department at Dubai’s Repton School, are expatriates based in the Emirates; three have travelled from London and one from Beirut to join the group. And all have paid their own travel expenses. “This is their gift to the programme and the kids,” said Sonia Brewin, the Start director.

Start has also taken volunteer groups to Jordan and Lebanon. “The idea is to collect creative people and encourage them to donate their time,” Ms Brewin said. Creating art gives children a sense of accomplishment, she said. “With art, there is no right and wrong. If you have a good teacher, they can see something brilliant in everything.” And when the children see their art displayed on the classroom walls, they feel proud.

Sven Muller, 40, an interior designer who lives in Dubai and has been volunteering with Start for two years, said, “I deeply believe in the power of creativity and arts. It can lead you in life.” Budget allowing, Start will lend a hand anywhere in the Middle East. But for Jocelyn Chami, this particular location is important. Ms Chami, 50, was born and raised in Beirut; both of her grandfathers left the Palestinian Territories in 1948 when Israel was established.

When she heard about the programme in Bethlehem, she knew immediately that she wanted to participate. Ms Chami is a Dubai-based yoga instructor who finds a creative outlet in pottery. She modelled the cat stretch pose for a group of children, and speaking Arabic, guided them into the next posture. “Yoga is a great thing to give them,” she said. “It makes them physically strong and helps on a mental level. And it helps on a spiritual level – they connect to their hearts and souls.”

While both Mr Muller and Mr Cooper called volunteering a “privilege”, Ibrahim Burmat, an art teacher at Hermann Gmeiner who will spend time alongside the Start group, said it was also a responsibility. As a graduate of the SOS programme, Mr Burmat, 23, knows first-hand the profound impact organisations such as Start make. “I’ve been through the system and it was very successful for me,” said Mr Burmat, who holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and hopes to go on for a master’s. “When you grow up, you realise how much it gave you. I feel a responsibility to give back and make it even better.”

Nearby, Mr Cooper, his face smeared with colour, taped the children’s completed drawings to the wall. “I’m putting up the achievements of the day,” he said. He showed two girls, one with a long red ponytail and the other with curly dark hair, the stencils they would use the next day for screen printing. Sensing their interest, Mr Cooper gave an impromptu lesson, pouring canary-yellow ink into a frame and then revealing the pattern on the paper below. Mr Burmat translated Mr Cooper’s directions and the girls took turns trying it on their own.

“Their excitement is the payment for us. It’s pure energy,” said Mr Muller.

Article Courtesy: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 73 - Environmental artworks

2010-01-14T05:53:00.005+04:00

[January 11. 2010 3:39PM UAE / January 11. 2010 11:39AM GMT] Jessica Hume for THE NATIONAL

Arshaan Sarang, a visual communications student from the American University in Dubai hangs his series of work, The Drakon. Randi Sokoloff / The National

The Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz famously said that while art may not solve problems, it makes us aware of their existence and opens our eyes to solutions. None of the 25 students whose exhibit, Sustainable City, which opens today at Dubai Community Theatre and Arts Centre in the Mall of the Emirates, claim to have the answers to the world’s mounting environmental issues. The ambitions of their mixed-media presentation are limited to putting forth ideas in the hopes of fostering debate.

The exhibit, this year’s final project for the American University of Dubai’s graphic design graduates – showcases varied interpretations of the sustainable-city idea. More than an academic project, the students see this exhibit as a springboard from student life to professional life. For some, its challenges have even helped them to discover how to use the skills they have acquired over the past few years.

The title of the exhibit was chosen initially because it was thought to encapsulate the challenges of urbanising while maintaining ecological integrity. As the students began working on their projects, it came to mean different things to each, though strong commonalities emerged.

Rather than focusing on the environmental aspect, what struck the participants most was the human element of the sustainable city. Indeed, as the students say, the strongest themes in the exhibit are those of human vulnerability and the responsibility we all bear to address environmental and social problems.

Ever optimistic, Mona Mohamed, 21, and Dana Jamal designed their project on the assumption that ultimately, people want to make a difference. Rather than a lack of interest, they saw a lack of means as the obstacle for those who would otherwise take positive action.

“We thought design was kind of shallow, but we saw our project as a way design could give something back,” explains Jamal, 22.

Named MakeDue, Mohamed and Jamal’s social design project works as a conduit through which people wanting to volunteer are linked with specific projects or causes to enable change.

They have been pleasantly surprised by the success of their first campaign, called BuckIt. With the goal of raising enough money to have a well built in a small village in Kenya, Mohamed and Jamal removed all water bottles on campus, replacing them with empty bottles containing a note.

“The notes said that if they wanted water, they had to come to us and donate a small amount to our campaign,” Mohamed says. “We got all kinds of responses. Some people didn’t like that they had to walk across campus.”

Regardless, their campaign has so far raised Dh12,000, the remaining Dh4,500 that will be needed to realise their goal, they hope to generate through the Sustainable City exhibit.

MakeDue may have begun as a semester-long project, but the young women don’t see it ending with their school careers.

“Hopefully the exhibit will be the start of something new, something big,” Jamal says. “It’s so important to empower people to feel they can make a difference. That’s what we’re trying to do with this.”

What scares Arshaan Sarang, 21, most is the possibility of war. “I think there will be a massive war over the remaining fossil fuels,” he explains. “That’s why we need to do more for sustainability.”

As major consumers of fossil fuels, vehicles present a problem for Sarang, but also an opportunity. Admittedly preoccupied with alternative energy, he designed a vehicle that uses an enhanced geothermal system.

“You pump water into the earth, it goes through the hot rocks and comes back up and creates steam. That goes through turbines and creates electricity. Then the water goes back down.”

For Sustainable City, his idea takes the form of three large images which the viewer looks at using 3D glasses. Despite not being an engineer, Sarang hopes to present his concept to people at General Motors, though he hasn’t arranged for a meeting yet.

“If my concept gets across to someone who can take it further and bring it to life, that’s what this is about,” he says. “The Middle East is vulnerable. The UAE is included in that. To prevent war we need to get serious about renewable energy. Graphic design is one of the strongest ways to get that message across.”

The lack of manual design makes Karla Cantalejo, 21, uncomfortable. “The whole graphic-design world is completely dependent on computers,” she says, explaining that if resources continue to be used at their current rate, there may come a time when we won’t be able to rely on electronic appliances. “My message is that there is an alternative to computers. I’d like to inspire people to start working manually.”

To this end, she devised and produced a graphic-design kit from scratch, complete with pastels, water colours, charcoal and paper. It was, she admits, as much to prove a point as to offer an alternative. The process took time but cost no money, as she used only materials she found around her home and school.

“I needed large containers for mixing, a wooden frame for the paper, some kitchen materials for the pastels, a barbecue set for the charcoal. To make the paper I used old paper, mixed it with other things like branches and twigs for texture and made a pulp. For everything I used everyday materials. Anyone could do this.”

Her kit also comes with a guidebook that details how to make all of its contents themselves. Cantalejo has only made one kit so far, but would ultimately like to market her idea to do-it-yourself stores around the UAE.

“I want people to see Sustainable City and get the message that we can’t keep taking resources without consequences. Through my project I wanted to exemplify that we can reuse things. Graphic design is everywhere, people see it everyday,” she says, adding that she will continue to push an environmental agenda as a professional designer. “We have the power to convey this message to a wide audience. This is important.”

Personal reinvention is the key for 21-year-old Lama Odeh. “Before you change the world around you, you have to change yourself,” she says, adding we are all are reliant on modern inventions and infrastructure that could be taken away at any time. She believes that taking these luxuries away is the only way to create a sustainable city. “If you take away everything you depend on, shed material things, only then can you create new order. And that’s what’s needed to make a sustainable city.”

Her installation consists of a large wooden box filled with soil, charcoal, sand, dust. Next to the box are plastic bags. Odeh wants people to see the box, smell and dig their hands into its contents. The tactile experience is essential in her back-to-basics message. Then the viewer takes some of the soil mixture, puts it into the bag and takes it away.

Meanwhile, 21-year-old Anike Marya’s project deals with sustainable production of graphic design. “I wanted to make a creative green directory for graphic designers. So if they want to know about a photographer, printer or whatever, they can look at it and see who’s green and who’s not.”

She began by compiling the email addresses of roughly 500 companies and sent an e-mail to each one with a questionnaire in order to rate them on their green credentials. When three of those companies got back to her, Marya took to the streets and made personal visits, conducting interviews in person.

“About 32 companies were green, according to my survey,” she says, explaining that she is confident this number will continue to grow. And, as the number of design professionals in the UAE increases, so, she hopes, will the relevance of her green directory.

“Consumers are demanding that companies are green,” she says. “I want this exhibit to inspire people, consumers, to demand that companies are greener. In the future, in order to be competitive, companies will have to be green.”

Article Courtesy: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 72 - A new wave of art

2010-01-14T05:47:00.004+04:00

[January 12. 2010 5:00PM UAE / January 12. 2010 1:00PM GMT] Ed Lake for THE NATIONAL

From the current show at B 21 ‘Wrap Me Up In You’, an exhibition of ‘festive’ mixed-media works by Nargess Hashemi. Courtesy B21

The art calendar in the UAE is, so to speak, bumpy. There are great troughs of nothing while the sun is raging through July and August and curious little divots where the miscellaneous holidays of the nation’s motley residents cluster and prevent much from getting done. Now, though, we have a pretty clean run across the pleasant uplands and this year’s winter-spring season shows every sign of being a delight.

First up is B21, the reliably interesting gallery that led the Dubai art world’s colonisation of the Al Quoz warehouse district. Yesterday the gallery opened a second Dubai show by the young Tehrani painter Nargess Hashemi, who is not the last talented Iranian we’ll be hearing from in the UAE this year. She is, however, a relatively feted arrival in the Iranian art scene. One of her untitled canvases fetched $15,000 (Dh55,000) at the Magic of Persia auction last year, placing her among the top 10 biggest sales of the night.

Her new show, Wrap Me Up in You, is an investigation of the meaning of family life in the Islamic republic. She is working from recent photographs of her own family gatherings, by contrast with the childhood material she mined in her first Dubai show, Stories From The Boudoir. The scenes are reproduced in black lines on tracing sheets, mounted on jauntily patterned wrapping paper.

Judging by the pre-opening images I’ve seen there’s a sort of pointedly anodyne quality about them – a distant acknowledgement of the way the decorum of family life goes on, in spite of everything. The release for the show notes that five weddings took place in the artist’s family around the time of last summer’s election protests, which she took part in. There’s a kind of surrealism about that.

The XVA in Bastikya is next in line with a pair of distinct shows that open side by side on Sunday. The young London-based artist Al Braithwaite spent six years in the Middle East. For his second show at the gallery, Hall of Mirrors, he issues a sort of challenge to the West on behalf of the region. Ornate picture frames from the height of Europe’s imperial past are filled with Braithwaite’s own scratchy oil paintings of the Muslim world’s political leaders. Gaddafi stands in place of Napoleon, for instance. The idea, Braithwaite says in his statement on the show, is to see “how it looks and feels when Daoud successfully slingshots a piece of rubble into the eye of Goliath”.

Even more intriguing is the artist with whom Braithwaite is sharing the gallery. Abdulnasser Gharem is a conceptual artist with a day job in the Saudi Arabian army. Restored Behavior is a collection of documents and artefacts resulting from performances he made around his home in southern Saudi Arabia. The show revolves around the properties of concrete as a guarantor of civic order and of rubber stamps as emblems of bureaucracy. That all sounds rather oblique but could make for a revealing look at life in the kingdom, from a man with one of the most intriguing CVs going. It should be worth a look.

Last year Carbon 12 emerged as one of the most exciting new spaces in Dubai. The new year sees it in new premises – it has joined the party in Al Quoz –but working with a lot of familiar names. It leads off next Monday with a solo show by Farzan Sadjadi, a Tehrani painter whose career has been closely tied to that of the gallery since both of their beginnings. His near-parodically gloomy battlefield scenes, full of animal skulls, corpses, ravaged earth and baleful skies call to mind Goya both in subject and in frantic execution. Yet there’s something else there, too: a warped playfulness, as if Philip Guston was looking out over the fields of the Somme.

On February 25, Sadjadi is followed by Tobias Lehner, a Leipzig-based painter whose multilayered and jarringly coloured abstracts give the impression of being magazine collages but are in fact meticulously painted. The work is reminiscent of Lehner’s fellow-countryman and Carbon 12 alumnus Markus Oehlen: hip, bracing, and highly crafted. On March 24, Sara Rahbar, an Iranian artist best known for polemical embellishments to the American flag, will be bringing more of her deceptively tidy textile work to Carbon 12.

Then we head straight in to spring with a two-man show. There’s the emerging US-born and Dubai-based artist Hesam Rahmanian, who goes in for sardonic, splashy animal allegories in a style vaguely reminiscent of, well, Farzan Sadjadi (does any Dubai gallery have as many artists who seem influenced by one another as Carbon 12?). He’s teamed up with a mystery Emirati guest, but we’ll have to wait until nearer the show’s opening on April 20 to find out who.

And, of course, there’s the Third Line, probably the most dynamic gallery in the Emirates. It punches above its weight in terms of influence at home, functions as an emissary for the UAE’s independent gallery scene abroad, and somehow manages to keep up a stream of sensitively curated, high-quality exhibitions in between consulting, putting out books, running design conferences and generally being all things to all culture watchers. Its first show of the decade, opening next Tuesday, will be a solo exhibition by the Iranian-born calligrapher Pouran Jinchi, whose work I have admired since I was introduced to it (by the Third Line) at Art Paris Abu Dhabi back in 2008. Her rubbings of prayer stones, embellished with geometric or scriptural designs, are as serene as anything you’re likely to see this year: bubbles in which sacred syllables float into the air. There’s a point being made about the nature of ritual and repetition and accumulated significance, but the works cast such a spell that one hardly perceives their argument.

Jinchi is followed on March 11 by one by Shirin Aliabadi, yet another Tehran-based artist. Her photographic work has been so visible at the various art fairs in the region that it’s hard to believe this is her first solo exhibition. Her previous work looked at the way Western standards of beauty sneak into Iranian dress. In particular her Miss Hybrid series of platinum blondes in cherry lipstick and headscarves – portraits lush as magazine spreads and twice as witty – were a highlight at last year’s Art Dubai. Her new show explores wedding make-up. It should be a treat.

The Meem gallery’s first show of the year, which opens on February 15 is a joint show by the Iranian artists Pooya Aryanpour and Morteza Darehbaghi. Both go in for highly textured canvases in which national emblems and calligraphic designs combine in spaces of cavernous darkness. Darehbaghi’s output seems to be statelier than Aryanpour’s, occasionally calling to mind the UAE’s own Abdul Qader al Rais. Aryanpour leans more towards gauzy forms that unravel among shadows, recalling Yeats’s line about the rag and bone shop of the heart.

Finally, TheJamJar makes a late entry to the season with a solo show from the Pakistani graphic artist Fahd Burki starting on March 12. Protheses (not, as an early press release tantalisingly had it, Prostheses) is a show about the way we relate to our bodies and our bodies in turn relate to inanimate objects. Fahd contributed similarly heady and philosophical works to TheJamJar’s Grey Noise show in 2008. His theme then was noise and silence, so making sense of embodied consciousness should be a doddle.

Article Courtesy: THE NATIONAL

ARTICLE 71 - Art and business converge in Dubai

2010-01-14T05:46:00.002+04:00

[Thursday, January 14, 2010] Miranda Smith for EMIRATES BUSINESS 24/7

More than sixty galleries from 30 countries converge on Dubai in March for what has become one of the region's top annual cultural events while generating significant sales for participants.

The fourth edition of Art Dubai, which runs from March 17 to 20, features new galleries from as far afield as Mexico City (Galeria OMR), Santiago (Galeria Animal) and Lahore (Grey Noise).

Although the total number of galleries is marginally down from last year (62 this year versus 65 in 2009), more than half are returning galleries, a fair spokesperson told Emirates Business.

Chili Hawes, Director, and Elisabeth Lalouschek, Artistic Director of the October Gallery, London, said in a statement to media: "Art Dubai is a strong platform for us to exhibit and sell. We choose works that will impact on the visual landscape in Dubai and we see the fair as an excellent way of promoting our artists."

Among the new initiatives this year are artist focus stands, where select galleries will exhibit one or two artists. These galleries include Rose Issa Projects, London; Green Art Gallery, Dubai; Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai; Rossi + Rossi, London; and Frey Norris, San Francisco. The move follows the successful introduction of solo projects in 2009, with nearly a third of all participants now present exhibitions by individual artists.

A new area within the fair has been devoted to museum-quality painting and sculpture from the fifties to the seventies, providing an important contextual framework to the achievements of contemporary artists.

"Collectors and curators come to Art Dubai to discover new talent and new ideas and this will remain a guiding principle of the fair's long-term strategy," said John Martin, Director and Co-Founder of Art Dubai.

In addition, Art Dubai has invited not-for-profit arts organisation Bidoun Projects to curate its programme of special projects highlighting the importance of collaboration in the region.

With "Bazaar" as its theme, guest curators are Aram Moshayedi, of Laxart, and the curatorial team of Sohrab Mohebbi and Ozge Orsoy. In addition, Antonia Carver and Masoud Amralla Al Ali, Artistic Director of Dubai International Film Festival, will curate a programme of films by UAE directors and artists, focusing on the exploration of the surreal and the spiritual in a series of short films and videos. The second Abraaj Capital Art Prize will also be unveiled at the fair this year.

Article Courtesy: EMIRATES BUSINESS 24/7

ARTICLE 70 - Overwhelming Majority Of Surveyed Galleries Expect Equal Or Higher Sales From Art Dubai 2010 Compared To Last Year

2010-01-10T10:38:00.000+04:00

[6 January 2010]

A recent gallery survey conducted for Art Dubai 2010 indicates that a majority of respondents believe sales will either remain the same or improve compared to 2009. With more than 60 galleries exhibiting this year, well over half from outside the region, international galleries are continuing to look to the Middle East and neighbouring markets to open up new opportunities in the contemporary art market. Additionally, respondents consider the Middle Eastern market to play a very significant role for the contemporary art industry, with 75% of the surveyed galleries indicating that Dubai is perceived as the key platform for the art market in the Middle Eastern region and Art Dubai an essential component for meeting new collectors.

John Martin, Director and Co-Founder of Art Dubai, believes that the results indicate a continued confidence in the Middle East art market generally and the central role Dubai has established as the principle marketplace for art commerce in the region: “Despite the tough economic conditions of the last eighteen months, the Middle East art market has demonstrated its resilience in general, and Dubai has proved its importance as the principle platform for the contemporary art market in the region. Our survey has indicated that over 75% of Art Dubai’s surveyed participants believe Dubai remains the most important centre for the art market in the Middle East and that Art Dubai continues to present the best opportunities for meeting new collectors from across the region and internationally. With a reputation for innovation and quality built over four years, Art Dubai has consolidated its position as one of the most important new art fairs in the world. The continued confidence in the fair confirms our belief that Dubai has the all the ingredients to become one of the most important new centres for the global art market, and a significant meeting place for creativity and the exchange of ideas.”

Whereas in previous years participating galleries were as interested in finding new artists to represent as much as direct sales, in 2010 the survey reveals that galleries will now be concentrating more effort on representing their existing artists and focusing on building their regional collector base. “As regional collectors become more focused and experienced in their collections, so galleries are able to devote more of their stands to the artists whose work resonates more closely with the regional collector base. This year I am delighted more galleries will be presenting solo shows of some of the most important emerging and established artists giving a greater depth to the visitor experience. In 2010 there will also be a new area within the fair devoted to museum-quality painting and sculpture from the 1950’s to 1970’s providing an important contextual framework to the achievements of contemporary artists.”

“Collectors and curators come to Art Dubai to discover new talent and new ideas and this will remain a guiding principle of the fair’s long-term strategy,” said Martin. “In the next fair we are grateful for the continued partnership with Bidoun Projects who will curate an important programme focusing on upcoming talent from the Middle East and beyond.” With ’Bazaar’ as its theme, the 2010 guest curators are Aram Moshayedi, of LAXART, and the curatorial team of Sohrab Mohebbi and Ozge Orsoy. In addition, Antonia Carver and Masoud Amralla Al Ali, Artistic Director of the Dubai International Film Festival and founder of the Emirates Film Competition, will curate a programme of films by UAE directors and artists, focusing on the exploration of the surreal and the spiritual in a series of short films and videos.

In addition to the 60+ art galleries participating in Art Dubai 2010, the fair will also include the unveiling of the artwork by this year’s recipients of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize. The three artist/curator teams will reveal their winning projects, enhancing their global reputation and widening their international network. In its second year, the Abraaj Capital Art Prize is one of the most generous art prizes in the world, and provides an exciting opportunity for creative collaboration between international curators and artists from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA) region.

Furthermore, Van Cleef & Arpels will present a prestigious exhibition of watches entitled: The Poetry of Time. Dedicated to the unique design of watches, the exhibition brings together the watch making tradition and excellence of the jeweler’s savoir-faire.

Art Dubai 2010 is held in partnership with private equity group Abraaj Capital and continues to enjoy support from its sponsors Van Cleef & Arpels and Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts.

Article Courtesy: DUBAI CITY GUIDE

EXHIBIT 01 - N/A v0.0 CURATED BY SIDHANT BHAGCHANDANI

2009-12-13T01:36:00.002+04:00

N/A v0.0
AMANDA WONG, BERNARDE & MUXTSCHEFAIRE, CHOKRA & WARRA HUGH
CURATED BY SIDHANT BHAGCHANDANI
DECEMBER 17, 2009 - JANUARY 29, 2010
OPENING 17 DECEMBER 2009 6-9 PM
LIVE PERFORMANCE BY CHOKRA AT 8 PM
SALT ARTSPACE

N/A v0.0 for SALT

N/A v0.0, a group exhibition curated by Sidhant Bhagchandani, opens at SALT ARTSPACE on December 17, 2009. The exhibition features print works by Amanda Wong, book installations by Bernarde & Muxtschefaire, a performance by CHOKRA and large scale paintings by Warra Hugh. N/A v0.0 imbibes fractured notions of applied collectives and curatorial vision as traditional constituents in constructing the applicable/non-applicable for emerging art spaces in a programming sequence. The exhibition demonstrates a surface-zero engagement with the non and the applicable as deliberate iterations of negation which claims in a conscious contemporary construct “all that isn’t, as is.”

© Sidhant Bhagchandani 2009

SALT

SALT is a contemporary community art space offering a flexible gallery, performance and gathering venue as a platform for creativity, collaboration and public engagement. Through projects, programs and exhibitions, SALT aims to facilitate connections between artists and the community to flavour and preserve the spirit of everyday contemporary culture. Located in New York at 27th and Broadway in historic Tin Pan Alley, SALT is supported by The Gallery Church and venue rentals.

SALT ARTSPACE
1160 BROADWAY, 5th FLOOR
NEW YORK NY 10001
TEL: 917 475 1769 ext 12
W-F, 10 AM – 5 PM

www.saltartspace.org

WORK 08 - Afshan Ketabchi

2009-11-16T10:33:00.003+04:00

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

2009-11-16T10:30:00.002+04:00

[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

2009-11-16T10:23:00.002+04:00

[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

2009-11-16T10:17:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-11-16T10:13:00.002+04:00

[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

2009-11-16T10:02:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-11-16T09:55:00.004+04:00

[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

2009-11-16T09:51:00.003+04:00

[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?

2009-11-16T09:43:00.004+04:00

[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

2009-11-16T09:34:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-10-20T20:16:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-10-20T20:09:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-10-20T19:58:00.002+04:00

[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

2009-10-20T19:51:00.004+04:00

[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

2009-10-20T19:44:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-10-20T19:41:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-10-20T19:34:00.005+04:00

[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

2009-10-20T19:31:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-10-20T19:26:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-08-08T10:08:00.002+04:00

[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

2009-08-08T09:51:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-08-03T11:10:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-07-27T13:06:00.002+04:00

[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

2009-07-27T12:52:00.004+04:00

[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

2009-07-27T12:34:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-07-27T12:27:00.005+04:00

[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

2009-07-17T15:26:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-07-17T15:10:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-07-17T02:04:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-07-15T11:23:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-07-15T11:22:00.001+04:00

[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

2009-07-15T11:18:00.002+04:00

[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

2009-07-12T14:29:00.004+04:00

[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

2009-07-11T13:04:00.003+04:00

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

2009-07-11T12:25:00.004+04:00

[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

2009-07-11T12:02:00.004+04:00

[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

2009-07-10T15:37:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-07-10T15:29:00.005+04:00

[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

2009-07-10T14:18:00.002+04:00

[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

2009-07-10T14:02:00.005+04:00

[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

2009-07-10T13:46:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-07-10T13:39:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-07-10T13:34:00.002+04:00

[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

2009-07-10T13:30:00.002+04:00

[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

2009-07-10T13:20:00.003+04:00

[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

2009-07-10T12:29:00.000+04:00

[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