14 November 2012, 1–2:30pm
Presented by the Office of the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences / Sharjah Art Gallery / The Visual Cultures Program / Department of the Arts at The American University in Cairo.
Mary Cross Lecture Hall
AUC New Cairo
Renowned artists and filmmakers Shirin Neshat (b. Qazvin, Iran, 1957) and Shoja Azari (b. Shiraz, Iran, 1958) visit AUC to talk about their recent work and upcoming film projects. Bruce Ferguson, curator and Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, will moderate the discussion.
Neshat’s many awards include the First International Prize at the Venice Biennale (1999), the Grand Prix at the Gwangju Biennale (2000), the ZeroOne Award from the Universität der Künste Berlin (2003), and the Lillian Gish Prize in New York (2006). Her debut feature-length film Women Without Men (2009), completed in collaboration with Azari, garnered her a Silver Lion for best director at the Venice Film Festival. Neshat’s artistic practice over the past decade has explored the themes of religion, violence, madness, and gender in contemporary Iran. Her most recent photographic series, “The Book of Kings,” exhibited this January at Gladstone Gallery, New York, engaged with the Middle East more broadly, probing the subject of heroic uprisings—from the Persian literary epic the Shahnamah to the recent history of the Arab Spring—as poetic source material. Azari, an experimental filmmaker and multimedia artist, has long drawn upon Iranian cultural references as well. His 2010 exhibition Icons at the Leila Heller Gallery in New York explored the intersection of religious iconography and adulation in popular culture. Neshat and Azari are currently in Cairo to research their second feature film, a picture devoted to Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum.
AUC- Sharjah Art Gallery
The Sharjah Art Gallery is the artistic and cultural center of the Department of the Arts at The American University in Cairo. The gallery presents exhibitions and educational programming with a special focus on contemporary art in the Middle East and North Africa. Its cultural and educational mission is to present the work of innovative visiting artists and curators to enhance the discourse on contemporary visual arts and to advance partnerships with educational institutions throughout the region.
For more information please contact:
Bruce W. Ferguson, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, The American University in Cairo
Aissa Deebi, Director, Visual Cultures Program | Sharjah Art Gallery
Please send your request via email to:
Nahla El Helbawi, Communications Officer, School Of Humanities and Social Sciences
[email protected] / T +2 02 2615 1993
