ORNAMENT AND NARRATIVE Women Artists of Eastern Diasporas
Stedman Gallery Rutgers–Camden Center for the Arts October 15 to December 15, 2012
ORNAMENT AND NARRATIVE
Roya Akhavan
The countries and societies stretching from Morocco to India—parts of which are known, variously, as the Middle East, North Africa, and/or the Fertile Crescent—share both histories and traditions and have developed indigenous and local cultures that distinguish them from their neighbors. None of these societies is impervious to the pressures of modern transformations—the Arab Spring being the most recent modernizing wave. One of the factors of change is mobility: the ability to travel, to visit, or to settle in another place and to find or create community. This community constitutes a diaspora that is often the site of acculturation and adaptation to a new society. One of the loci of transformation, as well as the agent of change, is woman, to whom this exhibit looks as a producer, transformer and consumer of culture. This exhibition brings together women from the East, most of whom live abroad, whose contact with other cultures transforms the artistic traditions that travel with them.
Through repetition, the transformation of images into patterns allows a passage from the real to the abstract, and from the representational to the conceptual. While a single image cannot always escape the confines of its literal meaning, reiteration can awaken meanings that spill beyond the boundaries of representation. As pattern expands, the shape, cleansed of its denotation, becomes free to express something else entirely.
Women Artists of Eastern Diasporas
This exhibit proposes two streams, ornament and narrative, that animate the work of the participating artists. Strictures against figurative representation have been, to varying degrees, and at different moments in history, a part of Muslim, Christian and Jewish cultures and societies. This proscription against the figure has given birth to a culture of the ornament, to the development of intricate geometric and organic patterns, often wedded to a bold use of color, that has characterized the fine and applied arts, architectural details, and the embellishment of printed works. There have also been less strict interpretations of the injunction against the representation of the figure, that have allowed for non-religious figures to be set in secular narratives. Each of the artists has transformed one or both of these traditional approaches with a modernizing touch that delights the viewer in presenting a tradition transformed in a visually engaging image, and which contributes to a deepened understanding of the culture from which they emerge. Roya Akhavan’s paintings propose richly layered intertwining figures and motifs, recalling the interlaced ornaments of earlier historic moments, approached in a less formal way. The relationship between figure and ground is rendered in a much more complex and lyrical way, and the traditional approach to symmetry is thrown off balance. Najla Arafa’s graphic design work calls on Arabic calligraphic tradition inserted in modernist veils of transparent layering, abstract design, and asymmetrical composition. The formality of Arabic calligraphy is interrupted by the informality of gestural sign making; transparent washes replace planes and forms of saturated color with layers of delicate color and scrambled scribbles. Siona Benjamin’s installations and paintings draw on traditional images, cultural references and styles from her Indian Jewish heritage, transformed through a contemporary pop cultural sensibility. The work presented here, with its rich synthesis of seemingly disparate elements from her multcultural background, includes her large installation “Lilith in the New World,” and several recent “Improvisations.” Lalla Essaydi, who transgresses many gender-based strictures of Muslim culture, creates complex, exquisitely-detailed photographic tableaux that reference, destabilize and transform stereotypical images of the “exotic” Middle-Eastern woman, with many compositions drawn from 19th century Orientalist paintings. She carefully poses her subjects in traditional Arabic settings, covers all surfaces with an autobiographical calligraphic text written in henna, and creates large-scale photographs that challenge our preconceptions and reframe our vision. Sissi Farassat embroiders patterned sequins on her photographic images, isolating the subject from the context in which the picture was taken and capturing the subject in a movement or a facial expression that is at once suggestive and abstract. The glittery patterns enchant, while also recalling the ornate embellishment found in traditional and modern buildings, carved in wood, carved in stone, or cast in plaster, or composed with colored tile; the photographic images blend the past and the present. Naomi Safran-Hon has focused her work on the “absent presence,” implied by images of houses abandoned by Palestinian Arabs who remained in Israel, but left their homes in her native Haifa when the State of Israel was established in 1948. She transforms photographs of interiors with lace and cement, sometimes painting with the latter to create powerfully evocative images of displacement, absence, conflict and memory. Soody Sharifi’s digital work selected from her Persian Delights series, employs a saturated monochromatic background to figures engaged in a daily activity; the clothing of the figures or the objects with which they are engaged are imprinted with a rich pattern, establishing a contrast with the emphatic color field. Mitra Tabrizian’s film The Predator tackles the tensions of contemporary life in the diaspora, using English as the lingua franca of its protagonists drawn from different North African and Middle Eastern countries that do not share a common language. The film also tackles perceptions that the West projects onto the East, a holdover from Orientalism of the 19th century, augmented in the recent clashes of cultures. Shahar Yahalom creates dream-like, fantasy images and objects in a variety of media. The drawings exhibited here bring together gothic, mythical, landscape and aquatic images to create emotionally evocative, multilayered narratives. Cover, Soody Sharifi, Escape (Persian Delights series), 2010, archival inkjet print, edition of 6, 12.5 x 12.5 in.
The battles that rage across Akhavan’s paintings follow no iconographic or historical code. They are ageless, universal battles, irrevocably committed to the perpetual deferral of their outcomes. Their references are entirely conceptual: chaos is a figure of uncertainty, of precarity. The interplay between rigidity and fluidity presents the paradox between order and unpredictability. The miniature figures that populate the foreground express form without flesh. In spite of their corporeal quietness, these figures’ soundless voices echo across the paintings, as they animate the canvas they inhabit. They reflect on the scenes that surround them even as they reflect one another in their infinite procession, which extends in every direction beyond the boundaries of the painting. Nexus is a series of linked paintings. Each canvas lifts an element from the one that precedes it, forging a visual chain that reflects the inescapable interconnectedness of the universe, the inexorable linkage of time, space, and causality. Far from constraining the series, this seemingly rigid rule actually opens the nexus of paintings to infinity. The last painting is never final: within it lies the nexus for another work. ROYA AKHAVAN was born in Tehran, Iran and lives and works in Toronto, Canada and Paris, France. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including Tehran, Istanbul, Dubai, Paris, London and New York. She is represented by the Leila Heller Gallery, New York. Untitled V from Nexus Series (detail), 2009, acrylic on linen, 64 x 51 in.
Najla Arafa
Siona Benjamin
NAJLA ARAFA is an aspiring Egyptian graphic designer living in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. When she was younger, she expressed her talent through simple doodles. At the age of 15, and despite lacking academic education or training in computer skills, she deepened her knowledge on her own, developing the necessary digital skills. Being a lover of traditional art did not keep her away from the magic of digital art; she has since created a body of work that blends Arabic fonts, digitally drawn words and images, and her own handwriting.
Escape (detail), 2012, digital print, 13.5 x 20 in.
“I am an artist originally from Bombay, India, of Bene Israel Jewish descent. My work reflects my background and the transition between my old and new worlds. I am inspired by traditional styles of painting, like Indian/Persian miniatures, Byzantine icons and Jewish and Christian illuminated manuscripts, but I blend these ancient forms with pop cultural elements from our times to create a new vocabulary of my own. Using the rich colors of gouache, I apply layers, literally with the paint, as well as metaphorically with the content.� SIONA BENJAMIN is a painter now living in New Jersey. She holds two M.F.A. degrees, one in theater set design from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, and the other in interdisciplinary fine arts (painting, drawing, metals) from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Benjamin has exhibited her work extensively in the United States and Asia. She received artist fellowships from the New Jersey State Council of the Arts; the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper (RCIPP), Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University; and the Fulbright Foundation. Her work is in the collections of the Hunterdon Museum, NJ; the Morris Museum, NJ; the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ; the Newark Public Library, NJ; the Noyes Museum, Oceanville, NJ; the Montclair Art Museum, NJ; the Jersey City Museum, NJ; the Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers University, NJ; the New Britain Museum of American Art, CT; the William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, CT: and Eastern Connecticut State University, CT. Siona Benjamin is represented by Flomenhaft Gallery, New York.
Lilith (detail), painting: 2005, gouache and gold leaf on wood panel, 30 x 26 in.; installation, 2007, mixed media, 144 x 120 in.
Lalla Essaydi
Sissi Farassat
“In my art, I wish to present myself through multiple lenses—as artist, as Moroccan, as Saudi, as traditionalist, as liberal, as Muslim. In short, I invite the viewer to resist stereotypes.” Lalla Essaydi describes some of the central themes of her work: “Gender issues within Islamic cultures, the Western voyeuristic tradition of Orientalist paintings, as well as what is the relationship between East and West? I am very much interested in … becoming a bridge, because I want to make it known that Orientalist paintings are just Western male fascination, and a fantasy. I want people to understand that. I’m not laying blame on anyone, but I want people to acquire a different kind of seeing. I want them to synthesize themselves with these situations where women are portrayed so they would start seeing other things than sexual exploitation.”
Sissi Farassat’s sequined pictures investigate and reflect essential aspects of perception and the aesthetics of the photographic image. She isolates the photographed subject, mostly a person, but, at times, also objects, by covering the large surrounding surfaces around the figures with a semitransparent, dazzling sequined carpet. The context is thus eliminated, and the subjects are captured in an abstract surrounding; all references to time and space are erased with an enchanting, hand-embroidered texture. The sequins replace the “there and then” of the photographic image, with the “here and now” of their materiality. The sensuous materiality of the sequins is completely alien to photography, yet their sensibility to light and their distinctive reflective quality is mirrored in aspects of photographic exposure. Farassat also makes reference to early icon painting, where gold leaf represented sacred light. The shimmering abstract sequin surfaces locate these works in this long tradition of iconic images.
LALLA ESSAYDI lives in New York; she grew up in Morocco and lived in Saudi Arabia for many years. She received her M.F.A. from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University, Medford, MA in 2003. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is included in the collections of the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Columbus Museum Of Art, OH; The Kresge Art Museum of Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA; The New Britain Museum of American Art, CT; The Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC; The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; the Fries Museum, the Netherlands; and the Musée du Louvre, Paris, France. Lalla Essaydi is represented by Schneider Gallery, Chicago, Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston, and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
Les Femmes du Maroc: La Grande Odalisque (detail), 2008, chromogenic print mounted to aluminum, 48 x 60 in.
SISSI FARASSAT was born in Tehran, Iran and lives and works in Vienna, Austria, where she studied photography. Farassat has exhibited extensively in Europe, including Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, and beyond, in the United States and Japan. Her work is in Austrian and Swiss collections, and she has been the recipient of a number of awards. She is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York and Kashya Hildebrand, Zurich.
Andrea (detail), 2010, unique chromogenic print embroidered with sequins, 35.5 x 23.5 in.
Naomi Safran-Hon
Soody Sharifi
“In my studio, cement becomes paint; here, not only the borders of my region are explored, but also the limits of painting. Shapes created in cement through the use of lace relate to abstract form as well as the division of territory. The shapes are taken from maps that show the partition of land in my region. I combine photographs of the dilapidated neighborhood of Wadi Salib in my hometown Haifa (Israel) with cement and lace, in an attempt to reconstruct these homes and speak of their absent homeowners and lost stories.”
The bodies of works which Soody Sharifi has created, whether they are photographic series, or installations using photography, continuously feed off, and complement each other conceptually and technically. These images point to a layered, carnivalesque reading of traditional and contemporary cultures; in emphasizing the delicate fictional underpinning in these images, they come closer to representing reality than what is shown in most news media. Through these images, Sharifi explores the tension between public and private spaces, depicting scenarios which undo the images of Islamic stereotypes represented through the narrow focus of the daily media. Moreover, she hopes they also challenge the Muslim expectation of propriety. By using fictive and documentary strategies, she creates bodies of work that hover between photographic realism and fantasy.
NAOMI SAFRAN-HON was born in Oxford, England, in 1984, and grew up in Haifa, Israel; she currently lives in New York. She received her B.A. summa cum laude from Brandeis University, 2008 in Studio Art and Art History and an M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art in 2010. In 2003 Safran-Hon received the Young Artist Award from the Hecht Museum, Haifa University, Israel. She exhibited in The Rear, the Herzliya Biennial of Contemporary Art, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel, in 2007. In the United States, Safran-Hon’s work has been included in Fresh Paint at Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA; Evocatecture, Heather James Fine Art, Palm Desert, CA; Unhinged, Gallery 263, Cambridge, MA; Forest of the Trees, Heather James Fine Art, Jackson, WY; Uncommon Commencement, Heather James Fine Art, Palm Desert, CA. In New York, Safran-Hon’s work had been featured in a solo exhibition at Slag Gallery, in two group shows at Marianne Boesky Gallery and P.P.O.W Gallery, as well as at the not-forprofit NURTUREart in Brooklyn. Her video/ performance work was included in the festival Handheld History at Queens Museum of Art, New York, NY, and at Time After Time, Actions and Interactions, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA. She is represented by Slag Gallery, New York.
Absent Present: Wadi Salib 16 (detail), 2012, archival inkjet print, lace and cement on canvas, 36.5 x 54.5 in.
SOODY SHARIFI was born in Tehran, Iran. She received her B.A. and M.F.A. from the University of Houston, TX and has lived in Houston since 1974. She has exhibited nationally and internationally. She is represented by the Leila Heller Gallery, New York.
Hoops ’n Hijab (detail), 2010, archival ink jet, 12.5 x 12.5 in.
Mitra Tabrizian
Shahar Yahalom
In The Predator, a hit man from an unknown Islamic country is sent to London to assassinate an influential writer who has sought political asylum in Britain. The film, which received an Arts and Humanities Research Board Innovation Award, focuses on the unusual encounter between two men, a writer who has given up his life’s work and has lost belief in any political intervention, and a soldier who is losing his loyalty. The hunter and the hunted have one thing in common—they have nothing to lose.
Daphne, according to Greek mythology, was pursued by Apollo. As she fled from him, she begged her father Ladon, a river god, for help and he transformed her into a laurel. “In my body of works I explore this human condition in which a living body freezes and becomes mute, becomes an object.... This is a tricky image to visualize because... the human body, which more than anything symbolizes life and subjectivity, freezes and becomes an inanimate object....”
The protagonists in The Predator come from a fictional Islamic country. The cast members, however, originate from a number of Islamic countries: Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon and Morocco. The film suggests, metaphorically speaking, that fundamentalism has created its own state, with English acting, paradoxically, as the lingua franca because Islamic countries use different languages. The film’s use of English reflects on the notion that a film or a nation cannot be “authentic” unless it expresses itself in an original language, a notion of authenticity that both the East and the West perpetuate.
SHAHAR YAHALOM’S work has been displayed in solo exhibitions including The City Gate, Herzliya Biennale, Israel, 2009; and The Raspberry Land, Shortlist Exhibition, Israeli Art Prize 2011, Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation, Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Yahalom has received numerous awards including the 2006-2007 America Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship. Shahar Yahalom was born in Israel and now lives and works in New York. She is represented by Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv.
The Predator portrays an enigmatic character, who has no expectations and no ideals, but who is serving an idealist Islamic system. This counters the image of the Islamic fundamentalist as propelled by his suicidal “missions,” which results in the homogenizing characterization of Islam as “barbaric.” The Predator is a significant departure from this stereotype. MITRA TABRIZIAN was born in Tehran, Iran, and lives and works in London. She has exhibited in major international museums and galleries, including a solo exhibition at Tate Britain, London in 2008. Her photographic and film works are represented in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, England; the Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Australia; Moderna Mussset, Stockholm, Sweden; Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany; and Musée d’Art Moderne, Luxembourg, among others. She has published widely; her most recent book, Another Country (Hatje Cantz 2012) includes texts by Homi Bhabha, David Green, and Hamid Naficy. She is represented by Leila Heller Gallery, New York. The Predator (still), 2004, 35 mm., 28 m.
Torture Daphne (detail), 2012, pencil on paper, 9 x 6.5 in.
EXHIBITION CHECKLIST
(dimensions in inches, h x w x d) ROYA AKHAVAN All artwork courtesy of Leila Heller Gallery, New York Untitled IV, 2009 Acrylic on linen, 63.75 x 51 Untitled V, 2009 Acrylic on linen, 63.75 x 51 NAJLA ARAFA All artwork courtesy of the artist Escape, 2012 Digital print, 13.5 x 19.5 Arabian, 2012 Digital print, 15.75 x 19.75 Revolution, 2012 Digital print, 13 x 19.75 Longing, 2012 Digital print, 13 x 19.75
Marienbild, 2005 Unique chromogenic print embroidered with sequins 11.75 x 17.75 Car III, 2004 Unique chromogenic print embroidered with sequins, 40 x 60 NAOMI SAFRAN-HON All artwork courtesy of Slag Gallery, New York Jerusalem: A Window with a View, 2012 Cement and lace on canvas, 72.5 x 54.5 Home Front I, 2011 Archival inkjet print, cement, and lace on canvas, 8.5 x 11 Home Front II, 2011 Archival inkjet print, cement, and lace on canvas, 8.5 x 11
RUTGERS–CAMDEN Wendell E. Pritchett, J.D., Ph.D. Chancellor Kriste Lindenmeyer, Ph.D. Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences DEPARTMENT OF FINE ARTS Joseph C. Schiavo, Ph. D. Chair Martin Rosenberg, Ph. D. Professor of art history STEDMAN GALLERY RUTGERS–CAMDEN CENTER FOR THE ARTS Cyril Reade, Ph. D Director
Home Front III, 2011 Archival inkjet print, cement, and lace on canvas, 8.5 x 11
Noreen Scott Garrity Associate director for education
Mar’rar ii, 2011 Archival inkjet print, cement, and lace on canvas, 24.5 x 32.5
Nancy Maguire Associate director for exhibitions Carmen Pendleton Community & artist programs manager
All the Water is the Color of Drowning, 2012 Digital print, 19.75 x 14.5
Absent Present: Wadi Salib 16, 2012 Archival inkjet print, lace and cement on canvas, 36.5 x 54.5
SIONA BENJAMIN All artwork courtesy of Flomenhaft Gallery, New York
SOODY SHARIFI Artwork courtesy of Leila Heller Gallery, New York
Lilith in the New World, 2007 Mixed media, 144 x 120 x 48
Shirin and Farhad (Persian Delights series), 2010 Mixed media, 12 x 12
William Haas Exhibition installation assistant
Improvisation #13, 2011 Gouache and mixed media on mylar and museum board 10.5 x 10.5
Escape (Persian Delights series), 2010 Mixed media, 20 x 20
Maria Buckley Administrative assistant
Nude (Persian Delights series), 2007 Mixed media, 12 x 12
CURATORS
Improvisation #15, 2011 Gouache and mixed media on mylar, 17 x 17 Improvisation #16 Gouache and mixed media on mylar, 16 x 16 Improvisation #18 Gouache and mixed media on mylar, 15 x 15 LALLA ESSAYDI All artwork courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York Les Femmes Du Maroc: Harem Beauty #1, 2008 Three chromogenic prints mounted to aluminum 40 x 30 each
Kite Runner (Persian Delights series), 2007 Mixed media, 12 x 12 Hoops ‘n Hijab (Persian Delights series), 2010 Mixed media, 12 x 12 MITRA TABRIZIAN Courtesy of Leila Heller Gallery, New York Predator, 2004, 35 mm transferred to DVD, 28 m. SHAHAR YAHALOM All artworks courtesy of Noga Gallery, Tel Aviv Found Object, 2012 Ink on paper, 12 x 8
Les Femmes Du Maroc: Harem Women Writing, 2008 Chromogenic print mounted to aluminum, 48 x 60
Torture Daphne, 2012 Pencil on paper, 9 x 6.5
Les Femmes Du Maroc: Light of the Harem, 2008 Chromogenic print mounted to aluminum, 60 x 48
Hungry, 2012 Pencil on paper, 9 x 6.5
Les Femmes Du Maroc: La Grande Odalisque, 2008 Chromogenic print mounted to aluminum, 48 x 60 LFM Revisited, 2010 Chromogenic print mounted to aluminum, 60 x 48 SISSI FARASSAT All artwork courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York Andrea, 2010 Unique chromogenic print embroidered with sequins, 35.5 x 23.5
Miranda Powell Arts education & community arts program assistant
Nancy Maguire Cyril Reade, Ph. D. Martin Rosenberg, Ph.D. For additional Rutgers-Camden programming visit rcca.camden.rutgers.edu Gallery hours: Monday – Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Thursday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Ornament and Narrative is presented by Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts in conjunction with The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art, and Society, a program of Rutgers Institute for Women and Art (iwa.rutgers.edu) www.fertile-crescent.org. This exhibition and RCCA programming is made possible with generous funding from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment of the Arts; Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; Campbell Soup Foundation; and other generous supporters. The Stedman Gallery thanks the artists for their participation and is grateful for the assistance of the Leila Heller Gallery, Flomenhaft Gallery, Edwynn Houk Gallery, Slag Gallery and Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art.