Other Interpretations (Here and Elsewhere)

On the day before escalating tensions with Hamas saw the Israeli Defense Forces to launch a ground invasion of Gaza, an exhibition
opened at the New Museum in NewYork, which presents that region’s thorny history through documentary-driven works by 45 artists and artist collectives
from 15 countries with various degrees of connection to the Arab world. It invites reflection on the process of recording, interpreting, editing and presenting
historical narratives, both personal and collective.
The show’s title, HereAndElsewhere, is taken from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1976 film-essay IçietAilleurs, which was originally intended as a documentary on the
Palestinian struggle, but which morphed over several years of filming and editing into a reflection on modes of representation. To paraphrase the show’s
associate curator Natalie Bell, the propagandistic narrative gave way to something far more insightful: a commentary on the practice of relying on hyper-
bolic stereotypes or fictional testimonies to construct representations that promote a particular idea.
In this vein, the New Museum’s thoughtful exhibition, curated by a team led by Massimiliano Gioni, who has previously mentioned an interest in art
from the Middle East and who was recently promoted to Artistic Director, was intended from the outset to focus on“artists who were looking critically
at the function of images or thinking critically about different modes of reportage,”according to Bell.“Yes, I am interested in art from the Middle East,”
says Gioni.“I did a whole show because I thought there was great work being made that was not being shown here and obviously, it also served as an
opportunity for me to learn more and get to know artists better and to engage with them now and in the future.”Bell further explains that at its core,
Here And Elsewhere (both the film and the exhibition) grapples with what it means to be an artist:“No matter what your medium, you select and edit
and narrate what you want to show your audience, rather than merely acting as a conduit for images or experiences.”
SLANTS OF DOCUMENTARY
The curators say they had no specific criteria in mind during a research phase in the spring of 2013 that saw the team cull the work of over 800 artists. The
final selection represents a wide array of practices revolving around photography, film, archives and historical narratives. While many names are familiar –
Akram Zaatari, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hassan Sharif, among others – the intergenerational group also includes lesser-known artists, whose work references
Alana Chloe Esposito reviews the New Museum’s Here And
Elsewhere, a show which many have dubbed the USA’s best
show of Middle Eastern art to date.
OTHER
INTERPRETATIONS

the Arabic-speaking world, while defying the
notion of it as a homogenous or cohesive
entity. The idea to produce a show of Arab artists
at the New Museum gradually took shape over
several years as Gioni was conducting research
related to his work as curator of the eighth
Gwangju (2010) and 55th Venice biennales
(2013). As a result, various approaches to
documentation dominate the exhibition.
The first of these is a personal reportage
exemplified by the short videos of Abounaddara,
a collective of self-taught filmmakers dispersed
throughout Syria. Speaking on a panel at the
New Museum, group member Charif Kiwan
stated their intention to embrace ambiguity and
refrain from judgement in their interviews of
Syrians from all walks of life. Part of their aim is
to shed light on those resisting the gravitational
pulls from either side of the ideological divide
between the Assad regime and the“ugly Jihadis”,
who are often conveniently overlooked by the
mainstream media. Their highly empathetic
video Everything Is Under Control, Mr President
(2009) allows viewers to connect to each
interview subject, whether pacifist or sniper,
victim or perpetrator. For Kiwan, a duty to portray
all Syrians first and foremost as human beings
justifies lending sympathy to killers.“We want
viewers to be touched by the situation and avoid
condemnation,”he says, adding that“maybe
even I would kill in a particular situation”.
Another approach relies on anchoring
an analysis of the present in past or future
histories, real or imagined. For instance, Wafa
Hourani’s Future Cities series envisions the
Palestinian refugee camp Qalandia in 2047,
2067 and 2087 respectively 100 years after the
UN partition plan, the Arab-Israeli War and the
First Palestinian Intifada. According to Hourani’s
projected narrative, in 2019 the Palestinian Mirror
Party covers their side of the separation wall
with mirrors; in 2085 the Qalandia checkpoint
becomes a free-speech zone and in 2087,
concrete from the wall is removed and replaced
with mirrors on the other side. Qalandia 2087
(the only one from this series on view) is a
diorama of the camp consisting of atmospheric
details such as strains of music emanating from
This page:
Installation view of
(background) Hrair
Sarkissian’s Execution
Squares (2008) and
(foreground) Rana
Hamadeh’s And Before It
Falls It Is Only Reasonable
To Enjoy Life A Little (2013).
Facing page:
Installation view with works
from Bouchra Khalili’s The
Mapping Journey Project
(2008–11).
He [Wafa Hourani] admits that making
art about the future is“merely a polite
way to talk about the present”.

74
REVIEW
cardboard houses with light-box windows and
balconies and public spaces populated by toy
cars and tiny plastic people and vegetation
that Hourani hopes“will give people the sense
of walking through the streets”. He admits that
making art about the future is“merely a polite
way to talk about the present”but it also carves
out room for introspection, which can be hard
to accomplish in the present. Simply imagining
the removal of the separation wall without
struggling through the painful act of self-
criticism would be insufficient to bring about the
long-term social and political changes Hourani
craves. His mirrors serve the dual purpose of
exposing the dangerous powers of illusion and
confronting the sometimes inconvenient truth
that the first Intifada was also partly responsible
for the erection of the separation wall.
Yet another approach was born out of
the struggle to digest the torrent of conflict-
related images and news updates that tend to
desensitise us to the brutality and/or tragedy at
hand. Through painterly gestures, Haerizadeh,
for one, transforms YouTube images of political
protests and demonstrations into grotesquely
humorous, fantastical scenes in works such as
Subversive Salami In A Ragged Briefcase (2014).
“Sometimes, you feel the scenes don’t even
make sense with each other, but this is how
history is written and I find this interesting,”he
notes in the catalogue’s roundtable discussion
on the past. What ties these approaches
together is the artists’recognition of what is
at stake in their chronicling of their social and
political realities.
TESTIMONY, NOT TENSION
Reflecting“not so happy times”as Gioni put it,
the show is quite dark and several works are
heart-wrenching. Some audience members
teared up during the panel discussion between
Khalil Joreige, Kiwan and Khaled Jarrar, who
could only participate via Skype after being
detained for no discernible reason by Israeli
security officers en route to NewYork.Yet overall,
flickers of optimism embedded in the deeply
human works reverberate through the show.
Perhaps inevitably, reactions of early visitors
to the show have been split. While many voices
are lauding it as the best representation to date
of Middle Eastern art in New York, if not the USA
(a claim I agree with), others, particularly from
the Middle East, feel that the predominance of
art relating to conflict on view perpetuates a
stereotypical view of the region’s artistic output.
Not being Middle Eastern myself, I have no
right to challenge the views held by people of
the region. I concede that the proportion of art
related to conflict I’ve seen in exhibitions or on
studio visits in Cairo, Amman, Dubai, Sharjah
and other places over the past several years
tended to be lower there than here.
And yet, I was impressed by the frank
discussion of this very issue on wall texts, press
materials and especially in the hefty catalogue
co-edited by Negar Azimi and Kaelen Wilson-
Goldie of Bidoun. It includes roundtable
discussions with some of the participating artists
as well as a fairly comprehensive and critical
overview of the history of Contemporary Arab
art shows in the West by Media Farzin.
This page:
Installation view of (left)
Hassan Sharif’s Suspended
Objects (2011) and (on the
wall) Abdullah Al-Saadi’s
Camar Cande’s Journey
(2010–11).
Facing page:
Installation view of Wafa
Hourani’s Qalandia
2087 (2009).
Photography by Benoit
Pailley. All images courtesy
New Museum, New York.

75
REVIEW
To me at least, the show takes great pains
to avoid replicating the pitfalls of, on the
one hand, exhibitions such as MoMA’s 2006
Without Boundaries: Seventeen Ways Of Looking,
which was criticised for whitewashing cultural
specificity for the sake of following the dictates
of a relatively staid, globalised Contemporary
art scene; and, on the other hand, the plethora
of short-sighted shows across the USA and
Europe since 9/11 that reduced all art from the
region to overly simplistic statements about
‘Arab’issues such as the veil. As Bell told me,
“there’s no single style or set of formal attributes
that can identify something as‘Arab art’and
that includes references to conflict”.
Moreover, as the third Gaza war in six years
has recently come to an end; and with the
casualty and refugee/internally displaced
persons rates in Syria respectively estimated at
over 200,000 and 6,000,000; and in the wake
of revolutions that have so far failed to bring
about the desired social and economic progress
in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, what’s wrong with
focusing on art that deals with conflict and
strife? No artist, Arab or otherwise, should feel
compelled to take on a particular trendy subject
matter in order to gain international recognition.
For the same reasons, curators should not feel
pressure to exclude strong work just because
some consider the subject matter to be cliché.
It seems valid to present good art that
responds to the high concentration of political
turmoil and suffering across a region that,
while not homogenous, is united by language,
religion and history. If nothing else, it engages
audiences who might not readily have access
to information about the Middle East beyond
the mainstream media accounts. Would the
critics prefer not to introduce these artists’
perspectives to New Yorkers? Do they not, at
the very least, applaud the show instigating (or
furthering) this very debate? Besides, most of
the work on view here is more about personal
testimony or first-person narrative than about
politics for politics’sake.
It’s hard not to think of this exhibition within
the context of the wider global trend of people
documenting and sharing the minutia of their
lives. These works are far more potent than
Instagram images of what one ate for lunch or
vacation snapshots, but they are all selfies in
the broader sense, expressions of who we are.
If these artists can say,“this is my experience,
my interpretation, my story”in a way that New
York audiences can relate to, then there is hope
for sustained reflection on how, in the words of
Bell,“both knowledge and history are processes
of writing, editing, revising ever-expanding sets
of images, memories, or even objects.”
Also, it is worth mentioning that for many of
the artists, this is either their first time showing
in New York or at an American museum or
both, so in terms of exposure to new ideas and
opportunities for cross-cultural interaction,
both they and the New Museum’s audience
stand to gain something. As Gioni notes,
“perhaps by looking elsewhere, we can all
better understand our‘here’.”
Here And Elsewhere runs at the New Museum
until 29 September. For more information
visit www.newmuseum.org
“Perhaps
by looking
elsewhere, we
can all better
understand
our‘here’.”
- Massimiliano Gioni

Other Interpretations (Here and Elsewhere)

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