Arab-American Visual Artists
Apr. 5th, 2011 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ajnabiehI am a great lover of the visual arts, despite the fact that I have a) no personal aptitude for them and b) no critical education in how to think about them. All I know is that I would very much like to become a purchaser of art in my future life, when I someday am not living on a grad student's salary.
In any case, Diwan introduced me to a bunch of amazing visual artists I had never encountered before, producing breathtaking work that is intensely politically critical but also aesthetically stunning. Although I'm glad for the performance artists and writers I encountered, too, it's the visual artists that I'm most enthusiastic about.
I've combined them all into a post, because I am lazy. Sorry about that.
Note: There are a bunch of videos in here, none of which have transcripts (except for some of the interviews in the documentaries, which are subtitled in English because they were conducted in Arabic). If anybody needs either a transcript or a summary, I'd be happy to provide.)
John Halaka
John Halaka is a Palestinian, born in Egypt and raised in New York. He identifies himself as a painter. You can see lots of John's paintings on his website. However, the work he showed at the conference wasn't painting in any traditional sense. What really struck me was his series Landscapes of Desire, where he uses rubber stamps of words to make what appears, at a distance, to be sketches of the ruins of Palestinian homes, destroyed in the 1948 war. Although that website mentions words like “remember,” “resist,” and “return,” the one that struck me is the one that contains both "forgive" and "genocide" in the same picture.
John is also behind SittingCrow Productions, which is his attempt to document Palestinian history and culture with an eye towards the arts. He has completed two documentaries, The Presence of Absence in the Ruins of Kafr Bir’im and Wounds Of the Heart: An Artist and Her Nation. He showed parts of Wounds of the Heart during his presentation, and it struck me as an excellent tool for learning about the Palestinian art world and Palestinian politics. Particularly useful is the way that he unpacks and reads the work of Rana Bishara, his subject, by providing context and clarifying symbolism that might be opaque to cultural outsiders. (His reading of her jar of pickled cactus is a brilliant thing to behold--especially for people like me, who lack an artist's vocabulary).
While films are in production, John has also uploaded his raw interviews, and is working on subtitling the Arabic ones in English. Here is his archive of interviews for "Forgotten Survivors," focusing on survivors of the nakba, and here is the archive for Desire and Resistance, profiling contemporary Palestinian artists. I'm definitely anticipating using these in the future in teaching.
Reem Gibriel
Reem is Libyan by birth, and began her study of ceramics in Libya, where she also taught and curated a gallery. She now lives in Michigan, where she studied at Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan. Her work emphasizes the fragility of human life, and how we work against that fragility.
Reem's presentation was the most moving of those I saw at Diwan, because of her material: she was describing how she was inspired by the images of death and destruction she saw while watching the 2008-2009 Israeli bombardment of Gaza, and how it shook her to want to get those around her to pay attention. She started by sculpting figures to represent dead children wrapped in their shrouds, but found she couldn't get through a single one without weeping; someone (I think an advisor?) suggested that she find another way to work on the project, because you can't finish something you weep your way through. (Excellent advice, that.)
Trying to move up a level of abstraction led Reem to making amphorae, which were used by Romans to bury infants, wrapped like shrouds or mummies, and using a technique that caused them to collapse with time, suggesting the impermanence and fragility of human life.
Here is an amazing video of her Personae exhibit at the University of Michigan Museum of Archeology and the MetAmphorae exhibit she did at the art school, including pictures from the security cameras of the collapse of two of the amphorae. In the Personae exhibit, she gave each amphora a name of an individual killed in war or genocide, from Rwanda to Bosnia to Armenia to Gaza.
I also really like her Consequences of a Broken Decision II and A World of Meanings pieces from 2009 on her website. I've never seen abstract pottery work of this type before, but it's beautiful, and as effective as other 3D art.
Ayad Alkadhi
Ayad is an Iraqi painter, who left Baghdad when he was 23 and has ended up in New York. He has an MFA from NYU, and now paints and works in the city. His work combines a number of elements: newsprint as canvas, portraiture (frequently self-portraiture), layered levels of Arabic calligraphy, and political symbolism.
Some of his work is extremely witty. I loved Islam International, which combines Islamic imagery (the color scheme of green and white, the shahada, the niqab or chador) with the nationalist symbols of Western countries with large Muslim populations. Others, like Widow Nation, are both realistic and full of grief; they also draw effectively from both Iraqi and Western artistic traditions. The Structure series has some of the most arresting and creepy visuals; I would love to hang Hand of Fatima I or Ava on my office wall someday. Or my living room wall. Anywhere, really.
You can find some videos of Ayad at work here. He's an eloquent commentator on his work, which is always helpful if you feel unfit to deconstruct a piece--plus the videos are nicely done in their own right.
In any case, Diwan introduced me to a bunch of amazing visual artists I had never encountered before, producing breathtaking work that is intensely politically critical but also aesthetically stunning. Although I'm glad for the performance artists and writers I encountered, too, it's the visual artists that I'm most enthusiastic about.
I've combined them all into a post, because I am lazy. Sorry about that.
Note: There are a bunch of videos in here, none of which have transcripts (except for some of the interviews in the documentaries, which are subtitled in English because they were conducted in Arabic). If anybody needs either a transcript or a summary, I'd be happy to provide.)
John Halaka
John Halaka is a Palestinian, born in Egypt and raised in New York. He identifies himself as a painter. You can see lots of John's paintings on his website. However, the work he showed at the conference wasn't painting in any traditional sense. What really struck me was his series Landscapes of Desire, where he uses rubber stamps of words to make what appears, at a distance, to be sketches of the ruins of Palestinian homes, destroyed in the 1948 war. Although that website mentions words like “remember,” “resist,” and “return,” the one that struck me is the one that contains both "forgive" and "genocide" in the same picture.
John is also behind SittingCrow Productions, which is his attempt to document Palestinian history and culture with an eye towards the arts. He has completed two documentaries, The Presence of Absence in the Ruins of Kafr Bir’im and Wounds Of the Heart: An Artist and Her Nation. He showed parts of Wounds of the Heart during his presentation, and it struck me as an excellent tool for learning about the Palestinian art world and Palestinian politics. Particularly useful is the way that he unpacks and reads the work of Rana Bishara, his subject, by providing context and clarifying symbolism that might be opaque to cultural outsiders. (His reading of her jar of pickled cactus is a brilliant thing to behold--especially for people like me, who lack an artist's vocabulary).
While films are in production, John has also uploaded his raw interviews, and is working on subtitling the Arabic ones in English. Here is his archive of interviews for "Forgotten Survivors," focusing on survivors of the nakba, and here is the archive for Desire and Resistance, profiling contemporary Palestinian artists. I'm definitely anticipating using these in the future in teaching.
Reem Gibriel
Reem is Libyan by birth, and began her study of ceramics in Libya, where she also taught and curated a gallery. She now lives in Michigan, where she studied at Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan. Her work emphasizes the fragility of human life, and how we work against that fragility.
Reem's presentation was the most moving of those I saw at Diwan, because of her material: she was describing how she was inspired by the images of death and destruction she saw while watching the 2008-2009 Israeli bombardment of Gaza, and how it shook her to want to get those around her to pay attention. She started by sculpting figures to represent dead children wrapped in their shrouds, but found she couldn't get through a single one without weeping; someone (I think an advisor?) suggested that she find another way to work on the project, because you can't finish something you weep your way through. (Excellent advice, that.)
Trying to move up a level of abstraction led Reem to making amphorae, which were used by Romans to bury infants, wrapped like shrouds or mummies, and using a technique that caused them to collapse with time, suggesting the impermanence and fragility of human life.
Here is an amazing video of her Personae exhibit at the University of Michigan Museum of Archeology and the MetAmphorae exhibit she did at the art school, including pictures from the security cameras of the collapse of two of the amphorae. In the Personae exhibit, she gave each amphora a name of an individual killed in war or genocide, from Rwanda to Bosnia to Armenia to Gaza.
Profile: Reem Gibriel from UM Art & Design on Vimeo.
I also really like her Consequences of a Broken Decision II and A World of Meanings pieces from 2009 on her website. I've never seen abstract pottery work of this type before, but it's beautiful, and as effective as other 3D art.
Ayad Alkadhi
Ayad is an Iraqi painter, who left Baghdad when he was 23 and has ended up in New York. He has an MFA from NYU, and now paints and works in the city. His work combines a number of elements: newsprint as canvas, portraiture (frequently self-portraiture), layered levels of Arabic calligraphy, and political symbolism.
Some of his work is extremely witty. I loved Islam International, which combines Islamic imagery (the color scheme of green and white, the shahada, the niqab or chador) with the nationalist symbols of Western countries with large Muslim populations. Others, like Widow Nation, are both realistic and full of grief; they also draw effectively from both Iraqi and Western artistic traditions. The Structure series has some of the most arresting and creepy visuals; I would love to hang Hand of Fatima I or Ava on my office wall someday. Or my living room wall. Anywhere, really.
You can find some videos of Ayad at work here. He's an eloquent commentator on his work, which is always helpful if you feel unfit to deconstruct a piece--plus the videos are nicely done in their own right.
Great collection!
Date: 2013-05-26 04:45 am (UTC)