Interview with ghazel, Mea Culpa Exhibition Catalogue, Carbon 12 Gallery, 14 March -14 May, 2014, Dubai (original) (raw)
Related papers
Mapping and contemporary art - revised version 2018
Artistic Approaches to Cultural Mapping Activating Imaginaries and Means of Knowing Edited ByNancy Duxbury, W. F. Garrett-Petts, Alys Longley, 2018
This chapter deals with notions of the changing function and status of mapping in art, opening out definitions that have created expectations and limits on what is possible and, perhaps, desirable. It surveys how maps became a common visual trope for many artists in the decades after World War Two, beginning with some of the exhibitions and publications that have supported and disseminated their work. The chapter focuses on the changing tenor in the reception of the famous 'Mappe' series by Italian Arte Povera artist Alighiero e Boetti. It explores selected instances of maps or mapping in art, but offers these neither as a representative overview of current practices, nor a new canon. There are now many instances of contemporary art using cartography that, generally speaking, represent a generational shift away from the map towards mapping as a process, often with a concomitant focus on action and activism.
Critical Cartography of Art and Visuality in the Global Age II
R. Pinilla and C. Gramatikopoulos (eds.). Critical Cartography of Art and Visuality in the Global Age II. The Territories of the Contemporary. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, pp. 63-88. ISBN 1-5275-0641-X, 2018
Art and its context have always been intertwined. British art historian Claire Bishop regards great moments of socio-political change during the 20th century as catalysts for waves of participation and interest in the social within art. The social upheavals that started in 2010-2011, with their profusion of protest camps, have clearly marked collective sensitivity, and have also triggered a renewed interest of the art world towards politics. With many artists relating their works to the new forms of activism, there has been much discussion on art’s relation to social movements. However, when enunciating this relationship, it is not always clear what is the object of study. This article proposes a contextual system for understanding the grey zone which stands between the two poles of the “social movements” and the “artistic institutions”, using the social movements of 2011 as a case study, in a “reading mode” that can be extrapolated to other social periods. In the present text, I present different possible points on a scale that starts from a greater proximity to the activist events, moving towards relationships with art institutions. Although I here formulate different categories for the analysis, this is a taxonomy whose lines are porous and where ambiguity is more common than certainty. The different examples that are discussed here come mainly from three paradigmatic protest camps of 2011: Tahrir Square in Cairo (January 2011), as the paradigmatic foundational camp for the wave of activist settlements that took place during the following years; the Puerta del Sol in Madrid (May 2011), as the one which translated the phenomenon to the West, inaugurating a less confrontational type of camp and more closely tied to the practice of countercultural activism; and Zuccotti Park in New York (September 2011), as being the camp which brought the phenomenon to the heart of capitalism making a big impact in the media and leaving a notable symbolic imprint. In terms of the forms of possible theorization, I propose to take as precedents the experience of the 1990s and the early 2000s, when attempts from the side of art at understanding social movements that were not tied to unions or parties started to multiply.
Critical Cartography of Art and Visuality in the Global Age II (Book)
Critical Cartography of Art and Visuality in the Global Age II, 2018
This volume addresses questions that are crucial to approaching art, visuality, and cultural policies from the perspective of global transformations and the rise of new social, political and cultural paradigms. The concept of territory is the theoretical underpinning off three sections of the volume: “The Geoasthetic Hypothesis: Constructing and Deconstructing Territories”; “Creativity and Dissent: The Future as a Contested Territory”; and “Value, Labour and Gender: Spaces of (Un)Recognition”. Obviously, in this case, territory is not viewed as a two-dimensional space that can be abstracted into a map; it rather emerges as a multidimensional place of proximity and difference, of consensus and conflict, of hegemonies and dissent. It expands from the private space of domestic labour to the public field of politics; rather than treating them as separate fields, they are viewed as a complex continuum, where the narratives of displacement, dissent and utopia are being interwoven. In order to understand its multiple dimensions and problematics (cultural, political, social), the volume adopts an approach that extends beyond art theory and aesthetics, into the realm of economics, geography and political theory.
Conflict as a Site of Ambiguity: Retracing Iran's Turbulent Past in Photographs and
Hermeneutic strategies are invariably contoured by modes of representation, expressing reality either through a quasi-objective approach or by making the subjective self to invest in a metafictional narrative. While analyzing visual narratives as a mode of expression, in terms of how it engages with its audiences, there have been debates regarding the extent to which it allows an empathetic understanding or a simultaneous detachment from the work of art. In the domain of visual ethnography, photography is considered to be a medium that captures the essence of objective reality, yet is not devoid of the idiosyncratic perspective of the photographer. According to Wai-Kit Ow-Yeong, "Given the role of photographs as aide-mémoires and testaments to reality, such images seem to be ideal tools for cultivating emotional identification with others,[ yet] the commoditization of photography also renders it banal, leading not only to what has been condemned as the opportunistic exploitation of images by consumerist bourgeois society, but also-disturbingly-the inhibition of empathy in discourse and practice" (1). War Photographs often act as the reflection of the collective consciousness of a society in conflict but also run the risk of being appropriated for specific ideological concerns, usually by the Western capitalist ideology to depict a regressive homogenous space of conflict in the third-world. Graphic novels as a mode of visual story-telling in literature has gained significance in the last few decades with Joe Sacco's Palestine, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Art Spiegelman's Maus: A survivor's tale. The illustrations, coupled with the text in each of the frames in the novel, make allusive symbolism significant wherein the graphical mode of presentation not only adds to the contextual Mukherjee 2 premise of the textual narrative but also gives a perspective beyond the textual, in the realm of the imaginary. While analyzing the illustrations in Satrapi's Persepolis, Lauren Rizzuto says, " As if to emphasize the reality of the devastating circumstances, Satrapi has given the illustration [a] new dimension by drawing the explosions with shaded lines and points; readers recognize the people as people merely because of their shapes, for their outlines are fuzzy and no facial features are visible" ( 11)( see ).
Making geopolitics otherwise: artistic interventions in global political space
This article considers how contemporary artists have have engaged with processes of militarization and governmentalization since 11 September 2001. It signals three areas of critical thematic interest where contemporary art intersects with contemporary geopolitics -questions of the body, of technology and of 'things out of place' -and suggests that, while its practices and effects require careful critical attention, contemporary art is a field in which it is possible to reflect on how geopolitics might be enacted differently.
If mapping is our most common operational metaphor today, there has been a related increase in the use of maps in art and attention from outside the art world is growing with new publications also on the rise. This article reviews aspects of this decades-long history and discerns patterns to the reception of this theme, suggesting that some revisions are needed – in particular a call for a wider cultural account than is often the case. Shifting epistemologies that consider art useful to cartography or science are discussed. This article therefore grapples with notions of what mapping in art has been and can be, opening out a history of definitions that have created expectations as well as regrettable limits, looking at who is mapping, and what is being mapped today, via contributions from artists. Keywords: Contemporary art, art exhibitions, mapping, cartography, maps as art, thematic exhibitions, art curating, Alighiero e Boetti, Autogena and Portway, Experimental Geographies, critical cartographies, actor-network theory, art theory, Aboriginal Art, Öyvind Fahlström, J. Brian Harley
Dáiddakárta. Cartography in Contemporary Art Practices
The Journal for the Philosophy of Language, Mind and the Arts, 2024
This article explores contemporary art practices in Sápmi which utilise maps as a tool and medium. The importance of the artist Hans Ragnar Mathisen's abundant maps from the mid-1970s is acknowledged, and furthermore the article looks into examples from the next generation Sámi artists who create dáiddakárta, which literally translates to art maps. Although not a traditional Sámi way of mapping and orientating in the landscape, dáiddakárta is significant in representing Indigenous people, in knowledge production, decolonial resistance, and reconciliation. Various dáiddakárta broaden the concept of what a 'map' has been, and could be, and contribute to the cartographic representations of other forms of being. Emphasising the concept of worlding helps understand mapping as a constant formation, relation and negotiation, and as a forceful and sometimes activist process, not only rendering or representing a world 'already there'. Instead, the art maps serve as interpretative, aesthetic and even speculative actors in contemporary society.