# 34
The Interventions Issue
LBP 15·000 / AED 37 / QAR 37
• IN THE LIBRARY WITH MARWAN RECHMAOUI • OMAR VICTOR DIOP: SENEGAL’S RISING STAR •
• ROLEX: CHAMPIONING CREATIVE COLLABORATION •
• IN CONVERSATION WITH AI WEIWEI • ARTISTIC INTERVENTIONS • A WEEK IN IRAN •
ARTs / STYLE / CULTURE from the Arab world and beyond
editor’s letter
The Interventions Issue There are plenty of other features that are not to be missed in this issue, including an exclusive conversation with Ai Weiwei that touches on topics ranging from activism to Andy Warhol. Reportage illustrator George Butler also shares his drawings documenting the withdrawal of British and international groups from Afghanistan with us all, and Marwan Rechmaoui opens up on his relationship to books and his act of censorship at the Istanbul Modern Library. It is also an honour to have Navina Haidar, the curator of Islamic Arts at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, as our guest for the Curated By section. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading Selections over the past year as much as we have putting it together. I’d like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to our talented contributors and team for making Selections an engaging arts platform. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season, and as we head into 2016 I want to send you heARTy New Year’s wishes from all of us at Selections. Last year came to an end with two major highlights, which we’re happy to share in this issue. The first was a week spent travelling through enchanting Iran and attending the opening of the magical exhibition Farideh Lashai: Towards the Ineffable at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. The second high point was attending the Rolex Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative Arts Weekend, which took place in Mexico City in December, to celebrate the fascinating journey experienced by the seven mentoring artists and their talented protégés over the past year.
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Looking ahead into 2016, we promise to keep a watchful eye on the regional and international art scene and expand our boundaries to share our always-enriching encounters with you.
contributors
India Stoughton graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an MA in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies. Having travelled extensively in the Middle East, spending time in Morocco, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Qatar, as well as Syria, she is currently based in Lebanon, where she has written for publications including The Daily Star, Canvas, The Outpost and The National, among others.
Rajesh Punj is a London-based art critic, correspondent and curator, with a specialist interest in Asia. He has previously written for international art publications including Flash Art International in Milan, Deutsche Bank Art Mag in Berlin, and Elephant in London, among others.
Maria Cristina Didero i s an independent design curator and journalist contributing to Domus, Vogue Casa, Flair, Loft, and Apartamento. She has been in charge of the Vitra Design Museum for Italy for more than 10 years and sits on the board of Veritas auction house in Lisbon, is a patron of Design Days Dubai, and curates Design Talks for Miart Milan. She has been Director of Fondazione Bisazza since 2011.
Dr. Zoltán Somhegyi is a UAE-based Hungarian art historian, holding a PhD in aesthetics. Besides being an assistant professor at the University of Sharjah, he is a curator of international exhibitions, a consultant of Art Market Budapest – International contemporary art fair, and author of books, artist catalogues, and more than two hundred articles, critiques, essays and art fair reviews.
Danna Lorch is a Dubai-based writer focusing on art and pop culture from the Middle East. She blogs at ‘Danna Writes’ and serves as contributor to ArtSlant. Recent publications include The National, Jadaliyya, Contemporary Practices, Canvas, and Vogue (India). Danna holds a graduate degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University.
Laura Egerton is a Dubai-based art historian, writer and curator. She was one of the founding team behind Art Dubai, where she ran education programmes, selected art projects and was curator of the Abraaj Group Art Prize for its first five years. She holds MAs in art history from Cambridge University and the Courtauld Institute of Art.
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contributors
Writer Daniel Scheffler lives between New York and Cape Town and is working on his first novel.
ver the course of a 20-year career, O Marwan Naaman has written for the likes of Fodor’s, Businessweek, Monocle, Harvey Nichols and eHealth Insurance, in a variety of fields that range from lifestyle, travel, design and art to finance and medicine. He spent 12 years as Editor-in-Chief of Aïshti Magazine (later renamed A Magazine), which he launched, transforming it into the most successful luxury lifestyle publication in the Middle East.
Dr. Ahmad Minkara is a LebaneseAmerican doctor and writer. He has lived between Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the United States.
Having lived and worked in nine countries and counting, Nick Rice brings broad life experience into his writing. Racking up 16 years as a journalist and editor, he has reported on humanitarian, political and business issues, arts and culture, travel, lifestyle and everything in between. He’s also worked as an amateur sailor in the South China Sea, a radio presenter in Havana and nearly died a couple of times working as a jaguar handler in Bolivia.
Simon Balsom is a Middle East longtermer, inveterate traveller, aesthete and writer, based in Beirut since 2015.
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contents
jan-feb 2016
DESIGN 106
ART PAPER
86
17-35 Local, regional and international news, reviews and interviews
ART 36
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ARCHITECTURE 110
STYLE Ai Weiwei meets Andy Warhol The Chinese dissident artist tells Selections about art, activism and getting arrested
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A week in Iran Selections’ editor-in-chief Rima Nasser recounts the highlights of an artfilled journey from Tehran to Isfahan
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58 Championing creative collaboration The latest edition of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé initiative climaxed with an unforgettable weekend in Mexico 65 Innovation, Installation, Intervention Selections explores the work of six artists who are breaking boundaries and igniting debate with their bold interventions
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A Meeting of Cultures in Marrakech Founder of the Marrakech Biennial Vanessa Branson and curator Reem Fadda discuss the upcoming sixth edition
The art of high fashion An exhibition in Florida examines the impact of Italian fashion on art, architecture, photography, theatre and cinema
Five minutes with Richard Hutten The prolific Dutch designer shares his philosophies on life and work and the ingredients that make a dream commission
From the lens of our editor Anastasia Nysten shares some of her photographs capturing the spectacular architecture of Iran
CURATED BY 115
Curated by Navina Haidar
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Inside the Met’s Islamic art collection Navina Haidar walks Selections through the halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Islamic collection
The lion and the couturier The Golden Lion in Venice shines again thanks to a painstaking restoration by Chanel
PHOTOGRAPHY LITERATURE 98
In the library with Marwan Rechmaoui The Lebanese sculptor and installation artist discussed his love of history books
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Magical Moments A reprint of East of the Sun, West of the Moon restores Kay Nielsen’s beautiful illustrations to their original splendour
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Senegal’s rising star Photographer Omar Victor Diop discusses his powerful photographs dwelling on Africa’s past, present and future
contents
Editorial Masthead Editor-in-Chief Rima Nasser Editor Anastasia Nysten Copy Editor India Stoughton Designer Genia Kodash Illustrator Yasmina Nysten Production Coordinator Lida Kabbara Contributing Writers Simon Balsom, Maria Cristina Didero, Laura Egerton, Danna Lorch, Irene McConnell, Dr. Ahmad Minkara, Marwan Naaman, Rajesh Punj, Nick Rice, Daniel Scheffler, Dr. Zoltan Somhegyi, India Stoughton
Advertising & Distribution Advertising & Editorial Inquiries info@selectionsthemagazine.com Distribution lebanon Messagerie du Moyen Orient de la Presse et du Livre s.a.l.
The Interventions Issue #34
cover: Ai Weiwei 2012 Image courtesy Ai Weiwei Studio cover’s background: Ai Weiwei at National Gallery of Victoria exhibition Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei, 11 December 2015 – 24 April 2016. Ai Weiwei artwork © Ai Weiwei. Photo: John Gollings
qatar City News Publishing united arab emirates Jashanmal National Co. L.L.C. Printing Chamas for Printing & Publishing s.a.l. info@chamaspress.com Responsible Editor Fatma Koteich BPA Worldwide Consumer Magazine Membership Applied for December 2014
Selections magazine digital edition is also available for iPads and Android tablets
selectionsthemagazine.com
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This issue’s content curators Art news from New York — Yasmina Nysten Art news from Sharjah — Dr. Zoltan Somhegyi Art News from Dubai — Danna Lorch Design — Anastasia Nysten Curated by (coordinated) – Anastasia Nysten
Untitled 1, For My Father series, 2015, Archival print, 100 x 150 cm, Edition of 5
Rula Halawani For My Father
18 January - 3 March 2016
12, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, T: +971 4 3236242 dubai@ayyamgallery.com www.ayyamgallery.com
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The Richness of Home Works
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A Bigger, More International Ayyam
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Weakening Walls
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A Stitch in Time
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The Times They Are A-Changing
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The World Meets Here
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The Power of a Kiss
Orientalism, Egyptomania and Embroidery
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Beirut Cultural Agenda
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Capturing Moments of Transition
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Seeing Triple
Ammar-Al-Attar, Fajar
review
selections art paper #10
beirut
The Richness of Home Works Organised by Ashkal Alwan, Home Works 7 provided a glimpse into the state of contemporary cultural practices across the region by India Stoughton
A few minutes into Ode to Joy, Manal Khader promised the audience, packed into the sold-out auditorium of the Sunflower Theatre, that by the end of the production they would see a bed explode on stage. It wasn’t a lie. Neither was her statement quite truthful.
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In that respect it ressembled the tangled subject matter of the performance, which focused on the 1972 kidnapping of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics by a small group of Palestinians — revolutionaries or terrorists depending on who you ask. Directed by veteran Lebanese artist and playwright Rabih Mroué, who co-wrote and starred in the performance with Khader, Ode to Joy blended pre-recorded video footage with live film and performance. Also starring Lina Majdalanie, the production began with a surreal fairy tale, told in voice over, and went on to explore the at first seemingly unrelated topics of exploding beds — and explosions more generally — and the effect the Munich attack had on perceptions of the Palestinian revolution. Humourous and poignant, Ode to Joy was one of the highlights of Home Works 7, which ran from November 11 to 24 at multiple venues. The irregularly staged forum on cultural practices, organised by Ashkal Alwan, transforms Beirut into the region’s premier art hub for two weeks every two to three years.
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review
opposite page : Exhibition view, What Hope Looks Like After Hope, curated by Bassam El Baroni, Home Works 7, November 2015, photo by Marwan Tahtah, courtesy of Ashkal Alwan
Home Works 7 was curated by Ashkal Alwan’s director, Christine Tohme, along with guest curators Frie Leysen and Bassem El Baroni. Their extensive program of talks, exhibitions, performances, book signings and film screenings made it a peerless means of discovering some of the concepts and questions currently occupying the thoughts and practices of contemporary regional artists. Leysen’s program of performances included 11 distinct productions, among them a quirky dance-theatrical hybrid by Japan’s chelfitsch Theatre Company. The hilarious Super Premium Soft Double Vanilla Rich is set in a convenience store called Smile Factory, where staff and customers alike conduct surreal monologues while dancing spasmodically and seemingly uncontrollably to the 48 preludes and fugues of J. S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. Laila Soliman and Ruud Gielens’ La Grande Maison fused lecture, performance and video to open a window onto the lives of prostitutes living and working in Tunisia, while the opening night show, #3 Bonanza, by Belgian company Berlin, used film and live performance to create a complex portrait of five inhabitants in a forsaken mining town in Colorado. Two major exhibitions were staged at Ashkal Alwan and the neighbouring Beirut Art Center.
above :
Installation view, pssst Leopard 2A7, Natascha Sadr-Haghighian, 2013-ongoing. Home Works 7 (November 11 – 24, 2015), photo by Bilal Jawiche, courtesy of Ashkal Alwan
below : Performance, Of Ivory and Flesh – Statues Also Suffer, Marlene Monteiro Freitas. Sunflower Theater, November 25, 2015, Home Works 7, photo by Marwan Tahtah, courtesy of Ashkal Alwan
Curated by Tohme, On Water, Rosemary and Mercury occupied the ground floor of the BAC, featuring work by 10 artists from Turkey, Iran and the Arab world. Particularly striking pieces included Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s A Convention of Tiny Movements, part of a series exploring the future of mass surveillance, in which a box of facial tissues is wracked by minuscule tremors as the artist uses it to convey recent evidence that everyday objects, including tissue boxes, can be used as microphones. An inspired pairing saw Stephanie Saadé’s personallyinflected reflection on Lebanon, A Map of Good Memories — a thin layer of 24-carat gold leaf laid on the concrete floor like a tea stain — installed beside Abbas Akhavan’s Variations on a Garden. Akhavan’s large mixed-media installation, partially enclosed by hanging fabric, consisted of a pool of dark water, evoking the reservoirs built in traditional Iranian courtyards, into which regular drips plummet from a pipe on the ceiling. At Ashkal Alwan, What Hope Looks Like After Hope, curated by El Baroni, was an elaborate and wide-ranging exhibition featuring work by 13 international artists, mostly consisting of sound and video installations, exploring topics from cinema and thought, to neoliberal capitalist ideals, to humancomputer relationships. Rich, diverse and unconventional, Home Works 7 was as illuminating as it was confounding, answering questions only to raise as many more. Perhaps some of them will be addressed in Home Works 8, whenever that might be. •
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sharjah
Weakening Walls A new show at Sharjah’s Barjeel Art Foundation explores the nature of walls and borders, both physical and metaphorical by Dr. Zoltán Somhegyi
Walls, fences, borders and margins are a basic part of our day-to-day experiences. We spend our lives among walls — we live, work and spend most of our leisure time inside closed buildings, with only limited time dedicated to outdoor experiences. Borders follow us wherever we go: we are constantly limited by political and metaphorical margins, and very often also by physical and tangible walls and borders between countries and territories, where crossing is only allowed after the fulfilment of a series of complex procedures marked by documents and passports. Walls and Margins, the new exhibition curated by Suheyla Takesh at Barjeel Art Foundation — the Sharjah-based initiative to manage, preserve and exhibit Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi’s private collective of contemporary Arab art — focuses on artworks that interpret the experiencing of walls, fences and borders, both physically and ideologically. In the process, it raises questions about human rights, limitations of free movement, separation, migration and freedom.
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above left:
Abdulnasser Gharem
above right:
Nadia Ayari
Walls are intricate phenomena. Their ambiguity also lies in the fact that the desire for separation and defence might end up in confusing realities: we may come to find that we no longer know which side we are on, if our supposed defences provide us with freedom or self-generated imprisonment. This existential ambiguity is profoundly demonstrated in a reflective painting by Tunisia-born, New York-based artist Nadia Ayari, in which we see a monumental eye behind a barbed wire fence. The work is open to different readings: is it about the limitation of the eye’s view, or the other way around, an ever-watching gaze surveilling us behind an imprisoning barrier? Visitors to the exhibition can directly experience the power of blockades. A work by Saudi Arabian artist Abdulnasser Gharem physically blocks part of the entrance to one of the exhibition space’s rooms. The 2010 work, entitled Concrete Block II, is a lifesized wood and rubber replica of a concrete block, normally used on roads. The ready-made character of the work is intentionally weakened by the change of material, where the surface of the sculpture is covered by rubber stamps with the repetition of the Arabic sentence: “Never trust in concrete.” The work again allows for a wide range of interpretations that range from a critique of the obstructive nature of the work, to optimism about the gradual erosion of even the strongest wall-building materials. • Walls and Margins continues at Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah until February 1
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review
dubai
Orientalism, Egyptomania and Embroidery Farhad Ahrarnia’s latest solo show at Lawrie Shabibi combined art historical references, literary anecdotes, celebrity mythologies and political undertones by Laura Egerton
Farhad Ahrarnia, The Delirium of Becoming, a Moment Caught Between Myth and History
background photograph often highly pixilated. A captivating addition was thicker yarn making large circular, half-moon or triangular shapes in many vivid colours, giving the images an extra kinetic force and visual dynamism. A nod to modernist design, they were closest to the embroidery of Sonia Delaunay and also inspired by the Russian Suprematism of Malevich and El Lissitzky — Russia does, of course, border Iran. The complexity of the art historical references, literary anecdotes, celebrity mythologies and political undertones was counter-balanced by the clarity of the Ahrarnia’s choices. His method is intentionally slow, giving us time to connect the dots or unpick the threads. •
In 2008, Farhad Ahrarnia held an exhibition in Leighton House, London, showing images from the Bradford riots and of the U.S. soldiers who had died in Baghdad. His first solo show in the Middle East, A Dish Fit for the Gods at Lawrie Shabibi, investigated subjects that would have been a better historical fit with Leighton: Orientalism, Egyptomania and working with early experimental photography. Materials such as silver-plated metal shovels and beautiful examples of Khatam (Persian micro-mosaic) would have sat comfortably in Leighton’s Arab Hall. The intertwined narratives at play in this complex and fascinating show, which ran from November 16 to January 14, would have suited Victorian dinner conversations, too. One sepia portrait of a young girl pertained to be Agatha Christie, party to the discovery of the ivories in Nimrud, as she accompanied her husband, prominent archaeologist Max Mallowan, on excavations in Iraq. Others could have been characters in Christie’s thrillers. Mata Hari, the original femme fatale, an exotic dancer accused of espionage and executed by the French, was shown in profile adorned in jewels and Asian ornaments. Donald Wilber, the cultured CIA agent who orchestrated a plot to overthrow the Iranian Prime Minister, donned a keffiyeh in the style of Lawrence of Arabia, his face in shadow. Five Hollywood beauties demonstrated the cult of Cleopatra, girl power at its peak. The glittering textures of Ahrarnia’s needlework embellishments crossed this way and that over the digital images printed onto canvas — each line and knot meticulously calculated. Western dancers took sphinx-like poses or formed pyramids, the initial
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01. Bassem Geitani , Shathaya show @ Galerie Janine Rubeiz 02. Jean Boghossian, Tra Due Fuochi show @ Beirut Exhibition Center 03. Anachar Basbous @ Agial Art Gallery 04. Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, Driven by Storms (The Notebooks) show @ Ayyam Gallery 05. Maroun Hakim, Scion of Light show @ Artspace Hamra 06. Wael Shawky, Cabaret Crusades: The Secrets of Karbala show @ Sfeir-Semler Gallery 04
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beirut
Beirut Cultural Agenda Selections reviews some of this season’s most intriguing exhibitions by India Stoughton
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Shathaya Galerie Janine Rubeiz November 4 to 26
Bassem Geitani’s latest solo exhibition at Galerie Janine Rubeiz dealt with reality and illusion, fact and faith, dogma and exploitation. The artist worked with rusted iron shrapnel to create a series of 19 seemingly abstract shapes, swathed in blue linen, like bodies wrapped in shrouds. Only when glimpsed in a mirror did the shapes resolve themselves into words — each one a calligraphic rendering of one of the 99 names of Allah. The centrepiece of the show was a conical mirrored structure resembling a missile, pointed directly at the viewer. Around it, a line of calligraphy formed a circle, which became legible once reflected in the mirrored cone: “Between 150,000 and 200,000 deaths.” The figures referred to the estimated number of people killed during Lebanon’s sectarian-driven, 15-year Civil War. Shathaya neatly explored the hypocrisy of killing in the name of religion through the symbolism of the mirror, which suggesting a double reading, whereby appearances are deceptive.
above :
Scion of Light
Bassem Geitani, Al Quddus (The Divine), 2015, mixed media, 51 × 37 × 8cm
below : Maroun Hakim, Spikes devouring the sun, 2015, 150 × 200cm, acrylic on canvas
Artspace Hamra December 9 to 23
Prolific Lebanese painter and sculptor Maroun Hakim’s latest solo show consisted of a series of 26 colourful landscape paintings, completed in the space of a single year. Inspired by the beauty of nature, Hakim sought to capture the colours and atmospheres of the four seasons. Based on the artist’s direct observations, the paintings celebrate and amplify the beauty of Lebanon’s pastoral scenes. In keeping with the exhibition title, Hakim’s paintings had a luminous quality, as though lit from within. Impressionistic daubs of brightly coloured acrylic paint captured fields dotted with vivid wild flowers or bogged down with winter rain, ponds studded with lilies — a la Monet — and rolling hills clad in the tender green of spring grass, shielded by thick layers of snow or transformed into fiery orange and yellow hummocks by autumn leaves. Bold, bright and evocative, his paintings emphasized both the diversity and the inevitability of the changing seasons.
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Anachar Basbous Agial Art Gallery December 10 to January 2
Born in 1969, the son of Michel Basbous, Anachar Basbous lives and works in Rachana, the village full of open-air sculptures created by his father and two uncles, for which he is named — Anachar is Rachana backwards. Basbous’ latest works, on show at his eponymous solo exhibition, were smaller than the pieces he has exhibited in recent years. Sculptures in stainless steel, brass, corten steel, marble and basalt played with curves and points, juxtaposing exterior and interior spaces. Repetitions of and variations on a single geometric shape were stuck together to form new, more complex compositions, in keeping with Basbous’ preference for building his works up — rather than carving them out — from his chosen material. From the sleek finish of polished brass to the rough, pitted surface of shaped basalt, the pieces shared a sense of intrinsic weightlessness and balance, while presenting a different aspect from each new angle. Corten Steel, 55 × 70 × 50cm
Cabaret Crusades: The Secrets of Karbala Sfeir-Semler Gallery August 26 to January 2
Wael Shawky, The Secrets of Karbala, HD video, sound , colour, 120 minutes
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Wael Shawky’s latest solo show at Sfeir-Semler Gallery was named for the final work in his trilogy of films about the Crusades, in which he uses marionettes to present the historic military campaigns from the perspective of Arab leaders. The gallery also screened Cabaret Crusades: The Path to Cairo, the second film in the trilogy. The first, Cabaret Crusades: The Horror Show File, had its premiere at the gallery in 2010. Together, the three films recount the bloody history of the Crusades, and were initially inspired by Amin Maalouf’s book The Crusades Through Arab Eyes. The first was made using 200-year-old wooden marionettes from Italy, the second with handcrafted ceramic puppets, and the third with specially commissioned marionettes made of Murano glass. A selection of these delicate puppets — works of art in their own right, combining human and animal features — was displayed at the gallery, along with a large-scale installation and drawings based on the film’s scenery, providing a fascinating insight into Shawky’s complicated and elaborate creative process.
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review
Driven by Storms (The Notebooks) Ayyam Gallery November 13 to January 9
Driven by Storms (The Notebooks), a solo show featuring work by Iraqi artist Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, followed on from a larger exhibition held earlier in 2015 at Ayyam Gallery Dubai, curated by Nat Muller. The exhibition featured work inspired by an exchange between Alfraji and his nephew Ali, who sent the artist a handwritten letter about his longing to escape the violence of Baghdad. The child included a small drawing of a boat, illustrating his desire to sail away from Iraq to Holland, where Alfraji is based. The dozens of black-and-white drawings in the Beirut iteration of the show paired the artist’s own experiences of exile, and dream of returning to the vanished Baghdad of his childhood, with his nephew’s fantasy of sailing away from war. The exhibition was centred around Alfraji’s notebooks, providing insight into his working process. A hypnotic video animation consisting of an animated drawing conveyed a story of displacement from Iraq in a surreal, moving stream of consciousness.
Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, Driven by Storms (The Notebooks)
Tra Due Fuochi Beirut Exhibition Center December 14 to January 10
This solo exhibition, organised in collaboration with Agial Art Gallery, featured work by Syrian artist and jeweller Jean Boghossian. Co-founder of the Boghossian Foundation, the artist had a first solo show at the Beirut Exhibition Center in 2011, entitled Burning. In Tra Due Fuochi, he exhibited the continuation of his series of pieces created using fire as a medium, a technique he landed on after experimenting with a wide variety of media, including drawing, oil painting, charcoal, watercolour, folding and collage. Curated by art critic and president of the Burri Foundation Citta di Castello in Italy Bruno Cora, the exhibition focused on Boghossian’s attempts to create balanced compositions by harnessing the unpredictable element of fire and smoke. The resulting works, which included books, canvas, paper and plastic marked by fire, displayed an intriguing sense of randomness and lack of control, resulting in a wild beauty. •
Jean Boghossian, Senza titolo, 2012, smoke on canvas, 200 × 200cm
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interview
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DUBAI
Capturing Moments of Transition Photographer Rania Matar works with girls and women to capture moments of physical and mental change between one state of being and another by Danna Lorch
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Rania Matar is entranced by the liminal moments that girls and women experience over the course of the life cycle, from the foal-like first confidence of puberty and contrasting sharp-edged insecurity, to the second adolescence that women walk through as they enter menopause and watch as their daughters develop into a younger, often prettier versions of themselves. East Wing presents Matar’s first solo show in the UAE, Becoming: Girls, Women and Coming of Age, which brings together three distinct projects, as well as the launch of the photographer’s latest book, L’Enfant Femme.
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interview
For most of the works in the show, which are included in the accompanying book, Matar — who left Lebanon for the US during the Civil War — photographed girls in affluent American suburbs, cosmopolitan quarters of Beirut, and Palestinian refugee camps and areas popular with Syrian refugees in Lebanon. In many cases, it is virtually impossible to tell the girls apart — three of them have coincidentally chosen matching outfits of jean shorts and hot pink tank tops. Their commonality, rather than socioeconomic limitations and advantages, are what really stand out here. Selections interviewed Rania Matar to find out more about the project.
opposite page : Rania Matar, Brigitte and Huguette, Ghazir, Lebanon, 2014 from Unspoken Conversations, courtesy of East Wing, © Rania Matar
below : Rania Matar, Stephanie, Beirut, Lebanon, 2010 from the Series A Girl and Her Room, courtesy of East Wing, © Rania Matar
above :
Rania Matar, Darine 7 and Dania 8, Beirut Lebanon, 2014 from L’Enfant, Femme, courtesy of East Wing, © Rania Matar
Danna Lorch: What did you conclude about the fragility or strength of girls at this particular age? Rania Matar: This is a very potent age where girls’ bodies are transforming and where they are starting to grow into their own selves as women — just at the cusp of early adolescence. There is a simultaneous fragility/vulnerability and power/strength going through that process — just like going through any transition in life, I believe. And yes, this part of growing up transcends all else. DL: How do you think the portraits will resonate with an Arab audience? RM: I live in the United States, but I was born and raised in the Middle East, so it is important for me in my work to focus on our sameness and on universality. I am equally the product of both cultures, and I equally identify with both cultures. As a result, I photograph girls and women in both cultures. If one looks through my new book, L’Enfant-Femme, one would notice that I only refer to the girls by name and age. I don’t specify the location until the end, in the captions. I hope one feels a deep sense of universality; a beauty that transcends place, background and religion. • Becoming: Girls, Women and Coming of Age continues at East Wing until January 28
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dubai
Seeing Triple Dubai’s Cuadro Gallery ran three distinct solo shows simultaneously this winter, presenting a trio of artistic visions of the UAE by Danna Lorch
This winter, Cuadro Gallery presented three simultaneous yet distinct solo shows from the next generation of Emirati artists — Nasir Nasrallah, Ammar Al Attar and Zeinab Al Hashemi. The three bodies of work, on show from December 9 to January 4, were connected by the artists’ obsession with compelling viewers to pause and heavily re-think common UAE topography, objects or rituals.
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As a boy, Nasir Nasrallah grew up cannibalising old machines in his grandfather’s antique shop, which lay in the souk in the heart of Sharjah. Today the artist’s studio perches just metres away. In Every Page a Piece of Me featured a wall of offbeat works on paper — from a floating beauty with a garden planted in the crown of her head, to blueprints for a purposeless machine involving a Cyclops and a showerhead. It’s easy to understand Nasrallah as equal parts industrialist and storyteller, an artist who is entranced by human collections and the urban Emirati landscape, but also has the capacity to transport viewers to another universe altogether. Whether described as a designer or a conceptual artist — a label that she dismisses as irrelevant in the first place — Zeinab Al Hashemi breaks the rules of time in her work, taking earth-bound elements of UAE life, from the desert to construction zones and the country’s geography itself, and transforming them
selections art paper #10
opposite page : Zeinab Al Hashemi, Rock your Soul, 2015, Constructionism, satellite shots on photographic paper,126 × 84cm
below : Nasir Nasrallah, The Flower is Travelling, ink on Paper, 21 × 13cm
review
above :
Ammar-Al-Attar, Fajar
top : Ammar-Al-Attar, Color Pray Aband
above right:
Ammar-Al-Attar, Ali
into futuristic new forms. In Constructionism, Al Hashemi presented five digital ‘scanographies’ from her ongoing Urban Phantasmagoria series, in which she manipulates satellite shots of UAE geography to create kaleidoscopic photographic tapestries. These pieces were complemented by experimental concrete on canvas works, in which the artist rediscovers the country’s map by becoming both labourer and urban planner, using pieces of charcoal to mark space. These new pieces felt experimental and rough, as though we were spying on Al Hashemi in the midst of her next precocious breakthrough. Ammar Al Attar’s Salah was significant because it marks a transition from emerging documentary photographer to a larger, more surefooted photographic practice that is inevitably going places well beyond a supportive UAE collector base. Here Al Attar explored rituals in Muslim prayer by photographing himself in each gesture and metamovement of the ritual, taking great effort to decipher meaning, as much as action. The show was poignantly installed directly above the mosque in DIFC and stood in clever contrast to his previous Prayer Rooms series, which uninhabited prayer spaces. •
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dubai
A Bigger, More International Ayyam Since it first opened in Alserkal Avenue in 2008, Ayyam Gallery has gone from strength to strength. Now the Samawi cousins are expanding their Dubai premises and diversifying their line-up by Laura Egerton
When cousins Khaled and Hisham Samawi moved into Alserkal Avenue’s Unit 11 in 2008, they were the first gallerists to spot the potential of the run of spacious warehouses. Seven years after they nestled in amongst mechanics and light industry to show the work of young Syrian artists they had discovered in Damascus, the cousins are delighted with the way the area has transformed. “In recent years Alserkal Avenue has become the undisputed art centre of the Gulf,” says Khaled. “We are proud to have been part of its growth and maturity.”
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Back in 2008, the grand scale of the Alserkal Avenue gallery was something new to Dubai. In this spacious location, Ayyam Gallery was able to give its artists space to create large-scale installations and stage exhibitions such as the recent Collapse by Sama Alshaibi, Nadim Karam’s 99 Objects Possible to Find on a Cloud or Sadik Kwaish Alfraji’s Driven by Storms (Ali’s Boat). They have held retrospectives of seminal artists of the region, such as Samia Halaby and Moustafa Fathi, as well as group shows and their hugely successful Young Collectors Auctions, which will hold its 24th edition in February. In the meantime, they have opened in DIFC, Beirut, and briefly in London, Cairo and Jeddah. Now, Ayyam Gallery is expanding its Alserkal Avenue location, taking over Unit 12 next door. Unit 12 offers a smaller white cube space, with a side room suited to showcasing video pieces or smaller works. The opening exhibition in the space, A Temple for Extended Days, brings the triptych Tomb Sonata in Three Military Movements by Egyptian artist Khaled Hafez to Dubai for the first time. Created
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in 2010, the painting’s juxtaposition of threatening military presence, ancient Egyptian iconography and modern day superheroes is as relevant today as it has ever been. The surface of the work is built up from recycled materials — personal notes and musical scores are layered amongst magazine covers and takeaway food containers. Hafez creates a timeless dystopia, in which a buff athletes stride with purpose alongside animals and guns. He could be illustrating any number of historical or contemporary conflicts, hinting that resolution can only come through the intervention of the supernatural. The experimental video The A77A Project: On Presidents & Superheroes dates from 2009. A cartoonlike animated figure, with the headdress of the ancient god Anubis, marches through the rubbish strewn streets of present-day Cairo to the sound of a staccato disco track, punctuated by extracts from the resignation speech of President Gamal Abdel Nasser. An installation exhibited alongside this work consists of ten glow-in-the-dark Anubis statues resting in sand. The gallery has exciting plans for the future. Next up is a photographic series from Rula Halawani, an artist new to the gallery’s roster. A native of occupied East Jerusalem, Halawani has built her practice by documenting the minutiae of lives and starkness of landscapes under occupation.
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above : Khaled Hafez, Tomb Sonata in Three Military Movements II, 450 × 200cm, paper collage, burlap and acrylic on canvas, 2010
below : Khaled Hafez, Book Of Flight, 250 × 600cm, 5 canvases, mixed media on canvas, 2010
opposite page : Khaled Hafez, The A77a Project, 2009, video and installation
In March, the space will display new paintings by up-and-coming young Iraqi artist Athier. The gallery has always offered tremendous support to its artists, turning its Damascus space into an artists’ studio compound and helping artists to leave the country and seek refuge from the ongoing conflict. In 2015, they launched a young artist-in-residence programme. Ayyam’s relationships with Syrian artists will always be at the heart of their programming, but they also have grander ambitions. “We are in discussions with major international galleries and established international artists for representation in Dubai,” reveals Khaled, “as we contemplate the transition of our roster to focus on a more global line-up in place of representing a specific region.” •
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dubai
A Stitch in Time New York-based Turkish artist Sermin Kardestuncer shows new works after a hiatus of more than a decade at Dubai’s XVA Gallery by Danna Lorch
#3, 2014, earth on silk paper, fabric, thread, 17 × 17cm
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Sermin Kardestuncer believes that titles are too prescriptive, and consequently her first solo show at XVA Gallery is unnamed, as are the distinctive multimedia works it encompasses. The New York-based Turkish artist’s highly conceptual pieces study the relationship between memory and pattern, following two primal tropes: tightly coiled spirals and strict grids. The grids showed in a previous exhibition at Pierogi Gallery in New York and have an industrial feel to them that could reference Manhattan’s navigation system as much as the ruled velocity of the human life cycle.
Pattern has always been the cornerstone of Kardestuncer’s practice. “Without pattern is zero,” she says. “I am going towards zero — breath, air. Zero is my goal, perhaps towards the end of my life. Repeating a pattern or making the same things over and over again can be comforting. You start at the edge or the middle of a page and then you expand, like throwing a stone in the water and watching the ripples happen.” All of the textiles Kardestuncer uses have a history to them. She seeks out imperfect scars in the form of stains, frayed edges, or permanent lines, and won’t purchase thread, instead pulling it from pieces of fabric. Tacked to the gallery wall, a nebula of delicate white dots has been painstakingly stitched onto a square of fireplace soot-stained muslin, a cheap material that originated in the Indian port town Masulipatnam, and was historically used for undergarments. Kardestuncer went through an incubational chapter and took more than a decade-long break from exhibiting between 2001 and 2014. She describes her latest work as a slow process, as she insists on creating with her own organic rhythm — a method that comes across as positively countercultural for someone living as an artist in one of the world’s most frenetic and expensive cities, where time literally equates to money. With a home studio and regular stints in Europe, Kardestuncer’s creative process, which involves hunching over fabric, needle and thread and waiting for a pattern to emerge, is best described as controlled ecstasy. “Sometimes you just can’t stop,” she says. “It’s comforting to stitch or knit, the need to fill an area and that stitch with the thread needs you because it brings you to infinity. You feel almost elevated, and for this reason I can’t work more than four or five hours per day.” • Sermin Kardestuncer’s unnamed solo exhibition continues at XVA Gallery until February 3.
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DUBAI
The Times They Are A-Changing Nazgol Ansarinia’s practice interrogates the current realities of life in Tehran, referencing rapid change and vanishing traditions by Laura Egerton
A recipient of the first Abraaj Group Art Prize in 2009 for her contemporary take on the Persian carpet, Nazgol Ansarinia has forged a practice that investigates the current reality of living in Tehran. Her first solo show in Dubai, Surfaces + Solids at Green Art Gallery, commented on the dichotomy between the exterior and interior: the public and the domestic. Running from November 16 to January 9, the exhibition included the installations Living Room (2005) and Membrane (2014) span the ten years since she returned to Tehran after studying abroad. The two works share nostalgia for the past — for what has been lost or taken away — and poetically describe traces of what remains. Living Room is a projection, which meditatively scans empty walls of her family home after furniture and pictures had been removed,
leaving only a ghostly presence. Membrane is a toscale representation of the one wall left after a house has been demolished and the inhabitants have left. An imprint made of only paper, paste and glue, it felt perilously fragile. On a table sat five small, grey architectural models. Fabrications are recreations of existing residential buildings and commercial high rises, with the addition of three-dimensional renderings of the trompe l’oeil cityscapes that are depicted in murals on the exterior. In reality these are utopic, dreamlike and, crucially, brightly coloured mosque domes or wind towers. It is hard to appreciate the connection or indeed the artist’s touch through these painstakingly detailed but plain models, which Ansarinia made in collaboration with a local architect, using 3D printing technology. Architecture is again the subject in her ongoing series Pillars, in which dull-coloured resin is enlivened by scrawling text inside the capitals, excerpts from the Iranian constitution pertaining to the economy. Ansarinia is commenting on the effect the post-1979 recovery and rapid gentrification has had on her city. Ancient, accepted rules, such as the classical order of architecture, are being disregarded and cast aside. In her best artworks, Ansarinia uses as her subject matter quotidian objects or spaces loaded with either personal or cultural significance. Through breaking them down into patterns or impressions on a surface, she proposes a new path, a new future. •
Green Art Gallery, 2063
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The World Meets Here French art dealer and gallerist Stéphane Custot establishes a permanent presence in Alserkal Avenue by Danna Lorch
right:
Stéphane Custot
far right:
Frank Stella, Maze, 1966, 91.4 × 91.4cm
This March, Custot Gallery will open its doors in Dubai as part of Alserkal Avenue’s ambitious expansion. The space debuts with The World Meets Here, a group exhibition including a 1966 pinstripe maze by Frank Stella, a Robert Indiana sculpture and Fabienne Verdier’s cerulean symphony — a 2015 acrylic and mixed media work fittingly titled Notations en bleu, among other sculptures and contemporary works by a number of noteworthy international artists. Over the past 25 years, founder Stéphane Custot has built real expertise in Europe through various ventures, including Pavillon des Antiquaires and the Pavillon des Beaux-Arts (since renamed Pavilion of Art & Design) in Paris and London, and Waddington Custot Galleries in London. The art dealer and gallerist says he chose the UAE because it is quickly becoming known as a major global cultural crossroads. “At the moment, Dubai as a whole is undergoing tremendous change, not only within the art world but also within the tourist industry and the job market,” he explains. “The UAE has a different feel to Europe
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and North America, and situated halfway between the two. It represents a perfect market opening for international art. I was also attracted to the vibrancy of the Alserkal Avenue district, an area where so many different industries rub shoulders.” Custot has hopes of taking the time to explore and incorporate influences from the local art landscape, but initially the gallery will have a more international bent. “The key aim behind the exhibitions that will take place will be to offer a comprehensive overview of the very best of international art to art enthusiasts in Dubai and those passing through the city,” he says, “and to give people the chance to view the creative trends and works which have only been exhibited sporadically in the region until now.” The gallery’s presence further solidifies a gradually growing trend of museum quality work and experienced dealers from Europe and North America forging a permanent presence in the UAE beyond the annual art fair circuit. It will be intriguing to observe how the region’s local and expatriate collectors respond over time. •
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los angeles
The Power of a Kiss French-Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed mixes passion and politics in his first major Los Angeles exhibition by Marwan Naaman
From Here to Eternity, Adel Abdessemed’s first major exhibition in Los Angeles, marked a startling departure for the French-Algerian artist. Abdessemed, now in his mid-40s, is best known for his powerful, visceral works that often reference the horrific Algerian civil war, which he witnessed when he was an art student in the 1990s. Themes of cruelty, violence and animal sacrifice have been prevalent in his work, and his shows have even been shut down due to their disturbing content, most notably two years ago in Qatar, and in San Francisco in 2008. “As artists, we must generate tensions for something very positive and extraordinary to come out,” the artist once said. “Without struggle, there would be very little art, very little invention.” But Abdessemed’s latest show, which ran in November and December at Venus gallery in Los Angeles, stood out for its passion and humanity. For his LA debut, Abdessemed unveiled a series of nearly 100 black stone drawings on paper and military tarpaulin, distinguishing this show from previous exhibitions, which generally highlighted video, sculpture and conceptual art. The title of the show, From Here to Eternity, was inspired by the 1953 film starring Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, and many works in the exhibition depicted variations on the movie’s pivotal scene, in which the two lead actors kiss passionately as waves crash over them.
While it would appear that these works were a simple tribute to the iconic 1953 film, there was — as in most of Abdessemed works — a strong political message that the artist wanted to communicate. As a child in Algeria, Abdessemed viewed Western films under the strict censorship of an oppressive Algerian government, which cut out all scenes that portrayed physical contact between the sexes. Years later, he revisited his youth through his artwork, in an attempt perhaps to revive the love and beauty that the Algerian government had so violently tried to eradicate. In addition to the works referencing the film From Here to Eternity, Abdessemed also showed drawings of a young woman posing, a man sweeping the floor and an owl that looked out at the viewer with an enigmatic gaze. As with most of Abdessemed’s works, the ultimate message isn’t always immediately evident, but the power of the black stone drawings, and the raw passion they exude, is exactly what we’ve come to expect from the prolific artist. •
Adel Abdessemed, Not Yet Titled, 2015, black stone on paper
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I think my stance, and my way of life, is my most important art Ai Weiwei
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Ai Weiwei meets Andy Warhol by Daniel Scheffler
Selections sits down with Ai Weiwei to discuss art, activism and Andy Warhol
Not all the credit can go to Andy Warhol, of course. But Ai Weiwei certainly owes him a debt of thanks. Then again, go one step back beyond Warhol and you’ll find Marcel Duchamp, whose readymades gave Warhol the proverbial green light to start delivering his opus on pop art. In the endless cycle of inspiration, creation and legacy, enter this century’s shining star — Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei.
opposite page: Ai Weiwei 2009 Image courtesy Ai Weiwei studio
The latest show from the prolific dissident artist opened on December 10 at Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria, entitled Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei. With more than 300 works, including major commissions such as a unique version of Forever Bicycles in the gallery’s foyer, rising above 30 feet, as well as immersive installations and a wide selection of painting, film, photography, music, publishing, sculpture and Ai’s personal penchant, social media, the show explores the time we are living in, right here, right now.
right: Andy Warhol American 1928–87 Self-Portrait 1981 Polaroid™ Polacolor 2 3 3/8 × 4 1/4 in. (8.6 × 10.8cm.) The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. 1998.1.2872 © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS, New York. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney
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Three years in the making, the exhibition, which will travel to the Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, America, in June, explores the relationship between tradition and modernity and the role of the individual and the state. It also raises questions related to human rights and the very topical issue of freedom of expression. At the same time, it draws parallels and highlights differences between the work of Warhol, representing the 20th century — the “American century” — and Ai as a representative of the 21st century, billed as the “Chinese century” to come. Warhol famously tapped into the way we internalise mass consumption, the rampant consumerism of the previous century and of course his favorite topic, popular culture, exploring how they impacted art and production. Ai does something similar for the 21st century, in which social media drives so much of the conversation. “In 1981, I moved to New York,” Ai told Selections. “I became an artist so I could escape the politics in China. It was dangerous at the time, to stay in China.” After 10 years in New York, his fridge was filled with film rolls that he never intended to print. On his return to China, however, he changed his mind and developed the film, and here he discovered some of his best works. “Politically charged work interrogates a nation that’s experiencing incredible change,” he explained.
opposite page top: Ai Weiwei Chinese 1957– Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn 1995 3 silver gelatin photographs 148.0 × 120.0cm each (triptych) Ai Weiwei Studio © Ai Weiwei
opposite page bottom: Ai Weiwei Chinese 1957– Forever Bicycles, 2011, installation view at Taipei Fine Arts Museum Image courtesy Ai Weiwei Studio © Ai Weiwei
above right: Andy Warhol American 1928–87 Campbell’s Soup II: TomatoBeef Noodle O’s 1969 screen print on paper 88.9 × 58.4cm The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS, New York. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney
One of the overriding themes of this exhibition is activism — particularly activism through art. For Ai, the line between work and life has blurred. “I became fully aware [of the activism in my work] when my head was covered by a black hood and I was driven to a secret place,” he recalled. Strangers and friends had warned the artist of the danger posed by his work, but he felt that as an artist he would be considered small fry. “It takes some time for a big animal to react — what I was doing, it wasn’t familiar to the authorities,” he explained. Then came the series of pro-democracy demonstrations in China in February and March 2011 — inspired by Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution — and with it Ai’s arrest. The artist was held for 81 days without charges filed, but he remained positive, managing to keep his spirit and principles intact.
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opposite page: Steve Schapiro Andy Warhol Under the Silver Cloud Pillow, New York 1965 © Steve Schapiro; Andy Warhol artwork © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS, New York. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney
below right: Ai Weiwei Chinese 1957– Ai Weiwei with Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds, @aiww, Instagram, 2015 Ai Weiwei Studio © Ai Weiwei; Andy Warhol artwork © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS, New York. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney
“I am one clown, one funny artist. You can put a bullet in me, but it cannot change my beliefs,” he said. “Jail is like being dropped into the bottom of the ocean. You cannot hear your voice. It’s an illusion that you don’t have your voice.” Today, he doesn’t care what people think of him, just as Warhol never cared. “He is the first artist I felt that I could completely understand,” said Ai, talking about the American pop art pioneer. “I come from the northwest of China, near the Russian border, and he comes from Pittsburgh, but he is a person with a gesture and language that I completely understand. He is extremely sincere and at the same time never sincere — like a person that exists virtually: his look, his voice. He really escaped into his work. When he was alive he was never taken seriously. His value is gradually accepted.”
“Warhol always had his finger directly on the pulse of American culture,” said Eric Shiner, director of the Warhol Museum and co-curator of Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei. “By depicting the icons of his age in his artwork, from Campbell’s soup to Marilyn Monroe, he tied his name to their iconic standing. By creating his own brand identity with his signature wig and by socialising in the highest circles, Warhol cemented his own status as an American icon.” Today, this is what Ai has done, using social media and documenting his life via blogs — although the artist says that right now he is only retweeting. “Without social media you have to take action,” he explained. “It’s too easy to just give verbal comments.”
‘‘I am one clown, one funny artist. You can put a bullet in me, but it cannot change my beliefs
Ai added that he was amazed by the parallels the curators of the Melbourne show found between Warhol’s work and his own. “I often couldn’t tell which was his work and which was mine — they found connections and could even trick me,” he said. One of the things the two artists have in common — along with their predecessor Duchamp — is their tendency to work with mundane objects, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. “I love working with objects that are just ordinary,” explained Ai. “We live in a world where everything old is being destroyed. I’m not a nostalgic person, but to see traces or marks like those wasted is sad, pitiful.”
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above: Andy Warhol, American 1928–87, You’re In 1967 spray paint on glass bottles in printed wooden crate Crate: 20.3 × 43.2 × 30.5cm, Bottles (each): 20.3 × 5.7cm, Diameter: 18.7cm, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS, New York. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney
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below : Ai Weiwei Chinese 1957– Neolithic Pottery with Coca Cola Logo 2007 paint, Neolithic ceramic urn, 27.94 × 24.89cm, Image courtesy Ai Weiwei Studio, © Ai Weiwei
opposite page: Ai Weiwei at National Gallery of Victoria exhibition Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei, 11 December 2015 – 24 April 2016. Ai Weiwei artwork © Ai Weiwei. Photo: John Gollings
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“Andy Warhol was a fanatical chronicler of his time, through film, photography, audiotape and the publishing of his diaries and Interview Magazine,” said Max Delany, senior curator of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Victoria. “His Polaroid photographs, celebrity portraits and video diaries show him to be a social media artist before his time. He was keenly aware of the significance of fame and celebrity and cultivated his own persona to forge new social realities.” Delany sees Ai in the same light — an equally vivid recorder of his own historical moment through photography, film, publishing and social media. “He is someone who merges art, life and politics to create new social and political movements,” Delany said. “In doing so, he is an agent of historical change.”
‘‘Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei have
quite literally defined the aesthetics of their respective times and places, while challenging the sensibilities and mores of all of us
Ai Weiwei Chinese 1957– At the Museum of Modern Art 1987 from the New York Photographs series 1983–93 silver gelatin photograph Ai Weiwei Studio © Ai Weiwei; Andy Warhol artwork © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS, New York. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney
“Through different formal means, yet utilising similar strategies, Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei have quite literally defined the aesthetics of their respective times and places, while challenging the sensibilities and mores of all of us,” said Shiner. He believes that each artist critiques his immediate environs, hitting on topics as diverse as consumer culture, celebrity and art history to reshape and revise the way we understand the world. So, Marcel Duchamp had the urinal, Andy Warhol had the soup can and Ai Weiwei has the bicycle. In each case, a mundane object is transformed into something crucial, a symbol of the age.
Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei continues at the National Gallery of Victoria until April 24, before moving to the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh from June to August
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A Week in Iran by Rima Nasser
Selections’ editor-in-chief Rima Nasser shares the highlights of an unforgettable trip to Iran One of the highlights of 2015 was the week I spent in Iran, where I was immersed into a world of ornate mosques and stunning palaces, breathtaking gardens and world-class art, some of it on show to the public for the first time in close to 40 years.
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Iran’s Modernist Wonder Woman The trip began with the opening of Towards the Ineffable: Farideh Lashai. The first major retrospective of the Iranian modernist artist, who was born in 1944 and died in 2013, the exhibition opened on November 20 and runs until February 26. Organised with the support of the Lashai Foundation, the exhibition also marked the first time that the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art has exhibited a number of important work by Western artists in their collection since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The show’s curators, Italian scholar, art critic and art historian Germano Celant — former senior curator at New York’s Guggenheim and artistic director of Milan’s Prada Foundation since 1993 — and Iranian curator, architect and filmmaker Faryar Javaherian, paired a number of Lashai’s pieces with work by other celebrated Iranian and international artists. Their selection includes pieces by artists who had influenced her work, including Alberto Giacometti, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon, Cy Twombly, Sohrab Sepehri, Franz Kline, Bahman Mohassess, Behdjat Sadr and Nasser Assar. Likev those of many Iranian artists, Lashai’s life was punctuated by experiences of revolution, displacement, exile and return. She rose to prominence in the 1970s, and Towards the Ineffable charts a timeline of her life, showing how her work evolved over decades of experimentation and contextualising it against a background of the history and development of Iranian art more generally.
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far right: Farideh Lashai, Self-Portrait, unknown date, oil, colored pencil and graphite on paper, 74 × 59cm
right: Farideh Lashai, Untitled, 2009, oil on canvas, 200 × 200cm
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Farideh Lashai, Untitled, 1967, oil on canvas, 133 × 95cm, Centre Pompidou, Paris
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Farideh Lashai, Untitled, Cover of “Shal Bamoo”, 2000, oil and graphite on canvas, 108.5 × 118cm
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Lashai, whose work spans paintings, video, poetry and fiction, was inspired by the rich history of Persian art and also by Western modernism. Gallerist and art dealer Leila Heller has described her as “the most important Iranian-woman modern artist” and she is particularly famous for her depictions of nature. A tomboy and prolific painter as a child, Lashai left Iran as a teenager, studying literature and translation in Germany and learning crystal design and carving at Reidel Studios, a glass manufacturer in Austria, before returning to Iran full time in the 1970s. A feminist and activist, she had several successful solo shows in Iran but after being arrested and detained for two years, from 1974 to 1976, she moved to America, then back to Iran once again in the 1980s. Towards the Ineffable provides a glimpse into the breadth of her oeuvre, showcasing paintings, sculptures, glass designs for the Reidel Studio, and even elements of her work as a writer and translator. Lashai’s work is hung on white walls, while pieces by the other artists on show are hung on grey. Seeing them together emphasises the true power of Lashai’s paintings, which transport viewers into her deceptively peaceful world. Her landscapes, combining traditional and avant-garde techniques, seem to capture the essence of nature, at once peaceful and wild, beautiful and chaotic.
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Among the highlights of the exhibition are her innovative painting and animated projection pairings. Accompanied by the strains of soothing classical music, her vivid canvasses are transformed into moving tableaux. Crows peck at the ground and white rabbits — Lashai’s favourite animals, which she often used as a stand-in for herself — lollop in and out of her paintings, hopping playfully, as though kicking their back legs into the air with joy. Charlie Chaplin appears, parading beside the canvas with his distinctive walk, feet pointing outwards, his walking stick tapping alongside. These magical projections appear innocent and childlike, but also contain a more adult element of pathos.
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Art Luminaries in Discussion
A fascinating afternoon of talks about Lashai provided additional context about her life and work. Venetia Porter, curator of the Islamic art collection at the British Museum, shed some light on Lashai’s final work, When I count there are only you… But when I look, there is only a shadow, explaining how the piece uses drawings and video projections to reinterpret Spanish artist Francisco Goya’s famous series of etchings The Disasters of War, executed between 1810 and 1820. Porter linked the artist’s fascination with Goya back to a short story she wrote in 1967, at the age of 23, and subsequent works throughout her lifetime. For When I count there are only you… Lashai used a complex digital process to make Goya’s tortured figures appear and disappear. “For a mere second or two, the viewer sees the image as Goya intended it, the scenes of torture and agony, and then the empty desolate landscapes return,” Porter explained. “The effect is remarkable. What Lashai wished to explore was the idea of how an action makes a mark on a place.”
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Prominent Dutch curator Catherine de Zegher delved deeper into Lashai’s difficult life, after which Celant and Javaherian had an open discussion about their approaches to staging her work. “Farideh represents the richness and complexity of an intellectual and an artist, a woman, who has passed through and suffered troubled times in Iran, reflecting them in her works, from paintings to poetry,” explained Celant. “Her path is mixed with tribulations and obstacles, emigrations and disasters, including the social and the personal, which are reflected in her activity. Her roaming from art to design, from literature to cinema, forms a unity that acts as an echo of her life.” Celant went on to explain why he chose to exhibit Lashai’s work alongside work by European and American artists. “The logic I have followed, along with Farayar Javaherian, has been to frame the unrepeatability of her path, creating, from the beginning, an artistic context that might serve to position her historically and internationally,” he said. “The exhibition as a whole affirms the intersectionality of history and individuality, the international and the national, context and person,” he added, “in order to recognize original and unique figures, such as Farideh Lashai, whose creativity and unusual ideas, activities, modes of representation and imagination have established a core foundation upon which it is possible to construct a contemporary Iranian identity.”
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Farideh Lashai, When I count there are only you‌ But when I look, there is only a shadow
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Francis Bacon, Reclining Man with Sculpture, 1961, oil on canvas, 165 × 143cm
Hidden Treasures A visit to the museum’s basement vaults revealed the space where for 36 years a collection worth an estimated $3 billion was stored, invisible to the public eye. The story of the museum’s collection is fascinating in its own right. Acquired in the 1970s by Iran’s former Empress, Farah Diba Pahlavi, the wife of the deposed Shah, the collection has remained largely hidden since the 1979 revolution, aside from one or two short exhibitions of a limited number of works.
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The vault contains the more than 1500 pieces that have languished unseen for decades, among them works such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Gabrielle with Open Blouse and Francis Bacon’s triptych Two Figures Lying on a Bed with Attendants, both of which are destined to remain hidden below ground because of their depictions of nude or semi-clad subjects. Among the 41 never-before-exhibited artworks chosen to accompany Lashai’s work upstairs were Jackson Pollock’s Mural on Indian Red Ground, estimated at a value of $250 million by Christie’s five years ago, and Francis Bacon’s Reclining Man with Sculpture.
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The Heart of Tehran’s Art Scene Since the birth of Iranian modernism in the 1940s and ’50s, the country has enjoyed a rich and varied art scene. Today, Tehran’s art scene is flourishing thanks to regular cycles of exhibitions, lectures, screenings and performances. During the opening week of Towards the Ineffable, I visited four local galleries showcasing some of Iran’s most promising emerging and established contemporary artists.
Aaran Gallery, an institution founded in 2009 that aims to foster artistic exchanges between South-West Asian, North African and South-East Asian nations, was finishing up Beyond Blue, a solo show by Sasan Abri. Abri uses colours as a means to express emotions in his work, explaining that his monochrome portraits in blue express the infinite simplicity of life and its meaning.
Assar Art Gallery, which was founded in Darakeh in 1999 and relocated to central Tehran in 2004, was showing a series of colourful paintings by Alireza Adambakan. Entitled Asar (headless or endless), the exhibition featured seven vivid canvasses, part of an ongoing series in which the artist juxtaposes his innermost emotions with the religious narratives that formed the backdrop to his childhood. Ab/Anbar gallery, established in 2014 as an independent entity aiming to advance contemporary art in Iran through exhibitions, lectures, screenings, performances, and publications, was hosting Callidrawing, a solo exhibition of work by Reza Abedini. The show featured 89 inventive and experimental works that straddled the border between drawing and calligraphy, the artist’s two longstanding modes of work. Aun Gallery, founded in 2009 to promote and support talented young Iranian artists through month-long solo exhibitions throughout the year, chose to exhibit work by Abbas Akbari. Stone Paste consisted of a selection of ceramics, presenting new perspectives on an 800-year-old work of art, the mihrab — a niche in the wall of a mosque at the point closest to Mecca — found in Meydan Mosque in the historic city of Kashan, now located in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.
Bizhan Bassiri’s exhibition, Aun gallery
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Meeting Monir Farmanfarmaian
One of Iran’s best-known artists, 91-year-old Monir Farmanfarmaian has achieved recognition at home and overseas. Her Tehran studio is fascinating in its own right. The walls are covered with clippings from newspapers, catalogues and websites that have written about the artist’s work over the course of her 70-year career, while old black-and-white photographs and a colourful painting of a vase of flowers added a pictorial element to the ensemble, highlighting Farmanfarmaian’s eye for aesthetics.
Last year, the artist had her first — long overdue — solo exhibition at a major museum in New York, a city where she spent half her life. She first moved to New York to study art in 1944 and then returned after the 1979 revolution, spending 26 years in exile. Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Infinite Possibility. Mirror Works and Drawings 1974 — 2014, was held at the Guggenheim, a museum she used to visit as a young woman back in the 1950s, when it was known as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. The artist’s distinctive brand of geometric abstraction has its roots in both Islamic art and modernism, and her cut-glass mosaics combine traditional techniques with a contemporary aesthetic. Farmanfarmaian explained that, following an accident earlier in the year, she had been working mostly from home in recent months, creating designs for her elaborate mirror pieces and sending them to her studio, where her team fabricates them according to her instructions. It was a pleasure to witness the unveiling of two new pieces, as yet unseen even by the artist herself. Both were stunning mirror works, which played beautifully with the light.
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Unbridled Beauty
After soaking up so much modern and contemporary art in Tehran, Kashan was the perfect contrast, a city where tradition reigns supreme. A visit to the stunning Abbasi House, an 18th century property with mirrored ceilings and six courtyards, allows for the peaceful experience of wandering in the beautiful landscaped gardens. It was here, amid lush lawns and flourishing trees, that a magical moment transpired. Out of nowhere, a white rabbit appeared, hopping calmly across the grass. It seemed as if Farideh Lashai herself had chosen to make an appearance in the form of her beloved spirit animal.
My final two days in Iran were spent in beautiful Isfahan, where I visited some of the world’s most spectacular mosques. In their beautiful mirrored mosaics, I saw the inspiration for the work of Monir Farmanfarmaian, and was able to reflect on the ways in which — like that of Farideh Lashai — her work is a positive fusion of Eastern and Western influences. It seemed a fitting end to a trip that began with the message of coexistence and tolerance projected by Towards the Ineffable, which may come to be seen as a historic symbol of warming relations between Iran and the West in years to come.
One of the finest examples of Kashan’s traditional architecture is Manouchehri Traditional House, a boutique hotel featuring nine stunning guest rooms, a restaurant, cinema, brocading and velvet weaving workshop, gallery, bookshop and internet café, lovingly restored to its historic beauty by Saba Manouchehri. Located in the old Jewish area of the city, known as Sarepole, the house has come back to life under her painstaking efforts. Manouchehri studied jewellery making at Tufts University of Massachusetts and is also a talented sculptor. Upon her return the Iran, she decided to open a gallery to promote the work of young Iranian artists and to restore the house as a means of preserving the city’s traditional beauty. She even opened a centre for silk weaving, a skill for which the area was historically known.
This white rabbit in the gardens of Abbasi House appeared like Farideh Lashai herself, in the form of her beloved spirit animal
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Championing Creative Collaboration by Rima Nasser
The Rolex Arts Weekend in Mexico in early December celebrated the culmination of a philanthropic initiative that paired emerging and establish artists from around the world
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Creativity is the fruit of uncertainty — it may not be a conventional definition, but it’s an idea that caught the imagination of seven of the world’s most successful artists at the celebration of the culmination of the 2014-2015 cycle of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in Mexico in December. The Rolex Arts Weekend gathered more than 150 artists and writers from all over the world in Mexico City on December 5 and 6 to witness a series of performances and meet the seven mentors and their protégés, who have spent the last year exploring ideas, sharing experiences and learning from each other in a mutually beneficial exchange. Launched in 2002, the Rolex Arts Initiative aims to make a contribution to global culture by seeking out gifted young artists from all over the world and pairing them with masters in their fields for a year of one-toone mentoring. “It’s based on the traditional concept of mentoring in the arts, where younger apprentices learn their craft alongside older practitioners,” explained Rebecca Irvin, head of philanthropy at Rolex. “We believe that behind every great artist is a great artist.”
The 14 mentors and protégés celebrating the culmination of their collaborations illustrated the diversity and global outlook of the initiative. Priztker Prize-winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor worked with Paraguayan architect Gloria Cabral. Oscar-winning Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu was paired with Israeli filmmaker Tom Shovel. American lighting designer Jennifer Tipton collaborated with Sebastián Solórzano Rodriguez, who also hails from Mexico. Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho selected a Portuguese protégé, Vasco Mendonça. Sri LankanCanadian author Michael Ondaatje worked with Bulgarian writer Miroslav Penkov. And finally, DanishIcelandic multimedia artist Olafur Eliasson chose to collaborate with Brussels-based Congolese photographer Sammy Baloji
opposite page: Rolex Arts Weekend at Centro Cultural Del Bosque – Mexico, December 5, 2015. Congolese artist and photographer Sammy Baloji created an installation in the lobby of TeatroJulio Castillo. The event was accompanied by a conversation with his mentor Olafur Eliasson. © Rolex/ hugo glendinning
below: TheRolex Mentor andProtégé Arts Initiative, closing ceremony, Centro Cultural Del Bosque, Mexico, December 6, 2015. Celebration in honour of the Mentors and Protégés of the seventh cycle (2014-2015). Myles Thatcher, dance, Alexei Ratmansky, Gloria Cabral, architecture, Peter Zumthor, architecture, Sebastián Solórzano Rodríguez, theatre, Jennifer Tipton, theatre, Tom Shoval, film, Alejandro González Iñárritu, film, Michael Ondaatje, literature, Miroslav Penkov, literature, Kaija Saariaho, music, Vasco Mendonça, music, Olafur Eliasson, visual arts, Sammy Baloji, visual arts, © Rolex/ Hugo Glendinning
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above: At the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, Denmark, mentor Olafur Eliasson surrounded by his works. Denmark, 2014, © Rolex/ Hugo Glendinning
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below: in an artists’ studio, the cooperative Moussaouia in Marrakech, protégé Sammy Baloji examines a copper plate that will be part of a dome for exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Morocco, 2015, © Rolex/ Hugo Glendinning
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Rolex arts weekend at Centro Cultural Del Bosque – Mexico, December 5, 2015. Congolese artist and photographer Sammy Baloji created an installation in the lobby of Teatro Julio Castillo. The event was accompanied by a conversation with his mentor Olafur Eliasson. © Rolex/ Hugo Glendinning
It was Eliasson — who from the first preferred to see his year working with Baloji as an equal exchange, rather than a one-way transfer of knowledge from master to apprentice — who first raised the topic of uncertainty in art. It was, he said, one of the things about which Baloji was able to teach him. It was valuable “to actually spend time with somebody who is in the process of verbalising the It was valuable to actually spend time with emotional state in which somebody who is in the process of verbalising the emotional state in which they are they are,” he explained. “I realised that I had, to some extent at least, already verbalised. I have already formalised my language, meaning that I have become repetitive and boring. So, interestingly, Sammy was not boring compared to me… What I learned was that in the hesitation and in the doubt there’s a strength — a strength that I maybe have forgotten, because I’m always so certain. I enjoyed the luxury of leaning back into being uncertain.”
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‘‘I believe that our relationship has not come to an end — we have only just begun
Peter Zumthor’s design for the “Tea Chapel” in South Korea. Switzerland, ©Rolex/ Hugo Glendinning
Iñárritu elaborated on this theme. “I fully agree with Olafur when he says that culture is like a process of uncertainty,” he said. “I believe that the world is the way it is because of all the certainty in it. All politicians are sure of themselves. They have to be certain. The media is also certain. In fact, people on Twitter have to have opinions that are certain. All dictatorships are certain — that’s why historically dictatorships and culture have been totally opposed to each other, because culture feeds off of uncertainty and the search for an answer that will never come, because that’s the process of existence.” All of the mentor-protégé pairings emphasised the mutually beneficial nature of the initiative and said that they planned to continue working together after the year is formally concluded. “I believe that our relationship has not come to an end — we have only just begun,” said Eliasson. “We have made a few attempts to start a creative experiment together, a special creative experiment in Lubumbashi, in the context of a festival in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi that Sammy has been co-organising… I’ve become emotionally invested in Sammy’s work. I follow it both because I’m interested in Sammy, but also as it is for me a source of inspiration.”
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above: protégée Gloria Cabral and mentor Peter Zumthor at work, in his studio in Haldenstein, Switzerland, preparing a design for the “Tea Chapel” in South Korea. Switzerland, © Rolex/ Hugo Glendinning
below: Protégée Gloria Cabral at work in Haldenstein, Switzerland, on the model for the “Tea Chapel” in South Korea designed by mentor Peter Zumthor. Switzerland, © Rolex/ Hugo Glendinning
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Mentor Alexei Ratmansky (right) and protégé Myles Thatcher in the foyer of Munich’s Bavarian State Opera. Germany, © Rolex/ Hugo Glendinning
‘‘Culture is a way of life.
It’s a relationship. It’s the nature of this conversation we are all having in this room right now
Since 2002, Rolex has worked with 368 artists in more than 40 countries. Even as the hundreds of former protégés continue to enjoy the fruits of their collaborations, both with their formal mentors and in many cases with each other, a new set of mentors are preparing themselves to take up the reins. After a fascinating program of installations, live music and dance performances, conversations and presentations, the weekend climaxed with the announcement of the mentors for the 2016-2017 cycle, who — to paraphrase Eliasson — are preparing to make their marks on history.
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“We often put success at the end of the process, turning thinking into doing,” the artist explained. “But truth is that success is very often in the process itself. We have creativity or the impact that creativity has on the world, which is why we call it culture… Culture is a way of life. It’s a relationship. It’s the nature of this conversation we are all having in this room right now. So culture is something much bigger than we can tap into, and if we succeed in making creative decisions, we can actually influence the world.”
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Innovation, Installation, Intervention By India Stoughton
Selections delves into the world of six artists whose work breaks free of traditional spaces, surfaces and media to create public interventions that challenge viewers, whether from the walls of a gallery, a stately home or the urban fabric of a city
There was a time when art interventions – works that interact with a previously existing artwork, audience or space, or attempt to implement change outside the art world – were considered subversive, often dismissed by those in authority as vandalism. Increasingly, however, performance art, installation or urban art that might once have been seen as interventionist is not only accepted by gallerists, curators and collectors but is even promoted and commissioned by the art-world structures it seeks to challenge. Selections profiles six contemporary artists whose work finds a home in unexpected places, pushes the boundaries of traditional media or creates jarring juxtapositions with traditional artwork to challenge and stimulate public audiences. Paris-based Lebanese artist Nadim Asfar blurs the boundaries between the private and the performed, film and photography to create work that defies traditional classifications while exploring perennial subjects including love, disenchantment, fusion and rejection, and personal and universal experience. In Britain’s Blenheim Palace, the sumptuous baroque birthplace of Winston Churchill, veteran American artist Lawrence Weiner placed enigmatic, site-specific, language-based installations this autumn, describing his work as an attempt to create a reality that negated that of its luxurious surroundings.
Meanwhile, in Florence, the always controversial Jeff Koons encouraged new readings of two Renaissance masterpieces when he exhibited a flashy, three-metre-tall golden statue entitled Pluto and Proserpina beside the marble copy of Michelangelo’s David on Piazza della Signoria, and a royal blue sphere, entitled Gazing Ball (Barberini Faun), atop Donatello’s original bronze sculpture of Judith and Holofernes in the Room of the Lillies at the Palazzo Vecchio. In Beirut, Jad El Khoury’s series of urban interventions War Peace aimed to highlight the ongoing legacy of Lebanon’s Civil War, stimulating fierce debate through playful yet controversial murals on the side of wardamaged buildings. British artist George Butler has brought the horror and tragedy of war and displacement into world-class museums and galleries through his delicate drawings, executed in situ in war-wracked Syria and Afghanistan and the poverty-stricken refugee camps of Lebanon. His emotive illustrations cross borders and boundaries, causing worlds and realities to collide. Finally, New York-based Egyptian artist Ghada Amer discusses the frustrations and rewards of her recent venture into creating ceramics, continuing her successful drive to bring mediums traditionally associated with women’s handicrafts, such as pottery and embroidery, into the largely maledominated art world.
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Territorial Musings by Marwan Naaman
Lebanese artist Nadim Asfar creates works that exist somewhere between film and photography
Nadim Asfar feels that it was essential for him to leave his native Lebanon in order to develop his artistic vision. “I came to France five years ago,” he says. “I was in a stage of my life where I was trying to find out what I wanted to work on and then focus on it. I needed to go through an introspective period, and Paris is very good for this. It’s a city that helps you define yourself.” The Lebanese artist had been taking photographs professionally for over a decade prior to his move. After earning his degree in cinema and audiovisual studies from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in 2001, he took a one-year specialisation course in photography at Paris’ Ecole Nationale Supérieure Louis Lumière, leading him to participate in Paris’ prestigious Salon d’Automne in 2003. He held his first solo exhibition in 2004 at Galerie Fadi Mogabgab in Beirut and had several subsequent shows at Galerie Tanit, which currently represents the artist and his work. “I started doing photography at age 10,” says Asfar. “I had something special with photography, but I was always hesitating between cinema and photography… For a long period of time, I focused only on photography. Now I’ve found a way to be somewhere in between.”
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This halfway mark between cinema and photography came into fruition during fall 2014, when Asfar took part in Heartland: Territoire d’Affects, a group show held at the Beirut Exhibition Center. Along with esteemed artists like Etel Adnan, Ranya Sarakbi, Gilbert Hage, Simone Fattal and Mona Hatoum, Asfar explored “the emotional territory of love, disenchantment, fusion and rejection,” but he was the only one to do so via a movie installation.
Nadim Asfar, portrait
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Eauxterritoriales, NadimAsfar
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Shots from the video Territorial Waters
Named Territorial Waters, the film explores “what belongs to a country and what belongs to everyone.” Many months in the making, Territorial Waters is a short video installation filmed on Lebanon’s coast. “It took me two years,” Asfar says, “including scouting, finding the right locations, getting the right authorisations, finding the right time and the right period to have the right light.” The result is a haunting, captivating film that looks at Lebanon through its Mediterranean waters, via a cinematic lens that is poetic, political, nostalgic, sad and hopeful, all at the same time. Asfar explains that getting permission to film — from the Lebanese Armed Forces and UNIFIL, among others — was a particularly daunting task. “The poetic aspect of my work initially had to take into consideration much wider problems, including the politics in which we’re all involved,” he says. “This explains the title, although the title also references the current migrant crisis. We saw so many images of people fleeing their homeland, going we don’t know where, not knowing where they will land and facing danger. This issue affects the poetic aspect of the landscape.”
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For 2016, Asfar is planning an exhibition at Beirut’s Galerie Tanit, featuring work that will exist somewhere between film and photography. “My new work will focus on landscape and geography in a biographical form,” he says. “Not landscape as a spectacle, but rather as a personal experience. I will focus on places I’ve lived, like Lebanon and Paris.” Reflecting on 15 years of life as an artist, Asfar is grateful to have been able to pursue his passion for film and photography. “I enjoy this work because it gives me lots of independence and the freedom to do what I want,” he says. “It’s a different, intimate way of living.”
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The Materialist by Rajesh Punj
American artist Lawrence Weiner took over Blenheim Palace from October to December, transforming the baroque birthplace of Winston Churchill into site for his enigmatic installations
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Politely punky in appearance, Lawrence Weiner’s brittle beard and rasping utterances helped him to carry the crowd for the time it took the 73-year-old American artist to introduce his evanescent adventure at Blenheim Palace to an audience intended to be positively perplexed by the imposition of contemporary works upon classical artefacts. Weiner described his artistic presence in the baroque palace as a presentation, not a provocation of one moment of history over another. As such, the conundrum of what does and doesn’t belong inside this regal setting is at the heart of the Blenheim Art Foundation’s commitment to giving the estate over to a contemporary artist, without apology or compromise. Following the impressive inaugural configuration of
Bought up on a gritty aesthetic of “miscellaneous materials” and “painterly processes,” Weiner was part of a detritus gathering counter-culture challenging the rules of representation in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, activated in part by fellow Americans Jasper Johns, Frank Stella and Robert Rauschenberg. Weiner saw in their work a looser and more intuitive approach to making art that liberated the materials, whilst at the same time concentrating attention on them. Those initial visual encounters proved an epiphany for Weiner, whose early works were in and of the dirt and debris that littered the corners and crevices of the city. Initially collecting the most rudimentary elements, including plywood, rope, cardboard, and nails, Weiner took the gutsy step of abandoning everything for
‘‘I would build it, and look at it, and then translate it into language, because everybody sees things in terms of language
works by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, Weiner’s inclusion appeared more subtle in many respects — once discovered, his works were there for the taking. “What happened is I accepted Blenheim as a normal, simple structure and I tried to create a situation in order to set up an alternative structure,” Weiner explained. “So instead of having a conversation with the objects that are already here, and trying to move them to one side, what you do is try and present a reality that obviates what’s there, and so it no longer becomes a point of interest, when our interest is what you place upon it now, today.”
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the language of art, instigating a form of installation based entirely on the notion of making those semiotic associations oneself. His pieces at Blenheim Palace consist of a series of short phrases, portentous words placed into an alien context and left for the viewer to discover and decipher. “I would build it, and look at it, and then translate it into language, because everybody sees things in terms of language,” Weiner explained of his artistic process. “You see a stone, you say ‘stone’ to yourself. You have to say something in some kind language to yourself… Once that’s done, you present it within that context. And, if you get it right, in that moment it enters into their context, and the work becomes site-specific. And then if you move it to someplace else, if it works, it becomes site-specific to the new location.”
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below: Lawrence Long Library, Within a realm of distance, Lawrence Weiner at Blenheim Palace, 2015, photo credit: Hugo Glendinning, Courtesy of Blenheim Art Foundation
above: Far Enough Away, Within a realm of distance, Lawrence Weiner at Blenheim Palace, 2015, photo credit: Hugo Glendinning, Courtesy of Blenheim Art Foundation
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Renaissance Man by Marwan Naaman
Jeff Koons reinvented Florentine art with his daring interventions
Jeff Koons made history last fall, when he unveiled two stunning interventions in Florence. Tuscany’s capital city, Florence is the birthplace of the Renaissance, and the world’s most glorious centre of Renaissance art — a fitting place to host new works by a famed contemporary artist. The American artist’s works were launched to coincide with the Biennale Internazionale di Antiquariato di Firenze, which opened in late September. Instigated by the Biennale’s director Fabrizio Moretti and curated by art historian Sergio Risaliti, Koons’ installations were dubbed Jeff Koons: In Florence and ran until the end of December.
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The first intervention, the glittery, golden, three-metretall Pluto and Proserpina, was set near the spectacular marble copy of Michelangelo’s David on Piazza della Signoria. According to the Biennale’s description, the stainless steel statue, which showcases “the two figures of Pluto and Proserpina [clinging] to each other in a dramatic and sensual embrace,” is “bound to create a jarring contrast with the pieces in marble and bronze in the square.” Jeff Koons, Pluto and Proserpina, 2010-2013, mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating and live flowering plants, 327.7 × 167 × 143.8cm, ©Jeff Koons, photo: Serge Domingie
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opposite page: Jeff Koons, Gazing Ball (Barberini Faun), 2013, plaster and glass, 177.8 × 121.9 × 139.4cm, © Jeff Koons, Photo: Serge Domingie
right: Jeff Koons, Pluto and Proserpina, 2010-2013, mirrorpolished stainless steel with transparent color coating and live flowering plants, 327.7 × 167 × 143.8cm, ©Jeff Koons, photo: Serge Domingie
No less breathtaking, Koons’ second intervention, Gazing Ball (Barberini Faun), took the form of a royal blue sphere placed atop Donatello’s original bronze sculpture of Judith and Holofernes, in the Room of the Lillies at the Palazzo Vecchio. Koons’ Gazing Ball series was first unveiled in 2013 at New York’s David Zwirner gallery, featuring white-plastered sculptures of iconic works from the Greco-Roman era. Each sculpture was adorned by a bright blue “gazing ball” made of blown glass.
For his intervention at the Palazzo Vecchio, Koons took his 2013 series one step further, this time by casting the blue ball on an authentic Donatello sculpture. “I’ve thought about the gazing ball for decades,” the artist explained. “I’ve wanted to show the affirmation, generosity, sense of place and joy of the senses that the gazing ball symbolises. The Gazing Ball series is based in transcendence.” Jeff Koons: In Florence marked the artist’s first intervention in the Italian city and was his most high-profile exhibition since his much-publicised retrospective at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in 2014.
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Art Attack by Irene McConnell
Lebanese artist Jad El Khoury explains how Lebanon’s problems inspired him to create gigantic murals on the side of war-damaged buildings
For the past three decades, the scarred skeleton of a concrete skyscraper has towered over the heart of Beirut, marking the former Green Line that divided the city during the Civil War. Never renovated after the conflict ceased, its pock-marked façade still carries the craters caused by shelling, amid constellations of bullet holes. It was this unlikely canvas that caught the attention of artist and interior architect Jad El Khoury, after a revelatory talk with Nadim Karam. “Everything we’re living in Lebanon — all the problems like the garbage in the street, the children who work instead of going to school — motivated me to leave the country,” El Khoury explains. “I was going from one embassy to another searching for a way to emigrate. Then I met Nadim Karam. I’d always thought that an international artist and architect like him must be based in London or New York, but then I discovered that he’s based in Lebanon, so I went and met him. The first question I asked him was, ‘Why are you here? Someone like you can be in any city you want.’” Karam’s answer came in the form of another question. “Where should I be other than here? This is where they need us most.”
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His answer marked a turning point for El Khoury. “I started looking at the same problems that had motivated me to leave in a different way,” he recalls. “Instead of passing by and trying not to look, now I was looking at them and trying to transform them into subjects or concepts that I can make art out of.” El Khoury is known for his signature doodled characters, the catalyst for his artist’s name: Potato Nose. Starting with a meandering line, he adds simple features — round eyes, a button nose, a smiling mouth or bristling teeth — transforming amoebalike blobs into endearing figures, somewhere between human and animal. “It’s about drawing a simple line, spontaneously, then transforming it into a character,” he explains. Prior to his first intervention on the war-damaged building in October, his figures could be found scattered around Beirut, adorning random walls and decorating the sides of Cuentista, a café in Gemmayzeh. But this project saw El Khoury take on a canvas of an unprecedented scale. He left his job at Karam’s studio and trained for three months on ropes and a harness, preparing the scale the side of the building.
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Jad El Khoury, 2015
The artist used Photoshop to create simulated designs for the graffiti. “I found that when I filled the building with many characters it was like the missile traces disappeared,” he recalls. “I didn’t want to erase the traces of war, so that’s why in the final piece I drew a character around some of the traces, I didn’t cover them… I used red paint so that from a distance it looks like the building is bleeding, to remind us how bad things were during the war. But when you come closer you discover that it’s not blood, they are funny characters who came to spread positivity in the street, instead of bad memories.” In parallel, El Khoury worked on an unusual set of paintings, taking sheets of metal and shooting at them with a gun, then using the bullet holes as the basis for his distinctive characters. These works can now be found in private collections including those of Bank Audi and the Bustan Hotel. In November, he followed up his first intervention with a similar work on the side of Lebanon’s famous Holiday Inn, this time using blue and white paint. The controversial project attracted a lot of attention, both positive and negative, serving as a catalyst for discussion about Lebanon’s war traces. It’s an outcome that artist is happy with. Whether or not people admire his work, he says, it has opened up a valuable debate.
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DRAWING WITHDRAWAL by Nick Rice
Often working amid crisis and conflict, George Butler captures more in his artworks than the click of a shutter can — they are imbued with the essence of time and place
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In March 2014, I spent eight days with George Butler visiting a number of refugee camps near the Syrian border in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. I observed how he worked: naturally connecting with people when it was appropriate, becoming invisible when it wasn’t. All the time, he kept sketching in pen and ink, deftly managing to balance his wooden board, inkpot and pens with a knack born of much practice.
‘‘These drawings purposefully
show life a pace back from that violence: people washing for prayers, shopping, farming, building, learning and living
Our task was to record the living conditions and daily plight of Syrian refugees in the region for the charitable organisation Doctors of the World, and Butler’s work was subsequently shown on the BBC, published in The Guardian and exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Not one to rest much between assignments, later the same year 30-year-old Butler travelled to Afghanistan, where he documented in his distinctive pen and ink style the withdrawal of British and international combat troops from the country after 13 years of conflict. “The three weeks I spent in Afghanistan in November and December 2014 were the start of a continuing diary of violence,” Butler recalls. “These drawings purposefully show life a pace back from that violence: people washing for prayers, shopping, farming, building, learning and living. Much of the rural life reminded me of home and I’m excited to be bringing the drawings back.”
opposite page: Bird Street
above: Teacher training in Worsaj
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above : Sewing machine
opposite page: Rural scene
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Butler’s art works were drawn in situ, in locations throughout Afghanistan in the weeks following the withdrawal of combat troops. The images bring to life the honest realities to be seen on the streets of Afghanistan and throw a glimmer of light on the very real impact of conflict on people, communities and society, as well as highlighting the welcoming attitude of the Afghans. Sensitive and incisive, Butler’s pictures reveal faraway realities, unfurling corners of the Afghani people’s experiences for a unique glimpse not otherwise seen. These artworks provide a uniquely expressive view and represent a new medium, uniting reportage and art.
above: Limb clinic
opposite page: Shah Mosque
Butler believes that reportage illustration is as valid, viable and as powerful as photography and film in recording today’s news. As an artist and illustrator he is free to interpret the elements that inspire him and sees drawing as a way to offer the viewer a different perspective. His drawing is an open process that anyone can view over his shoulder, serving as an alternative way of capturing very emotional subject matters.
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Ceramics and the F Word by Danna Lorch
Ghada Amer talks to Selections about feminism, the unpredictability of ceramics and her opening show at Dubai’s Leila Heller Gallery
Earth.Love.Fire., Ghada Amer’s first show in the Middle East in more than two decades, opened Leila Heller Gallery’s impressive new Dubai space on Alserkal Avenue in November. In addition to giving a UAE audience access to sculptures that Amer is widely known for — like The Blue Bra Girls, which references a protestor from the Egyptian Revolution — the exhibition introduced the Egyptian-American artist’s first figurative ceramics works. These pieces are the product of a residency at Greenwich House Pottery in New York City and a period of sometimes frustrating, but ultimately fruitful experimentation in bringing a medium traditionally thought of as “women’s handiwork” into the still largely male-dominated art world Danna Lorch: Why did you incubate these pieces at Greenwich House Pottery before you showed them to anyone? Ghada Amer: I was not stressed. I was in a little studio in downtown New York where nobody goes. [The director of Greenwich House Pottery] Adam Welch was very helpful. I had fun. It was like when you’re a kid and your parents bring you to art school. DL: Yes, and whatever you make, your mother says it’s beautiful. GA: It was playful… It was a very creative experience. There was nothing to lose. It was not for sale.
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DL: The kiln introduces an element of fragility and unpredictability that don’t apply with textile work and painting. Your pieces can and did crack or come out at times in way other than you’d imagined. GA: It was so frustrating. At some point I almost quit. I said, ‘I’m not good at this.’ I was arrogant, because when I started I thought it would be easy. It is not only learning how to handle and build with this wet material but it is also about how it dries, how it is fired and glazed. DL: Did you like the pieces that did not come out the way you’d expected? GA: Not even one of the works came out the way I had wanted! There is a big element of surprise in my work that I have mastered in painting, but not yet with my erotic figures. With the ceramics I have no control. DL: In her essay in the book that accompanies this exhibition, Shiva Balaghi highlights an embroidery piece in your studio which quotes the Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi. Would you like to be considered a feminist artist or is this just one more label? GA: It’s a label I don’t mind. I like feminism. I’m an artist and I speak about woman. I don’t know if this makes me a feminist artist. I am interested in woman’s condition because it’s my condition. My work is about me and my life and difficulties. So yes, I am a feminist. But I don’t like my work to be called feminist art. What does that mean? It’s like Arab art or Muslim art. What do they mean?
opposite page: Ghada Amer in Studio, photo: Brian Buckley
above: Portrait in green with orange spots
DL: You started out as a painter and you still are one, only now you paint with a needle and thread, and on ceramics as well. Painting is a boys’ club, so, in a way, choosing to become a painter was an act of protest against that art world status quo. GA: Why do I embroider? I don’t even like embroidery! But I do it because I want to make a statement to say, ‘Listen, this is a boys’ club and I’m going to choose a handicraft that women have always been doing and make a painting.’ It’s a politically charged statement on painting.
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A Meeting of Cultures in Marrakech by Daniel Scheffler
Selections sits down with founder of the Marrakech Biennale Vanessa Branson and curator Reem Fadda to discuss the sixth edition, running from February to May
The latest incarnation of the Marrakesh Biennale, the Moroccan cultural capital’s biennial, is more than just an art gathering. Focused on building bridges, culturally and economically, the 2016 edition tackles the theme Not New Now, takes it all to the next level as part of the biennial’s valiant efforts to rise above the art world’s plethora of attractions. Founder Vanessa Branson and curator Reem Fadda, associate curator of Middle Eastern Art at the Guggenheim, chat to Selections about what compelled them to work on the Marrakesh Biennale, launched in 2004, how the art world has changed and will just keep changing, and the magic of an old world turned new.
opposite page left: Vanessa Branson, ©Leila Aloui, 2015
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opposite page right: Reem Fadda, ©Sophia Dadourian
Daniel Scheffler: What compelled you to start the Marrakech Biennale? Vanessa Branson: I had worked with contemporary artists for decades and understood the power of art to transcend national borders. The power is not only in the creativity but also in the positive fallout from gatherings of interesting and interested people. I had been working on developing El Fenn, a riad hotel, for a couple of years, and during this time my respect for and love of the Moroccan culture grew strong. Back in 2004, when our world leaders were reducing complex and nuanced arguments into “you’re either with us or against us,” I simply couldn’t sit back and do nothing… I had cultural clout and an administrative infrastructure in Marrakech. I was in a unique position to start an arts festival, at first as a platform for debate, which then evolved into the world class international biennial it is today.
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above: Palais Badi
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below: Benohoud Hicham, Bienvenue, Š Pierre Antoine
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DS: What characterises a biennale today versus a decade ago? Reem Fadda: I think biennials started as places where cities could launch themselves, but nowadays they are becoming centers for where art could redescribe and reinvent itself. In Marrakech, art can somehow absolve itself from market politics and we can see what it’s really made of. This is the logic behind the rise of so many biennials in cities that are considered to be on the periphery… The art world is finally evolving and not just relying on a Western-centric version of the story. It has been steering for the past 15 years to new centres and finding new markets. DS: How do you select the work for each edition? RS: I like to select work based on the artist and my knowledge of their entire oeuvre. Like many curators, I find myself really approaching the artists I have a deep connection with and knowledge of. I’m also trying to look into work that for me resonates with a term I’m trying to explore — living art. My aim is to look at the merging of art and politics, but in a way that is coupled with formal investigations and a deep regard for creating beauty. DS: What are your feeling about the Moroccan culture scene and how art fits into that? RS: There has been a historically important and vibrant art scene in Morocco. It has contributed widely to the evolution of art across Africa and West Asia. It has yet to be appreciated to the extent it deserves. Additionally, Morocco is a fabulous country with a diverse and rich culture. Art has been shaped up to diverse progressive political and social thought through sophisticated forms. VB: Morocco has been a centre of art production historically ever since its decolonisation. It has contributed to an important discourse on art and politics that has emerged from the south or decolonised nations, and this same discourse has become pervasive in contemporary art practice at
large. It’s important for us to examine these centres and make sure we understand their contributions to the vocabulary of art. Additionally, the location of the biennial in Morocco is important, because it’s on the crossroads to the world. It’s intrinsically connected to the Arab world, Africa and, of course, Europe. It’s also a six-hour plane ride from New York. DS: Can you tell me more about Not New Now as a title? RS: Not New Now was really a provocation, a beginning of an idea. It’s my personal demons all come into one title. How do we look at a world that is combustive, one where the question of a future is not the most pertinent, but the absence of a present? I also allowed myself to dig historically and look at art practices that are still present but have not been given the regard they deserve. This was not an attempt to channel a postmodern token postulation, but in fact to create a continuum of ideas and formalisms from a moment in history until the present day, which is what I’m concerned with. I also enforced a few limitations on myself. I decided I was going to work with the heritage sites, but I didn’t want to build any white walls, doing away with newness and the form serving the sterile white cube. I wanted to investigate what art that is placed in public and in service of the public is really like. I also wanted to see and present artists that have always thought that way in the first place. The second important parametre I drew was that I am looking at a particular geographical focus of the Afro-Asian, and in some ways the cross-currents within these geographies and the historical ties. I also am exploring legacies of decolonisation, and their failures as well, because the picture is far from perfect.
Marrakesh Biennale runs from February 24 to May 8 marrakechbiennale.org
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The Art of High Fashion by Marwan Naaman
A new show examines the impact of Italy’s postwar fashion industry on art, architecture, photography, theatre and cinema
Italian labels hold a special place in every fashionista’s heart. Brands like Gucci, Prada, Valentino, Roberto Cavalli, Fendi, Emilio Pucci and others seem to embody the dazzling creativity of the contemporary fashion scene. Around the globe, the fashion lovers are constantly observing Italian brands to understand current trends and styles and identify each season’s must-have accessories.
Sorelle Botti design at the galleria Borghese, Rome, 1947. Photograph by Pasquale De Antonis
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Italy’s reign over global fashion began in earnest after World War II, with an Italian fashion boom taking place between 1945 and 1968. Seeking to restore, strengthen and stabilise Italy’s postwar economy, the country’s leaders invested heavily into Italy’s fashion industry. Fashion designers drew on the nation’s rich cultural and artistic legacy to produce garments and accessories that were both luxurious and practical, at the same time reactivating the nation’s textile, leather and silk factories, which in turn produced jobs for Italy’s skilled craftsmen. Those very same factories were essential in reviving Italy’s economy, both by bringing skilled labour back into the workforce and by becoming big advertisers in magazines in order to promote a new stylish and creative Italy.
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opposite page: Installation image of Bellissima: Italy and High Fashion 1945-1968 at the Villa Reale in Monza, Italy. Photo by Luca Palmer
below right: Installation image of Bellissima: Italy and High Fashion 1945-1968 at the Villa Reale in Monza, Italy. Photo by Filippo Podesta
This winter, the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, examines those wondrous years by tracing the development of Italian high fashion, known as alta moda, and examining how the era’s fashion was instrumental in producing extraordinary art, architecture, cinema, theatre and photography. The exhibition, entitled Bellissima: Italy and High Fashion 1945-1968, is presented by Bulgari and staged by Rome’s MAXXI: National Museum of the XXI Century Arts. Curators include MAXXI director Anna Mattirolo, fashion curator and critic Maria Luisa Frisa and editor-in-chief of W magazine Stefano Tonchi.
Rare items on display encompass dresses created specifically for 1960s Hollywood sirens, including such iconic actresses as Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Kim Novak and Ingrid Bergman, as well as accessories that came to be synonymous with “Made in Italy” knowhow, like costume jewellery, hats, shoes and handbags by Gucci, Ferragamo and Fragiacomo. There is also a special section devoted to Bulgari, showcasing the Italian jeweller’s innovation and experimentation during this key era. With its enthralling mix of Italian high fashion and unique pieces of art, all from the 20th century, Bellissima offers a dreamy, unprecedented celebration of a major aspect of Italian culture.
Bellissima: Italy and High Fashion 1945-1968 runs from February 7 to June 5 at the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
In an attempt to capture the heady glamour of the postwar era, Bellissima recreates Italy’s fashion scene, highlighting over 230 designer garments that represent Italian fashion, including the spectacular gowns to have graced ballrooms and theatres, as well as some of the period’s most stylish cocktail dresses. “This moment in history laid the foundation for Italy’s future ready-to-wear fashion, and the exhibition traces its beginnings within the social and cultural contact,” says Stefano Tonchi. Bellissima looks at the designers who made lasting contributions to Italy’s image throughout the world, including Valentino, Simonetta, Roberto Capucci, Fendi, Sorelle Fontana, Emilio Pucci, Renato Balestra. The exhibition also examines the relationship between fashion design and art, architecture, theatre and filmmaking, while focusing on the roles that cities such as Florence, Rome, Venice and Milan played during those extraordinary times.
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The Lion and the Couturier by Simon Balsom
Venice’s Golden Lion shines again, thanks to a painstaking restoration financed by Chanel
For centuries, the Lion of Saint Mark has proudly adorned the western façade of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. Adopted by the city as its symbol, it is no coincidence that the Leone d’Oro is the top prize awarded at the Venice Film Festival. The advance of time gradually dimmed the lion’s once majestic coat of gold, until, at the end of 2013, the statue was removed for restoration. The restoration work on Venice’s Goldern Lion, along with the Triumphal Quadriga, also known as the Horses of Saint Mark, was funded by couture label Chanel, as patron of the Comité Français pour la Sauvegarde de Venise.
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Fashion and historical restoration can so easily make the strangest of bedfellows, but when the label concerned is Chanel and the history involves one of Venice’s greatest icons, you can be sure that something of interest is afoot. Chanel’s involvement forms part of an increasingly long line of fashion industrysponsored restorations across the cash-strapped cities of the nation. Tod’s famously paid the $34 million expenses involved in reviving Rome’s Colosseum. Meanwhile, Bulgari donated the $2 million required to freshen-up the Spanish Steps and Fendi doubled this for the satisfaction of funding the restoration of the Trevi Fountain.
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this and opposite pages: San Marco Basilica Lion restoration, Venice
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opposite page: Sous le Signe du Lion, High Jewelry collection
below right: San Marco Basilica Lion restoration, Venice
Two teams worked for many months on the inspection and subsequent restoration of the Venetian lion and its attendant mosaic. It took more than 1,300 hours to clean and sand the off the several sheets of gilded copper that make up the statue. Once stripped back, three new layers of gold were applied to the statue and, finally, a layer of protective wax coating.
Italy’s Minister of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Dario Franceschini, has vociferously encouraged the fashion industry’s ongoing largesse. “Our doors are wide open for all the philanthropists and donors who want to tie their name to an Italian monument,” he said, inviting them to “just pick one.” If the other brands’ involvement could be seen as nationalistic, as well as commercial, Chanel’s commitment to the Lion of Saint Mark stems from an altogether more personal story.
A second team focused on the restoration of the blue mosaic decorated with stars that forms the historical backdrop to the lion. More than 600 blue and 200 golden tesserae tiles were replaced during the intricate restoration, the originals having been deemed too badly degraded by pollution and the effects of salty sea air to be restored. Four craftsmen worked for 32 weeks to complete this project — a triumph of restoration. Thanks to the patronage of Chanel, the Lion of Saint Mark once again presides in his glory over the Serenissima.
Although French by birth, Gabrielle Chanel adopted Venice as her own. For her, the lion of Venice would become a recurring and familiar symbol, one that she would regularly return to as an emblem in her creations, to decorate the buttons adorning her suits or the clasps of her handbags. Indeed, it finds itself most recently referenced in the maison’s Sous le Signe du Lion collection, which representing the fifth zodiac sign — Mademoiselle Chanel’s own. The lion also ranks high among the objects that adorn her Paris apartment at 31 Rue Cambon.
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In the library with Marwan Rechmaoui by India Stoughton
Lebanese sculptor and installation artist Marwan Rechmaoui discusses his relationship to books, his act of censorship in the Istanbul Modern library and why history stimulates his imagination
Books play an intrinsic role in the work of sculptor and installation artist Marwan Rechmaoui, perhaps never more so than in his installation as part of the 2015 Istanbul Biennial. Rechmaoui visited Istanbul Modern to oversee the installation of pieces from his Pillar series, 14 large concrete sculptures resembling ruined skyscrapers. During a chat with the biennial’s curator, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, she mentioned the dilemma of what to do with the museum’s library during the exhibition period. Rechmaoui told her about a project he had dreamt up for his personal library at home, whereby he would block off the bookshelves with sheets of glass, leaving a number of slots through which certain books could be extracted, while the rest remained visible but inaccessible. Spontaneously, the pair decided to install the piece in the museum’s library. “I have a modest library at home — around 1500 books,” Rechmaoui explains. “I used to get a lot of books from the official Soviet publishing house. It was used for propaganda — they published books about Marxism for the masses. In the early 2000s, I started thinking that maybe these books have become obsolete… I thought I should keep them visible, but block them off in some way, because the information inside them is useless but they are an indication of a period in history, so their existence is important.”
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A powerful piece of interactive art, at Istanbul Modern the installation raised questions about access to knowledge, leaving visitors to the museum able to access just 60 books from the library’s catalogue of 6000. “It took the direction of censorship of publications and the idea that censorship is always there,” the artist says. “Even if it’s not implemented by the state, you have self-censorship.”
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the official Soviet publishing house. It was used for propaganda — they published books about Marxism for the masses. In the early 2000s, I started thinking that maybe these books have become obsolete…
opposite page: Marwan Rechmaoui, portrait
opposite page background: Istanbul Biennial: Marwan Rechmaoui, Pillars, Installation View Istanbul Biennial 2015, concrete, metal and wood, Unique, Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut and Hamburg
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above: Ashkal Alwan, Marwan Rechmaoui, Blazons Ashkal Alwan, metal, 5 + 2 ap, Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut and Hamburg
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below: Istanbul Biennial: Marwan Rechmaoui, Pillars, Installation View Istanbul Biennial 2015, concrete, metal and wood, Unique, Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut and Hamburg
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The installation paired particularly effectively with a permanent installation in the library area, British artist Richard Wentworth’s False Ceiling, in which dozens of books are suspended from long strings, transforming them into decorative objects. Coincidentally, Wentworth’s installation also finds an echo in Rechmaoui’s newest work, Blazon. Installed on the roof of Ashkal Alwan during Home Works 7, the piece is made up of dozens of embroidered flags, fabricated according to the artist’s specifications by local designers Bokja, which hang from a metal frame a few metres above the ground. Some display pictures of well-known buildings or monuments, evoking the symbols on a coat of arms. Others display names picked out in Arabic letters. Together, they create an abstract, fractured map of Beirut, a city divided into factions, each defined by its assets. “This work was instigated by Samir Kassir’s history of Beirut,” Rechmaoui says. “When I read Beirut, I very much liked the way he tackled more daily issues, not just the big events of history. I went from that back to all the references he used. Then, of course, from there you go to other things… I read a lot about chivalry, the history of it and how it’s structured. I read anything I could find about the history of Beirut.” In Blazon, Rechamoui envisages the city as an army. “The idea started when I realised that we are living in a place where we are always on guard,” he explains. “We’re always ready for something to happen. This made me think that we are like soldiers.” The artist breaks the city down into 60 neighbourhoods, assigning each landmark a colour, based on its name, which, he discovered, is always derived from one of five things: architecture, nature, geography, religion or a family name.
The work continues in the vein of earlier projects, which also focus on urban development and social history. For this reason perhaps, Rechmaoui reads mostly history and social studies books — works of philosophy or sociology. He does extensive reading before beginning work on a project. The research for Blazon alone has taken him almost ten years. “I get the idea and it’s almost complete usually — the scale, the material, the image of it,” he explains. “Usually it comes as a flash. And then I start researching, about the idea and about why I got the idea.” That’s not to say that literature hasn’t helped to shape his sensibilities and interests too. “I was a bad student at school,” he recalls. “Every day there were studying hours after school. So what I used to do, in my late teens, is I read all the classics, but under the table, because I was afraid my father would come into the room and catch me. At that time I read Victor Hugo and Marguerite Dumas and Wuthering Heights. In Arabic I read Kalila wa Dimna, and poetry, of course. Abu AlAla al-Maari is someone I keep close. He was a blind poet living in Syria in the 11th century, and he’s the first existentialist… His poetry is difficult because it’s very philosophical. These are things that you keep coming back to. At each age you understand them differently.” In the end, though, it’s the passing of time that interests Rechmaoui. “I’ve been a reader of history for at least the last 20 years,” he says. “It’s been a main interest because it’s full of images and it reconstructs disappeared worlds. I like the element of imagination involved in it. It’s similar to fiction, but it’s about things that existed at one time. I don’t read history by faith. I’m always paying attention and comparing different accounts. What interests me is how things change — the dynamics of change, that’s my thing.”
Marwan Rechmaoui is showcasing Blazon at Sfeir-Semler Gallery in Beirut until May 7.
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Magical Moments by Irene McConnell
A reprint of iconic children’s book East of the Sun and West of the Moon restores Danish artist Kay Nielsen’s stunning illustrations to their original splendour
Every adult remembers the fairy tales they heard as a child, filled with acts of awe-inspiring or terrifying magic, weird and wonderful creatures, mythical heroes and beautiful princesses. Even more inspiring though, are images that come with such stories, filled with a magic all of their own. In a move designed to excite adults and children alike, Taschen recently issued a reprint of one of the most stunning collections of illustrations ever produced.
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First published in 1914, East of the Sun and West of the Moon is a visual masterpiece, thanks to a collection of vivid illustrations by Danish artist Kay Nielsen, in which bold lines and bright colours are tempered by fine detail and a distinctive style that transforms each image into a work of art. Knights on horseback do battle with ranks of artfully illustrated foot soldiers. Birds fly in hypnotic patterns across a blue sky, framing a figure in a dramatic robe, picked out in stunning detail. A man holds a women in his arms in a chaste but romantic pose in a delicate sketch in black, white and gold, reminiscent of a Klimt masterpiece.
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Nielsen, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, 1914
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A collection of 15 fairy tales, gathered by legendary Norwegian folklorists Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Engebretsen Moe during their epic journey across Norway in the mid-19th century, East of the Sun and West of the Moon is considered a jewel of publishing history, largely due to Nielsen’s illustrations, which tell stories in a single image, almost negating the need for words. Considered one of the finest works of early 20th century children’s literature, the original art book is highly sought-after by collectors. A signed copy achieved the highest price ever paid for an illustrated children’s book at auction in 2008.
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Nielsen, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, inside, 1914
‘‘Nielsen’s illustrations are restored to their original splendour, printed in five colours with delicate gold leaf and lettering
In Taschen’s beautiful hardcover reprint of the beloved classic, 46 of Nielsen’s illustrations are restored to their original splendour, printed in five colours with delicate gold leaf and lettering. Three accompanying essays are illustrated with dozens of previously unseen artworks and enlarged details from the artist’s rare original watercolours, and explore the artist’s life and work, as well as the history of Norwegian folktales.
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Five minutes with Richard Hutten by Maria Cristina Didero
The prolific Dutch designer shares his conception of art, his must-have qualities and the ingredients that make a dream commission
Richard Hutten is one of the most influential characters on the international design scene. Born in 1967, he graduated from the Academy of Industrial Design in Eindhoven in 1991; the same year he started his own design studio, working on a wide range of projects from furniture and product design, to interior and exhibition design. His work has been exhibited extensively and is part of the permanent collections of many prestigious institutions worldwide. Maria Cristina Didero sat down for a fast and furious fiveminute interview with the renowned Dutch designer.
opposite page: Dombo mug for Gispen
above: X-chair for Moroso
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‘‘In work and life there are the same rules: have serious fun and give serious fun
MCD: And your second rule in work and life? RH: Also here the rules are the same: everything with respect to people and the planet. MCD: What’s one quality that a designer cannot be without? RH: There are many, but it all starts with curiosity and enthusiasm. Maria Cristina Didero: What three words would you choose to describe yourself? Richard Hutten: Playful, serious, fun. MCD: Can you share three people who have inspired you? RH: Gerrit Rietveld, Leonardo da Vinci and Johan Huizinga.
MCD: Is there one object in particular that you wish you had made? RH: There are many designers that I admire, old and new. But if I have to choose, it would be the Red and Blue Chair designed in 1917 by Gerrit Rietveld — the first modern chair ever.
MCD: How would you describe your conception of art and design? RH: When I look at art, I try to be openminded. I like to be surprised. I like it to be fun, but I also like it when it is rebellious, conceptual and, of course, beautiful.
MCD: What is your dream commission? RH: I only do dream commissions, but for a perfect commission the ingredients need to be perfect. The client has to be nice. The budget has to be good. The ambition has to be high. The subject should be interesting. And it should have a cultural component.
MCD: What’s your number one rule when working on a project and what’s your number one rule in life? RH: In work and life there are the same rules: have serious fun and give serious fun.
MCD: What’s your last thought before falling asleep? RH: Before falling asleep I think about beauty in life, and then I look at her, just before I close my eyes.
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both above: Satellite chair for Offecct
right: Layers cloud chair for Kvadrat
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Inside the Met’s Islamic art collection b y D r. A h m a d M i n k a r a
Navina Haidar walks Selections through the beautiful halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Islamic collection, shedding light on the mesmerising Mughal South Asian Gallery and last summer’s acclaimed Deccan show
Navina Najat Haidar has been a curator in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s department of Islamic art since 1999, and played a leading role in the planning of the Met’s galleries for the art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and South Asia, which opened to the public in 2011. She sat down with Selections to discuss the Met’s impressive collection and the acclaimed exhibition Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy, which ran for three months in summer 2015. Ahmad Minkara: Can you briefly walk us through Met’s extensive galleries of Islamic art and the highlights of the collection? Navina Haidar: Over a thousand works of art created between the seventh and the 20th centuries in different parts of the Islamic world are on view in the galleries. The gallery spaces are located above an open court, and arranged so that they are free and interconnected. One route through the galleries offers a linear chronology, tracing a historical path from the Umayyad period, following the spread of Islam. But if you walk through the spaces in other ways, you will experience the galleries in a more regional arrangement. So there are several narratives to be discovered and wonderful objects to be enjoyed.
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The objects on display include masterpieces such as painted folios from the famous Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp of the Safavid dynasty; the Mughal emperor Jahangir’s jade inkwell; a gold yatagan sword made in the workshops of Ahmed Tekelu for Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman sultan of the 16th century; a double page on vellum of the Nurse’s Quran made in the ninth century for a female patron; the Emperor’s Carpet, also Persian, 16th century; and the world’s earliest chess set (missing just one pawn), made in Iran in the 10th century. These are just a few among many highlights on view, which delight and educate the mind. Among the special architectural features in the galleries is a Moroccan court, built by craftsmen from Fez in a 15th century style. We also have the reconstruction of a room from 10th century Nishapur, in Iran, featuring the original carved stucco panels. Another highlight is the Damascus Room, dated 1707, which is an interior paneled room from a Damascene nobleman’s house. AM: What are some of the unique features of the Mughal South Asia Gallery? NH: The South Asia galleries comprise a set of two interconnected spaces within the larger suite of galleries, and have been envisioned as being very multicultural. The display includes art from
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the Sultanate, Mughal, Deccan, Rajput, Pahari and British worlds, among others, offering a wide sweep of South Asia from the 15th to the early 20th centuries. There is a good deal of Mughal material on display at any time and the pieces are of great quality, for example an imperial level extremely fine 17th century pashmina wool carpet fragment from the Altman bequest, which has almost 2000 knots per square inch. Its beautiful design consists of a trellis of interlocked leaves, blossoms and trees. This is just one of many such treasures. AM: You had a busy summer curating the exhibition of Deccan art. What were some of the highlights of this show? NH: The sophisticated courts of the Deccan region of India during the 16th and 17th centuries attracted talents from many parts of the world, particularly the Middle East. The region was also a pivot for trade with Europe. Indians, Iranians, Africans and Europeans all appear in the portraits of the period, and influences from various art styles are also apparent. But, most importantly, the Deccan period had an artistic expression that was uniquely its own. Deccani painting, textile production, metalworking and architecture achieved great aesthetic merit and originality.
AM: Can you reveal anything about the shows you’re planning to curate in 2016? NH: Next June I am curating a small show of Indian miniatures from a private collection. I am also hoping to put together a project on the first century of Islam. This might take the form of a small installation and symposium. I am also planning a book on the art of the Jali window screen – carved, pierced windows. And I am developing a proposal for a type of museum that has never been attempted before – something for the Middle East that will be of meaning for our complicated world. But it is a secret for now, as its still in early formation!
Highlights from the show included a portrait of Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II by the painter Farrukh Beg. An early 17th century masterpiece on loan from Prague’s Napstrek Museum, it had never been seen in the US before. Another highlight was a set of golden palanquin finials in the shape of lotuses, lotus buds and sunflowers, which had been reunited from six or seven collections.
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Line: Clarity and Enigma Navina Najat Haidar, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s department of Islamic art, shares with Selections her insight into the magic to be found in a seemingly simple line
I have always loved the effects of a plain line upon a surface. A line gives rise to a drawing, calligraphy or a painting. Even a simple stroke can be fascinating for how it is executed and what it reveals. When, as a young student, I first discovered the cartoons of Saul Steinberg I couldn't believe that anyone could create such clever and thought-provoking images with a single line (fig. 1). William Kentridge’s scribbly cat looks amusing at first glance, sinister at closer inspection, and increases with tension the more you look at it (fig. 2). Zarina Hashmi’s minimalist palette and black lines evoke entire worlds, histories and memories. Chaukhat or “threshold” is from her print series Home is a Foreign Place, based on the architecture of her Aligarh family home, a town I know and recognise in her work (fig. 3). The contrast between shadow and light can be powerfully expressive. Border # 8 by Michal Rovner shows an almost spectral line – the border between Israel and Lebanon. It speaks volumes in its mood and dark atmosphere (fig. 4).
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Colour, free of form, is most alluring to me, especially when it appears as rich, lustrous and thick paint on a surface. But it’s not always as abstract as it may seem. Howard Hodgkin’s powerful strokes of colour seem as faithful to memory, emotion and subject as representational art (fig. 5). In the Islamic tradition, the art of calligraphy evolves from a mastery of line and form. A bi-folium from the 9th-century “Nurse’s Quran” is a great example of the elegance and power of the sacred text through shapes of letters executed in ink on vellum (fig. 6). Crossovers between style and technique are exciting to discover. The effect of the calligraphic pen is seen in the saz drawings of Ottoman Turkey. Dragon in Foliage by Shah Quli, a late 16th-century Persian artist in Istanbul, is created from an undulating line, which becomes thick and thin like calligraphy as it forms the dragon’s back and the strong curving serrated leaves below (fig. 7). Indian drawings are a special favourite of mine. I just installed a Jaipur cartoon of the 19th century in our South Asian gallery. It depicts a dancing girl dressed as the god Krishna, delineated with clean, confident outline, right down to the tendrils of her charming curls (fig. 8).
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Saul Steinberg Untitled 1954 Ink on paper Originally published in The New Yorker, April 10, 1954 Š The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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WILLIAM KENTRIDGE Scribble Cat, 2010 Sugarlift aquatint, spitbite aquatint, drypoint and hand-painting on 6 copper plates; Hahnemuhle paper, Natural White 300gsm Paper: 203 × 179.8cm Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery
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Zarina Home is a Foreign Place 1999 Portfolio of 36 woodcut chine collé with Urdu text printed on paper and mounted on paper 27.9 × 21.6cm © Zarina Hashmi
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Michal Rovner Border #8 1997–98 Paint on canvas 128.9 × 169.5cm © Michal Rovner
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Howard Hodgkin Sea 2010-2012 Oil on wood 8 1/4 × 10 5/8inches © Howard Hodgkin Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
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Bifolium from the "Nurse's Qur'an" (Mushaf al-Hadina) Folio from an illustrated manuscript ca. A.H. 410/ A.D. 1019–20 Tunisia, probably Qairawan Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on parchment 44.5 × 60cm
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fig. 7
Shah Quli 'Saz'-style Drawing of a Dragon amid Foliage Illustrated single work ca. 1540–50 Turkey, Istanbul Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper 58.4 × 43.2cm credit: Bequest of Cora Timken Burnett, 1956
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fig. 8
Attributed to Sahib Ram Head of Krishna: cartoon for a mural of the Raslila ca. 1800 Ink and opaque watercolor on paper 47 × 69.2cm credit: Rogers Fund, 1918
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Diaspora El Moro
Senegal’s Rising Star by India Stoughton
Omar Victor Diop abandoned a corporate sales job to work full time as a photographer, creating colourful, beautifully staged photographs with a powerful message
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Architecture
from the lens of our editor Selections’ editor Anastasia Nysten shares some of her luminous photographs capturing the spectacular architecture of Iran
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this and opposite pages: The Jﾄ［eh Mosque of Isfahan
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Abbasi historic House, Kashan
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from left to right:
TabÄ tabÄ ei historic House, Kashan
Abbasi historic House, Kashan
Traditional house in Kashan
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Architecture
TabÄ tabÄ ei historic House, Kashan
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Curated by navina haidar
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In Spanish artist José Tapiro y Baro’s watercolour A Moroccan Man, painted circa 1913, a man with a short beard, just beginning to turn grey, is captured in three quarter profile, wrapped in a swathe of cream cloth. When Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop restaged the portrait for his series Project Diaspora, he mimicked the man’s pose and serious expression, but replaced the cream fabric with a bold African floral print in green, pink and white, creating a dizzying profusion of flowers. On his knee, he balanced a shiny new football.
about for decades. It’s also part of my personality… I think that no matter how serious the topic is, it’s possibly to talk about it in a fun way.” Diop’s career took off almost immediately and in May 2012 he quit his job in finance to work as a photographer full time. His work has since appeared in high profile festivals and exhibitions all over the world, but the artist is modest about his growing reputation, putting it partially down to luck. “I think I was fortunate,” he says, “and also it was a context that was favourable for someone like me to come up, because there
‘‘I can never deny that I see things as a Senegalese and as an African, but I always make sure that being an African is not a profession
Born in Dakar in 1980, Diop is a rising star on the international scene, having taken up photography as a hobby soon after his 30th birthday. The self-taught photographer was working in corporate sales when he bought a camera and began shooting landscapes and experimenting with fashion photography. In 2012, his project The Future of Beauty was selected for exhibition at the Bamako Biennial. The playful series imagines a fashion shoot in the year 2112, in which models pose in outfits made from recycled water bottles, colourful tarpaulins, plastic netting and brown paper. “In the call for submissions there was a general theme: for a sustainable world,” Diop says. “I didn’t want to just point to all the things we’re doing wrong, because I think people are less sensitive nowadays to that kind of work, which is how the environment has been talked
weren’t many photographers of my age who were trying new things and who were still living in Africa and producing from Africa.” He is wary of being pigeonholed, however. “I can never deny that I see things as a Senegalese and as an African, but I always make sure that being an African is not a profession,” he says. “That’s the challenge that every African artist faces. Do you restrain yourself from seeing things as a human being, rather than just an African? Do you only participate in African-oriented events and projects? … I participate in important, specialised events in Africa, but I also make sure that I have a presence with more global audiences at international photo or art festivals, because the only way we can define or redefine perceptions of Africa is by being involved. You cannot shy away from who you are.” Diaspora Don Miguel De Castro
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[Re]-Mixing Hollywood, Frida
In 2014, during a four-month residency in Malaga, Spain, Diop began working on Project Diaspora. Feeling like an outsider, he was struck by a series of European paintings from the 15th to 19th century, capturing diaspora Africans. He decided to restage 12 of them, posing in costume as each of the subjects. Diop selected the portraits based on what was known of the subjects’ lives. “They have this in common: they all lived a life that was a paradox, a mixture of glory and rejection, shame and pride,” he says. “Most of them were born in slavery, or were enslaved, and had very dark beginnings, but somehow they managed to transform all this into glory and influence. These were stories of such a dramatic destiny that I focused more on that than the aesthetics of the original paintings.” He added pieces of football gear to each photograph as a way to tie the series together, as well as to encourage reflection on the reality of life as a diaspora African today. “All of these African football stars in Europe or the rest of the world are successful, they are respected for what they do, but not always for who they are,” he says. “Soccer is a universal phenomenon but it’s also where you see racism and exclusion.
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Sometimes people throw banana skins or they make monkey sounds when an African soccer superstar scores a goal. We should have made it further in our search for unity, but still there’s a lot of work to do.” Each image is meticulously planned and edited in postproduction. “I actually write every photo before I shoot it,” Diop explains. “For example, Project Diaspora started out as a series of monologues, one for each portrait.” But there are still surprises when it comes to how the work is received. Take the series [Re]-Mixing Hollywood, a collaboration with Dakar-based FrenchAmerican photographer Antoine Tempé. The series of 20 photographs were shot in hotels in Dakar and Abidjan, imagining what the photographer’s favourite French and American movies might have looked like if they had been conceived and filmed in Africa. “We were very surprised to see that it initiated a conversation about race,” Diop recalls. “It created a conversation on diversity in Hollywood, which was not our intention, but it was a good thing, because when a piece of work creates a conversation, then it serves its purpose.”