Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

artists: Lida Abdul, Adel Abidin, Sarah Abu Abdallah, Ziad Antar, Mohamed Bourouissa, Fahd Burki, Ramin Haerizadeh & Rokni Haerizadeh & Hesam Rahmanian, Nermine Hammam, Susan Hefuna, Nadia Kaabi – Linke, Taus Makhacheva, Mehreen Murtaza, Arwa Al Neami, Lydia Ourahmane, Anahita Razmi, Larissa Sansour & Søren Lind, Massinissa Selmani, Mounira Al Solh, Monira Al Qadiri
curator: Magda Kardasz
cooperation: Magdalena Komornicka
exposition design: Jacek Malinowski

This exhibition presents artists of the middle and younger generation from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. The invited artists live and work in their countries of origin, as well as in Europe or North America, but most often they permanently move between these two worlds (sometimes they are called modern urban nomads). Often educated overseas, they receive scholarships or are in touch with the world through global media. Some artists of the older generation, from regions of Muslim cultural dominance traditionally rejecting figurative representation, imported figurative or abstract art from the contemporary art capitals in the 1950s and 60s. Young artists today choose new media and the Internet is their natural source of inspiration and a way to communicate about their art. They try to look at the history, culture, politics, social and economic problems of their native countries from a distance and present them in a wider perspective. The threads present at the exhibition tackle the problems of identity, aesthetics of vanishing, war and culture, archeology of the future, (between local legends and science fiction), geometry and architecture, the status of the woman (between tradition and global dreams) and the role of the artist.

Anahita Razmi, This is Not Iranian, 2015, image of tattooed arm of the artist on photo rag, courtesy of the artists and Carbon 12, Dubai