February 24, 2021
Everyday Allegories: Quotidian Subjects and Contemporary Art in the Middle East
Mitra Abbaspour
Haskell Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art,
Princeton University Art Museum
Marge D'Amico, Introducer, and Mitra Abbaspour
Minutes of the 21st Meeting of the 79th Year
Vice-President John Cotton called the meeting to order at 10:15 AM. Keith Wheelock read the minutes from the previous meeting. Guests included Sue Levin (guest of Marcia Snowden), and the following docents at the Princeton Museum Art Museum: Ann Schmidt (guest of Rob Coghan), Judith Funches (guest of Christine Danser); and Marianne Grey, Martine Elefson, Adria Sherman, Harriet Teweles, Grace Mele, Marita Engshuber, Earlene Baumunk Cancilla, Jeanne Johnson, Annette Merle-Smith, Nancy Greenspan, Irene Amarel, Lynne Harwood, Mike Mayo, Nancee Goldstein, Dee Gozonsky, Loretta Yin, Denise McDaniel, Laura Berlik, and Kristen Callahan (guests of John Cotton). One hundred forty-one Old Guard members and guests attended.
Marge D’Amico introduced the speaker, Mitra M. Abbaspour, the Haskell Curator of Contemporary Art, Princeton University Art Museum.
Mitra Abbaspour’s presentation aligned loosely with a survey course of contemporary Middle Eastern art she will be teaching in the fall at Princeton University. Beginning this broad and eclectic survey, she pointed out that art can be identified by three things: subject matter, aesthetics, or technique.
An example of subject matter, a kafieh, the black and white scarf closely associated with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was woven by artist Mona Haloum, out of her own hair.
An example of aesthetics was Shirin Nashat’s depiction of a woman’s henna-painted hand with a poem in elegant Persian script.
Two examples of technique were Shahzia Sikander’s abstracted landscape, done in the style of traditional miniature painting and Shirana Shahbazi’s contemporary photo of a woman, then woven into a traditional hand-woven carpet.
Abbaspour continued, by her own admission, showing a lot of work quickly to help expand our artistic language or visual vocabulary.
Abbaspour divided her presentation into three non-chronological chapters, each illustrating influence on the contemporary artistic language of her survey, while also drawing on artistic traditions of the past.
Chapter 1: Rooted in History: Local Artistic Language Rooted in Art History
Historic mosaics of Iran and mirrored palace walls are reflected in Monir Shahroudy’s use of thousands of reverse-painted miniature glass shards creating complex patterns of geometry in “Flight of the Dolphin.”
Siamek Filizadeh created The soldiers of evil are killed by Rostam II, a series based on an epic Persian poem, depicting a Persian mythical sword-bearing hero confronting a gun-bearing American soldier.
Ali Banisadr, an Iranian painter, mimicked the intricacy of Iranian historical miniature painting in a vast canvas, representative of traditional Coffee House paintings. Oral storytellers sat before these paintings and explained them, much as a priest would explain the biblical stories depicted in a church reredos. Shoja Azari created another Coffee House painting with parables of contemporary relationships between Iranians and others, usually Americans. Replacing the traditional oral storyteller are a series of video recordings of gunshots, music, and crowds yelling, integrated into the painting. These massive paintings integrate 21st century news stories in a traditional Iranian style.
Chapter 2: Shifting Geographies 1971-1991
In Chapter 2, Abbaspour highlighted the Casablanca School of Art and its head, Farid Belkahia. The school was strongly influenced by French colonialism in Morocco, but Farid turned that practice upside down and began emphasizing the artistic language of the Berbers, using materials like pounded copper and leather, painted or cut into unusual shapes.
Between 1971 and 1991, there were several political and economic shifts in the region, resulting in new artistic centers. These shifts, chiefly the 1971 formation of the United Arab Emirates (Qatar, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai), led to a distinctive change in visual language.
Yto Barrada’s Autocar-Tangier is a series of paintings with seemingly abstract designs. But each of the designs is representative of the graphics of a highly recognizable international bus company, a subtle sign of mobility in the region.
Zineb Sidera created a fascinating series of very short videos, entitled Mother Tongue. In one, a grandmother speaks Arabic to her grown daughter; in the next, the daughter speaks French to her daughter, who then responds in English, again symbolic of the geographic shifts and mobility in the area during this period.
Hassan Sharif, born in Iran, migrated to Dubai where he was celebrated as the “grandfather of contemporary art” in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Migrant laborers from Southeast Asia took part in huge construction projects in the UAE. They brought with them mass-produced articles, including plastic combs and rubber shower slippers. Sharif created art from these new materials. A wire-bound sculptural mountain of colorful shower slippers represented the dramatic influx of southeastern Asian immigrants.
Chapter 3: Inside/Outside: Language of Artists in the Diaspora
Mona Hatoum represents artists of the diaspora who feel displaced. Born in Beirut of Palestinian parents, she is not Lebanese. She has no identity as a Palestinian, but because her father works in the British Embassy, she obtained a British passport. But she is not British. There is an acute sense of dislocation, not belonging anywhere, among many artists in the Middle East diaspora. Hatoum creates familiar objects with a twist. A bathmat filled with plastic entrails depicts that sense of being turned inside out. Another populated with steel pins gives the sense of not being welcome.
Other artists, however, including Hassan Hajjaj, are energized by emigration. He created colorful portraits of his musician friends, combining traditional African garb with hints of contemporary culture. One wears Yves Saint Laurent slippers; another is framed by Coca Cola cans.
Another, Nikzad Nodjoumi, in a work acquired by the Princeton University Art Museum, painted 200 portraits of people using the front pages of the New York Times as his canvas. This artwork, a kind of meditation on international relations, integrates United States and Middle Eastern culture through the visible headlines and depictions of friends.
And finally, Michael Rakowitz combines cardboard, paint, glue, and newspaper into replications of looted articles from Iraqi museums during the Iraq-Iran war.
In all of these works, the Middle East art traditions are reinterpreted to reflect dramatic cultural, political, and economic changes in the 20th and 21st centuries.
There were a handful of questions but arguably the most important asked about the collection at Princeton. Clearly, there are some exciting pieces, but if you ask Abbaspour, there are not enough.
Respectfully submitted,
Julie Denny
Marge D’Amico introduced the speaker, Mitra M. Abbaspour, the Haskell Curator of Contemporary Art, Princeton University Art Museum.
Mitra Abbaspour’s presentation aligned loosely with a survey course of contemporary Middle Eastern art she will be teaching in the fall at Princeton University. Beginning this broad and eclectic survey, she pointed out that art can be identified by three things: subject matter, aesthetics, or technique.
An example of subject matter, a kafieh, the black and white scarf closely associated with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was woven by artist Mona Haloum, out of her own hair.
An example of aesthetics was Shirin Nashat’s depiction of a woman’s henna-painted hand with a poem in elegant Persian script.
Two examples of technique were Shahzia Sikander’s abstracted landscape, done in the style of traditional miniature painting and Shirana Shahbazi’s contemporary photo of a woman, then woven into a traditional hand-woven carpet.
Abbaspour continued, by her own admission, showing a lot of work quickly to help expand our artistic language or visual vocabulary.
Abbaspour divided her presentation into three non-chronological chapters, each illustrating influence on the contemporary artistic language of her survey, while also drawing on artistic traditions of the past.
Chapter 1: Rooted in History: Local Artistic Language Rooted in Art History
Historic mosaics of Iran and mirrored palace walls are reflected in Monir Shahroudy’s use of thousands of reverse-painted miniature glass shards creating complex patterns of geometry in “Flight of the Dolphin.”
Siamek Filizadeh created The soldiers of evil are killed by Rostam II, a series based on an epic Persian poem, depicting a Persian mythical sword-bearing hero confronting a gun-bearing American soldier.
Ali Banisadr, an Iranian painter, mimicked the intricacy of Iranian historical miniature painting in a vast canvas, representative of traditional Coffee House paintings. Oral storytellers sat before these paintings and explained them, much as a priest would explain the biblical stories depicted in a church reredos. Shoja Azari created another Coffee House painting with parables of contemporary relationships between Iranians and others, usually Americans. Replacing the traditional oral storyteller are a series of video recordings of gunshots, music, and crowds yelling, integrated into the painting. These massive paintings integrate 21st century news stories in a traditional Iranian style.
Chapter 2: Shifting Geographies 1971-1991
In Chapter 2, Abbaspour highlighted the Casablanca School of Art and its head, Farid Belkahia. The school was strongly influenced by French colonialism in Morocco, but Farid turned that practice upside down and began emphasizing the artistic language of the Berbers, using materials like pounded copper and leather, painted or cut into unusual shapes.
Between 1971 and 1991, there were several political and economic shifts in the region, resulting in new artistic centers. These shifts, chiefly the 1971 formation of the United Arab Emirates (Qatar, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai), led to a distinctive change in visual language.
Yto Barrada’s Autocar-Tangier is a series of paintings with seemingly abstract designs. But each of the designs is representative of the graphics of a highly recognizable international bus company, a subtle sign of mobility in the region.
Zineb Sidera created a fascinating series of very short videos, entitled Mother Tongue. In one, a grandmother speaks Arabic to her grown daughter; in the next, the daughter speaks French to her daughter, who then responds in English, again symbolic of the geographic shifts and mobility in the area during this period.
Hassan Sharif, born in Iran, migrated to Dubai where he was celebrated as the “grandfather of contemporary art” in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Migrant laborers from Southeast Asia took part in huge construction projects in the UAE. They brought with them mass-produced articles, including plastic combs and rubber shower slippers. Sharif created art from these new materials. A wire-bound sculptural mountain of colorful shower slippers represented the dramatic influx of southeastern Asian immigrants.
Chapter 3: Inside/Outside: Language of Artists in the Diaspora
Mona Hatoum represents artists of the diaspora who feel displaced. Born in Beirut of Palestinian parents, she is not Lebanese. She has no identity as a Palestinian, but because her father works in the British Embassy, she obtained a British passport. But she is not British. There is an acute sense of dislocation, not belonging anywhere, among many artists in the Middle East diaspora. Hatoum creates familiar objects with a twist. A bathmat filled with plastic entrails depicts that sense of being turned inside out. Another populated with steel pins gives the sense of not being welcome.
Other artists, however, including Hassan Hajjaj, are energized by emigration. He created colorful portraits of his musician friends, combining traditional African garb with hints of contemporary culture. One wears Yves Saint Laurent slippers; another is framed by Coca Cola cans.
Another, Nikzad Nodjoumi, in a work acquired by the Princeton University Art Museum, painted 200 portraits of people using the front pages of the New York Times as his canvas. This artwork, a kind of meditation on international relations, integrates United States and Middle Eastern culture through the visible headlines and depictions of friends.
And finally, Michael Rakowitz combines cardboard, paint, glue, and newspaper into replications of looted articles from Iraqi museums during the Iraq-Iran war.
In all of these works, the Middle East art traditions are reinterpreted to reflect dramatic cultural, political, and economic changes in the 20th and 21st centuries.
There were a handful of questions but arguably the most important asked about the collection at Princeton. Clearly, there are some exciting pieces, but if you ask Abbaspour, there are not enough.
Respectfully submitted,
Julie Denny