Art's 'Meeting Point'

The Leila Heller Gallery Opens a New Space on 57th Street

One of the rooms in Leila Heller's new 16,000-square-foot, six-floor art gallery. Photo by Keith Bedford, courtesy The Wall Street Journal.

by Jackie Bischof, The Wall Street Journal 

For almost 30 years, Leila Heller ran her gallery from the Upper East Side, making a name for herself as an art dealer and for her support of emerging and midcareer Middle Eastern artists, before setting up shop in 2010 on a gallery-lined stretch of West 25th Street.

Now, Ms. Heller is returning uptown with a 16,000-square-foot, six-floor space in Midtown Manhattan that she will operate in addition to the Chelsea location. The new gallery will open on Tuesday, with an inaugural exhibition on portraiture that will run through August.

"It's been my whole life," said Ms. Heller of being uptown. "I always knew I was going to go back."

The new location on West 57th Street will be headed up by Thomas Arnold, who spent 14 years as director of Mary Boone Gallery's locations in Chelsea and Midtown before leaving in 2012 to set up his own consulting firm.

The exhibition, titled "Look at Me … Portraits: Manet to the Present" is organized by Ms. Heller as well as Paul Morris, the founding director of the Armory Show, and Beth Rudin DeWoody, a curator and collector who has worked with the gallery in the past. It will include works by more than 170 artists, including Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jean- Michel Basquiat and Shoja Azari, an Iranian-born filmmaker and artist whose work featured in Ms. Heller's Chelsea gallery last year.

Islamic World Through Women’s Eyes

Mideast Photography at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“Untitled #2,” by Gohar Dashti, from Iran. Courtesy the artist, via Forbes.

‘She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers From Iran and the Arab World’: The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, presents an ambitious and revealing exhibition.

 View Slideshow

by Vicki Goldberg, The New York Times

Middle Eastern women, supposedly powerless and oppressed behind walls and veils, are in fact a force in both society and the arts. They played a major role in the Arab Spring and continue to do so in the flourishing regional art scene — specifically in photography — which is alive and very well indeed. Some Middle Eastern photographers have taken their cameras to the barricades, physical ones and those less obvious, like the barriers erected by stereotypes, which they remain determined to defy. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, takes note in “She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers From Iran and the Arab World,” an ambitious and revealing exhibition of work by 12 women, some internationally known.
      

The curator, Kristen Gresh, says in the catalog that this show, which runs through Jan. 12, was intended to explore “the dualities of the visible and invisible, the permissible and forbidden, the spoken and the silent, and the prosaic and the horrific.” These approximately 100 photographs and two videos generally respond to that intention and open a wide window on what preoccupies women in regions that are read about here more often in news articles about riots and refugees. At times, the ideas in this show count more than the images, which range in quality from remarkable and convincing to the merely derivative in some cases.

      

In the Middle East, it hasn’t always been easy or considered respectable for women to photograph. Boushra Almutawakel, born in Yemen, recalled that a man once asked her what she did; when she replied that she was a photographer, he said sweetly, “It’s nice to have a hobby.” She was nervous about her first show, partly because it included pictures of herself, but only later did her mother voice disapproval: “Who shows pictures of herself?” She answered, “Mama, they’re art, they’re in a museum,” to which her mother replied, “Who sells pictures of herself?”

      

Iran poses particular difficulties to photojournalists, both male and female. Shadi Ghadirian, from Iran, said in a video that in her country a female photographer is a potential traitor. Many colleagues have been detained and imprisoned, and some have never returned. Newsha Tavakolian, an Iranian who has photographed for The New York Times, said in an interview, “We have a red line.” Where is it? “I don’t know. No one knows where it is.” Then, with a shrug, she added, “Everyone knows.”

The widening Gulf

On the explosion of Middle Eastern investment in Western art and an exhibition of Iranian art at the Asia Society

 

The Museum of Islamic Art. Courtesy James Panero and The New Criterion.

 

by James Panero, The New Criterion

 

A few years ago, I came as close as I’ll ever get to the center of the art world. Over Dover sole at Sant Ambroeus, a restaurant on the Upper East Side, I sat across from someone who might have been mistaken for an out-of-place young grad student. While she was at Duke, my lunch companion, class of 2005, had double-majored in literature and political science. Now at Columbia, she was pursuing a masters in public administration. Casually dressed, she looked as though she were on a study break from Butler Library. Her demeanor was reserved, a little shy, and serious. “It’s work all the time. Sometimes it’s just very difficult, but I think it’s doable,” she explained. The “art world’s most powerful woman,” as The Economist has called her, had much on her mind.

Between taking classes at the time and raising her family, Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, known as Sheikha Mayassa (a name that has a James Bond ring to it), runs the museum operations of Qatar, where she is the fourteenth child of the former Emir and the sister of the current one. “I’m still figuring out the best ways to do all this. I set up video conferences. I have my staff come to New York every month. Then I take classes,” she told me. Funded by the oil and gas riches of her principality, a thumb-shaped pile of sand that sticks into the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Peninsula, Mayassa has been leading an acquisition program that, by a wide margin, has recently spent more money on art than any other entity. “The small but energy-rich Gulf state of Qatar is the world’s biggest buyer in the art market—by value, at any rate—and is behind most of the major modern and contemporary art deals over the past six years,” The Art Newspaper wrote in 2011. On ArtReview’s 2013 “Power 100” list, which ranks “the contemporary artworld’s most powerful figures,” Mayassa is ranked number one.

Art Dubai 2013: A diverse affair

Galleries from 30 nations converge on the city for Art Dubai 2013. Raising awareness is top priority

 

The letter that never arrived, 2013, by Bita Ghezelayagh. Courtesy Gulf News

by Jyoti Kalsi, Gulf News

A spotlight on West African art, an open-air sculpture gallery by the sea, and an in-depth look at MENA (Middle East Nervous Anxiety) — these are some of the highlights of Art Dubai 2013, to be held at Madinat Jumeirah from March 20 to March 23. The seventh edition of the art fair, which is presented in partnership with the Abraaj Group and sponsored by Cartier, will feature 75 galleries from 30 countries, showcasing latest works by more than 500 artists. Among the booths to look out for is Arndt Gallery’s (Berlin) recreation of Belgian artist Wim Delvoye’s recent exhibition of Gothic sculptures at the Louvre in Paris; London gallery Victoria Miro’s solo show by legendary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama; and a group exhibition of kinetic art by Edwin’s Gallery, Jakarta.

“The fact that we have galleries from 30 countries makes us the most global art fair. But we are also proud to be the largest showcase for artists from the Arab world,” Fair Director Antonia Carver says.

This year, the fair’s Marker section is focused on West Africa and features galleries from Nigeria, Cameroon, Mali, Ghana and Senegal. The theme of these concept stands, curated by Lagos-based curator Bisi Silva, is the rapidly evolving nature of West African cities and the impact of these changes on urban society. “Marker exemplifies our aim of making Art Dubai a place of discovery and cross-cultural exchange. Last year, our focus on Indonesia led to the start of many long-term exchanges between Indonesia and the Gulf region, including a section on the Arab art world at the Biennial in Yogyakarta. This year we chose to look at West Africa because we have seen that there are extraordinary artists and art centres there. We want to create awareness about art from that region and encourage cultural interactions and greater synergies that build on the historic and present links between Africa and the Middle East,” Carver says.

Although it is a commercial event, Art Dubai has also played an important role in creating awareness and understanding about contemporary art and engaging the local community with art through its extensive non-commercial programme of curatorial and educational projects. These include free public seminars and talks, art workshops and tours, and various commissioned projects. New curatorial elements added this year are a mobile art gallery located in a truck that will visit different areas of the city; and Sculpture on the Beach — an exhibition of large-scale artworks located on the Mina A’Salam beach. The artworks selected by curator Chus Martinez range from Iranian artist Bitta Fayyazi’s quirky figures, made from pipes and broken porcelain, to Mexican artist Gabriel Kuri’s steel creations. “This picturesque location gives our galleries the freedom to think beyond the confines of their booths and to display large-scale artworks,” Carver says.

Muslima: Muslim Women's Art and Voices Featured at IMOW Exhibition

by Samina Ali, The Huffington Post

As the curator for the International Museum of Women’s new global exhibition, Muslima: Muslim Women’s Art & Voices, the one question I’m repeatedly asked is, “What common trait do Muslim women artists and leaders around the world share that strikes you?”

My answer: their courage.

The sad reality is that many of us have grown accustomed to –and comfortable with –seeing Muslim women portrayed as victims.

Yet brave women around the world undertake heroic acts every day. Many do so without anyone bearing witness.

 

From Iranian artist Shadi Ghadirian's series "Nil, Nil," included in the International Museum of Women’s online exhibition at muslima.imow.org. Courtesy Shadi Ghadiria and The Huffington Post

To even out that ledger, I want to share the heroic stories of three women I interviewed for Muslima. It’s just a small glimpse of what you’ll see in the upcoming exhibition, which just launched.

Dr. Shirin Ebadi is the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. For more than 40 years, Dr. Ebadi has worked to improve the lives of women and children in Iran.

Iran’s push into Egyptian film?

by Michael Rubin, AEI

The Islamic Revolution in Iran ushered in a period of enmity between Iran and Egypt. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s revolutionary leader, made enmity toward and a firm belief in the illegitimacy of Israel a pillar of the new regime’s ideology. He put Egypt—the only Arab country to recognize Israel—in Iran’s sites. Relations deteriorated further after the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat: rather than condemn Sadat’s murder, the Iranian leadership celebrated it, even naming a Tehran street after Khalid Islambouli, Sadat’s assassin. Over the next three decades Iranian leaders regularly belittled Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, as a “pharaoh,” castigating both his dictatorial ways (Iranian regime rhetoric regularly depicts the Islamic Republic as a democracy) and implying that he belonged to the pre-Islamic world of the jahaliyya, the age of ignorance. Efforts at rapprochement between Iran and the largest Arab country repeatedly fell flat as Iranian hardliners castigated their reformist counterparts’ calls for improved relations with Egypt as a betrayal of both basic Islamic principles and Khomeini’s vision. Mubarak’s fall, however, coupled with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, led to hopes—at least in Tehran— for a renaissance in relations, if not a new Tehran-Cairo axis.

It is against this backdrop that this short excerpt from the semiofficial, hardline Fars News Agency, is interesting. While Tehran and Cairo have yet to re-establish full diplomatic relations— probably because of objections from Riyadh and Doha, both of whom are major donors to the faltering Egyptian economy—the Iranian Interests Section in Cairo is becoming increasingly more active and taking a far higher profile.

The Iranian encouragement to the Egyptian film industry is important. Cairo is the Hollywood of the Arab world. From Tangiers to the Tigris, Arabs watch Egyptian soap operas and full-length comedies. It is the Egyptian dominance of film that has led to the Egyptian dialect of Arabic becoming the most widely understood, perhaps even more so than the stodgy and formal “Modern Standard” dialect taught at most universities and in diplomatic parlors. Throughout the Mubarak years, Egyptian cinema has also been political. The Egyptian leadership used films like “Al-Irhabi” (The Terrorist) and “Al-Irhab wal Kebab” (Terrorism and Kebab) to satirize and ridicule Islamist groups. Having taken control, the Muslim Brotherhood sought its own revenge, trying and sentencing Adel Emam, the star of the films and Egypt’s best known comedian of the silver screen, to three months in prison for insulting Islam.

Taking Risks in Art and Politics

Shirin Neshat: An Artist — Iranian, Muslim and Female — Engages

Image courtesy of Scene in NY

by Aysegul Sert, NYTimes

Over the past two decades, Shirin Neshat has drawn on her personal experience of being an artist at home in the West with roots in Iran to illustrate her creed: “People should be free to choose what they want to do with their lives, what they want to wear, what religion they want to believe in; this is not something a government or a community should impose.”

Perched in her spacious studio in downtown New York, she added: “Globalization is happening, and the world is becoming more homogenous. We have to accept that we are not going to be all the same; we have to tolerate each other’s differences.” 

Born in 1957, Ms. Neshat left Iran before the fall of the shah, settling in New York after a short stay in California. “I will never belong to anywhere completely,” she insisted. “I will never fit in anywhere completely.” Although if Iran were to become democratic, she allowed later in the conversation, “then maybe one day I could go back.” 

Ms. Neshat has exhibited at the Tate in London and the Whitney in New York, and she earned a Silver Lion at the 2009 Venice Film Festival. She first gained attention in the mid-1990s, with “Women of Allah,” a series of photographs depicting women in veils, their skin covered in calligraphy of Islamic poetry. It was a meditation, she said, on the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran — on martyrdom, patriotism and religion. 

That revolution, she asserted, led to many Iranian women becoming “brainwashed and submissive.” In recent years, first with the opposition protests in Iran in 2009 and then with the Arab Spring, “we see a generation of women and men no longer divided but equal. They are educated, they are not ideological, their interest is pure and positive, which is change, democracy and freedom.” 

'Patience Stone' Star: In Iran, You Have a Choice - You Can Stay Alive, or You Can Die

by Jordan Riefe, The Wrap

“The existential question in the west is to be or no to be; in our country it’s to say or not to say, that is the question” says exiled Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, star of “The Patience Stone” -- a movie that sheds harsh light on the treatment of women in much of the Muslim world.

The result is a choice: “You can stay alive, or you can die,” Faranhi told the rapt audience at a screening at L.A.’s Landmark Theater, part of The Wrap’s Award Screening Series.

“Patience Stone” is part of a growing mini-genre of movies about the plight of Middle-Eastern women -- which also includes 2008’s “The Stoning of Soraya M.” and HBO’s “For Neda,” about Neda Agha Soltan, who became a symbol of protest when she was gunned down during the unrest surrounding Iran’s 2009 election.

In it, Farahani plays a young wife caring for her older, catatonic husband, wounded in a war that rages around them in a desolate Afghan city.

Her work becomes cathartic as she pours out her woes on his deaf ears, investing him with her sorrows as in the Afghan folk tale about a “patience” stone that soaks up tribulations until it shatters.

And tribulations she has, as Farahani paints a portrait of the sexual humiliation her character has endured in order to stay in the good graces of a rough and indifferent husband.

“It’s a woman that wants to be free, free of the chains of tradition, free of all these pressures they were putting on her,” Farahani told the moderator, The Wrap’s Awards Editor Steve Pond, about her character. “This was really important for me.”

Persian poetry power: Writers are bringing the spirit of Iran's verse to Britain

In Iran, verse moves crowds to tears.

by Christina Patterson, The Independent

Three years ago, in a garden full of cypress trees, I watched men and women kissing a marble tomb. Some of them were smiling. Some were wiping tears away. Nearly all of them where whispering words that sounded like a prayer, or song. But the words they were reciting, in this beautiful garden, in Shiraz, in Iran, weren't the words of the Koran. The words they were reciting were the words of a poet born in Shiraz 700 years ago called Hafez.

If you grow up in a country like England, where poetry is something most people study a bit at school and then forget, it's quite a shock to see poetry have so much power. You know, in theory, that it can. You've heard about the poets who filled football stadiums, in Russia, and Eastern Europe. You may even, like me, have met quite a few of them, and heard them read, and talk about, their poems. But it's still a shock to see men, with moustaches, and women, in chadors, fighting tears, as if the words they're reciting are written on their hearts.

So when I heard there was going to be a tour of Persian poets in this country, I wanted to find out more. It's nearly a decade since I ran an organisation promoting poets and poetry, and since I talked, publicly and often, about poetry's role, and power. I wanted, in an age when we get our entertainment at the click of a mouse, to be reminded that poetry can matter. To see if I still believed it could.

"I think," said the poet Sarah Maguire, at the launch of the Persian poets tour, at an art gallery in Bloomsbury last week, "that what you experienced in Iran you'd also experience in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Somalia or Sudan. Poetry in these countries is of overwhelming importance. Both Arabic and Persian culture have this very old, pre-Islamic tradition of written poetry. In Somali culture, it's oral. The most poetry-obsessed people in the world are Somalis." I knew about the Arabic and Persian obsession with poetry, but I didn't, I told her, know about the Somalis. But Somalia is as near to a failed state as you get, and only an Ayatollah could claim Iran was a successful model of anything much. So what, exactly, is gained?

Maguire was quiet for a moment. "I think," she said, "it's the people's pride. Somalis are the most traduced and stepped-on people on Earth, but they have this sense that their identity is carried by poetry. One of the things I wanted to do in setting up the Poetry Translation Centre was to try and get across to British people that there are these people here who may be at the bottom of the social pile, but have this extraordinary tradition of rich culture, and this dignifies them."

But isn't poetry a bit of a luxury when lots of very poor people are having their meagre incomes cut? Why should we pay to hear work by foreign poets we've never even heard of?