http://nadour.org/artwork en wellsdjohn@gmail.com Copyright 2013 2013-09-10T06:20:28+00:00 /collection/the-newer-middle-east /collection/the-newer-middle-east#When:06:20:28Z Borders in Africa and West Asia are amusingly straight only because they were crudely drawn on drawing-tables with a ruler and a fountain pen. Generally, I am interested when absurdity is or becomes the form.  Oraib Toukan   The New(er) Middle East consists of an interactive puzzle that engages the public to re-assemble a territorial map of the Middle East made from suspended plastic-magnet bits.  The bits are fragments of the region's actual nation states.  The work is a play on the so-called ‘New Middle East Map’ a plan that has been frantically distributed in various conspiracy theory circles and in some mainstream media since its inception in June 2006.  The map was originally suggested by retired United States Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, as his ‘proposition’ of ‘how a better Middle East would look.’  The puzzle was cut by overlapping his proposed map of the Middle East (Egypt to Pakistan) with the current, post World-War-II, map of the same area. Sculpture 2013-09-10T06:20:28+00:00 /collection/built-from-our-tallest-tales-2008 /collection/built-from-our-tallest-tales-2008#When:03:34:20Z “Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top reaching heaven. Let us make a name for ourselves, so that we do not get scattered all over the world.” - Gen. 11.4 Diana Al-Hadid evokes the Biblical myth of the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis, via the famous 1563 painting of this building as a utopian structure by Pieter Breughel the Elder. Opposing the verticality of an unstable edifice built skywards like an ascending spiral, as in the Flemish painter’s depiction, the monumental sculpture Built From Our Tallest Tales bears witness to the collapse of an architectural model. It falls and shatters to reveal the principles of its foundation. Built by repeating an octagonal geometrical motif, the wooden structure supports a metal armature in the style of Late Gothic tracery. The arches occupy different levels of the tower and underscore the structural precariousness of the edifice which, even in Breughel’s early vision, seemed to reveal man’s fallibility. The materials – concrete, metal, fibreglass – are those of a contemporary construction, and are doubled up by honeycomb panels in coloured resin. The mosaic formed by these beehive-like panels also brings to mind Islamic ornamentation. These panels structure the overall sculpture along an axonometric perspective which seems to materialise the different floors of the building. Thus human construction meets natural construction in an ideal building which bears witness to the unfailing communication needed to accomplish any collective undertaking, which here is imperilled by its own excess. At the origin of the Babel myth, the idea that men once formed a single whole speaking the same language before they were scattered over the face of the earth. The artist evokes this myth by achieving a synthesis between east and west, mixing cultural identities by linking the mythical construction in Babylon of a tower meant to reach heaven with the construction of medieval churches in Europe, all the way to the recent collapse of the World Trade Center in the United States. Vérane Pina Translated by Charles Penwarden  Sculpture 2013-09-10T03:34:20+00:00 /collection/culmination-hayv-kahraman /collection/culmination-hayv-kahraman#When:10:53:14Z "When oppression continues for generations, questioning of it all fades away." At the heart of Hayv Kahraman’s work lies the question of femininity as it is lived in the Middle East.  From personal experience heavily influenced by the dominant oppression which characterises the plight of women  in particular in the context of the Iraq war and which was to brand the artist’s childhood, her work invites us to encounter an intimate yet familiar universe which testifies to a state of submission that still exists today. In apparently banal scenes of domestic life, Hayv Kahraman’s female characters appear as gracious and elegant figures.  The melancholy expression in their large eyes and the fragile and elongated poise of their heads brings to mind the archetypal swan.  From an intentionally limited palette, the artist employs an oil-painting technique which involves laying down flat blocks of colour.  By allowing the materiality of the support to appear as an integral part of the piece, the wood shapes the delicate presence of these characters which seem to melt into the polished surface.  The repetition of an ornamental motif applied according to a subtle play of opposing colours between the clothing of the model and the background it is set against brings to mind a tapestry and reinforces the two dimensional appearance of subjects trapped by a flat surface.  For Hayv Kahraman, this representation in two dimensions signifies the duality between joy and agony, dream and nightmare.  A duality which is expressed by the characters’ gestures in Culmination through the strain of the forced body and the tension in the hair that is being pulled to keep it under control… On the subject of obedience and subordination, the artist questions the plight of the Eastern woman and declares "When oppression continues for generations, questioning of it all fades away. My focus is not on women who choose the domestic path willingly, but those who are forced into and then submit to this enslavement". Vérane Pina Translated by Theodora Taylor Painting 2013-04-29T10:53:14+00:00 /collection/rose /collection/rose#When:10:48:45Z "This ritual consisted in reading the coffee grounds that came with an earlier tradition, the Sunday lunch, established a few years before by Lara’s grandmother." Between accumulation and repetition, the work of Lara Baladi highlights a process that evokes the passing of time. Her project “Diary of The Future” (2008-2010) reveals the intimacy of a family’s story. The project started in 2007, when her father returned to Cairo to end his life where he was born. During the last six months of his existence, friends and family took turns at his bedside. The artist preserved the memory of these visits to the bedridden father. She formalized it through a ritual, particularly documented and filed using photography. This ritual consisted in reading the coffee grounds that came with an earlier tradition, the Sunday lunch, established a few years before by Lara’s grandmother. With the return of her father, the ritual gradually became an integral part of each visit. The artist thus gave visitors precise instructions suited to the Turkish coffee ritual. She meticulously consigned the cups of each guest and photographed each one of them, consequently testifying of their presence – as in Roland Barthes’ concept of “that was” that qualifies the prime function of photography. The central piece in this project, Rose, summons the individual and collective memory through the composition of a work whose geometrical shape, referring to the old fashioned model of a middle-class interior, recalls that of the lace table mats of our grandmothers. It subtly connects the Eastern arabesque and the popular iconography. The figure of the cherub, the representation of love or the image of death can all be seen there. Witness of the fugacity of each present moment in which the clear-sighted projection of the future already lurks, beyond the transcendence of death, this collage expresses the continuity of life. Vérane Pina Translated by Valérie Vivancos  Photography 2013-04-29T10:48:45+00:00 /collection/come-invest-in-us.-youll-strike-gold-the-exhibition /collection/come-invest-in-us.-youll-strike-gold-the-exhibition#When:05:29:40Z Come visit the exhibition, you'll see a selection of artworks from the Nadour Collection, new commissions and more!   The Hilger BrotKunsthalle in collaboration with the Nadour Collection present,  Come Invest in Us. You'll Strike Gold - The Exhibition 20 Artists from the MENA September 10th – November 3rd, 2012 Hilger BrotKunsthalle Absberggasse 27 1100 Vienna, Austria www.brotkunsthalle.com   “Come Invest in Us. You’ll Strike Gold,” refers to the words spoken by Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika after being elected for the first time in 1999. As much as this was an economic promise addressed to his country, it was also a seductive wink to foreign investors. Since then, entrepreneurs have indeed honored his invitation with the heavy support of various international governments. Based on artist Djamel Kokene’s eponymous work, Come Invest in Us. You’ll Strike Gold – The Exhibition scrutinizes the scope of Western, as well as Arab, economic and financial interests at stake in the MENA region, interests that the recent popular uprisings and concurrent international political gamesmanship and strategic maneuvering have only made more blatant. The project offers diverse perspectives on how artists fom the MENA region and its diaspora reflect on the contexts, consequences and aftermaths of the various investments, transactions and contracts that have been made with and within the region. By exploring such multifaceted issues as the wealth of the territory as a whole, oil and gas drilling, militarization and the armaments industry, the flow of people and goods, real estate, building and civil engineering works, and brands and luxury goods, the works shown in the exhibition shed light on the true motivations behind the many questionable business dealings – invariably money, control and power – and, in extension, on how this is affecting the social, political and cultural environment of the entire region, as well as its inhabitants. Ultimately, the exhibition also reveals how these financial and economic dealings are impacting aesthetics and forms in the Arab World and Iran. Curated by Diana Wiegersma. Artists featured in the exhibition/ Adel Abidin  Haig Aivazian  Kader Attia  Fayçal Baghriche  Taysir Batniji  Shahram Entekhabi  Ninar Esber  Karim Ghelloussi  Babak Golkar  Babak Kazemi  Bouchra Khalili  Majida Khattari  Djamel Kokene  Ahmed Mater  Leila Pazooki  Sara Rahbar  Baktash Sarang  Sama Al Shaibi  Oraib Toukan  Hajra Waheed    Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Installation, Video, Performance 2012-08-23T05:29:40+00:00 /collection/the-collection-of-modern-art /collection/the-collection-of-modern-art#When:11:15:31Z At once absent and present through the descriptions and the power of imagination (and memory), the Old Masters retrace the steps of artistic globalization. Within this geographical and semiotic movement, Leila Pazooki underlines the power of interpretation of each commentary displayed beside the artworks. In her essay The Aesthetics of Silence, Susan Sontag considers some fertile contradictions in artistic theory. For her, it is from what she calls Silence that since the modern period has been, where a work of art draws its greatest power. This Silence that she relates in a wide sense to the idea of reduction, of withdrawal and effacement but also to misunderstanding and vacuity, relates particularly to the act of removing objects (and artworks) from sight. For the author, the most ambitious, edifying and pure art is found in the opposite to unduly noisy gestures: the art of the unheard melodies.   Or unseen one might add in the case of the Iranian artist Leila Pazooki. L'Origine du Monde and Revolt in Cairo are part of a much wider project by the artist, The Collection of Modern Art (2011) in which Leila Pazooki questions ideas relating to copyright, to the art market and its history, to reference and citation.  In the two works currently shown by the Nadour collection, the artist makes a direct reference to the paintings The revolt of Cairo, 21st October 1798 by Anne Louis Girodet de Roucy Trioson (1810) and L'Origine du Monde by Gustave Courbet (1866).  Starting from standard reproductions of these two famous paintings, Leila Pazooki has made an unusual request to the copy painters of Dafen, a Chinese village known for its skill in artistic reproduction.  The artist has asked them to give meaning to the images they see before them.  From copyists they become interpreters.  Their commentaries have been written up, printed and displayed in frames.  Each interpreter/copyist is cited.  Next to these texts, black expanses corresponding to the template of the original works are placed against the walls. At once absent and present through the descriptions and the power of imagination (and memory), the Old Masters retrace the steps of artistic globalization.  Within this geographical and semiotic movement, Leila Pazooki underlines the power of interpretation of each commentary displayed beside the artworks. Translated by Theodora Taylor. Painting, Installation 2012-05-29T11:15:31+00:00 /collection/moments-of-glory /collection/moments-of-glory#When:09:41:30Z Is this laziness on the part of the critic unable to grasp an artwork outside of his own value system? Does it show the stigmas created by the globalization of the art world from a Western point of view? Moments of Glory is an installation which revives one of the most commonly accepted forms in contemporary art, neon, the mere use of which seems to immediately qualify any production as a work of art.  If we compare it to Bruce Nauman’s original aim when he created his first neon back in 1967 (1), to make something that would not appear to be art, the formula might raise a smile, since the medium has become so widespread as to add the aesthetic equation “neon equals art”. Beyond merely a form that may question by means of cliché the notion of a work of art, Leila Pazooki’s multi-coloured tube writing reveals the parallels that are too easily drawn between some great names in Western art history and other artists from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Might it then be possible to discover an Iranian Jeff Koons, an Indian Damien Hirst, a Dali from Bali, or even a Renoir from South Africa?  There are so many quotes from the press that reveal a certain reluctance to consider every artistic production independently, without an accompanying reference to some supposed Western counterpart. Is this laziness on the part of the critic unable to grasp an artwork outside of his own value system? Is it the desire to assert the supremacy of the Western art scene over the rest of the world? Or does it show the stigmas created by the globalization of the art world from a Western point of view? Leila Pazooki explores the complexity of aesthetic relationships defined according to their geographical context between coming together, subsidence and separation. Vérane Pina Translated by Theodora Taylor (1) Bruce Nauman, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (1967) Sculpture, Installation 2012-05-02T09:41:30+00:00 /collection/leila-pazooki-women-eating /collection/leila-pazooki-women-eating#When:08:55:50Z On the border between licit and illicit images, "Women Eating" reveals the transgressive creativity of Iranian cinema, where the imposed framework has become the catalyst for a new kind of expression… Following on from the project The Aesthetics of Censorship begun in 2009, Leila Pazooki has turned her attention to Iranian cinema, which has been subjected to strict state-imposed censorship since the revolution of 1979. With the creation of a Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance whose purpose is to Islamize all types of art and artistic activity, the state wishes to maintain a national production by driving forward a public policy that focuses on films that are “pure and stripped of any vulgarity”[1]. Therefore Iranian cinema is restricted to conforming to a particular “Islamic moral code”, from the writing of the screenplay to the making, production and even the distribution of a film. No more representations of women in clothes that could reveal any part of their bodies, with the exception of the face and hands. No more physical contact between men and women, however it might be portrayed. As a result, the dictates of censorship have encouraged the emergence of a new wave in cinema, collectively known as “Islamic Hollywood”. If for Hollywood, sex, eroticism and violence are the basic ingredients in every cinema production, “Islamic Hollywood” has succeeded in finding its own recipes in order to get past the restrictions imposed by censorship whilst continuing to entertain the public. So for her video Women Eating (2010) Leila Pazooki has selected extracts of Farsi films showing women engaged in the seemingly banal act of the consumption of food on screen. Since any explicitly erotic element is no longer permissible, this comes through in the symbolic depiction of a woman who may bring a simple food – solid or liquid- to her mouth, thereby evoking the sexual act itself. Paradoxically, by imposing the wearing of a headscarf this far into the private sphere on screen, the censorship that restricts female representation has engendered a much greater emphasis on the expressiveness of the gaze and the eroticizing of the mouth, made deliberately dramatic in the close-up frames. On the border between licit and illicit images, Women Eating reveals the transgressive creativity of Iranian cinema, able to transcend moral, religious and ideological structures, where the imposed framework has become the catalyst for a new kind of expression… Vérane Pina Translated by Theodora Taylor. [1] Agnès Devictor “A public policy for cinema: the case of the Iranian Islamic Republic” in Politix, vol.16, no. 61, 2003, p.151-178 Video 2012-04-24T08:55:50+00:00 /collection/the-aesthetic-of-censorship /collection/the-aesthetic-of-censorship#When:17:33:37Z Can there be an aesthetic value in an iconoclastic intervention? Leila Pazooki’s take on this project as a combination of the artistic and the sociological is revealed by its contradictory title. Can there be an aesthetic value in an iconoclastic intervention? What happens to beauty when the logic behind censorship is to conceal and detract, as historically authority has used it to prevent freedom of thought and creativity? Think of Trotsky, erased from the official photos of the Stalinist regime or of Michelangelo’s nudes in the Sistine Chapel, covered over until the 1980’s. Unlike a complete ban, the aim of a retouch is to soften the taboo image, making it acceptable to be viewed. Those creators of the images on display have been driven by this ambiguous intention. The piece consists of a number of reproductions of works of Western art: extracts from books from the library of the University of Fine Art in Tehran, where Leila Pazooki studied painting. It was between 2004 and 2008 during various trips to her native town that she secretly collected the pictures, amongst them Nymphs of the Spring by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Edouard Manet’s Olympia and Ingres’ Violin by Man Ray. The censorship is sometimes brutal here, or awkward where the flat translucent areas of coloured gouache render the “embarrassing” elements of the artwork more obvious and desirable. Whether it is applied to images from journalism or art, censorship provides a marker for a society’s values, aspirations and taboos. In the sound piece that accompanies the photographs Leila Pazooki gives a voice to an authorized censor, revealing the ideological motivation behind the piece but also the aesthetic choices and techniques that guide these subjective “reworkings”. And the displacement of these found images effectively puts their status into question, challenging museum conventions and the concept of originality in art. Removed from their political and religious context, these documents become iconic when the artist mounts them in antique gold frames [1]. It is only then, that these images that have been reproduced a thousand times, reveal their unique and singular craftsmanship, as if this gesture was no longer destructive but rather creative. Irène Burkel Translated by Theodora Taylor. [1] In 1953 Robert Rauschenberg made a similarly radical gesture in his Erased de Kooning Drawing in which he erased a drawing by Willem de Kooning. To accompany this appropriation/homage, Rauschenberg inscribed the title of the work by hand on a sheet of paper, which he mounted in a gold frame. Installation 2012-03-25T17:33:37+00:00 /collection/reza-aramesh-action-103 /collection/reza-aramesh-action-103#When:14:52:51Z Vulnerable and abandoned, as if summoned by the after-life, the figure drawn into this posture and this face carries a religious dimension. Reza Aramesh’s art is sourced from the images of conflict, war and hostage taking feature daily in the news. Hostilities, passions and dramas so powerfully expressed in the media have inspired the Iranian artist to create a corpus of gestures and poses that recur as a motif in an oeuvre that is alternately photographic and sculptural. By photographing live tableaux or by wooden sculpture, Reza Aramesh revives images gathered from the world’s press to produce what he calls “Actions”. The painted wooden sculpture Action 103 is based on the arrest of an Iraqi civilian in February 2006 by his country’s special police force. Face to the wall, the young man holds his arms above his head in an ambiguous pose, perhaps from fear as much as resignation. Vulnerable and abandoned, as if summoned by the after-life, the figure drawn into this posture and this face carries a religious dimension. Inspired by the iconography of the 17th Century, the golden age of Spanish statuary and its representations of saints and martyrs, the artist isolates his subject from all exterior elements in order to concentrate the effect. So no weapons, or any other signs bear witness to the violence of the scene. From this “decontextualisation” an archetypal figure has been created, frozen into a pose that seems timeless. Only one or two physical clues: his clothes, his haircut, allow any rapid understanding of the circumstances portrayed. Cut from a single block of wood with traditional tools and materials, this sculpture forms part of a series produced in Italy in a long-established workshop that specializes in church statuary. The hyper-realistic figure is raised slightly above ground on a plinth inlaid with marquetry, specially made in the United Kingdom, its complex geometric pattern evoking the traditional ornamental floors of Islamic tradition. Translated by Theodora Taylor. Sculpture 2012-02-28T14:52:51+00:00