Showing posts with label arab art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arab art. Show all posts
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
CCTV feature on Art Dubai
Check out this video about Art Dubai's rising art stars, featuring so many Arab and Middle Eastern artists.
Monday, March 26, 2012
The body in Arab art
Mouvement decompose, Mehdi-George Lahlou
An exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe is exploring the body in Arab art. Notes curator Hoda Makram-Ebeid, "We want this show to break down clichés concerning the Arab world, but we're not looking for controversy. The artists on show are of all ages, from all over the world. The immense variety and multiplicity of the work demonstrates that it is impossible to lump together 'Arabic artists' or Arab art. They're looking at a problematic – that of the body – which interests everyone today and their work is relevant to people of all different backgrounds." Learn more here.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
The Sheikh and I
This film looks really interesting, as it explores a lot of the issues and controversy around recreating Western-style concepts of free speech, public spaces, art, and art delivery mechanisms in the Arab Gulf. I will have to find a way to track it down!
More of the backstory on Zahedi's film here.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Call for participation: women art enthusiasts
Your help is greatly appreciated! I want to hear from you!
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Talk to me! Feedback from women in the Arab art scene
Please repost or tweet!
Call for participation: women art enthusiasts in the Arab world
I am conducting research on the phenomenon of women-only viewings at art fairs and museums in the Arab Gulf. If you attend or enjoy art events in the Gulf or the Arab world in general, I'd like to speak with you. We can communicate via email in Arabic French, or English, or via Skype or G-Chat in English or French - unfortunately I am not funded to travel to the Gulf to meet in person. I am happy to protect your privacy in any way you wish.
Below are the kinds of questions I'd like to get a variety of answers to:
What do you think about women-only viewings?
Are they helpful? Does it encourage or discourage you from attending exhibitions? Would you attend if women-only viewings were not scheduled? Do you attend the exhibitions during non-restricted hours?
How do you respond to the idea that women-only events are a “regional custom”? What is your interpretation of this phenomenon? Why do you think it is happening, what do you think is the cause?
I don't have an argument I want to make from your feedback or an agenda, but am generally interested in understanding how different people respond to this occurrence. Please find me at eaharrington at gmail or beth_slnanthro on Twitter; you're also welcome to leave a comment on this blog with a way to get in touch with you.
Call for participation: women art enthusiasts in the Arab world
I am conducting research on the phenomenon of women-only viewings at art fairs and museums in the Arab Gulf. If you attend or enjoy art events in the Gulf or the Arab world in general, I'd like to speak with you. We can communicate via email in Arabic French, or English, or via Skype or G-Chat in English or French - unfortunately I am not funded to travel to the Gulf to meet in person. I am happy to protect your privacy in any way you wish.
Below are the kinds of questions I'd like to get a variety of answers to:
What do you think about women-only viewings?
Are they helpful? Does it encourage or discourage you from attending exhibitions? Would you attend if women-only viewings were not scheduled? Do you attend the exhibitions during non-restricted hours?
How do you respond to the idea that women-only events are a “regional custom”? What is your interpretation of this phenomenon? Why do you think it is happening, what do you think is the cause?
I don't have an argument I want to make from your feedback or an agenda, but am generally interested in understanding how different people respond to this occurrence. Please find me at eaharrington at gmail or beth_slnanthro on Twitter; you're also welcome to leave a comment on this blog with a way to get in touch with you.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Call for feedback! Women art enthusiasts in the Gulf
Please repost or tweet!
Call for participation: women art enthuasiasts in the Arab Gulf
I am starting research on the phenomenon of women-only viewings at art fairs and museums in the Arab Gulf. If you attend or enjoy art events in the Gulf, I'd like to speak with you. We can communicate via email in Arabic or English, or via Skype or G-Chat in English - unfortunately I am not funded to travel to the Gulf to meet in person. I am happy to protect your privacy in any way you wish.
Below are the kinds of questions I'd like to get a variety of answers to:
What do you think about women-only viewings?
Are they helpful? Does it encourage or discourage you from attending exhibitions? Would you attend if women-only viewings were not scheduled? Do you attend the exhibitions during non-restricted hours?
How do you respond to the idea that women-only events are a “regional custom”? What is your interpretation of this phenomenon? Why do you think it is happening, what do you think is the cause?
I don't have an argument I want to make from your feedback or an agenda, but am generally interested in understanding how different people respond to this occurrence. Please find me at eaharrington at gmail or beth_slnanthro on Twitter; you're also welcome to leave a comment on this blog with a way to get in touch with you.
Abstract:
Viewings for Women Only: The Creation of Homosocial Space through Art Exhibitions in the Arab Gulf
When the new Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi held an initial exhibition of Picasso in 2008, organizers elected to schedule regular viewings restricted to women. The press statement noted that this is a "regional custom to allow women to socialize - and that its inclusion in the retrospective's schedule was meant as a peace offering to the community."
My paper explores the creation of homosocial spaces and their intersection with art, museums, and global politics. I examine the ways in which certain works of art are perceived to be problematic or sexual when viewed in mixed gender settings, and what this solution says about constructions and elicitations of desire. Same-sex settings are seen as neutralizing potentially inflammatory works - does this mean that works are perceived as dangerous not for their inherent content but in their moment and space of their witnessing? Thus, I explore the varying and shifting legibilities of works when they are framed and viewed in different spaces and constructs.
I argue this event demonstrates an attempt by the exhibition organizers, who have links to the Emirati government, to embed museum-going and art viewing behaviors within what Bourdieu would consider the habitus, customs perceived to be established and comfortable for local women. Interviews with Gulf female art visitors and examining other women-only activities for socializing helps to more fully contextualize this practice. This research explores this instance of female homosocial space in relation to similar phenomena in other communities, such as the Aboriginal Australian community, that restrict and divide viewings of art works by gender, drawing on the work of Fred Myers; it also explores the ways that art has previously created homosocial spaces and opened the topic of same-sex desire in Qajar art.
Call for participation: women art enthuasiasts in the Arab Gulf
I am starting research on the phenomenon of women-only viewings at art fairs and museums in the Arab Gulf. If you attend or enjoy art events in the Gulf, I'd like to speak with you. We can communicate via email in Arabic or English, or via Skype or G-Chat in English - unfortunately I am not funded to travel to the Gulf to meet in person. I am happy to protect your privacy in any way you wish.
Below are the kinds of questions I'd like to get a variety of answers to:
What do you think about women-only viewings?
Are they helpful? Does it encourage or discourage you from attending exhibitions? Would you attend if women-only viewings were not scheduled? Do you attend the exhibitions during non-restricted hours?
How do you respond to the idea that women-only events are a “regional custom”? What is your interpretation of this phenomenon? Why do you think it is happening, what do you think is the cause?
I don't have an argument I want to make from your feedback or an agenda, but am generally interested in understanding how different people respond to this occurrence. Please find me at eaharrington at gmail or beth_slnanthro on Twitter; you're also welcome to leave a comment on this blog with a way to get in touch with you.
Abstract:
Viewings for Women Only: The Creation of Homosocial Space through Art Exhibitions in the Arab Gulf
When the new Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi held an initial exhibition of Picasso in 2008, organizers elected to schedule regular viewings restricted to women. The press statement noted that this is a "regional custom to allow women to socialize - and that its inclusion in the retrospective's schedule was meant as a peace offering to the community."
My paper explores the creation of homosocial spaces and their intersection with art, museums, and global politics. I examine the ways in which certain works of art are perceived to be problematic or sexual when viewed in mixed gender settings, and what this solution says about constructions and elicitations of desire. Same-sex settings are seen as neutralizing potentially inflammatory works - does this mean that works are perceived as dangerous not for their inherent content but in their moment and space of their witnessing? Thus, I explore the varying and shifting legibilities of works when they are framed and viewed in different spaces and constructs.
I argue this event demonstrates an attempt by the exhibition organizers, who have links to the Emirati government, to embed museum-going and art viewing behaviors within what Bourdieu would consider the habitus, customs perceived to be established and comfortable for local women. Interviews with Gulf female art visitors and examining other women-only activities for socializing helps to more fully contextualize this practice. This research explores this instance of female homosocial space in relation to similar phenomena in other communities, such as the Aboriginal Australian community, that restrict and divide viewings of art works by gender, drawing on the work of Fred Myers; it also explores the ways that art has previously created homosocial spaces and opened the topic of same-sex desire in Qajar art.
Friday, March 25, 2011
BEND! Conference at Princeton - April, 2011
I am delighted to be presenting at the below symposium at Princeton next month. I'm going to be discussing the explorations of gender and identity in the work of Iranian photographers Shadi Ghadirian (below) and Newsha Tavakolian (above). More soon!
----------------------------------------------------
BEND! Photography, Gender, & the Politics of Representation
An Interdisciplinary Symposium
Princeton University, April 22-23, 2011
Keynote Speaker: Professor George Baker, Department of Art History, UCLA
The past decade has witnessed widespread institutional and scholarly efforts to historicize the relation between art and feminism, and between art and identity politics. These efforts unfold in a present that is often characterized as “post-gender” and/or “post-racial.” Just as categories of identity seem to lose traction in cultural discourse, so boundaries between artistic media become unfixed. Yet photographic representation is increasingly pervasive, and increasingly bound to the performance of subjectivity.
This symposium aims to consider the interrelated production of gender and photography, along with their dissolution as stable categories of inquiry. An interrogation of photography today requires looking within as well as beyond the boundaries of traditional art-historical frameworks. It compels us to account for the political and social dimensions in which photography participates, and demands that we re-consider the mise-en-scène of photography’s production as art.
How has the evolution of photography—from b/w to color, from analogue to digital, from mass media to social media—served to articulate or blur aesthetic and subjective differences? What politics of representation emerge when the individual can be both agent and object of photographic voyeurism, exhibitionism, and surveillance? Might photography's expanded field offer the potential for reshaping feminist politics today?
We invite participants to explore historical, existing and possible relationships between photography and the (re)production of gender, from the perspectives of visual culture, philosophy, (art) history, and art practice. Papers might consider photography in relation to:
gender bending - histories and politics of sexuality - performance and/or portraiture - the construction of masculinity - women artists - representations of gender, race, and class - advocacy, activism, and political practice - feminist politics, ethics, and aesthetics - medical and biological discourses - capitalism, terrorism, and war
Frances Jacobus-Parker / Elena Peregrina-Salvador / Mareike Stoll
PhD Candidates
Departments of Art & Archaeology / Spanish & Portuguese / German
Princeton University
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Contemporary Arab Art: Walid Raad
from the delighted observationist archives
This is amazing.
Go to the Atlas Group's website, and pick Archive > A > Raad.
Raad placed colored dots over the bullet marks in buildings and the urban environment in Lebanon in the 80s, based on the tracemarks of the bullets which often etched various colors into the buildings.
He realized later that the color of the bullets corresponded to their country of origin, and he had created an archive of the countries that sold ammunition during the war.
More soon - on Raad, whose work has been a joyful discovery.
So much to do, so much to prove, so little time.
originally posted on the delighted observationist, 12/10/2010.
This is amazing.
Go to the Atlas Group's website, and pick Archive > A > Raad.
Raad placed colored dots over the bullet marks in buildings and the urban environment in Lebanon in the 80s, based on the tracemarks of the bullets which often etched various colors into the buildings.
He realized later that the color of the bullets corresponded to their country of origin, and he had created an archive of the countries that sold ammunition during the war.
More soon - on Raad, whose work has been a joyful discovery.
So much to do, so much to prove, so little time.
originally posted on the delighted observationist, 12/10/2010.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
book review: Enfoldment & Infinity on AMCA
In Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art, Laura U. Marks is concerned with images as they enfold and contain information. Drawing on the scholarship of Gilles Deleuze and Charles Sanders Peirce, she argues that Islamic art and philosophy contain the deep sources of contemporary information culture and art. She defines new media art as works with a common “basis in code, an algorithmic process, and a database-interface relationship” (32). As she frames it, the work is, “mainly intended to introduce Islamic art to readers more familiar with contemporary art,” but is also directed at scholars of Islamic art, in the hopes that the comparative approach she offers will be a generative one for new curatorial and scholarly insights (29).
To continue reading, click here.
by Elizabeth Harrington
**published by AMCA International
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