March 5–8, 2015
The Armory Show
EOA.Projects
FOCUS:MENAM
Booth 534
Pier 94
New York, NY
www.eoaprojects.com
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In association with Edge of Arabia’s US tour, EOA.Projects is participating in the Armory Show FOCUS:MENAM with a curated booth presentation of Yazan Khalili, Mounir Fatmi and Rashed Al Shashai with Oraib Toukan’s The New(er) Middle East as a special project. The presentation aims to stimulate conversations around the contested visual identity of an expanded and disputed, imagined and real Middle East in direct relation to this platform in New York and American audiences. The booth is affiliated with Edge of Arabia’s CULTRUNNERS project and our artists’ journeys from Abha, Saudi Arabia in 2003 to New York in 2015.
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All profits from EOA.Projects will go to Edge of Arabia, a non-profit social enterprise.
Artist biographies
Mounir Fatmi
Born in 1970 in Tangier, Morocco, Fatmi lives and works between Paris and Tangier. The focus of his work is varied, but notions of deconstructing ideologies and religious dogmas, as well as death and consumption are common themes. He works in film and video installation, drawing, painting and sculpture. Fatmi constructs visual spaces and linguistic games. His work deals with the desecration of religious objects, deconstruction and the end of dogmas and ideologies. He is particularly interested in the idea of death of the subject of consumption—this can be applied to antenna cables, copier machines, VHS tapes, and a dead language or a political movement.
Yazan Khalili
Born in 1981, Khalili lives and works between Palestine and Amsterdam. Khalili graduated with a Master’s degree from Goldsmith’s College, University of London (2010). He works in various media including video, photography and drawings. These works are accompanied by lucid and engaging texts reflecting upon and mediating this visual output. The artworks are broad interactions with the notion of landscape in a Palestinian context and a refusal to depict the Israeli-built wall. They form a critical strand in the work of this pioneering Palestinian artist.
Oraib Toukan
Born in 1977, Toukan heads the Arts Division at Al Quds Bard College, Palestine. Toukan also graduated from Bard College with an MFA in Photography under a full Jacob Javitz Fellowship. Her works often look to unpack historiographic absurdities specific to exhibition making using discreet institutional interventions. Since 2011 she has been researching, restoring, digitizing and remaking works from a found collection of 900 film reels from former Soviet cultural centers in Jordan. Among these films are early productions for past members of the Palestine Film Unit, the filmic arm of the PLO.
Rashed Al Shashai
Born in 1977, Al Shashai holds a Master of Visual Arts degree. His artwork utilises found objects and appropriated imagery as conceptual means of pinpointing the aesthetics of the everyday, creating what he describes as a “semantic field” through which philosophical questions, primarily the purpose of human existence and the functions of society, can be explored. With a playful sense of the uncanny, Al Shashai seeks to engage viewers with the signs and forms of the mundane in order to facilitate a consideration of what might otherwise create tension, such as the omnipresence of media, a global descent into superficiality, and the growing epidemic of apathy that has come to define modern life.
Edge Of Arabia at The Armory Show
March 5–8, 2015
The Armory Show
Pier 92 & 94
New York, NY
Art Jameel and Edge of Arabia serve as education partner and lead cultural partner of The Armory Show 2015 “Focus: Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean (MENAM).” The collaboration includes the presentation of special projects by Middle Eastern artists at The Armory Show 2015 and a dedicated “Focus: MENAM” Symposium.
As global supporters of the arts, Art Jameel and Edge of Arabia have worked with leading cultural institutions and organizations throughout the world. Their partnership with The Armory Show is the latest in a series of collaborations aimed at cross-cultural engagement in the United States. At The Armory Show, they will present the latest iteration of the ongoing CULTURUNNERS project, which hosts artistic collaborations and technologies to connect cultural territories between the United States and MENAM regions. From March 4 to 8, CULTURUNNERS will be sited in a mobile artist studio and broadcast vehicle, in the form of a modified Gulf Stream RV that uses custom-built cultural technologies to map, archive, and amplify stories and voices from the Focus section of the fair. CULTURUNNERS is a core component of Edge of Arabia’s multi-year US tour in partnership with Art Jameel.
Armory “Focus: MENAM” will also mark the launch of FREEWAY, the online broadcast platform of Edge of Arabia’s US Tour. During The Armory Show 2015, FREEWAY will explore connections between the Focus and MENAM communities across New York. Featured projects include original video exploring the neighborhoods of Little Syria and Harlem, directed by Husam Al-Sayed and featuring scores by SALAR, both recipients of the 2015 Art Jameel Residency at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. Following its long-term commitment to the development of artists’ careers, Art Jameel will also award residencies to two artists from the MENAM region through its second Press Release annual partnership with the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn and Edge of Arabia.
Through “Focus: MENAM,” Edge of Arabia in partnership with Art Jameel will also present a series of special projects installed within the exhibition halls, including Ahmed Mater’s Cowboy Code (Hadith) presented by Athr Gallery, Saudi Arabia, and Oraib Toukan’s The New(er) Middle East presented by EOA.Projects.
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