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Res Artis Regional Meeting in Vienna, Austria

Date: May 3, 2012

The next Res Artis Regional Meeting in Europe will be hosted on May 3-5, 2012 in Vienna, in a capital that is considered to belong to West Europe but historically is one of the focal points of Central Eastern Europe (CEE). Since the iron curtain between West and East Europe vanished, Vienna became the economic gate to CEE and the entry point to a world that was previously inaccessible for Western Europe. That is the reason for choosing “Residencies: Gates and Bridges” as the main theme of the RM in Vienna.

A residency often marks the first step for an artist to consciously encounter a different culture. A residency is also sometimes a means to look for one’s own roots by discovering the culture of the predecessors. Many artists living around the globe have ancestors in countries they have never seen before, because it is not possible for them to visit these parts of the world.

In this sense, a residency can be a significant tool to learn more about one’s own cultural identity. It has a kind of ‘gate function’ to one’s own self. Being in residency always means to bring one’s own cultural rucksack to another place, and to take back home another culture’s input; it is a cultural bridge building activity.

For more about the conference, please click here.

International Summer Program at Watermill

Date: March 30, 2012

For the past 18 years, The Watermill Center has hosted an International Summer Program led by Artistic Director, Robert Wilson. Each summer, approximately 65 artists from almost 30 countries gather at Watermill’s Long Island, NY six-acre campus. Participants spend two - five weeks in intense creative exploration which provides a unique opportunity to learn from established professionals, particularly the development and performance methodologies of Robert Wilson and his peers; forge lasting relationships with other artists from a broad range of experience levels and disciplinary specificity; develop networks of US and international professional contacts; focus on new work, and embody what it means to be a “global artist.”

Participants receive access to an extensive collection of resources central to the Watermill experience: ongoing apprenticeships and daily workshops with Robert Wilson and his collaborators; lectures on various subjects from theatre and opera innovation, installation, design, and science led by international cultural luminaries, established artists, and scientists; opportunities to develop new work for public presentation during the annual Watermill Summer Benefit and Discover Watermill Day; access to 20,000 square feet of rehearsal/performance/design spaces; a theater production archive; a 6,000 volume library; outdoor stages; the Watermill Art Collection; and the Center’s landscaped grounds.

For more information about the program, please click here.

Museum as Hub: Beirut Art Center at the New Museum

Date: February 5, 2012

"Museum as Hub: Beirut Art Center” is a project which includes an exhibition, the presentation of Beirut Art Center’s Mediatheque and a series of events.

The exhibition entitled “Due to unforeseen events …”, examines specific cases in which the production or presentation of an artwork in Lebanon was altered from its original idea, hence raising unexpected questions and unfolding new meanings. The exhibition features descriptions of each case in addition to new commissions, in which artists respond to the alteration of their original ideas or intentions, using archival documentation as well as new texts, images, and objects. The aim is to question issues that are relevant to contemporary art practices and the recent history and politics of Lebanon, such as the relation between art and public spaces, the critical reception of works, and censorship. The exhibition features works by Ziad Abillama, Tony Chakar, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Rabih Mroué, and Kirsten Scheid.  In the resource center, Beirut Art Center will also present their Mediatheque, a digital archive that offers public access to works —including video, image, sound, and text—by artists from Arab countries, Iran, Turkey and Armenia. The mediatheque alos includes a selected archive of events that took place at Beirut Art Center since its opening.  Beirut Art Center has also organized a series of public performances and screenings in conjunction with the exhibitiion.

For more information about the exhibition, please click here.

Ayyam Gallery Damascus presents ‘Impulses,’ an exhibition by Hilda Hiary from Nov. 12- Dec. 31

Date: December 31, 2011

On November 12 (till December 31), Ayyam Gallery Damascus will proudly present “Impulses,” the solo exhibition of Jordanian artist Hilda Hiary. Signaling the artist’s first one-person show in Syria, this forthcoming event will showcase a new series of works that have been inspired by recent political upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa. Taking the vantage point of what she describes as a “witness of this era,” Hiary presents over a dozen new paintings in which figures become templates for raw emotion as they are suspended in non-descript settings that allude to both interior and exterior spaces, or private verses public realms.

For more information about the exhibit, please click here. 

Ayyam Gallery presents ‘Through the Looking Glass II’ by Mouteea Murad

Date: December 31, 2011

On Thursday November 10, Ayyam Gallery Beirut will proudly present “Through The Looking Glass II” an exhibition highlighting the most recent work of Syrian artist Mouteea Murad. Marking the painter’s first solo exhibition in Beirut, this upcoming event will showcase a new take on the complex geometric abstractions for which he has become known over the past few years.

For more information about the exhibit, please click here.

Ayyam Gallery DIFC presents ‘Nothing Nobody’, an exhibition by Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

Date: December 15, 2011

In Dubai from October 31 to December 15

Ayyam Gallery DIFC is pleased to announce “Nothing, Nobody,” the solo show of Iraqi artist Sadik Kwaish Alfraji.

On view from October 31 through December 15, this forthcoming exhibition will involve a new installation of recent paintings and videos. Together, these works revolve around a narrative that the artist describes as “Eyes which stare into nothingness, and a hand that dreads the void.” Emphasizing the collective, which he often combines with the personal, Alfraji introduces the exhibition by stating, “Fastened to our places we are, intoxicated by the illusion of motion and ruminating on dreams.”

Karama Human Rights Film Festival

Date: December 10, 2011

The Karama Human Rights Film Festival is wrapping up this weekend in Amman, Jordan.  For more information about the program, please click here.

Tashweesh at The Art of Revolution II Festival

Date: December 10, 2011

Tashweesh is an audio-visual group that brings together the different practices and interests of artists Ruanne Abou-Rahme, boikutt, and Basel Abbas (aswatt), using sound, music, image and text. The result is an exploration and collision between sound and video field recordings, archive material, vocals, breaks and soundscapes. They have also collaborated and performed together, individually and as Ramallah Underground, since 2003 in various venues and festivals around the world.

To take a look at their introductory video, please click here.  For more information about the event, please click here.

A sample recording from 14 Proper Nouns is now online

Date: December 9, 2011

14 Proper Nouns is a set of references drawn from the transcriptions of Hassan Khan’s seminal work 17 and in AUC (2003). For 14 nights from 21 October - 3 November 2012 one proper noun from the transcriptions served as subject matter for a discussion between the artist and DELFINA-FICA Fellow Nida Ghouse.

Please click here to listen to the online sample.

Geopolitics of Roots: No Man's Land at Carbon12

Date: December 9, 2011

Carbon 12 is proud to bring to the UAE a pioneer of Iranian video and performance art. While Ghazel’s work has been exhibited in many prestigious museums and international biennales, “Geopolitics of Roots — No Man’s Land” provides the unique opportunity to witness the evolution of this amazing artist. The new series is a significant departure from Ghazel’s existing body of work.

For more about the exhibit, please click here. 

Suspending Lives and Emerging Voices: Nadia Kaabi-Linke in conversation with Lina Lazaar

Date: December 9, 2011

In an exclusive video interview, artist Nadia Kaabi-Linke discusses her practice with Ibraaz's Associate Editor Lina Lazaar. Kaabi-Linke presented the 2011 work Flying Carpets for the exhibition The Future of a Promise during the 54th Venice Biennale, which provides a starting point in the interview for a deeper exploration of the artist's interests in tracing elided histories and submerged voices. The artist also discusses a new project she is developing as artist-in-residence at The Delfina Foundation, London.

For the interview, please click here.

Selma Gurbuz exhibition at Lawrie Shabibi

Date: December 7, 2011

Lawrie Shabibi is pleased to announce Mind's Eye, the first solo exhibition in the Gulf Region for Selma Gürbüz, one of Turkey's foremost contemporary painters. Working in a grand scale in oil on canvas and more intimately with ink on paper, this exhibition combines both aspects to give an overview of her recent work.

For more information about the exhibit, please click here.

Ayyam Art Center presents ‘A Real Dream,’ an exhibition by Safwan Dahoul

Date: November 30, 2011

In Dubai from November 2 until November 30

Ayyam Art Center will proudly present “A Real Dream,” the solo show of Syrian artist Safwan Dahoul. Featuring several new paintings, this forthcoming exhibition will highlight a recent breakthrough in the artist’s “Dream” series, a large body of work that he began in 1982.

Surrounding the gradual transformation of the artist’s reoccurring subject matter, which often takes on the form of a despairing woman in isolated interiors, this series has recently undergone a formative change. Emerging from the metaphorical suffocation of cramped quarters, Dahoul’s heroine has begun to overcome the very space that has defined her confinement for nearly thirty years. As the dimensions of the artist’s canvases have grown, she too has taken on a greater presence amidst the architectural details that mark the spatial properties of the each composition. Reaching mural-sized proportions in some cases, she has broken free from a world in which she has remained silenced, a marked sorrow having slowly submerged her into oblivion.

For more information about the exhibit or the gallery, please click here.

"The New Middle East" at RijksakademieOPEN 2011

Date: November 26, 2011

Lecture/Presentation, 15:00-16:30

During RijksakademieOPEN 2011, over 50 resident artists from all over the world open their studios. The diversity of their backgrounds and the broad range of artist's positions offer a unique view on the latest developments in contemporary art.

For this particular event, curator Robert Kluijver is in The Netherlands known for Borders, his series of exhibitions and an eponymous book on contemporary art and politics in the Middle East. In his presentation he will elaborate on the recent developments in visual arts on the Arabic peninsula of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha. While these areas are known best for their ability to ‘create’ cultural districts with international museums and art fairs, Kluijver will focus on the social and cultural changes that take place within the population and how this affects the work of local visual artists. Hereby he will overthrow the old and new clichés of the Arabic peninsula, and acquaint the audience with the work of some previously unknown yet fascinating artists.

Curator of the festival and Middle East-expert Neil van der Linden will perform as VJ. Together with the audience he will cruise through the world of pop culture and music. He will show a wide variety of audiovisual clips, by which we can explore the Middle East from Morocco to Afghanistan. This presentation foregoes the notions of ‘genre’ and ‘definition’, and instead focuses on the many similarities between the several expressions of pop culture.

For more information about the program, please click here.

Iniva presents "The Militant Image"

Date: November 25, 2011

The point of departure for The Militant Image is the special issue of the Third Text publication entitled The Militant Image: A Cine-Geography (2011) edited by Kodwo Eshun and Ros Gray.

The programme explores aesthetics, affiliations and strategies of tricontinental militancy in the production and circulation of the moving image.

For more information about the program, please click here.
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