INTERVIEW
WITH MAYMANAH FARAHAT FOR THE ONLINE MAGAZINE ARTENEWS
MF- How do you see the state of contemporary international art?
How does art function in today’s global society?
KH- I can easily say that I am lucky to be 43 years old!!!!!!
Let me explain; when 23 years ago I, with some of my artists peers, was
trying to find my way in the professional local (very local) egyptian
art scene, one could NEVER find an international art magazine that was
informative; Egypt was a closed country in terms of “what went outside”.
Then there came Mashrabia gallery in Cairo in the eighties, with French
gallerist Christine Rousseillon, who created a library in her gallery
where any artist could come and read Art in America, Flash Art, Art Forum
and Freize; my generation, then very young knew that what goes on in Egypt
has nothing to do with the rest of the world. Among others, I decided
to focus on making an international career; at that time, contemporary
international art scene was dominated by a bunch of powerful Galleries
who managed careers of artists like Jeff Koons, Julian Schnabel, Keith
Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Eric Fischel among others; a couple of American
critics and a couple of Italian Critics joined power with this coalition
of powerful galleries to dictate what went and what not.
Then of course there came the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Perestroika;
then everyone, powerful or not became interested in Russian artists, ex-Eastern
Block artists, and artists from the Far East; there was not a single “curator“
then, only powerful critics and powerful galleries.
I am lucky to witness, and later work with the first generation of curators.
To answer the question, today I see the art world is governed, rather
dominated, by powerful curators, and we witness the declining roles of
galleries and the near-total downfall of critics, who “changed jobs”
to curatorial practice to survive.
After September 11, and the emergence of neo-terror and all sorts of right
wing ideologies in the East and West alike, and the consequent need to
create dialogue between cultures, Middle East artists are for the first
time given the opportunity to take a place of “peer” instead
of a place of “indigenous”.
MF- What role does scholarship (art criticism, art historical discourse,
etc) play in shaping our perceptions and understandings of art?
KH- Today I am able to discern, locally in Egypt (and
also the Middle East) two types of practices that describe two different
perceptions of art: on the one hand there are the artists who still approach
and tackle art with the “aesthetics” mindset, and those are
the natural descendants of local pioneers and avant guards.
On the other hand there is a group of Middle East artists with an eye
on the international art scene, approaching art with the very same concepts
and perceptions of other “international” artists, i.e. they
speak the international language that art professionals speak all over
the world; art then becomes a “tool for communication” and
bridging between cultures.
The growing phenomenon of mixed residencies between artists, critics and
curators of different Geo-political and cultural backgrounds unifies more
and more the newly developed global nature of contemporary art language,
and possibly plays a part too in gradually abolishing “cultural
specificities” along the way.
I believe that art criticism of the nineties, with its esoteric linguistic
synthesis and confusing texts is declining and giving more ground to curatorial
texts of socio-political economy nature and social history interest.
MF- How do you read the current interest in Middle Eastern and “Islamic”
contemporary art in European and North American art institutions, markets
and galleries?
KH- With the exception of the pioneer and near-avant-guard
curatorial work of Marilu Knode (currently Curator at the Scottsdale Museum,
Arizona) and Martina Corgnati (Italian Academic, art historian, critic
and curator, currently finishing her book on Middle East contemporary
art practices) who both showed interest in Middle East art practices as
early as 1996, and who sensed a “premonition” somewhere in
the virtual art spaces that a wave of Middle East art and artists will
emerge, I personally believe this current interest only started with the
grave incidents of 9/11.
With the rise of the neo-Republicans in the US and right wing trends in
the rest of the West, and the near-establishment of a new generation of
international terrorists most of whom have Arabo-islamic backgrounds,
the need to discover (curiosity) and establish bridges between the inevitably
clashing civilizations made (and still make) a wealthy and cheesy curatorial
material to feed the already curatorial favorite themes of “gender”,
“identity”, “sexuality”, “sexism”,
“feminism”, the “sacred” and the “ephemeral”.
So I see now much curatorial work about “identity and gender under
Islam”; much interest is given to second-generation Arab female
artists (After Mona Hatoum, Ghada Amer and Sherin Neshaat making the first
wave).
Many of the female artists from the Middle East though refuse any link
or adherence to any feminist description, and insist to be approaches
as “artists” rather than “female Arab” artist
or “female Arab feminist” artist.
Visual artists Amal Kenawi and Sabah Naim (both based in Cairo) as well
as writer May el Telmissany (based in Montreal, Canada) refuse categorically
any link to Arab feminism.
To summarize, I think that the current interest in Middle Eastern
and “Islamic” contemporary art in European and North American
art institutions, markets and galleries shows three basic trends:
1. Curiosity: serious curatorial work really trying to
trace actual changes happening in the Middle East and the subsequent changes,
development and progress happening to art and artists.
2. Pursuing cliché: curatorial work looking for
gender, identity, etc
3. Pursuing exotism: curatorial work looking for non-existent-anymore
themes like oppression, persecution, etc..
MF- What artists, movements, or schools have had the most impact on your
work?
KH- a-Robert Rauschenberg
b-Jean-Michel Basquiat
c- Andy Warhol
d- Fluxus
e-Pop Art
f- Abstract expressionism
MF- As art progresses into the 21st century, can you reflect on
art of the last century? What or who marks the importance of art in the
20th century? What or who has ushered in art of the 21st century?
KH- I have my very personal perspective as to what happened
to art in the twentieth century, especially in the seventies with terms
like “post modernism” and so forth.
I believe the twentieth century in the post impressionist era started
to deconstruct what has been built cumulatively in the post-renaissance
centuries; this deconstruction was ignited by the industrial revolution,
pace of life, WW I & II and the subsequent distribution of wealth
and power.
The Fluxus movement played an important part there; several arts were
mingled and fused; sound and performance entered as a new medium.
After the political assassinations of the sixties in the USA, the Vietnam
war, the May 1968 social revolution in Europe, the emergence of film as
a visual arts medium on the hands of Warhol’s factory, the visual
arts world attained a level of saturation and demonstrated a sense of
“cultural nihilism”.
The following trends of minimal and conceptual arts reflected certain
serenity that could be seen either as “emptiness/void” or
as “a breeze to calm down”.
A second breath came in the last two decades of the century with the revival
of painting on the hands of the neo-expressionists of Germany (new-wild-ones
movement), Italy (Achile Bonito Oliva’s Transavanguardia) and the
few New York painters, especially Basquiat. The content though was either
a re-adaptation or re-interpretation of precise expressionists of the
earlier century; what I like to call “visual recycling”.
I believe that we enter the 21st century with no clear objectiveof where
we head; if we compare artists who entered the twentieth century started
a process of deconstruction, which was a long process to do, a seven-decade-process
to complete.
Today artists need a few decades to identify the way, and more than a
century to reach a new maturity.
With such military conflicts as in the Middle East, and the American invasion
and military atrocities in Iraq and Afganistan, and the israili systematic
mass murder of Palestenians, and the resolution to arms in different parts
of the wolrd to resolve conflicts, new aesthetics are established, I personally
call those “war aesthetics” and “aesthetics of violence”;
perhaps photo-journalism and documentary video are, and will be one of
the most sought after and used tools of expression to enter the new century;
already there are new categories to show and project those works like
“citizen-journalist category”, “mobile-phone video category”
and “web-cam category”.
The new century starts with realist documentation.
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