Between Iraq and Lebanon | Review by Sara Al Haddad

Participation and the presentation of the Arab countries in the Venice Biennale in its 55th edition are quite evident. Several Arab pavilions’ works revolved around the country’s political and societal status, including Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain.

The Iraqi and Lebanese Pavilion works both discussed the theme of war in their exhibited artworks, maybe not so evidently, but also the post-war effect on the country and its people through the artists’ artworks; a reflection of their own experiences with war using different medias such as carton paper and film. Bahrain and Kuwait artworks touched upon political and societal topics through figurative representations of women and the veil through photographs and drawings; sculpted figures of the country’s sheikh/ruler. The discussed themes touch base with ‘home.’ Familiar with the background history and society of the artist’s, visitors can make a connection as to why the artists decided to discuss and exhibit such artworks. Although the works discuss themes that can extend to a larger audience, they are, in themselves very limited through their specificness. Open to interpretation to an extent, one may find it difficult to stray away from the mainstream ideas and connotations associated with such artworks. For one, I did not get the opportunity to develop any intimate feelings with the works. The idea, concept, point of view – the feelings of the artist towards the subject matter, they were all there, very prominently. It may draw the viewer closer into the artist’s state of mind, but also creates an atmosphere of reactions but within constraints.

Whilst on the other hand, there’s the Israeli Pavilion. The work exhibited in the pavilion document an underground journey, fictional, from Isreal to Venice.  Taken by a small community of people, the pavilion’s space was turned into a workshop, where the group started to sculpt themselves. ‘The Workshop,’ is a video installation documenting the group’s journey of sculpting and creating sounds. It discusses the journey of underground networking across national boarders that goes undetected, while using the pavilion’s space itself as an interactive and essential part of the work.

Geographically being the only thing that connects both, politics aside, the Israel Pavilion works exhibits a developed stage of contemporary artworks. The works can appeal and connect with a larger group of audience. It allows for the viewer to formulate their own opinion, it allows them to interact with the work by creating their own connections with the work. Those connections are lacking in the Arab pavilions. Their topic specification; the dwelling and mourning with the past and focusing on societal taboo’s creates a limitation as to how far the works can go in today’s art world. Letting go of such apparent focal points in the Middle Eastern art will allow for the region’s art scene to progress and keep pace with the progression of the international art scene.

The Biennale provides a great platform for countries to represent their countries best artworks, works that can be seen alongside other international works. The Arab pavilions should not be afraid to showcase works that are not nationalistically related. Such works do not necessarily show strong national and societal affiliations; patriotic artworks have the tendency to act against themselves in an international scene.

Lorenzo Tel reviews Arab participation in the Venice Biennale

Saudi Arabia
Here it is Saudi Arabia with Rhizoma, generation in waiting. A side event that opens the reality of a country ready to contemporary thanks to the new generation of artists. The title has a direct reference to the word rhizome, which comes from the ancient greek and indicates a subterranean root of a plant that develops its roots both horizontally and vertically, as the same new Saudi culture ready to defy the force of gravity. You should therefore stay the proceedings in front of some works of the pavilion of the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Nouf Alhimiary in the photographic series What She Wore emulates the outfit of the day of the fashion bloggers around the world, with the result of a long unfolding of women in abaya, “the unchangeable outfits of Saudi women.” As the artist herself points out, is a group of women who could be seen from a distance look like the same person, and is this the only sketched out in the exhibition attempt to address the issue of individuality in the sense really critical. In front, the works of Eiman Elgibreen tell a different story. Or rather, the same story read with different glasses. A series of small paintings show women in abaya submit to the dancers of Degas, and the courts of x-factor version of Banksy Trials ballet, just painted, waiting for a comment. So far, a well-deserved boost to the attitude towards talent show of Western art system. If it were not for the title of the work: Do not look at me look at my art. A yearning for spiritual inwardness and recognition that would be a provocation indignant
and effective, by Saatchi or Gagosian. But in a country where the woman’s body is demonized, covered, segregated, punished, and for the way in which political and civil rights begin now to make small but significant improvements, such a task is not only
controversy, but the all unpopular. Saudi Arabia is a country that has only recently become visible to the system of
international contemporary art, and it is a country in which the decision to embark on an
artistic journey, even more so for a young man of talent, remains a complicated choice, a social challenge. The exhibited works are strongly connoted in the sense of nationalism, and pride towards their cultural habitat. The impression is that the intersection of these different and common struggles to emerge, the issue of women has remained virtually strangled. Rather than rejecting their own reality, Eiman Elgibreen makes a banner of pride and belonging.

Bahrain 
On the contrary, in the pavilion of Bahrain, on his first official participation at the Biennale. Except for the presence of the artist Camille Zakharia (Tripoli, Lebanon in 1962 living in Bahrain), the pavilion shows a predominance of women. The other two artists of the pavilion are in fact Mariam Haji (Bahrain 1985) and Waheeda Malullah (Bahrain 1978).The photos from the series A Villager’s Day Out, by Waheeda Malullah, show a girl in her black abaya in the act of wandering and exploring desolate places but attractive in a delicate duality between childlike curiosity and isolation that expresses no screams, but in a totally effective, the existential condition. The photograph is a kind of visual notebook for her, a physical and mental space in which to project his inner world. She does not use the camera to document the reality, then, but as a starting point for creative processing that fully expresses her point of view. The photographic collage c/o, by Camille Zakharia, is a way to connect his various experiences and to propose to the observer in a “cool” to establish a dialogue that the personal becomes collective experiences shared beyond the geographical boundaries and cultural. The first question that the artist asks himself about the meaning that it has had thirty years ago to leave his country – Lebanon – and how this experience has changed his way of being. “His country” is no longer – or better is not only – the homeland, the birthplace and family affections, his country were also the places where he has passed, staying for a certain period. His photographic collage brings together hundreds of images (550 to be exact) taken by the author except those that portray him and his brothers or other family members, who come from the family. Mariam Haji, finally, presents her personal interpretation of the victory. Victory (2013) is a drawing on paper with crayons, charcoal, pigments and other materials along eight meter where the young Mariam Haji, in a furious horse race Berbers, paints the wheel of an attack on a donkey: the rejection of male hegemony is also rejection of its symbols, and its instruments.

Iraq
Welcome to Iraq, has a section of works by eleven artists who live and work in the country. The focus is on the nature of everyday life as it is now lived in Iraq. The exhibition space is transformed into a real living room where visitors can sit, read, discuss and learn about the true culture of Iraq too loaded to be unfounded judgments. So, The primary objective is to provide – after decades of repression, censorship and conflicts that have limited the development of culture in Iraq – a cross-section of diverse
artists working in Iraq: the artists in the exhibition, all Iraqis living in Iraq, represent two generations of artists from all parts of the country.The works on display range from photography to design, from painting to video, sculpture, installation and textiles. Jonathan Watkins and Tamara Chalabi, President of RUYA (Ruya Foundation for Contemporary Culture in Iraq (RUYA) is a non-profit organization Iraq and Iraqi non-governmental organization founded by lovers of art and culture; primary purpose
of the foundation is to promote the development of culture in Iraq, and to build bridges with the rest of the world), have collaborated with researchers and experts within the country to search for artists. They organized information events for groups of more than 90 artists, and visited studies in Baghdad, in the provinces of Kurdistan and to Babylon, and Basra. The exhibition introduces Iraq in the apartment on the first floor, creating a deliberately drawing-room and an interactive space where visitors can sit, read and learn the culture of Iraq, while drinking tea. The peaceful atmosphere and home building will be maintained through the use of the furniture already present and a slight intervention on the existing architecture.The emphasis is on the artistic nature of everyday life as it is lived now in Iraq, showing a determination to fend for themselves, and inventiveness born of extraordinary historical circumstances.

Um, So What is the Venice Biennale? | Review by Tala Worrell

A friend of mine from college arrived in Venice yesterday. We immediately began trading stories and experiences. At one point he sheepishly inquired, “So what exactly is the Venice Biennale?” I laughed in dismay as I explained that I have been in Venice for two months and still can’t put my finger on what a Venice Biennale is.

I came to Venice with two extremes of what the Venice Biennale could be. In my mind, at its best, the Biennale would be a way to solve all the world’s problems, or at least point in those directions, by defining a new mode of communication outside of the usual rhetoric.

I saw this in Danae, the Russian pavilion, where the evocation of myth creates a new relational language. While one might be thinking of money, corruption, and greed in relation to Russia, it only lasts a minute before you start thinking about the world. Myth allowed for an unconscious transfer of the universal to the particular, a freedom not afforded in some other pavilions.

Welcome to Iraq, surprised me by how it managed to dislodge a concept of Iraqi-ness from the political turmoil on the home front. Taking the home as the point of departure, the pavilion opens a different way of relating to Iraq through the universal understanding of “home.” It breathes life into the discourse of Iraq, a space dominated and vigilantly occupied by politicians and the media.

At the other end of my imagined continuum, the Biennale at its worst would be another transnational superstructure whose players are an elite milieu of cultural heavy hitters. The art would become a manifestation of internal, self-referential art-world politics, and of the geopolitical climate of the world. The art would be a mirror for the world’s problems; it would at once be politics and a metaphor for politics.

Unfortunately, this is what I saw more of. The opening days, reserved for VIP’s, press, and other notables, seemed like the art world equivalent of an electro music festival. Swarms of cool artsy looking folk pavilion hopped around Venice. Cigarettes, coffee, and the occasional meal seemed to provide endless doses of energy to combat the late night hangover from previous evening’s yacht-scapades.

Many pavilions took the biennale as a teaching moment about the home culture. There were the self-orientalizing pavilions like Bahrain and Indonesia where cultural tropes masqueraded as “art”. These pavilions did nothing short of begging the viewer to indulge in the voyeuristic position of power as they made fetishes of themselves.

Honestly, I have no idea what Germany was doing. For some reason commissioning artists from different countries to show that making art in Germany is, “characterized by many layers of international cooperation” seems like a pretty weak thesis. I feel like I am standing in some kind of ruse, an Ai Weiwei smoke screen. I mean I hear Berlin is heaven for hipsters hailing from all corners of the world, but really?

China’s Transfiguration does its usual thing of massive amounts of massive works where the viewer gets stuck on the connection between the quantity, craft, and China’s labor force.

But, I must say, the pavilions that left me ambivalent and irritated were Romania and Chile. Both took the opportunity of participating in the biennale as a moment for a critique of the biennale, classic maneuver. Jaar’s Giardini rising from murky waters and the enacting of the history of the biennale from Romania formed a closed circuit of discourse.

Well, we get it, nationalism is a problematic issue, and why still have a biennale formatted like a UN Conference or FIFA World Cup where its structure rides on the very “borders” it is supposedly trying to break down (the nation). However, Chile and Romania only ask that question on a perpetual loop without any possible solutions.

My answer to my friend’s question remains that I really don’t know. All I know is that I wanted to see and feel something radical. I found the radical in the most unexpected places like the Palazzo Enciclopedico and When Attitudes Become Form.

But with respects to the national pavilions, the format of nations has too much political smog and conceptual hufflepuff, it is too steeped in a particular history and particular generation of thinking that tastes bitterly of delusion. The format of nations outfitting themselves with artwork like arms or jerseys just ends up looking like a silicone, botox-ed out woman trying to stay relevant.

Framing art within the structure of a nation completely negates one of the coolest things happening contemporarily which is how borders are actually irrelevant, those hanging on to it seem to be those holding the purse strings. The Venice Biennale seems to be in a kind of midcentury crisis.

WELCOME TO IRAQ | a review by Valentina Pelosi

one of the rooms in the pavilion.

The Iraqi Pavilion, named “Welcome to Iraq”, is part of the Collateral Events of Venice Biennale and it is located near San Tomà vaporetto station in the beautiful sestiere San Polo.

What immediately surprises you is that the pavilion is located in an ancient house, not in a museum nor a space specifically used for exhibitions.

I find this choice brilliant, especially after having seen the artworks and understing the idea behind it. The aim of the curator and of the artists participating is to show everyday life of Iraqi people, and a house could perfectly become the ideal context for this purpose.

The house has an intimate dimension and is surely representative of who we are and where we come from, which is our culture of reference, which are our habits and so on.

According to this, the curator tried to recreate a typical Iraqi house, where the visitors can walk around and seat wherever they like to rest, taking the time to browse books and newspaper left on the tables of the apartment while enjoying a good cup of tea and tasty Iraqi halawiyat.

I think that including the artworks inside a typical Iraqi ambiance hides the will to show the most private and intimate side of the Iraqi culture itself, far from the media exposure about Iraq we are used to but yet still strongly linked to it and to the historical facts this country has gone through and still live.

The books we find in the living room range from the birth of Mesopotamian civilization to the most recent history of the country. This I believe in order to reiterate that Iraq has an extremely rich history which contains the roots of the whole world culture and civilization. Surely years of dictatorship and wars had a lot of consequences which inevitably affected the work of art, but still there is the will to keep the past as a reference.

The pavilion presents a selection of works of 11 artists that live and work in Iraq (namely Abdul Raheem Yassir, Furat Al Jamil, Jamal Penjweny, Akeel Khreef, Hareth Alhomaam, Ali Samiaa, Cheeman Ismaeel, Bassim Al-Shaker, Khadeem Nwami, WAMI). One of the artists I appreciated the most was Abdul Rahem Yassir, a cartoonist that shows the contradictions of his country using a bitter irony. One of his works is represented also on the totes offered by the pavilion. Another work I really much enjoyed is the one of Jamal Penjweny. The work’s title is “Saddam is Here” and it consist in a sequence of pictures that depict Iraqi people in their everyday life who are carrying Saddam’s picture on their face, showing to the public the harsh and lasting effects that Saddam’s regime had on the country.

These are the artists that impressed me the most, but I believe that each of them deserves a wider space to explain and express their art. What I can feel as a common point of them all is a certain nostalgia of what was Iraq and the bitterness they feel towards what Iraq has become. They feel the vulnerability of their lives and yet recognize that the only way for them is making out with everyday life.

Who we were, what we are – by Munira Al Sayegh

Review of  <Re:Orient> in Barjeel Art Foundation. 

Through the ‘Western Looking Glass’, the word, the Orient studies the shaping of Arab Societies, through highly romanticised imagery which depicts the disconnect between the, then Colonists and the actuality of the time. During this time a lot of work was produced, to fuel that market, how ever amid the production for ‘the other’, art was produced which spoke for the people, at this highly tempestuous time in the Arab worlds history.

This space visits favorably subjective art from the time between the 1950’s and 1970’s magnifying work that grew from the Levant, North Africa, Arabian Gulf and Iraq. The work, found in these segregated walls, depict, a major turning point in the Arab world; the moment of transition of these states from being colonies to gaining independence. With that said, this left the viewer a little disconnected with the suggested idea of “The Orient,” found in the title.

The Barjeel gallery reinvented the insides of its walls, removing everything that is ‘gallery-like’ in nature, and replacing it with much more of a museum feel. Walking into the space you are greeted with the title on the wall, and as you walk through the room, you begin to discover that each country has its own room, and each room homes great works of art from that specific country. The layout, although very solemn and safe, also suggested some sort of favoritism, giving more space to some like the Levant, and closing off others like Iraq. The experience leaves you in conversation with the context and subject matters found in the art.

To conclude the body of work exhibited although from another time, speaks to the modern day Arab world. History repeats itself, and reinvents itself, and with this work that is shown, it is taken out of its 50’s through 70’s context, and is put in todays context, giving it another dimension towards its importance, transporting its importance, over decades, only to have thought it solved and spoke to a body, of people whom are independent, only to find themselves yet again, at the beginning of that same circle.