Susan Hefuna |
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Near:
Four Multinational Artists from the Middle East, at NYC's ELGA
WIMMER PCC
October 12 through November
6, 2004
Opening Reception: Tuesday, October 12, 2004, 6-8 pm
Including a NOT AT EAST artist discussion, beginning at 7 pm, featuring
Aissa Deebi, Curator, Director of Visual Arts,
ArteEast and Dr. Bashir Makhoul, University of
Luton, U.K.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 12-6 pm.
ELGA WIMMER PCC
526 West 26th #310 (between 10th and 11th Aves.)
New York, NY 10001
www.elgawimmer.com
For more information please contact ArteEast
490 Third Street, #2 Brooklyn, NY 11215
Phone & Fax: 718-832-6564
Email: info@arteeast.org
Representations of the Middle
East automatically offer scenes of political and religious fanaticism
that reinforce and increase the gulf, or the "distance,"
between the West and the Middle East. But in reality, you can go
from Paris to Beirut in four hours and the region is omnipresent
in Western daily news. This distance is elliptically implied in
"Near," the first in a series of ArteEast’s annual
art exhibitions.
The exhibition displays the works of Egyptian-German Susan Hefuna,
Palestinian Aissa Deebi, Palestinian Bashir Makhoul and Iranian
Mitra Memarzia,all of whom work and live both in the Middle East
and in Europe or the US. The selected artists’ works reflect
universal concerns that have led them to different explorations
of the region’s political and cultural conditions. Each artist
manifests in his or her work a different articulation of the relationship
of self, locality and globalization.
Despite a limited institutional infrastructure, Middle
Eastern artists deal with many of the issues that ring extraordinarily
familiar to the Western artist. Concerns such as identity, ethnicity,
socio-political relevance and, above all, the intermingling of cultures,
are similar to those that engage many artists operating in a variety
of social and cultural contexts. The exhibit illustrates the ways
in which people are engaged with every day ideas and concerns beyond
the media stereotypes of a Middle East mired in war, and plagued
by terrorists and fundamentalism.
NEAR CATALOGUE
Now available for purchase online
The 45-page catalogue accompanying ArteEast’s inaugural the
exhibition offers short critical essays by Aissa Deebi, Sarah Rogers
and Gordon Hon exploring the work of artists Susan Hefuna, Mitra
Memarzia, Bahir Makhoul and Aissa Deebi, while critically evaluating
the current position of contemporary fine art practices in the region
and reflecting on the social, cultural and political influences
that have shaped it.
Each artist’s work is profiled in the catalogue, which was
edited, designed and produced in-house by the exhibit curator, Aissa
Deebi.
Catalogue: $10 + $3.95 for domestic shipping and handling.
$10 + $6.95 for international shipping and handling.
Mail us a check, payable to ArteEast, to:
490 Third Street, #2
Brooklyn, NY 11215
NEAR is a project of ArteEast,
in collaberation with Arts Internatonal and the School of Art and
Design, University of Luton, U.K. The exhibition is supported
by the British Council and the Egyptian Consulate, NYC. Arts
International's NOT AT EAST artist salons are supported by the Doris
Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.
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