Charlie Koolhaas – Art Dubai

An artist collaboration between Charlie Koolhaas and Art Dubai 2011.

Rebel Art: Libyan Youth Find Outlet In Sketches, Song

“Making Fun of Qaddafi – The rebels may not be winning but they’re successfully mocking Libya’s leader — Uncle Curly — with flair. A look at the graffiti of the Libyan revolution” from Foreignpolicy.com

Podcast at NPR: “Young people are heavily involved in the uprising now under way in Libya: They are members of the rebel military; they are working to help form a new government; they are also producing revolutionary artwork, publications and music.

On any given day, you can find at least a few of Benghazi’s young and restless in a large, empty cement lot off one of the city’s main thoroughfares.

In the late afternoon, young men gather to see just how much tire rubber they can burn. Fishtailing Toyotas leave a smear of swirling, smoking, sticky blackness on the pavement. From a hotel room high above, the streaks appear like some kind of postmodern design.

About a mile away, just off Revolution Square, more substantive creations are taking shape. This is the Media Center for the 17th of February Revolution — a dingy, dog-eared building bustling day and night with frenetic 20- and 30-somethings trying to process what’s going on in Libya.

On the second floor, a cottage industry of sorts has developed, producing anti-Moammar Gadhafi posters. The walls are plastered with mainly black and white cartoons of the leader.

In one, he’s a fanged vampire with bombs and machine guns popping out of the top of his head. In another, Gadhafi is depicted as a monkey picking lice off a crony. They all ooze vitriol.”

More at NPR

(Image above from Ziegegeist)

Splendours of Mesopotamia

“This exhibition introduces the history of the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia, a crucial region in the development of human civilisation.
Splendours of Mesopotamia will be shown at Manarat Al Saadiyat on Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, 29 March – 27 June 2011
Open Daily, 10am – 8pm
artsabudhabi.ae

Four Films from Kamran Shirdel

“Bidoun and UbuWeb are pleased to present four of Shirdel’s most renowned socio-political documentaries, films that courageously and frankly revealed the darker side of Iran’s economic boom, analyzing the effects of a society flush with oil money. These films were steeped in a deep social consciousness reminiscent of the best of the Italian Neo-realist tradition, the cinema that had influenced him deeply during his studies in Italy. Shirdel’s furious documentaries and cinematic language were a bone of contention both under the Shah and following his exile, because they spoke up for the underprivileged and, in doing so, exposed and criticized the corruption of the mechanism of power. Because of the severe censorship, nearly all his films were banned and confiscated, and in the end he was expelled from The Ministry and put on the blacklist. Seven years after it was made (and censored), his The Epic of the Gorgani Village Boy (The Night It Rained!), after receiving the GRAN PRIX at The Third Tehran International Film Festival (1974), was immediately banned again and remained so (like his Nedamatgah (Women’s Prison, 1965), Qaleh (Women’s Quarter, 1966), Tehran Is the Capital of Iran (1966), and others) until after the revolution.”

Visit Kamran Shirdel on UbuWeb

Artist found his calling in banana plant

Addid’s Journal: “He is simple, stylish and has uncanny ability to look casual and almost carless. His sentences come slowly, the ideas carefully exposed to release his inner self. The 60-year-old slight, soft-spoken artist talks of his paintings which are rooted in the soil, filled with images of rural landscapes and vegetables.
Bany Payne or Ras Hailu Tafari, a name and a title that he has adopted since he moved to Ethiopia, drew his inspiration from his feelings for land and banana tree which was the chief produce in his home country, St. Vincent, Caribbean Island. The connection to things of the earth natural to life on a farm influenced his work to this day. This source of inspiration is not lacking in the fertile southern Ethiopian town of Shahemene where he lives today and practices his art.”

Read on at Addid’s Journal

Surgeon Using Parody to Dissect the News in Egypt

Photo: Abdalla F. Hassan for the International Herald Tribune

New York Times: “Bassem Youssef, a 37-year-old cardiothoracic surgeon, is closing a television deal that would make him one of the top paid talents on Egyptian television, a rise to stardom that began less than two months ago — on YouTube.
“I was born for this life of media,” Dr. Youssef said wistfully, although new to appearing before a camera. He is still getting used to being recognized everywhere he goes. “It is a bit scary,” he said.

As Egypt’s revolution unfolded, the bizarre coverage by the local news media became the stimulus for a show that drew its inspiration from two staples of the American cable channel Comedy Central: “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.”

Shot in a spare room in Dr. Youssef’s apartment overlooking the Nile in the Cairo neighborhood of Maadi, “The Bassem Youssef Show” started as an Internet production created on a shoestring budget with the aspiration of making it to television.”

Read on at the New York Times

Syria turmoil kills Mrs Al-Assad’s forum

Photography from Voyager: © Martin Mai/ TC

The Art Newspaper: “The wife of President Bashar Al-Assad was attempting to gather international cultural experts

Among the victims of the current turmoil in Syria has been the attempt by Asma Al-Assad, right, wife of President Bashar Al-Assad, to put the country on a gentler and more international path.
Mrs Al-Assad, who grew up in Britain, is patron of the Syria Heritage Foundation, a UK charity set up by Wafic Saïd, the Damascus-born businessman who has brokered important deals between the British defence industry and Saudi Arabia. Last month, encouraged by Mrs Al-Assad, the Foundation was to have sponsored the first “Cultural Landscapes Forum” in Damascus together with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.
The guest speakers were the crème de la crème of the global art scene, among them: the French minister of culture and the director of the Louvre talking about the Franco-Syrian cultural experience; the director of the British Museum on the history that only objects can tell; the director of the Hermitage Museum on how to modernise a museum; the head of the Aga Khan Trust on how to value culture as an asset; the director general of Unesco on the economic impact of the cultural sector.
The top cultural policy consultants, Lord Cultural Resources, were also there. The winner of the architectural competition for a new National Museum was due to have been announced.
But shooting into crowds and such refinements are incompatible, so the forum was postponed indefinitely and the architect remains unannounced.”