Systems and Patterns The International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC), Ljubljana, Slovenia
28 September–18 November 2012 Curator: Nevenka Šivavec Exhibiting artists: Nazgol Ansarinia, Jananne Al-Ani, Taysir Batniji, Hala Elkoussy, Mounir Fatmi, Abdulnasser Gharem, Mona Hatoum, Susan Hefuna, Rachid Koraïchi, Moataz Nasr, Walid Siti, Hassan Sharif, Slavs and Tatars. The exhibition Systems and Patterns presents contemporary art from the Middle East. It offers a selection of artists who come primarily from the context of Islamic culture and who put into question today’s global artistic universalism, which, while it may take cultural differences and national identities into account within the global art system, at the same time also neutralizes them. The exhibition overturns our inherited and media-fostered stereotypes about Islamic society and culture by giving us insight into contemporary urban Arabic and Iranian cultures and presents artists who convey political messages in restrained and non-spectacular ways. The exhibition connects present-day Middle Eastern art with research on the history of the Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana. As a museum that specializes in the art of printing and printmaking, the International Centre of Graphic Arts is also the producer of the biennial. Founded in 1955, at a time when the former Yugoslavia occupied a unique geopolitical position, the Ljubljana biennial quickly established itself as an event that, very early on, transcended the Eurocentric perspective by showing art production from the so-called Third World, and especially from the non-aligned countries – including artists from the Middle East. From its beginning and almost to the end of the 1990s, the biennial was committed to the universalist modernist paradigm. With the changes in the social and political situation, this paradigm has transformed itself into globalization and discursive art practices, but the question of artistic universalism remains pertinent even today. The heterogeneous artworks presented in Systems and Patterns encompass a broad variety of artistic languages, from contemporary documentarism to traditionalism. The “systems” here are both systems of representation and individual artistic systems. The “patterns” are ornaments, repetitive motifs, and basic visual elements, which form the building blocks of seriality, repetition, symmetry, and geometricism. Behind the repetition of decorative forms, we find messages that underscore the complexity of the current social and economic existence. Resisting the stereotypical gaze on the art of the Middle East, the exhibition presents works that in their formal visual elements consistently transcend the political narrative. The exhibition is accompanied by a lively interdisciplinary programme (for details, go to http://www.mglc-lj.si) and a bilingual (Slovene and English) catalogue with the essays by the Nevenka Šivavec and Nat Muller. For more information and images, contact Lili Šturm: lili.st...@mglc-lj.si Tel. + 386 (0)1 2413 818 International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC) Tivoli Mansion Pod turnom 3 1000 Ljubljana Slovenia www.mglc-lj.si Opening: Friday, 28 September 2012, at 7 pm. Viewing hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 10 am.–6 pm., closed on Mondays -- Other Info: Furtherfield - A living, breathing, thriving network http://www.furtherfield.org - for art, technology and social change since 1997 Also - Furtherfield Gallery & Social Space: http://www.furtherfield.org/gallery About Furtherfield: http://www.furtherfield.org/content/about Netbehaviour - Networked Artists List Community. http://www.netbehaviour.org http://identi.ca/furtherfield http://twitter.com/furtherfield _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
