without boundary seventeen ways of looking (at the moma)
I found the work of Shirin Neshat (Iran & NY), Mona Hatoum (Beirut, London & Berlin) and Marjane Satrapi (Iran & Paris) strong, Shazia Sikander whose work has been inspiring for its freshness was lacking at the Museum of Modern Art Show, that was exhibiting Islamic artists, living in Europe or America.
Shirin Neshat born in Qazvin, Iran, lives and works in New York. In her 1996 photograph Speechless, which was created after her return to Iran in 1990, (She had left in 1974 before the Iranian revolution), she observes the drastic changes in society’s dominant values and norms. Shirin Neshat’s women of Allah (1996) series black and white photographs question Islamic gender codes. In her own handwriting in Persian, she inscribes poetry over the surface of photographs. She depicts the social class newly empowered by the revolution through the image of a veiled woman wearing a gun barrel as an ornament. She inscribes on this photograph a eulogy to martyrdom by the fervently religious contemporary poet Tahereh Saffarzadeh(born 1936). In another photograph, untitled, where the hands were on the lips being silenced, she quotes a poem by the feminist Forough Farrokhzad (1935-1967). The inscriptions are like henna patterns tattooed over different part of the body, sometime in the eye or on the foot while balancing a gun.
for more images of Shirin Neshat go here.
http://www.time.com/time/europe/photoessays/neshat/
A black and white photographic still from her 2003 film installation the last word, shows a woman being interrogated by a judge, who has a lot of sheafs of written text in front of him, signifying the power of the written word to empower and silence. The still can also be read as the beauty of islamic poetry is giving the woman the strength hide her fear and to defy her oppressor. The still reminded me of Abida Parveen’s words, that reading books doesn’t make a person smart, living life does.
Marjane Satrapi uses comic books to deal with her battle of identities. Persepolis: the story of a childhood, is set in the Iran of the early 1980's when Ayatollah Khomeini was the supreme leader in Iran. The stories deal with the clash of a teenager's fantasies of western popular culture and ideas and post revolutionary Iranian reality where such fantasies were suppressed and deemed harmful to the greater cause of the revolutionary society. Her new book, Embroideries describes the woman in her family and their personal and public lives.
Mona Hatoum born in 1952, in Beirut, lives and works in London and Berlin had two interesting objects at the show. The keffieh (1993-99) was human hair on cotton. This was long strands of womens hair woven into a keffieh. This black and white woven scarf is worn by men and symbolizes the Palestinian struggle. The message being the insertion of women’s voices into a territorial battle that is imbued with machismo. The other interesting image was of a black prayer mat with pins sticking out of it, and a compass embedded inside it, to signify loss and dislocations.
Shazia Sikander who I think is an interesting artist and had a great show at the Asia society with Nilima Sheikh a couple of years ago, had a small insignificant contribution at the Moma show.
Instead of reinterpreting miniatures in a large scale, her work here looked tiny and not so fresh as she tried to juxtapose Hindu and Muslim imagery in her miniatures.
For more of Shazia Sikander's work see
http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-01,GGLD:en&q=shazia%20sikander&sa=N&tab=wi
For more descriptions of the art by the artists you can download the moma audio files.
http://moma.org/visit_moma/audio/2006/spec_exhib/Boundary/Boundary_download.html
Without boundary is one of the biggest shows moma has had since it reopened. My criticism of this exhibit was the curators attempt to steer clear of geopolitical issues. No mention is made in the show about how U.S. troops are in Afghanistan and Iraq and the consequences this is having in the Middle East and South Asia. No dialogue or discussion dealing with this overwhelming reality is presented.
Shirin Neshat and Marjane Satraphi are both exiles from Iran. Most of the other artists practiced their art outside the countries of their origin, that reality is seminal when you look at Islamic art. Is Islamic art state sanctioned only? Can artists who live in Islamic countries express their views if they are different from the state? Are Shirin Neshat and Shazia Sikander popular artists in the West cause they are able to present art that is able to be contextualized in the West, since it deals with issues of gender discrimination and oppression by Muslim men and society?
For the article by Tyler Green on Moma’s politics.
http://www.observer.com/20060403/20060403_Tyler_Green_culture_newsstory1-2.asp
Shirin Neshat born in Qazvin, Iran, lives and works in New York. In her 1996 photograph Speechless, which was created after her return to Iran in 1990, (She had left in 1974 before the Iranian revolution), she observes the drastic changes in society’s dominant values and norms. Shirin Neshat’s women of Allah (1996) series black and white photographs question Islamic gender codes. In her own handwriting in Persian, she inscribes poetry over the surface of photographs. She depicts the social class newly empowered by the revolution through the image of a veiled woman wearing a gun barrel as an ornament. She inscribes on this photograph a eulogy to martyrdom by the fervently religious contemporary poet Tahereh Saffarzadeh(born 1936). In another photograph, untitled, where the hands were on the lips being silenced, she quotes a poem by the feminist Forough Farrokhzad (1935-1967). The inscriptions are like henna patterns tattooed over different part of the body, sometime in the eye or on the foot while balancing a gun.
for more images of Shirin Neshat go here.
http://www.time.com/time/europe/photoessays/neshat/
A black and white photographic still from her 2003 film installation the last word, shows a woman being interrogated by a judge, who has a lot of sheafs of written text in front of him, signifying the power of the written word to empower and silence. The still can also be read as the beauty of islamic poetry is giving the woman the strength hide her fear and to defy her oppressor. The still reminded me of Abida Parveen’s words, that reading books doesn’t make a person smart, living life does.
Marjane Satrapi uses comic books to deal with her battle of identities. Persepolis: the story of a childhood, is set in the Iran of the early 1980's when Ayatollah Khomeini was the supreme leader in Iran. The stories deal with the clash of a teenager's fantasies of western popular culture and ideas and post revolutionary Iranian reality where such fantasies were suppressed and deemed harmful to the greater cause of the revolutionary society. Her new book, Embroideries describes the woman in her family and their personal and public lives.
Mona Hatoum born in 1952, in Beirut, lives and works in London and Berlin had two interesting objects at the show. The keffieh (1993-99) was human hair on cotton. This was long strands of womens hair woven into a keffieh. This black and white woven scarf is worn by men and symbolizes the Palestinian struggle. The message being the insertion of women’s voices into a territorial battle that is imbued with machismo. The other interesting image was of a black prayer mat with pins sticking out of it, and a compass embedded inside it, to signify loss and dislocations.
Shazia Sikander who I think is an interesting artist and had a great show at the Asia society with Nilima Sheikh a couple of years ago, had a small insignificant contribution at the Moma show.
Instead of reinterpreting miniatures in a large scale, her work here looked tiny and not so fresh as she tried to juxtapose Hindu and Muslim imagery in her miniatures.
For more of Shazia Sikander's work see
http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-01,GGLD:en&q=shazia%20sikander&sa=N&tab=wi
For more descriptions of the art by the artists you can download the moma audio files.
http://moma.org/visit_moma/audio/2006/spec_exhib/Boundary/Boundary_download.html
Without boundary is one of the biggest shows moma has had since it reopened. My criticism of this exhibit was the curators attempt to steer clear of geopolitical issues. No mention is made in the show about how U.S. troops are in Afghanistan and Iraq and the consequences this is having in the Middle East and South Asia. No dialogue or discussion dealing with this overwhelming reality is presented.
Shirin Neshat and Marjane Satraphi are both exiles from Iran. Most of the other artists practiced their art outside the countries of their origin, that reality is seminal when you look at Islamic art. Is Islamic art state sanctioned only? Can artists who live in Islamic countries express their views if they are different from the state? Are Shirin Neshat and Shazia Sikander popular artists in the West cause they are able to present art that is able to be contextualized in the West, since it deals with issues of gender discrimination and oppression by Muslim men and society?
For the article by Tyler Green on Moma’s politics.
http://www.observer.com/20060403/20060403_Tyler_Green_culture_newsstory1-2.asp
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