ART CITIES:N.York-But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise
“But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa” is the third exhibition of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, a multiyear collaboration that charts creative activity and contemporary art in three geographic regions: South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Archive
The exhibition underscores an important central question: How is the designation “Middle East” defined and understood both regionally and internationally? The exhibition “But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise” considers the impact of historical colonization and present-day globalization, and examines how the region is marked by its intertwined histories and its social, religious, cultural, and creative traditions. The exhibition examines the region from a visual perspective, looking at the geopolitics of the Middle East and North Africa through the work of selected artists. The exhibition includes installation, painting, photography, sculpture, video, and work on paper, and examines a range of topics emerging curatorial investigations pertaining to themes of origin, migration, the expression of ideology through architecture, and the excavation of buried meaning. Presenting a selection of newly acquired works for the Guggenheim’s permanent collection, the exhibition features installations, photographs, sculptures, videos, and works on paper from: Abbas Akhavan, Kader Attia, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Ali Cherri, Ori Gersht, Mariam Ghani, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Rokni Haerizadeh, Susan Hefuna, Iman Issa, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Hassan Khan, Mohammed Kazem, Ahmed Mater, Zineb Sedira and Ala Younis. The assembled works investigate narratives of origin, ideologies of architecture, and the politics of migration throughout the Middle East and North Africa, as embodied by “But a storm is blowing from paradise” (2014) work by Rokni Haerizadeh that lends the exhibition its title. Sourced from news media, this series of works on paper examines the viral capacity of digital communications, articulated through the visual entanglement of politics and fable. Installed on two levels of the museum, the exhibition features a selection of works, many of them installations of large or variable scale, in a range of mediums and formats including painting, photography, sculpture, video, and work on paper. Abbas Akhavan’s “Study for a Monument” (2013–15), which is comprised of intricate cast bronze flora specimens arranged on domestic cotton sheets and resembling a funerary display, occupies the floor by windows that overlook Central Park. Other works represent striking interventions into the museum’s galleries. These include Kader Attia’s “Untitled (Ghardaïa)” (2009), a reincarnation in couscous of the Algerian city from the ancient Mzab region that inspired influential French architect Le Corbusier. Nadia Kaabi-Linke’s monumental “Flying Carpets” (2011), a suspended stainless steel grid that casts a matrix of geometric shadows, is modeled after a central bridge in Venice where undocumented migrant street vendors of mainly African, Arab, and South Asian origin sell counterfeit goods on rugs to tourists.
Info: Curator: Sara Raza, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Aveue, New York, Duration: 29/4-5/10/16, Mon-Wed, Fri & Sun 10:00-17:45, Sat 10:00-19:45, www.guggenheim.org
