[spectre] re: art from islamic countries at MoMart

[Geert Lovink]

> http://www.counterpunch.org/farhat03252006.html

MoMA's Without Boundary Exhibit

Contemporary "Islamic" Art in Context

By MAYMANAH FARHAT

In the current wave of heightened interest in Islam and the Middle 
East, the Museum of Modern Art in New York presents Without Boundary: 
Seventeen Ways of Looking.

The exhibition opened February 26, 2006. The work of fifteen artists 
born in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia is featured in an 
attempt to shed light on the classification, production and discourse 
of contemporary "Islamic" art. The artists of Without Boundary live and 
work in Europe or the United States but remain connected to their 
native countries in varying degrees.

According to the exhibition's curator, Fereshteh Daftari, in a catalog 
essay titled "Islamic or Not," "The application of a term without clear 
definition to artists exhibiting in the global mainstream needs closer 
scrutiny." She articulates that the term "Islamic" is, "loaded with 
political and religious subtexts, and yet it has been applied to 
artists who would not necessarily use it to describe their own work, 
who do not live permanently in Islamic areas, and who produce art for 
European and American art spaces in which Muslim visitors are only a 
fraction of their audience."

Daftari attempts to test the validity of the term "Islamic" and the 
shortcomings of such classification by exhibiting and examining the 
work of artists considered at the forefront of contemporary art. The 
exhibition features the work of Jananne Al-Ani, Ghada Amer, Kutlug 
Ataman, the Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Mona Hatoum, Shirazeh Houshiary, 
Pip Horne, Emily Jacir, Y.Z. Kami, Rachid Koraïchi, Shirin Neshat, 
Marjane Satrapi, Shirana Shahbazi, and Raqib Shaw and Shahzia Sikander. 
In addition, the works of American artists Bill Viola and Mike Kelley 
are included to "further provoke" the question, what is contemporary 
Islamic art?

The exhibition is divided into three subtopics through which Daftari 
aims to address the definition of contemporary Islamic art. She does so 
through the artistic examinations of formal attributes, questions of 
identity, and explorations of faith. Such attributes, Daftari argues, 
are recognized by the West as characteristically "Islamic."

Daftari outlines the artistic parallels that connect the seventeen 
artists as being based on a tie, "not in ethnicity or religion, but in 
their way of revising, subverting, and challenging the aesthetic 
traditions they deal with and of bringing preconceived notions of 
cultural homogeneity to ruin." She is correct in her assessment of the 
term and current art historical discourse and while the work of Without 
Boundary does revise and challenge conceptions of "Islamic" aesthetic 
traditions, the exhibition as a whole fails to bring preconceived 
notions of cultural homogeneity to ruin.

Art in all societies is not produced under isolated circumstances. A 
more acute observation revels that art is in fact often a direct 
reflection of society. This connection is highly visible in the works 
of Without Boundary, which possess underlying themes of social 
commentary. The society which the artists comment on is the "Islamic" 
world. This aspect of the exhibition is perplexing in the sense that 
the artists are presented as living and working in the West and 
impacting Western culture and society. Daftari aims to expose the 
drawbacks of classifying these artists and their work under the one 
dimensional term "Islamic," yet through the exhibition the artists are 
only allotted the opportunity to comment on "Islamic" society. If the 
artists of Without Boundary do in fact represent an emerging trend in 
the mainstream Western art scene where they are no longer seen as 
"other" and their ideas are able to move freely across national, 
cultural and societal borders, then why aren't they provided the forum 
to comment on this society in which they live?

In order to deconstruct the Western classification of contemporary 
"Islamic" art, as Daftari first suggested, one must begin by answering 
several questions regarding issues that affect the West and its 
subsequent shaping of the mainstream art world and art history. What 
definitions characterize the term "Islamic" when it is used by 
academia, institutions and galleries of the mainstream art world? How 
have such definitions influenced the type of reception contemporary 
"Islamic" artists receive? As social agents of culture, how do the 
actions of academia, institutions and galleries reflect Western 
conceptions of the "Islamic" world and the greater political and 
economic policies of the West towards "Islamic" nations?

Such questions remain unaddressed by Without Boundary. Instead, the 
work in the exhibition is positioned within an explicit agenda, one 
determined by Western-centric tendencies and American political 
rhetoric. Unable to discard the influence of such framework, Without 
Boundary and the discourse accompanying it, provide little evidence of 
having transcended preconceived notions of "Islamic" cultural 
homogeneity.

Despite the fact that Daftari initially outlines in the catalog essay 
the need for reexamination of the term "Islamic," the most significant 
and obvious pitfall of the exhibition is the fact that the origins of 
prevailing preconceived notions are left unexplored. She deliberately 
avoids addressing American and European influence and activity in the 
Middle East and Central Asia over the past century and the direct link 
between such sociopolitical issues and the definition of the term.

In regards to immediate history, Bush's "War on Terror," the violent 
occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the subsequent political and 
economic consequences that have affected several "Islamic" nations and 
their expatriates are completely ignored. Such consequences are 
directly tied to current and past perceptions of the "Islamic" world by 
academia and the American public. In spite of this context, Without 
Boundary presents its audience with an exhibition that refuses to 
acknowledge that its conception reflects an increasing interest in the 
Middle East and Islam that is tied to American military and economic 
dominance.

The discourse surrounding the exhibition not only avoids these 
realities but actually propagates the exact notions of the "Islamic" 
world Daftari initially set out to combat.

Two prime examples of this discourse are a catalog essay, "Another 
Country" written by Homi Bhabha, and the editorial, "Gained in 
Translation" written by Glenn D. Lowry, the director of the Museum of 
Modern Art, for ARTnews Online.

Although Lowry and Bhabha intended to place the work of Without 
Boundary within discussions of profound contemporary visual art, broad 
generalizations are made that obscure fact and reality, subsequently 
supporting the idea that the "East" or "Islamic" world is characterized 
by nothing more than dictatorships, backwardness, religious 
conservatism and homogeneity. Through such characterization, the 
"multidimensional" nature of the art work in Without Boundary is then 
attributed to the mere fact that the artists have lived and worked in 
the United States and Europe, insinuating notions of Western cultural, 
academic, political and economic supremacy.

These notions work to maintain art of the "Islamic" world as secondary 
to its Western counterpart. In "Gained in Translation" Lowry includes a 
discussion of the individual pedigrees of each artist, emphasizing that 
the artists of Without Boundary are "part of a sophisticated and 
growing population of émigrés from the Islamic world who live in the 
West." He affirms that they are, "well educated and come from mostly 
solidly middle- or upper-class families." What are the intentions of 
his discussion of class and education? Must the director of MOMA 
justify exhibiting "Islamic" artists through such standards? He then 
enunciates that the artists discussed "form a counterpoint to the 
disenfranchised, often poorly educated, and marginalized Muslims living 
in France, Germany, and England." By doing so, he assures readers that 
MOMA and the mainstream art world are not straying from bourgeois 
qualifications that equate "sophistication" and intelligence with high 
economic standing.

Lowry's statements beg several questions. Why are there 
disenfranchised, poorly educated, and marginalized Muslims in France, 
Germany and England? What historical and political events have taken 
place affecting such a large demographic that is scattered from its 
native countries? To have a counterpoint to such populations is to 
imply an imbalance in educational and economic standing. Who or what is 
responsible for such imbalance?

Lowry leaves these statements unqualified. Instead, September 11th is 
evoked to detract from dealing with these pertinent issues, despite the 
fact that they are instrumental in how "Islamic" cultures and 
communities are perceived. Lowry writes, "the problem of defining 
oneself in this world is extremely difficult, especially in the wake of 
the terrorist attacks first in New York City and Washington, D.C., and 
later in Madrid and London, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq." 
Lowry's evocation parallels the distraction tactics of the American 
media via the condemnation of "Islam." Fueled by the "War on Terror," 
the entire "Islamic" world is held accountable for recent attacks on 
Western targets, which then justifies American military action in the 
Middle East and Central Asia.

Lowry continues his analysis through the archetypical Orientalist lens 
that uses broad generalizations to distinguish the "Islamic" world as 
completely "other" in contrast to the West; "given the conservative 
nature of many Islamic countries-with their restrictive policies 
concerning freedom of expression, political activism, nudity, sex, 
religious debate, and homosexuality, among other social and cultural 
issues-they offer difficult, even impossible environments for artists 
who make challenging artIt is largely for this reason that all of the 
artists under discussion live and practice primarily outside their 
countries of birth." Ironically, the "restrictive policies" Lowry 
attributes as being specifically "Islamic" are the exact topics in 
question in the continuing battle concerning American civil liberties. 
No mention is made of the fact that artists in America are living and 
working under the Bush administration's deliberate political attack on 
freedom of expression, political activism, and freedom of sexuality.

With such statements, Lowry places Western societies, religions and 
governments as superior to "Islamic" counterparts. He even goes as far 
to state that some Muslims, "acknowledge the democratic systems of the 
West but struggle to balance that appreciation against a religion that 
they feel leaves little room for liberal values." What are the "liberal 
values" Lowry is referring to? Are they the exact American "liberal 
values" currently in question in the U.S.?

Like Lowry, Bhabha's analysis of the exhibition is also determined by 
prevailing notions. He begins his catalog essay by affirming that a 
discussion of Islam today invokes "the age of terror," what he 
describes as, "the calling up of the Abu Ghraib album, the televised 
beheading of an American businessman, and many other entries in the 
musee macabre of war and terror." With such a statement, the "Islamic" 
world is portrayed as the perpetrator of mass violence that has made 
its way into the global psyche. The events associated with current 
invocations of Islam are described as though they occurred in isolated 
circumstances; "war and terror" are not contextualized in the greater 
scheme of contemporary history.

The "musee macabre of war and terror" images Bhabha speaks of are 
directly tied to the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, yet 
there is no discussion of this. Bhabha stresses that the artists of the 
exhibition, "offer us a way out of the prison house of the culture of 
torture and 'security'." One can argue that without discussion or 
exploration of the origins and affiliations of such preconceived 
notions of "Islam today" the work showcased in Without Boundary offers 
not a way out for viewers but an escape from the reality of American 
presence in the "Islamic" world. In order to shed what Bhabha calls 
"the prison house of the culture of torture and 'security'," viewers 
must be engaged within a discussion of the current state of affairs we 
face in the polarized "West vs. East" global society, which is directly 
responsible for such a "prison house."

Bhabha's analysis of Mona Hatoum's Keffieh, 1993-1999, continues to 
support Western predominant notions of Middle Eastern and "Islamic" 
cultures. "The keffieh--the cotton headscarf worn by Middle Eastern 
men--has developed a macho aura in the Palestine culture of political 
resistance." He goes on to state, "the macho style is an externalized 
response to the powers of oppression and domination; but it is also a 
form of domination turned inward, within the community, poised against 
the presence and participation of women, whose voices are repressed or 
sublimated in the cause of the struggle." Bhabha's statement completely 
obscures the reality of the Palestinian struggle in which women are 
active, if not central, participants of the self-determined political 
movement of their people. Additionally, within Palestinian visual art, 
literature, and culture in general, the female figure often lends way 
to allegorical representations of homeland, equating women as the most 
revered embodiment of the struggle.

To associate the keffieh with oppression and male dominance is to 
dispel the need for an examination of the larger sociopolitical 
picture. Bhabha's analysis steers the discussion of the violation of an 
entire people towards an internal issue of gender. Such an analysis is 
similar to examples of Western discourse which focus on the oppression 
of women in the Middle East and the "Islamic" world, while ignoring the 
need for an examination of the broader political and economic 
oppression that has resulted from the actions of regional, American and 
European governments.

Without Boundary and the discourse surrounding the exhibition 
demonstrate the desperate need for an extensive and critical 
examination of the mainstream art world. Art historical definitions 
used by academia, institutions and galleries remain imbedded in the 
cultural and social hierarchies that have resulted from the colonial 
and imperial geopolitical policies and activities of Western nations in 
Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Pacific Islands. 
These policies have been primary factors in the denigrated 
classification, documentation and representation of art and visual 
culture created by non-Western populations. The political, theological, 
ethnic and class biases of institutionalized art activity today must be 
held accountable for defining non-Western cultures as inferior.

Maymanah Farhat writes about Modern and Contemporary Arab art for 
ArtEast. She can be contacted at sccheeto at yahoo.com