Which Way is Up???

In 1154 Muhammad al-Idrisi created for King Roger II of Sicily the "Upside Down World Map," which today is known as the Tabula Rogeriana. al-Idrisi was a famous Islamic explorer and cartographer that pieced the map together from his personal knowledge and information from other travelers. The result was one of the most advanced and accurate maps for more than 300 years!

S.P. Scott, in his 1904 tome, The History of the Moorish Empire in Europe, wrote:

"The noble and elevating pursuits of science were not neglected under the Moors of Sicily and their intelligent and progressive conquerors, the Norman princes. Geography, astronomy, chemistry, and medicine were studied with diligence and success. al-Idrisi, whose decent from the royal dynasty of the Fez has been obscured by the eminent reputation he attained as a geographer and a philosopher, made for Roger II a planisphere which represented at once the surface of the earth and the positions of the heavenly bodies. From the minarets of Palermo, the Arab astronomer observed the motions of the planets, the periodical recurrence of eclipses, the relative positions and general distribution of the stars in space, by the aid of instruments invented on the Guadalquivir and the Tigris, and of tables computed on the plains of Babylon centuries before the Christian era. The Moslem thus consecrated to the prosecution of scientific research the towers of his most sacred temples, at a time when from the cathedrals of Europe doctrines were promulgated which menaced, with the severest penalties that ecclesiatical malignity could devise, every occupation which in any way contributed to the emancipation of reason or the intellectual progress of humanity [...]"

"The great work of al-Idrisi was compiled under the auspices of Roger II. The Arab was peculiarly fitted for the treatment of the comprehensive science of physical and descriptive geography. His information had been largely obtained by practical experience. He had served in campaigns conducted on the frontiers of civilization; in the capacity of a merchant he had traversed with the plodding caravan vast regions diversified with illimitable plains, lofty mountains, noble rivers; as a pilgrim he had performed his devotions at the cradle of the Moslem faith; in the tirels pursuit of learning he had prosecuted his researches over strange countries and among strange peoples; his features and his costume were familiar to the residents of the great European and Asiatic capitals; his peregrinations had extended from the Douro to the Indus, from the shores of the Baltic to the sources of the Nile. Thus endowed with especial qualifications, the Arab geographer was equally at home, whether recounting to a delighted audience the experiences of an extended journey or explaining to an assemblage of students the physical features of the earth and the relative distribution of land and water as depicted on the surface of a terrestrial globe. The work of al-Idrisi is an imperishable monument to the intelligence, the industry, the criticism, of the compiler, whose studies were confirmed in many instances by personal observation, and hte practical value of whose undertaking was established by his scientific atainments as well as by the copious erudition of the illustrious monarch by whose command it originated and was brought to a successful termination." (Pp. 68 - 72)

To read more from this book click here.
To see an online exhibition from the  Bibliothèque nationale de France dedicated to Muhammad al-Idrisi (in French) click here.

105,000 Dots for Iraq, and Counting

Check out the EFA for more information on this exhibit, and don't forget to watch the livefeed on March 8th!

March 4, 2010, 10:08 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/15000-dots-for-iraq-and-counting/
By ALI ADEEB
Warzer Jaff Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi-American artist, as his back was being tattooed. On Monday, Mr. Bilal will remove his shirt and subject his back to 24 hours of nonstop tattooing.
Updated, 3:08 p.m. | An earlier version of this post misstated the number of ink dots that will represent Iraqi casualties. It is 100,000, not 10,000, for a total of 105,000 dots. The start time of the performance was also misstated — it is 8 p.m., not 8 a.m.

In the annals of performance art, this may be one of the more masochistic acts. On March 8, Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi-American artist, will remove his shirt and subject his back to 24 hours of nonstop tattooing.

The plan calls for a tattoo artist to burn 105,000 dots into his skin in the shape of Iraq. Five thousand will be done with red ink, to represent American casualties in the Iraq War. The remainder, representing unidentified and forgotten Iraqi victims, will be done with ink that is visible only under ultraviolet light.

The performance, called “… and Counting,” has an ambitious philanthropic goal: Mr. Bilal hopes to raise $1 per dot in support of Rally For Iraq, a new nonprofit that plans to bring Iraqi orphans to the United States as students.

“This is the least I can do to try to help my country and my people. “ said Mr. Bilal, assistant arts professor teaching photography and imaging at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. “The pain that I will be going through is nothing compared to the suffering of my people. I am afraid that the American public is forgetting about them, and I want to bring attention to the situation in Iraq.”

Mr. Bilal, who left Iraq after the Gulf War in 1991 and has lived in the United States since 1992, has been an outspoken opponent of the Iraq War since it began in 2003.

His antipathy deepened in 2004 when an American missile attack at a checkpoint killed his brother.

The tattoo project is not the first time he has merged his politics and art. In 2007, in a performance titled “Shoot an Iraqi,” he spent a month living in a room of a Chicago art gallery and being shot at by a paintball gun. The gun was connected to an Internet site through which viewers could command the trigger. He turned the event into a book, “Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun.” That year, Mr. Bilal was named the artist of the year by The Chicago Tribune.

The following year, in a project called “Dog or Iraqi,” he allowed the audience to decide whether he or a dog should be subjected to the torture technique called waterboarding, in which water is poured over a person’s face and into his mouth and nose, causing a drowning sensation. He was chosen over the dog and was waterboarded.

He said he believed that artists should be more than educators; they should be provocateurs.

“The best we can hope for is to shock the audience and create engagement,” Mr. Bilal said. “It is not always about education all the time, but agitation also.”

“… And Counting” is the first fund-raising event for Rally for Iraq, which was founded by a group of Iraqi-Americans. The organization intends to raise enough money to support an initial group of five students.

“We believe that educating the new generation will be the best way to help our country build its future,” said Hussein Al-Baya, one of the organization’s co-directors.

Mr. Bilal’s performance will begin at 8 p.m. March 8 at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and will be streamed on the foundation’s Web site using two cameras, one showing Mr. Bilal’s back and the other showing the audience. Throughout the event, a litany of names of people killed in the war will be read aloud. Mr. Bilal is to fly to San Francisco the day after the performance to exhibit his artwork.

In preparation for the event, he has already inked the names of 16 Iraqi cities on his back.

Mr. Bilal visited his family in Iraq last July. He felt that he needed to get to know his sisters and brothers again. The war, he said, had stolen their hope.

“Some people say that when you cross the ocean it doesn’t matter anymore, but we Iraqis are always nostalgic,” he said. “It would be a great achievement if my work can help bring some hope to Iraqis for a better future.”

Ali Adeeb is a former intern and Baghdad newsroom manager for The New York Times. Kirk Semple contributed reporting.

Yale Press Bans Images of Muhammad in New Book

August 13, 2009
By PATRICIA COHEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/books/13book.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=yale%20university%20press,%20danish%20islam&st=cse

It’s not all that surprising that Yale University Press would be wary of reprinting notoriously controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a forthcoming book. After all, when the 12 caricatures were first published by a Danish newspaper a few years ago and reprinted by other European publications, Muslims all over the world angrily protested, calling the images — which included one in which Muhammad wore a turban in the shape of a bomb — blasphemous. In the Middle East and Africa some rioted, burning and vandalizing embassies; others demanded a boycott of Danish goods; a few nations recalled their ambassadors from Denmark. In the end at least 200 people were killed.

So Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005. What’s more, they suggested that the Yale press also refrain from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically, a drawing for a children’s book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the 19th-century artist Gustave Doré of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante’s “Inferno” that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dalí.

The book’s author, Jytte Klausen, a Danish-born professor of politics at Brandeis University, in Waltham, Mass., reluctantly accepted Yale University Press’s decision not to publish the cartoons. But she was disturbed by the withdrawal of the other representations of Muhammad. All of those images are widely available, Ms. Klausen said by telephone, adding that “Muslim friends, leaders and activists thought that the incident was misunderstood, so the cartoons needed to be reprinted so we could have a discussion about it.” The book is due out in November.

John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, said by telephone that the decision was difficult, but the recommendation to withdraw the images, including the historical ones of Muhammad, was “overwhelming and unanimous.” The cartoons are freely available on the Internet and can be accurately described in words, Mr. Donatich said, so reprinting them could be interpreted easily as gratuitous.

He noted that he had been involved in publishing other controversial books — like “The King Never Smiles” by Paul M. Handley, a recent unauthorized biography of Thailand’s current monarch — and “I’ve never blinked.” But, he said, “when it came between that and blood on my hands, there was no question.”

Reza Aslan, a religion scholar and the author of “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam,” is a fan of the book but decided to withdraw his supportive blurb that was to appear in the book after Yale University Press dropped the pictures. The book is “a definitive account of the entire controversy,” he said, “but to not include the actual cartoons is to me, frankly, idiotic.”

In Mr. Aslan’s view no danger remains. “The controversy has died out now, anyone who wants to see them can see them,” he said of the cartoons, noting that he has written and lectured extensively about the incident and shown the cartoons without any negative reaction. He added that none of the violence occurred in the United States: “There were people who were annoyed, and what kind of publishing house doesn’t publish something that annoys some people?”

“This is an academic book for an academic audience by an academic press,” he continued. “There is no chance of this book having a global audience, let alone causing a global outcry.” He added, “It’s not just academic cowardice, it is just silly and unnecessary.”

Mr. Donatich said that the images were still provoking unrest as recently as last year when the Danish police arrested three men suspected of trying to kill the artist who drew the cartoon depicting Muhammad’s turban as a bomb. He quoted one of the experts consulted by Yale — Ibrahim Gambari, special adviser to the secretary general of the United Nations and the former foreign minister of Nigeria — as concluding: “You can count on violence if any illustration of the prophet is published. It will cause riots, I predict, from Indonesia to Nigeria.”

Aside from the disagreement about the images, Ms. Klausen said she was also disturbed by Yale’s insistence that she could read a 14-page summary of the consultants’ recommendations only if she signed a confidentiality agreement that forbade her from talking about them. “I perceive it to be a gag order,” she said, after declining to sign. While she could understand why some of the individuals consulted might prefer to remain unidentified, she said, she did not see why she should be precluded from talking about their conclusions.

Linda Koch Lorimer, vice president and secretary of Yale University, who had discussed the summary with Ms. Klausen, said on Wednesday that she was merely following the original wishes of the consultants, some of whom subsequently agreed to be identified.

Ms. Klausen, who is also the author of “The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe,” argued that the cartoon protests were not spontaneous but rather orchestrated demonstrations by extremists in Denmark and Egypt who were trying to influence elections there and by others hoping to destabilize governments in Pakistan, Lebanon, Libya and Nigeria. The cartoons, she maintained, were a pretext, a way to mobilize dissent in the Muslim world.

Although many Muslims believe the Koran prohibits images of the prophet, Muhammad has been depicted through the centuries in both Islamic and Western art without inciting disturbances.

Rather than sign a joint editor’s note for the book and the removal of the images, Ms. Klausen has requested instead that a statement from her be included. “I agreed,” she said, “to the press’s decision to not print the cartoons and other hitherto uncontroversial illustrations featuring images of the Muslim prophet, with sadness. But I also never intended the book to become another demonstration for or against the cartoons, and hope the book can still serve its intended purpose without illustrations.”

Other publishers, including The New York Times, chose not to print the cartoons or images of Muhammad when the controversy erupted worldwide in February 2006.

Ms. Klausen said, “I can understand that a university is risk averse, and they will make that choice” not to publish the cartoons, but Yale University Press, she added, went too far in taking out the other images of Muhammad.

“The book’s message,” Ms. Klausen said, “is that we need to calm down and look at this carefully.”


August 13, 2009, 1:06 pm
Discussion: The Yale Press Decision Not to Publish Controversial Cartoons
By Patricia Cohen
Yale University Press decided to pull 12 controversial caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad from a forthcoming book after a number of experts on Islam and counterterrorism warned that reprinting them could cause violence. When the cartoons were published in 2005 and 2006, riots erupted around the world and more than 200 people were killed. The press withdrew the drawings as well all other images of the prophet from the book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” which details the entire controversy. Some argue that Yale University Press’s decision is a defeat for free expression and a victory for extremists. Others maintain the removal of the images is prudent given the risk of violence.

August 13, 2009
3:45 pm


The university should be apologizing to the author for not only removing the so-called “offensive” cartoons, but also removing other noted illustrative examples of Muhammed.

Central to the point, Muslim extremists are using their clout to forcefully bend the laws of the land to cater their specific needs, just witness Europe, Middle East, Asia. They should learn to assimilate and become part of the new country they selectively chose for themselves, and learn to live in harmony with their neighbors.

Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. ~Potter Stewart

— FireInsideTheMan

4. August 13, 2009
5:11 pm


Apparently the post-modern university requires an outside panel to tell them what’s right. I would too if I didn’t have any convictions of my own.

— Stewart Trickett

5. August 13, 2009
5:28 pm


This strange and sad decision by Yale raises questions not only of academic freedom, but also of the role of universities and university presses in our culture. University presses provide a vehicle for disseminating scholarly research that is important to human knowledge and understanding, but not always commercially viable. As universities such as Yale grow into mega-corporations preoccupied with brand management, the university presses within them are squeezed by these pressures and their very integrity and reason for being are inherently subject to compromise. This could have happened at Harvard, Princeton, or Oxford University Press instead. It may well be for this reason that the author decided not to pull the book entirely, wishing to see her life’s work published in imperfect form rather than not published at all. The author has my sympathies, but my deepest concern is for all of us and for what other realms of knowledge and understanding will remain unpublished or even unexplored if this troubling trend continues.

— Ilsa Frank

6. August 13, 2009
6:02 pm


“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance”

Too bad the cowards at Yale are so afraid of being politically incorrect so they exercise self censorship

Milton had a few things to say on the subject as well.

Yale betrays the whole ethos of Western liberalism to the cause of convenience.

I’m with Ilsa.

— david wilder

7. August 13, 2009
6:41 pm


brave, brave Yale Press. I’m so proud.

— jeff hamren

8. August 13, 2009
7:33 pm


Probably Yale is partly funded by Saudi donations?

— Gerald Boisen

9. August 13, 2009
10:34 pm


Lux et veritas? Sad and scary tale…

— esthermiriam

10. August 13, 2009
10:36 pm


Brandeis has closed its fine art museum and wants to sell its collection, Yale edits out the visual from a work of scholarship about them — what is going on out there?

— esthermiriam

11. August 13, 2009
11:56 pm


Mr. Donatich justifies the Press’s acquiescence with the panel of authorities by equating publication of the images with having “blood on [his] hands.” But these anonymous advisers have nothing to gain and everything to lose from giving the Press the green light. Was the reverse question asked: who would be helped, and who might be protected, by Ms. Klausen’s contribution to the debate?

— Emily Satterthwaite

12. August 14, 2009
3:33 am


The cowardice and the tortured excuses are breathtaking. There is another point besides the obvious one of academic freedom and bowing to generalized intimidation. The book is an effort to examine these images and put them in a context of other images of Muhammad. By not printing these images, Yale University is effectively disassociating itself from this point of view. The sub-text is that these images are too offensive to even reprint. This undermines the author’s work. I wish some other university press would step forward and offer to publish the book as is. Or even better, a joint publication of a broad range of scholarly publishers.

— Robert Sadin

13. August 14, 2009
8:56 am


Yale’s decision sadly confirms the diminishing role of academia in expanding our understanding of the world around us. This is a complex story worth exploring fully without censorship!

— Sam Cruz

14. August 14, 2009
9:19 am


Not only is this proof of people knuckling under to the undue influence of religions (whatever ones they may be), it also shows how censorship rears its ugly head much too often in today’s world. In addition, can anyone reading this book really take any of it seriously when they do not print the very cartoons that the book is about? Is the Yale University Press going to now start printing art books with hundreds of high-grade blank pages because someone, somewhere, might object to a bit of Renaissance nudity. Titian beware! The invasion of the YUPies is near!

— David

15. August 14, 2009
10:47 am


Why blame Yale only? None of the U.S. newspapers or publication published those articles- but they did widespread reporting on it.

— Karan

16. August 14, 2009
12:28 pm


Well done! The most rational and decent desision made in a long time by those in the world of commications. In a culture bent on ratings and firing people up the simplicity in simply doing the right thing is without a doubt the most powerful. People need to be more reflective about their own behavior and right now I choose to think about the word - respect - and what it means, and then finding the power in this word, and then the act of being respectful, towards all things and all people.
Well done Yale Press, well done.

Ellen

— Ellen Shanley

17. August 14, 2009
3:23 pm


Way to go guys - stand up for academic freedom at all costs and then…..
Oops, my mistake - sorry about that.

— Charles Duwel

18. August 14, 2009
10:32 pm


The current administration at Yale, like an increasing number of their colleagues in the American academy, while continuing to wave their flags of pedagogical excellence fervently in a mild breeze, fold them away when the winds pick up. They believe in very little.

What they do seem to believe in and have done very well is raising money, and previously generous alumni who are upset by this nauseating display of academic cowardice and censorship should take note.

— Ben Ledbetter

19. August 15, 2009
10:10 am


The money trail is pretty clear. Yale is a partner to the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. I am sure they do not want to lose their $50 million gift from the Saudis by offending them with this book.

— Roberta Wagner

20. August 17, 2009
9:36 am


Will the Yale School of Medicine begin to censor their textbooks and language when discussing conditions concerning “private areas”? After all, everyone can see this material on the internet. That would be favorable over offending someone living near, say, the Indonesian embassy.

— Brian

21. August 17, 2009
12:23 pm


Yale is setting a frightening precedent as one of the leading academic presses in the country. In not publishing these images (not only the cartoons, but other widely viewed and available images of Muhammad), Yale Press believes it will protect people from the furor they incite – instead it is allowing such furor to trump reasonable discussion, debate and scholarly investigation, which is exactly what Ms. Klausen is arguing in her book: “The book’s message is that we need to calm down and look at this carefully.”

You can read more about how First Amendment advocates are responding to this at the National Coalition Against Censorship’s blog: http://ncacblog.wordpress.com.

— Claire

22. August 17, 2009
1:12 pm


This is the very definition of Cowardice.

— Christian in NYC

23. August 19, 2009
12:42 pm

To #8….i do believe that ex president whats his name and his father did at least drive by yale, but am uncertain as to what education they may have received there …and yes, as i recall, the ex pres. does have extremely warm relations with saudi arabia.

— FAL

Showcase: Neighborly Hatred

If you have the chance check out the NYTs gallery of photos and video on their website! Plus Justyna's website, which is amazing!!!

September 3, 2009, 12:00 am
By James Estrin
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/showcase-45/?ref=global-home

PERPIGNAN, France — If you want to understand why Justyna Mielnikiewicz has spent eight years photographing border disputes and ethnic conflicts in the South Caucasus, you should know two stories from her childhood.

First: When she was a child in Marklowice, in the Silesian region of Poland, she said her family spoke “proper” Polish at home and the local Silesian dialect outside, to fit in with the locals. Justyna watched her sister switch to dialect the moment she crossed the fence around their yard. But Justyna was a stubborn child and got it in her head to speak only proper Polish everywhere. As a result, she was mercilessly bullied by her schoolmates and nicknamed “the stranger.”

Second: On the way to school every day, she passed a large monument commemorating the Auschwitz prisoners who were marched through her village by the German army as they retreated from the Russians in early 1945. Thousands died along the way.

Now, Ms. Mielnikiewicz, 36, focuses on the crossroads between ethnicity, political borders and history. She sees the Caucasus — where Russia has recognized the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent from Georgia — as a place perfectly suited to explore these themes.

She recalled: “When I started going to Abkhazia, people said: ‘Why are you coming here? Nobody’s interested. I said it’s because it’s my personal journey to learn why people are doing this to each other, why people who live together can suddenly hate each other.”

This eight-year journey has now brought Ms. Mielnikiewicz to the Visa pour l’Image photojournalism festival in France, where she is to receive the Canon Female Photojournalist Award on Saturday. It is presented by the French Association of Female Journalists and includes a prize of 8,000 euros ($11,418) that will enable Ms. Mielnikiewicz to finish a project that will be exhibited at next year’s festival in Perpignan.

Ms. Mielnikiewicz photographed the war in South Ossetia for The Times. Her coverage included an audio slide show, “Photographers Journal: Fleeing the Georgian Conflict” and her pictures appeared in “Conflict in South Ossetia.”

Patrick Witty, the international picture editor at The Times, worked closely with Ms. Mielnikiewicz. On the second day of the war, he recalled, she sent him an e-mail message saying she had no ambitions to become a war photographer. “Despite this,” Mr. Witty said, “and despite her lack of a flak jacket, a helmet, or any experience photographing conflict before, she made the most memorable and moving pictures of the war. Her work is breathtaking.”

For the Perpignan competition, however, the photographs she submitted were not about the war but about the context of the war and the forces that create divisions.

While the chaos of war was a jarring experience for Ms. Mielnikiewicz, it was the the empty streets of the the Georgian city of Gori that really bothered her.

“I never realized that silence was the scariest thing, more than the explosions,” she said. “There were no cars, no one walking. It is not normal to hear silence in a big city. During war, reality goes upside down.”

The fighting has ended — at least for now — and Ms. Mielnikiewicz has gone back to documenting the context of the conflict . She is still trying to figure out why people can act so cruelly to their neighbors.

2 HBO Filmmakers Blocked From Chinese Festival

September 2, 2009
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/world/asia/02quake.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

BEIJING — When the American filmmakers Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill traveled around Sichuan Province last year to document the anger of parents whose children had died in school collapses during the earthquake in May, they ran into a chilly reception from officials.

Police officers harassed the two men and their co-workers, detained them and interrogated them for eight hours, they said.

Now, the Chinese government has denied both of them visas, blocking them from presenting their documentary, “China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province,” at the Beijing Independent Film Festival this week. The two men, who made the film for HBO with co-producer Peter Kwong, said their visa applications were rejected late last week. No explanation was given by the Chinese Consulate in New York, where the application was filed, they said.

“We are extremely disappointed that the Chinese government denied our request for visas and that we will not be permitted to discuss this film with a Chinese audience in Beijing,” Mr. Alpert and Mr. O’Neill said in a joint e-mail message. “The denial of our visas fits in with a pattern of what seems to be a complete commitment on the part of this Chinese government to crush any inquiry into the possibility of wrongful deaths during the earthquake in Sichuan.”

Chen Cong, a vice consul in the press office of the Chinese Consulate in New York, declined to explain the rejection, saying that diplomatic organizations had “the right not to give a reason for why the visa was denied.”

Mr. Alpert and Mr. O’Neill have both won Emmy Awards and have worked together on highly praised documentaries, including “Baghdad ER.” The Sichuan documentary was shown on HBO in May, one year after the earthquake, and got positive reviews. The official Web site of the film is blocked in China.

The Chinese government has gone to great lengths to silence any mention of the collapsed schools and, according to an official count, the 5,335 children who died or remain missing. In the weeks after the earthquake, which left nearly 87,000 people dead or missing, parents took to the streets to demand official investigations into why so many school buildings had collapsed even though other buildings around them remained standing. The parents said shoddy construction and corruption were the obvious causes.

Local officials ordered security forces to detain the parents or tried to buy the silence of the parents with compensation money. Meanwhile, journalists who tried approaching the schools were stopped, and two rights advocates who pressed for official inquiries were detained. The two advocates, Huang Qi and Tan Zuoren, were put on trial last month.

Artists trying to raise the consciousness over the collapsed schools have been similarly harassed. The Chinese filmmaker, Pan Jianlin, was tracked by security officials after his documentary on the deaths, “Who Killed Our Children?” was shown last year at the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea. Ai Weiwei, a prominent artist who often criticizes the Communist Party, had his Web site blocked after he tried to compile online a comprehensive tally of dead schoolchildren. He was temporarily detained in Sichuan last month when he tried to attend the trial of Mr. Tan.

A person helping to organize the film festival in Beijing said the HBO documentary would be shown on Thursday even though the filmmakers will not be able to attend. The festival is showcasing more than 80 films, and each one is generally shown once.

Mr. Alpert and Mr. O’Neill said there might be a possibility of talking to the audience by phone.

“We knew there was the possibility of rejection,” they said, “but we were hopeful that the Chinese government would allow us to discuss our work openly and in a spirit of constructive dialogue.”

Abu Dhabi Gets a Sampler of World Art

May 27, 2009
By CAROL VOGEL
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/arts/design/27louv.html?_r=1&8dpc

The public on Tuesday got its first peek at some of the art that will fill the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the 260,000-square-foot museum designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel and expected to open in the capital city of the United Arab Emirates by 2013.

At a ceremony to commemorate the beginning of construction, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, officially opened an exhibition at the Emirates Palace hotel that includes 19 works of art bought over the last 18 months for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, as well as loans from the French national museums.

Acquired for what is being billed as the first universal museum in the Middle East, the works range from a Greek ceramic figure from around 520 B.C. to two 1862 canvases by Edouard Manet.

“By its very nature this museum will cover many cultures and many civilizations from the ancient to the present time,” the crown prince said in a telephone interview. “We have historic relations with our friends in France which are extending to the cultural side.” The collaboration, he added, will “help educate our people” in the building and running of such cultural institutions.

Under a two-year-old agreement, Abu Dhabi will pay France $555 million for the use of the Louvre’s name, as well as for art loans, special exhibitions and management advice. Securing the Louvre’s involvement and brand name was a crucial step in the emirates’ plan to build a $27 billion tourist and cultural development on Saadiyat Island, off the city’s coast. The project’s cultural components also include a Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a maritime museum, a performing arts center, hotels, golf courses, marinas.

With an acquisitions budget of more than $56 million a year, a team of curators from the French museums have worked full time deciding how to shape the Louvre Abu Dhabi collection.

“There are specialists in every field who are aware of the market,” said Laurence des Cars, the curatorial director of the Agence France-Muséums, a French public organization set up to oversee the project.

The curators are not out to create a mini-Louvre but rather a new museum melding two cultures and two traditions.

“We want this to be a collection of masterpieces that make sense together, that have soul and that will form a dialogue with different civilizations,” Ms. des Cars said. Once the museum opens, the curators will also organize four special exhibitions a year for the next 15 years that will include loans from French museums and institutions all over the world.

Among the acquisitions that are part of “Talking Art: Louvre Abu Dhabi,” on view in the capital through July 2, are a standing bodhisattva from the second to third century A.D.; a Chinese white marble head of Buddha from the Northern Qi Dynasty, A.D. 550-577; and a 16th-century polychrome painted copper ewer from Venice. There are also works on Christian religious themes, including a Bellini “Madonna and Child” from the 1480s and a 16th-century sculpture of Jesus from Bavaria or Austria.

Areas like African art have yet to be represented, Ms. des Cars said, although they will be included later. In the meantime the curators have borrowed objects like a 19th-century wood Tsonga headrest from Zambia and a wooden stool from Benin, both on loan from the Musée du Quai Branly.

Paintings that have been bought for the Louvre Abu Dhabi include a canvas by Jean-François de Troy, “Esther Fainting Before Ahaseurus,” from 1730, and the two Manets — “The Bohemian” and “Still Life With Bag and Garlic” — which were originally part of a larger canvas.

“In 1867, after a critical flop when it was shown in Paris, Manet cut up the painting,” Ms. des Cars said, and it became three paintings, one of which, “Boy With Pitcher,” is in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The other two canvases disappeared and were found only recently.

“We had an opportunity to buy them from the Wildenstein gallery,” she said. They are being shown along with an etching by the artist, “Les Gitanos,” also from 1862, which shows the paintings’ original composition and is on loan from the Bibilothèque Nationale de France.

The curators also bought two works from the sale of art and objects belonging to Yves Saint Laurent and his partner, Pierre Bergé, at Christie’s in Paris in February: an African-style stool from the 1920s for $640,000 and Mondrian’s “Composition With Blue, Red, Yellow and Black,” from 1922, for $29.4 million.

Eventually, Ms. des Cars said, “all civilizations and cultures will be represented” at the new museum. But for now, she added, what is on view in this exhibition illustrates the curators’ mission.

“There is a big sculpture of Christ facing the head of a Buddha and a 14th-century Koran,” she said. “It’s the perfect symbol of our universal spirit.”

Behind Fairy Tale Drawings, Walls Talk of Unspeakable Cruelty

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/arts/design/28wall.html?_r=1
By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: February 27, 2009

Also, check out the slide show!

JERUSALEM — He occupies the driver’s seat with an air of insouciance, a blue helmet atop his head, two proud white steeds under his command and a sly smile across his lips. Bruno Schulz looks out at the world from his painting as if he owns it. But like much else in his life, cut short by a Nazi bullet, this is pure fantasy.

The work and story of Schulz, a Jewish writer and painter in Poland who was forced to illustrate a children’s playroom in a Nazi officer’s home and then killed, have long attracted literary attention. There was something about his humility, talent and fate that captivated writers like Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth and David Grossman, who all made him a character in their works.

Yet until the wall drawings for children were discovered in 2001 by a documentary filmmaker, fading and peeling like ancient Roman frescoes, they were thought to have been destroyed. Spirited out of Schulz’s hometown in what is now Ukraine under contested circumstances by the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel, they have been painstakingly preserved and put on view here for the first time.

And while this haunting show, a permanent exhibition titled “Wall Painting Under Coercion,” will not end the lingering controversy over whether Schulz belongs more to Polish than to Jewish culture, or whether the wall drawings should have remained in Ukraine rather than go to Israel, it offers a poignant example of artistic defiance in the face of overwhelming cruelty.

“There was something very Kafkaesque about his abhorrence of bureaucracy and authority,” said Yehudit Shendar, senior art curator at Yad Vashem. “He is sometimes called the Polish Kafka. He took courage with a brush in his hand. It became a weapon of rebellion.”

For example, the Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Hansel and Gretel that Schulz created for the officer’s children’s playroom bore the faces of real people: Schulz himself, his father and other members of the Jewish population in their town, Drohobych. Putting himself at the reins in his drawing struck a note of defiance, since Nazi law forbade Jews from riding in or driving carriages.

His face is also that of the witch, a reference, curators believe, to the witch hunts that Jews faced in eastern Galicia, then part of Poland, in those months after the Nazi conquest of his town in June 1941.

Instantly, some 900 Jews were rounded up and shot. Most of the rest were pressed into forced labor before being killed. Schulz was a sickly man and a talented one, and the Gestapo sergeant in charge of Jewish laborers, Felix Landau, held him aside and ordered him to decorate a riding school and his children’s nursery. It seemed to be his salvation.

Marila B., who was 11 at the time and lived in the house next to the riding school, eventually escaped through the forest with her family and lives today in Israel. She remembers the Nazi sergeant and the wall drawings because she was ordered to baby-sit for the officer’s children, aged 4 and 2.

“I would play with the children in the garden and then take them up to the playroom, and there I saw the drawings,” she said in a brief interview at the opening of the exhibition at Yad Vashem this month. Loath to be obliged to repeat her story, she asked that her full name not be published. “Landau used to walk around with a pistol in one hand and a whip in the other. He was the very embodiment of evil.”

Landau did save Schulz for more than a year, until November 1942, by providing him with work and the means for minimal sustenance. Schulz, whose literary reputation as a short-story writer had already been established, had obtained false Aryan papers and was about to escape when another Gestapo sergeant, Karl Günter, angry that Landau had killed his Jewish dentist, put a bullet in Schulz’s head. He is said to have told Landau: “You killed my Jew. Now I’ve killed yours.”

Schulz was 50 and a bachelor, and though he had published only a handful of works, he was viewed as brilliant by those who mattered most in Polish literature. His reputation later grew immensely. As Isaac Bashevis Singer put it, “What he did in his short life was enough to make him one of the most remarkable writers who ever lived.”

Always rooted in Drohobych, his work had a magical vitality to it.

As one of his famous lines reads, “My colored pencils rushed in inspiration across columns of illegible text in masterly squiggles, in breakneck zigzags that knotted themselves suddenly into anagrams of vision, into enigmas of bright revelation, and then dissolved into empty, shiny flashes of lightning, following imaginary tracks.”

Mr. Grossman, the Israeli author, says he discovered Schulz when someone told him that Schulz’s influence was evident in his own first novel. He had never heard of Schulz, but he picked up his stories and felt a chill of admiration and recognition. Upon learning of the infamous line about Nazis’ killing each other’s Jews, Mr. Grossman was filled with the ambition to write about the Holocaust.

In his widely admired novel “See Under: Love,” a character named Bruno escapes a ghetto under Nazi occupation and jumps into a river, joining a school of salmon.

Most of Schulz’s artwork has not survived but was also esteemed by his contemporaries. Expressionist in the way of Middle European artists of the interwar era, it mixed dreamlike fantasy with a touch of erotica. Because he was an assimilated Jew who wrote in Polish and whose hometown is now in Ukraine, the discovery of the murals was greeted in Eastern Europe as the retrieval of a piece of national heritage.

For officials at Yad Vashem, however, Schulz was killed for being a Jew, and his work belonged here. When they learned of the discovery, they negotiated with the family living in the house and the municipality to get permission to rescue the paintings from their neglected circumstances.

What happened next is disputed, but most of the paintings were removed and taken to Israel without the Ukrainian government’s permission. After years of bad feelings, a deal has been struck whereby the murals belong to Ukraine but are on long-term loan to Yad Vashem. The Ukrainian deputy culture minister attended the exhibition’s opening.

So did Mr. Grossman. He told the audience an anecdote from Schulz’s childhood. His mother caught him feeding sugar water to flies one autumn day, and she asked him what he was doing. “Helping them get through the long winter,” he replied.

That, Mr. Grossman said, is what Schulz’s work does for us all.

Vaseem Mohammed

You have to check out Vaseem's website. His art is amazing - as you can see ;o)
http://www.vaseemmohammed.com/




Islamic art is rising like a phoenix from the ashes of its past life to be reborn as rich and alive as before. The renaissance is the collective attempts of innovative work by British artists such as Vaseem Mohammed who combine classical and post-modernist styles to appeal to the audience of today.

Starting off with no artistic background or experience Vaseem has come a long way to become the artist he is now. Vaseem left his work in the retail industry in search of something which would be more fulfilling. “I come from a retail management background but I got so bored with it so I left. I ended up doing a foundation course which then opened up so much for me. I spent one year on my own basically just painting and experimenting.” Vaseem embarked on a year long course at Tower Hamlets College where he focused on graphic design to teach him the essentials.

Vaseem’s individuality came through at the early stages of his teaching when he refused to conform to the standard and style asked of him. “When I was doing my art and design course my teachers couldn’t help me. I was very stubborn, they used to say you can’t do that and I never used to listen to them.” Vaseem felt there had been a void in his teaching due to his interest in Islamic art and culture. “I needed someone to guide me and there was this amazing Sudanese man who was a 70-year-old master calligrapher, who guided me.” His guide was Osman Waqiallah, a revered artist whose work in the Vatican. Osman got him the art of calligraphy which is now a trademark of Vaseem’s paintings.

Starting out Vaseem’s work was very much experimental and an individual, striking style has emerged. Vaseem has two distinct styles of which one uses calligraphy as the heart of the piece juxtaposed on top of modernist, abstract style work. In his own words Vaseem describes the calligraphy as a representation of Islam’s stability and presence in an ever-changing world.

Vaseem draws from his childhood experiences of living in the East end of London in the Seventies. “That’s what inspires me; I like it, dilapidation, paint peeling off and things like that. In my parents house, which was over a 100 years old I used to peel at the wall paper, as children do, and there was decades of wallpaper there and subconsciously I started using that in my work.”

The surrounding work is done in layers using acrylic and gouache producing different textures and forms. “I keep stripping the layers of paint and eventually there comes some sort of an order. It is symbolic of the environment and the state of the world today. There is so much beauty in the world, Allah created it at the end of the day, and then there is mans destruction of it, whereas the calligraphy always stays intact like the Qur’an. The text is always the same and that is to show that Qur’an is always there whereas the world is ever-changing and evolving.”

The art of calligraphy was favoured in Islam to figural images to convey its core convictions as Islamic leaders saw the use of figural arts as possible idolatry. Islam’s theocracy then looked to calligraphy for religious expression. Vaseem made a conscious decision when embarking on his career to abstain from using animate images in his work in accordance with this tradition. He found that rather than restricting him in his works this opened up avenues for artistic expression by urging him to experiment with abstract styles. Calligraphy has built a reputation over the centuries as a symbol representing power and beauty and is revered by Muslims worldwide and appreciated by non-Muslims alike. The combination of artistry and scholarship has resulted in a sublime reputation which combines divine and moral representations. The use of calligraphy in Vaseem’s work adds an abstract beauty which draws the eye to the heart of the painting and gives it a soul and meaning.

The calligraphy used is varied and each painting has a complimentary style and design to fit in with the ethos of the piece. Kufic calligraphy has been in used in both the traditional and ornamental styles along with the more elaborate Thuluth and oriental Sini styles. The style is chosen depending on the theme of the piece and for its aesthetic beauty. In each case the relationship between the inscriptions and the disorder of paint produces a profound effect on the viewers urging them to question and understand the complexities of the piece and its message.

The path to art was intertwined with the path to Islam. “I got into Islam at the same time as I got into art. I guess one thing leads to another. It was more to do with the Islamic heritage and the arts as opposed to the religious side, that came later.” His work has a political message along with a religious one and is representative of world events occurring at the time. Vaseem uses his work to introduce people to Islam and make it more open to a wider audience. “I work firstly to bridge the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims. Also it is another window introducing people to Islam. As well as stuff that is happening at the moment and in the past, I’ve found it is a good way of attracting people and engaging them, in debate and discussion especially.”

Architecture is another distinct feature of Vaseem’s paintings. The walled cities painted incorporate the trademark domes, arches and intertwining alleyways that are a signature of Islamic architecture. The paintings are primarily inspired by a trip to Multan, a walled desert city in Pakistan. “There are a lot of saints and many monuments in Multan. These (the paintings) are views of the city. Its how light works with architecture. It’s my own interpretation and it’s just done, it’s not drawn out or anything. I carve these things out and use light and dark. It’s just trying to take manuscripts and putting them in different elements and contexts.”

The paintings share an expression of isolation and yet represent a global community. This is an expression of Vaseem’s own feelings of isolation both amongst the western and Islamic community. The walled cities are often mistaken for paintings of Morocco and other countries with Islamic heritage showing the unification of the architecture and Islam. Architecture in Islam tends to follow certain decorative principles which span all buildings and objects. The same ideas forms and designs recur across the Islamic world which prevail differences in art quality and execution of style explaining the familiarity of Vaseem’s paintings.

Initially Vaseem exhibited his work at Spitalfields market in the east end of London and eventually moved on to open his own gallery nearby. These days he works on commissions as well as private work. He has just finished a commission for an MBI international private jet which involved a set of complimentary paintings. He has also produced props for a forthcoming film called Redlight Runners. The film is being directed by Michael Madsen and the story involves the forgery of a ninth century Qur’an which Vaseem had to reproduce. This involved learning staining techniques to age the Qur’an and detailed study of calligraphy in that era resulting in a masterful replica.

Vaseem plans to travel further afield for inspiration and to exhibit his work. “My future plans are to go to the Middle East and Saudi Arabia to exhibit in a gallery called Zamzam gallery, one of the biggest galleries there. There is a client of mine who is going to take me over and I am hopefully going to do some work for the Saudi royal family.”

Vaseem is very introspective with his inspirations. He prefers to use experiences, emotions and situations which affect him personally than taking inspiration from other artists. “To be honest I don’t really look at much art, I just do my own thing, and I’ve always been like that. I actually refer to books but a lot of my stuff is kind of experimental.” Vaseem’s work is truly innovative and exciting and challenges traditional preconception of views and perspectives on Islamic culture.
Nadia Anwar, Emel Magazine May/June 2004

Shirin Neshat on The Charlie Rose Show

Shirin Neshat & Others

Did anyone see this show in 2006? Has anyone seen Neshat's new movie? If anyone has the catalogue and are interested in selling it let me know!!!





Non-Western artists have made quite a breakthrough in recent history, as far as becoming a part of the mainstream art world. Five years in the making, the Museum of Modern Art's exibition proves that the canvas has definitively become even more culturally diversified. The following is MoMA's description of their current exhibit from their website. A photo slide show essay follows from Slate magazine, offering some insightful criticism of this complex and intriguing exhibition.

Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking
February 26–May 22, 2006

Art on left by: Shirin Neshat (b. 1957 in Qazvin, Iran, lives and works in New York)
Untitled
1996

RC print and ink, 67 x 48" (170.2 x 121.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York. © Shirin Neshat. Photograph: Larry Barns. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York


The Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA-NYC) has a write up on the Exhibit which appears below:

An ever-increasing number of artists, such as Mona Hatoum, Shirin Neshat, and Shahzia Sikander, have come from the Islamic world to live in Europe and the United States. Without Boundary brings together some of these major contemporary voices. The exhibition features the work of artists of diverse backgrounds—Algerian, Egyptian, Indian, Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Pakistani, Palestinian, and Turkish—across a variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, video, animation, photography, carpet and textile, and comic strips.

The exhibition seeks to emphasize diversity by questioning the use of artists’ origins as the sole determining factor in the consideration of their art. To examine the various ways in which these artists’ works diverge from popular expectations, the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue examine the visual treatment of texts and miniature painting on one hand, and issues of identity and faith or spirituality on the other. The intention is not to imply uniformity based on a collective identity but rather to highlight complex, idiosyncratic approaches. Works by Mike Kelley and Bill Viola, two American artists, are included to prevent simplistic conclusions based purely on origin. Other artists featured include Jananne Al-Ani, Ghada Amer, Kutlug Ataman, the Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Shirazeh Houshiary and Pip Horne, Emily Jacir, Y.Z. Kami, Rachid Koraïchi, Marjane Satrapi, Shirana Shahbazi, and Raqib Shaw.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Fereshteh Daftari and Homi Bhabha (Harvard), with a prose piece by novelist Orhan Pamuk.

Here is an excerpt from Slate Magazine:

The conception underlying the show is confused and self-contradictory. Yet most of the art itself—including [this image] (shown above) by photographer Shirin Neshat—is powerful, original, stunning. It might seem captious to criticize a curatorial framework that brings mind-opening work to a wider public. But unfortunately, the show's context will shape perceptions of the art within it. The show's curator, Fereshteh Daftari, describes the exhibition's premises like this: "We often think of artists in terms of their origins. … This is problematic with artists from the Islamic world, particularly in light of the intense attention currently devoted to Islam from the West." Daftari points out that the Islamic world in fact "stretches from Indonesia to the Atlantic coast of Africa," adding that "Without Boundary sets out to look at the work of a number of artists who come from the Islamic world but do not live there. Only active consideration of this kind will slow down the race toward simplistic conclusions and binary thinking." Let me try to explain why, for all the curator's doubtlessly good intentions, the show's muddled premise does a disservice to its art. No doubt, as Daftari writes, there has never been a better time to use an art exhibition to prove the diversity of Islamic culture. The dichotomy of a "clash of civilizations" that shapes American foreign policy is inaccurate and crude. The hope would be that such a show might reveal the delicate spirituality of Islamic art and that this disclosure might soften the impression of militancy and fanaticism as the sole qualities of the Muslim world. Alas, "Without Boundary" lacks the thoughtful complexity that would illuminate such tangled issues.

The complete slide-show essay compiled by Slate on this Exhibition can be viewed in its entirety here: East Meets West: Why MoMA's new show doesn't help us understand Islam. (by Lee Siegel).

http://boundlessmeanderings.wordpress.com/2006/03/22/new-art-exhibition-at-moma-islamic-or-not/

Q&A: Lida Abdul Afghan video artist

Posted: Apr 25, 2008 in Culture

Lida Abdul is the country's latest ethnic hybrid -- the Afghan-American.

At 14, she fled her native Kabul with her older brother to escape the Soviet occupation, which began in 1979 and ended 10 years later.

"My brother and I were sent out so that he wouldn't have to go to the military because no one ever returned," said Abdul, a 34-year-old video artist who was in town to open a new exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

"The war was really brutal. So I lived with my brother. I grew up really on my own, with my brother, in India and Germany."

She moved to California in the early 1990s to study at the University of California-Irvine.

After the Soviet occupation, Afghanistan was overrun by Taliban extremists, and it currently remains at war as the new Afghan government and NATO forces battle those same Taliban fighters.

Abdul's video art -- very short films that are usually displayed in a gallery setting, not a theater setting -- typically deals with images of war and recovery in her homeland.

Do you remember the Soviet invasion?

I do remember the first time, the first day when the Russians invaded Afghanistan. All of a sudden, we had helicopters flying all over Kabul. You could hear the helicopters. The next thing, you could hear the tanks. The tanks were all over the cities, even in residential areas. You could hear the street cracking, the pavement breaking. It was really intense.

Do Afghans support NATO?

Afghans right now are happy that the NATO forces are in Afghanistan. They are pro-NATO forces. They felt really abandoned after the Russians left. They felt the international community really neglected them. They didn't have any roads. They didn't have food to eat. They fought for so many years against the Russians and that was where they felt really neglected. Now they feel someone is really paying attention to them.

One of your films shows a group of men trying to pull down ruins with ropes. What is the message there?

The question is: Is it possible to move away from the ruins or get rid of the ruins? That's the main question. And it's also speaking about the internal ruins. Can you get rid of the memory of the ruins, or does it always stay with you? What happens to memory, really? I don't have the answer, but that's the question I'm asking.

Who are your actors?

They are not actors. I never use professional actors because they are too composed, they are bringing too much history with them. But if I just use normal, everyday people, it's much more interesting. It's more about life, not a construction of some complex character.

Do ordinary people understand that when you recruit them to be in your films?

At first they don't understand what I'm doing. They think it's a little absurd, like painting the ruins white, or pulling the ruins down by rope. At first they didn't understand it. But from the very beginning of the piece until the end, there is a transformation. Then they understand. OK, this is really dealing with our history. We're really trying to focus on the condition that we're living under and where do we go from here? So, in that sense, I think that is a transformation and they understand.

How do you find the children who appear in your films?

It's really interesting. They're kind of silent. I have tried to understand and interview kids. There's a lot of silence. In some pieces that I've done, they perform their own trauma. There's one piece called "Umbrella" that I've done where a little boy is dancing in space endlessly on his own. I didn't ask him to do that. It's about this kind of repetition of the trauma. And usually, if you've noticed people who go mad, they usually repeat things a lot.

Do you show your films in Afghanistan?

Yes, I do.

Who is your audience?

Everyday people from all walks in life. They are really engaged in the arts and culture. Because of the culture and the tradition of the Persian literature and poetry, they have that already. There's a lot of storytelling and so on. There's a lot of theater. There are a lot of plays that they're interested in .....

We get mixed messages on the situation in Afghanistan. Is the country recovering from 30 years of war?

There's so much going on in Afghanistan. It's really interesting. It's an amazing place despite the war. My intention is to bring back the other aspects of Afghanistan that you don't get to see here in the United States or in Europe.

But we see so much devastation. Is that one of the points of your film, that life goes on?

Exactly. That's completely my point, that life goes on, even though there is war and destruction, that it doesn't stop people from moving on, from really progressing and having hope. Even though there's been 30 years of war, the Afghans are not feeling sorry for themselves. They're moving on. It's a culture that really has a part to it that's very loving, very positive.

Why did you want to study art in the United States?

I didn't know that I wanted to study art, actually. I was going to go to law school, then I dropped out because I realized it was not for me. I realized I wanted to do art because as a child, I was always drawing and painting, so somehow it returned. It was a memory I had of my childhood when I was working on my drawings, and I decided that I need to go back to that.

You split your time between Los Angeles and Kabul. Where do you want to settle?

I would really like to settle in Afghanistan. It would be very interesting to me as an artist. The fact that it's in transition from a war time to a peace time, from a state of disaster to a state of being more in construction, it is interesting. There are so many things that are happening. As a viewer, as someone who analyzes my environment, it's fascinating to see how something is built and how things are in transition. They have cell phones, but there are ruins. They don't have a car, but they have cell phones. It's between modernity -- they still have horses on the street. There's something nice about that.

If you go
Who: Lida Abdul, a video artist from Afghanistan whose work explores the history of destruction and political unrest in her country.

Exhibit: Video works "White House" (2005, 4 minutes, 58 seconds); "What We Saw Upon Awakening" (2006, 6 minutes, 50 seconds); "In Transit" (2008, 4 minutes, 48 seconds).

Where: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 4000 Michigan Road.

When: Now through Sept. 28.

Cost: Free.

Information: (317) 923-1331 or www.imamuseum.org.

- Interview by Abe Aamidor / Indianapolis Star