The first monograph on Iraqi artist Hayv Kahraman surveys her figurative work, which mines the marginal space that pertains to diasporic peoples, collective and personal memory, and gender. The vital practice of Hayv Kahraman produces ethereal figures relating to each other in complex grounds. Their grace belies the brutal history of violence and displacement Kahraman’s subjects endure, creating an oscillating effect that entices the viewer with its seductive order. The artist combines elements of Italian Renaissance painting and twelfth-century Baghdadi illuminated manuscripts to create an evocative, hybrid vocabulary. Her quietly radical shifts—where traditional Iraqi screens’ geometric patterns are replaced with sections of a woman’s body, or a manuscript figure is presented as doll-like parts—convey the artist’s developing exploration of femininity, acculturation, and abstract patterns. Essays by Martin Daughtry, Walter Mignolo, and Octavio Zaya accompany works from all series to date, where graphic patterning attests alternately to violence and to moments of agency, community, and escape.

Hayv Kahraman

Arts & Photography

Zaya, Octavio

Al-Khudhairi, Wassan

Mignolo, Walter

History & Criticism

Rizzoli Electa

Stories of Resistance examines the myriad ways in which resistance takes form across the world. Through the perspectives of an international array of artists working across a full range of media, the exhibition sheds light on the situations from which acts of resistance emerge. Featuring a diverse body of work, the exhibition nonetheless identifies several themes and motifs that recur across history, cultures, and regions. Resistance may be found in the rewriting of history, exposing or filling in the blatant absences left out of the dominant narrative. Resistance emerges from within governmental, corporate, or institutional structures and systems of power. Resistance takes shape in labor movements and in actions to protect water, land, and other natural resources. Migration, movement, and exile-most often depicted as acts of desperation-are here shown as acts of agency in the face of persecution, oppression, and inequality.To encompass the epic range of human resistance worldwide, the exhibition activates the entire museum space, inside and outside, with video, performance, photography, drawing, sculpture, and installation. Participating artists include Bani Abidi, Candice Lin, Jen Liu, Guadalupe Maravilla, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and Dread Scott, with additional artists to be announced, many of whom make their U.S. debut at CAM. A publication expanding on resistance as multidisciplinary action will coincide with the exhibition. The publication will feature a curatorial essay by Wassan Al-Khudhairi; commissioned essays and reprints of essays will provide multiple perspectives on the topic of resistance; artist sections with artwork plates and descriptions; installation photographs from the exhibition; and biographies on the artists.

Stories of Resistance

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

Paul Mpagi Sepuya presents the work of one of the most prominent, up-and-coming photographers working today. Sepuya primarily makes studio photographs of friends, artists, collaborators, and himself, inviting viewers to consider the construction of subjectivity. He challenges and deconstructs traditional portraiture by way of collage, layering, fragmentation, mirror imagery, and the perspective of a black, queer gaze. In contrast to the slick artifice of contemporary portraiture, Sepuya suggests the human element of picture taking--fingerprints, smudges, dust on the surface of mirrors. He also allows glimpses into the studio setting--including tripods, backdrops, lenses, and the photographer himself--encouraging multivalent narrative reads of each image. For Sepuya, photography is a tactile and communal enterprise. Although the creation of artist books has been a long-standing part of his practice, Paul Mpagi Sepuya is the first publication of his work to be released widely, copublished with the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis on the occasion of a major solo exhibition.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya

Aperture

Contemporary Arabic art is almost completely unknown in much of the West. The mission of the Arab Museum of Modern Art is not only to showcase a unique collection, finally accessible to students, academics, scholars and the international community, but also to act as a new institution with programs running alongside the exhibition to enhance its worth. This exhibition catalogue presents the collection's highlights to expose new audiences to modern art from the Arab world. It accompanies the first long-term installation in the museum's galleries, and presents works in thematic, chronological and regional context to allow visitors to make aesthetic and historical connections. The exhibition's themes are Landscape; Portraiture; Cityscape; Folk themes; Politicized content and form; Social Realism; Abstraction.

Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art

Shabout, Nada

Chalabi, Deena

Reference

Skira

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Books by Al-Khudhairi, Wassan