(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The exhibit will be held at the Michael Berger Gallery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and co-curated by Reem Alalusi. "Dis [Locating] Culture" will be the city's first exhibit of contemporary Islamic art.
The exhibit challenges the idea that Islamic art is a separate category from Western Art. The artists in "Dis[Locating] Culture" blur the categories and push the boundaries of each.
The exhibit breaks down cultural and religious stereotypes by showcasing the finest American Islamic artists -– whether Muslim by faith or not. Some of the nine artists included come from the Islamic world but do not live there; some neither live nor have roots in the Muslim world, and yet their works are classified under the Islamic umbrella as a result of their political, social, or even technical choices.
Artists such as Iranian-born Shoja Azari, Californian Sandow Birk and Bangladesh-native Anoka Faruqee are among the top-notch lineup assembled for the show.
Gold Oil Barrel #10 (2010 - pictured right) by Shiva Ahmadi is a work painted on an actual oil barrel. It attempts to provide an interesting juxtaposition between the two exports that Iran is known for: fantastical miniature paintings and crude oil.
Additionally, a symposium to explore the issues suggested by the exhibition will be hosted by the Michael Berger Gallery, the Pittsburgh Middle East Institute, & The Andy Warhol Museum and will be held at the Warhol Museum Theater.
"We are living in a time of binary thinking and exclusionary conclusions. Based on manufactured boundaries between cultures, these barriers lead to ever more fear and mistrust. Mistaken notions about one another travel far and wide, sometimes carried by political & religious subtexts that inform both popular and 'high' culture." explains co-curator Reem Alalusi.
By exploring contemporary Islamic art's borders and boundaries -– whether religious, cultural or social -– and asking participants which are to be respected and which disrupted and dislocated, the exhibit and symposium aim to upend the conventional narrative of civilizational collision in favor of the dialogue for working together.
The exhibition's opening reception will be on Friday, 15 April 2011 and the exhibition will continue through July 30, 2011.
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