Though the soaring mercury may well announce the arrival of summer, the exhibition titled “Tomorrow”, organized by Al Mawred Al Thaqafi as part of its Spring Festival, offers some respite.
The exhibition — held at the Viennoise hotel — aims at celebrating new Arab artists and their artworks. “The title tomorrow holds a clear reference to the future, indicating that these young Arab artists are on their way to becoming the celebrities of tomorrow’s art world,” said Charles Akl, the organizer of the program.
Whether or not that happens, the future will tell, but a look at the displayed works shows that these artists are not afraid to interpret history and past events in a bold and unconventional manner; their art is witty, eclectic and personal too.
Take for instance the installation by the Jordanian artist Diala Khasawneh, which succeeds in grabbing the audience attention with its title “First Bra.”
Shopping for her first bra was a traumatic experience for the artist. Through conversations with friends and other women, Khasawneh realized that it was equally harrowing for all of them.
Armed with these anecdotes, Khasawneh has created a showcase where each of the bras tells the story of a character, experience and choice.
The innovative display, together with the installation booklet, makes for an engaging experience. Each of the bras has been mounted on a simple base but in a unique context. There is the pin-cushion bra probably alluding to the pain and discomfort that many women associate with the bra, the cut-up bra and the cheeky lemon-filled bra.
"She, after takeoff and he, before return" — this quirkily titled exhibit is by a 24-year old Sudanese writer-student, Hussam Al Hilaly, who never intended to publish his writings. When he did publish a book containing 13 of his selected short stories, it was because he felt that not much of the Sudanese literature was getting published.
A Sudanese passport holder, he was born in Saudi Arabia and never went to Sudan till two years ago. Yet his stories reflect an understanding of the Sudanese socio-economic reality that only a person who has lived his life in the conflict-torn nation can possess.
“I have incorporated in my stories my mother’s and my father’s stories. People are surprised when they learn that I went to Sudan the first time only after I had published the book,” Al Hilaly told Daily News Egypt.
One of the stories exhibited at the venue is “Why Uncle Badawi has a computer?” It begins with the line “I hate this language that I write with.” The story deals with the anomaly between the spoken and the written Arabic and the writer’s refusal to accept the spellings prompted by his computer software.
Not one to shy away from self-critique, Palestinian Amer Shomali’s exhibition in its x-rayed photo style shows the “contradiction in the Palestinian official victory visual discourse.”
“The idea crossed my mind when I saw a Palestinian employees’ demonstration; a typical Palestinian one, with flags and victory signs,” Shomali told Daily News Egypt, “but the only difference was that they were begging for their salaries.”
The X-ray exhibition consists of five illustrated panels — each showing the two fingers’ victory sign — reflecting the official political discourse in Palestine. And the other fingers reflect the contradiction or the subtext.
Lebanese photographer Randa Mirza and writer-performer Rita Baddoura have joined forces for a photography and poetry book, chronicling the artists’ emotional journey from an African city lying along the Niger River to the western part of the Ténéré desert. The slideshow of their human and natural landscape photographs is deeply evocative of the desert country.
Yazen Khalili, through his exhibit “Landscape of Light and Darkness,” addresses the question of how spatial and temporal spaces are reshaped in an area of conflict. His photographs delineate a contrast between the illuminated and the dark spaces; a visual illustration of the hierarchy of power in a society.
Through skilful photography, Khalili captures both the lighted and the dark spaces, highlighting the bright area as the only visible space and by implication, the only area that exists.
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Yazen Khalili’s “Landscape of Light and Darkness.”
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Amer Shomali’s “X-Ray.”
