Kesh Angels. Metallic lambda print on 3mm white dibond. TIME Magazine – Photo: Hassan Hajjaj, Marrakesh, Morocco.
Out There
* Curator of 15th Biennial Fotofest in Houston, Karin Adrian von Roques, first encountered an “astonishingly vibrant” art scene in Morocco during her travels and studio visits as early as the 1970s — an experience that led her all the way to the Gulf states. *
.
Time Magazine, Lightbox, by Eugene Reznik (March 13, 2014) — The 15th Biennial Fotofest in Houston provides a counterpoint to many of the contemporary art fairs underway around the country, where representation of work by Arab photographers is often scant. View From Inside: Contemporary Arab Photography, Video and Mixed Media Art brings into focus 49 Arab visual artists, a third of whom are women, from 13 countries — the first survey of its size and scope in more than a decade.
Converging Territories #24. Moroccan-born Lalla Essaydi
“Does contemporary art even exist in Arab countries?” writes lead Biennial curator Karin Adrian von Roques. “If so, is it good art? Don’t the artists mostly just imitate Western art? Can art even come about when there is an Islamic ban on pictures?” These are the questions and misconceptions von Roques has heard while surveying contemporary art fairs beginning in the 1990s.
She first encountered an “astonishingly vibrant” art scene in Morocco during her travels and studio visits as early as the 1970s — an experience that led her all the way to the Gulf states. Yet to this day, in Europe and America, the common narrative of Arab artistic production concludes around the mid-19th century, or at the end of the centuries-long Classical Period. Arab visual art of our own time is “something like a no-man’s-land,” she writes, “about which little is known in any detail.”
.
[Continue Reading at TIME Magazine…]
.
Photographs by Samer Mohdad seen during installation at Silver Street Studios, Fotofest Biennial, Houston, Tex., March 11, 2014. Photo: Eugene Reznik for TIME
The post Shining a Spotlight on Arab Artists, Fotofest Biennial Opens in Houston – TIME Magazine appeared first on Morocco On The Move.