Poetry to Politics: Jameel Art Prize

on until 28 Nov. 2021

I hadn’t expected to be touched…

The ambient darkness surrounding the works on display helps one to visually zoom in, to focus on each work of art. A large text hovering up above each piece quotes each artist so the viewer gets a good idea of the subject of each artwork. What was even more helpful in understanding the story, the pain of each of the eight shortlisted artists is the background video interviewing them.

The aim of the Jameel Art Prize is to explore the relationship between contemporary practice and tradition from the Middle East and India. To illustrate,I will discuss one work where a single letter of the Arabic/Persian alphabet is the origin of so much emotion, incarnated in a powerful work of art. I was taken aback in a great way by Golnar Adili’s work, whose father had to live far in exile while the artist grew up in Iran. She went through letters of his, written to his lover, and studied the idiosynchracies of his cursive handwriting. Her mind’s eye zoomed in on a specific letter in the alphabet, the artist then reproduced that same letter each time it appeared slightly differently. The copied letters were incarnated in 3D, and repeatedly juxtaposed next to one another in a visual feast not unlike the strings of a harp.

The artist’s longing for an absent father is felt in the air.

In a jist, the show is successful in conveying the poignancy of these 8 artists’ stories, in reflecting what a heavy weight artists from this beautiful but tormented region carry in their heart. The curation was so well done that the artists come across as almost having worked together, singing in harmony in a visual chorus about what they care most about.

a still from Farah Fayyad’s video on a moment in her Lebanese life