Foreword Tarjama/Translation is another important milestone in ArteEast’s dedication to presenting contemporary arts from the Middle East to international audiences. It approaches a central preoccupation and a common theme with broad significance within the region and its diasporas, rather than providing a panoramic, and thus fleeting, exposure to “Middle Eastern art.” The exhibition focuses on the common yet complex theme of cultural, artistic and critical translation, while making connections between these artistic concerns on translation and other trends in contemporary art. Tarjama/Translation has been in the making for several years and opens at an exciting time for visual arts from the Middle East, whose presence in major art institutions, biennales and other key venues has been growing. One of the tropes often used in the context of this flurry of exhibitions in the United States is the billing of art and culture as dispelling stereotypes and building “bridges of understanding,” a trope further cemented in a June 2008 Brookings Institution report dedicated to the role of art in increasing cultural understanding between the U.S. and the Muslim world. The two pillars supporting each end of the bridge invariably refer to the U.S. on the one hand, and to a seemingly interchangeable set of constructions that include the Muslim world, the Arab world or the Middle East on the other. The problem with such a practice is not just that it often conflates Islam, Arab and Middle East, but that it willfully ignores the networks of ethnic, cultural, political and social links and intermingling within and across geographical boundaries and ultimately serves to construct the same barriers that are sought to be brought
down. This too is a process of translation, aiming to impose one meaning where there are many, to homogenize a region that stubbornly resists homogenization, a region where ethnicity, faith and practice in the multiplicities of forms are just one element at play. Rather, ArteEast’s emphasis is on lending a critical eye toward longstanding and organically developed relationships interwoven into the fabric of society, between societies and across regional boundaries. Unpacking the notion of art and its role in building cultural bridges of understanding was a main concern for Jessica Winegar, who first conceived of the idea of curating Tarjama/Translation and to whom we are indebted for her original thinking and vision in sketching out the underlying concept of the exhibit. One of the main goals of our collaboration, and of ArteEast more generally, is not only to diversify the kind of art that circulates in the United States, but also to tackle the type of discourse that surrounds its presentation where “translation,” broadly defined, plays a key role. Translation then further refers to the processes by which curators and art critics select works to be included in exhibitions, or instituted into the canon, which are in turn traded at art fairs and auction houses. ArteEast has always translated, but it also always tries to avoid reification of these binaries in all of its programs. As we swing on the pendulum between otherness and sameness, comparing and contrasting across boundaries, we hope in this exhibition to pose important questions about these aestheticized engagements and the processes of translation in their midst. This exhibition would not have been possible without the immense knowledge
and the dedication of our curators, Leeza Ahmady, Iftikhar Dadi and Reem Fadda. Each one of them has brought to the exhibition a special set of skills and extensive expertise that have made Tarjama/Translation all the more rich and artistically vigorous. Sarah Malaika, our exhibition coordinator, worked miracles at keeping tabs on such a complicated logistical operation, for which we are thankful. I would also like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Salah Hassan for his engaging essay contribution to the Tarjama/Translation catalog. We are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with the Queens Museum of Art in presenting Tarjama/Translation and thankful to Museum Director Tom Finkelpearl, Curator and Director of Exhibitions Hitomi Iwasaki, Director of Public Programs Prerana Reddy, and the entire staff of the museum for their tireless efforts and contributions to making this exhibit come to fruition. We are also grateful to Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University for including Tarjama/Translation in its exhibitions program for 2010, and wish especially to thank Frank Robinson, Director, and Ellen Avril, Chief Curator and Curator of Asian Art, for their enthusiasm and support. Last, but not least, a special and heartfelt thank you to Pamela Clapp, Yona Backer and to the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, for their support and generosity.
Livia Alexander, PhD Executive Director ArteEast
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