New York Gallery Displays Modern Middle Eastern Calligraphy
Middle Eastern calligraphy on display at a New York City art gallery is being touted as a vehicle for dialogue between the Middle East, including Iran, and the West. The works of art are recent creations that roughly coincide with the Arab uprisings in the Middle East.
An ornate painting on linen entitled “Astrolabe” by Tunisian artist Nja Mahdaoui greets visitors to the Sundaram Tagore Gallery. The work is saturated with what appears to be stylized Arabic writing, called calligraphy, but it's actually pure design without specific meaning. Tunisian diplomat Tarek Amri says the viewer determines what it means.
“We have the earth with the center. And from the center we are spreading through countries, through population, through different cultures. But all of them - this is of course my own meaning - they join in the center,” Amri explained.
Arabic calligraphy is traditionally associated with Quranic texts. But most of the calligraphy on display in New York is without literary or religious meaning. One untitled canvas by Qatari artist Ali Hassan is a study in black featuring a single Arabic letter.
In "Apocalypse III" by Chaouki Chamoun of Lebanon, abstract calligraphy separates people from the chaos hovering above.
Calligraphy is woven into an untitled piece by another Qatari artist, Youssef Ahmad.
“The word, the calligraphic quality is completely left behind," Gallery owner Sundaram Tagore explained. "It becomes this graffiti-like form, and the surface pattern that he creates is evocative of the desert of the Middle East."
Islamic societies generally prohibit depictions of humans and animals. Middle Eastern artists instead perfected representations of words. Tagore says they are now drawn to modernism, not unlike Western artists who derived abstract art from depictions of people and nature.
“Middle Eastern art went from the word to the image; word to image and abstraction. The image is these forms. These are the visual forms. So they are trying to abstract further and further,” Tagore said.
Works by Golnaz Fathi, the show’s only Iranian artist, arrived at the exhibit hours before its scheduled opening on November 10. Tagore says they were held for three weeks in U.S. customs. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not return VOA's request for comment.
All of the pieces, both Arabic and Persian, are recent. They were created just prior to or during the recent uprisings in the Middle East. Yousef Zada, Egypt's Consul General in New York, says the work of his countryman, Ahmed Moustafa, reflects the Arab drive for democracy and individual rights.
“This signifies somebody who is shouting, saying, ‘I’m here, and this is my heritage; this is my Islamic heritage,’ to be more clear of this,” Zada explained.
The gallery says the exhibit, entitled “Written Images: Contemporary Calligraphy from the Middle East” offers people in the Middle East and Americans an opportunity to understand one another through culture.
The art work will be on display in New York through early December. "Written Images" moves to Los Angeles next year and then on to Hong Kong. |