12 THE ART NEWSPAPER Number 284, November 2016
News International
China’s new Silk Road
leads west to Middle East
Biennials in country’s Muslim-majority regions coincide with cultural exchange with Qatar
MAMAT: © KWAN SHEUNG CHI. BAGHDAD: © AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/GETTY IMAGESTurkey to quit EU cultural
funding programme
4 OCTOBER
Turkish oicials have announced their
country’s intention to leave Creative Europe,
a European Union funding programme for
the arts. The withdrawal, efective from
1 January 2017, will cut of Turkey from
a €1.5bn pool of money for artists and
ilm-makers making work between 2014 and- According to the Turkish newspaper
Haberturk, the decision came after Creative
Europe sponsored a concert to mark the
Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1917, a term
Turkey oicially rejects.
Damien Hirst’s gallery
wins architecture prize
6 OCTOBER
The Newport Street Gallery in London, set
up by the artist Damien Hirst to show his
private art collection, was awarded the
Royal Institute of British Architects’ Stirling
Prize for the UK’s best new building in 2016.
The gallery was designed by the architects
Caruso St John. The practice converted
former theatre carpentry and scenery
painting workshops in Vauxhall, south
London, to create the gallery and shop,
which opened late last year, and Pharmacy
2, a high-end bar and restaurant.Doris Salcedo installation
mourns failed peace deal
11 OCTOBER
The Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo
marked the failed referendum in
Colombia—which would have approved
the government’s peace deal with Farc
guerillas—with a temporary public
installation in the main square of the capital,
Bogotá. The work, Sumando Ausencias, was
made of 7,000 metres of white fabric onto
which the names of 18,200 victims of the
insurgency were printed in ash. It was on
show in the square only between 8am and
8pm on 11 October.Selldorf chosen to design
Frick expansion
20 OCTOBER
The Frick Collection in New York has named
Selldorf Architects as the designer for its
expansion project. The irm, which is run
by Annabelle Selldorf, was selected from
a pool of 20. After a public outcry in 2014,
the museum scrapped initial plans for a
building that would have meant the end of
its Russell Page-designed courtyard garden.
The Frick will now expand within its current
footprint. Additions will include galleries
and a dedicated education space.
Compiled by Dan Duray and Pac PobricAnti-maia police retrieve
paintings by Van Gogh
30 SEPTEMBER
Anti-maia police in Naples have recovered
two paintings by Van Gogh that were
stolen 14 years ago from the artist’s
museum in Amsterdam. View of the Sea
at Scheveningen (1882) and Congregation
Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen
(188485), were discovered in a house on
the coast near Naples without frames and in
a relatively good condition, according to a
statement from the Van Gogh Museum. The
works will return to Amsterdam after the
criminal case, which is ongoing.
The rest of October at a glance
Baghdad pop-up show
rises from the ruins
Artists restage exhibition first seen
in bombed-out shopping centre
EXHIBITION
Baghdad. The Ruya Foundation for Contemporary Culture
in Iraq is planning to restage an exhibition this month in
Baghdad that first took place in a bomb-blasted shopping
centre in the Iraqi capital at the end of August. Within
hours, the pop-up exhibition, titled Karrada, was shut
down by the police.
The Iraqi-Canadian artist Riyadh Hashim brought
together 16 artists for the pop-up show in the ruins of
the Al-Hadi shopping centre in the Karrada district on 30
August, after a suicide truck bomb and a co-ordinated road-
side device killed more than 300 people on 3 July. Responsi-
bilty for the attack was later claimed by Islamic extremists.
Hashim and his colleagues mobilised artists from across
the country and beyond to express their solidarity with
victims of terror in Iraq and elsewhere, hoping to turn a
symbol of violence and sectarianism into a beacon of hope.
Despite verbal permission from the mayoralty of
Baghdad, police closed down the Karrada exhibition after
only four hours—but not before Iraqi television and 150 vis-
itors had seen the show. Among them were two boys from
the neighbourhood who helped the artists with their instal-
lations. “Many of their friends were killed in the bombing,”
says Hashim, adding: “We wept with them for their loss.”
Hashim’s own work I Am All of Them, a mobile of Pho-
toshopped images of the artist’s face blended with those
of terror victims in Orlando, London, Paris and Baghdad,
was one of many powerful pieces in the show. “When I
first walked into the building, I felt the souls of the victims
still floating in mid-air,” he says.
He transported the work 180km from his studio in
Diwanyah to Baghdad by taxi, installing it the night before
the exhibition opened on 30 August.Hard-hitting installations
Other highlights included London-based Hanaa Mallalah’s
charcoal work Biohazard, the design for which she emailed
from her studio and asked participating artist Nadia Flaih
to install. Flaih’s own work, Saviour, featuring fire hoses
connected to blood bags in front of a crater-like hole, is
typical of the bold installations.
Textile artist Dhuha al Khatib created The Elevator,
suspending fabric hands in the burnt-out cage of the lift
where eight members of the same family died. Her work
The Doll featured toy plastic blackbirds emblazoned with
Isil’s logo poised for attack.
A performance piece called Victim DNA, in which two
artists from Babylon covered each other in black paint and
then ofered charcoal “remains” on paper plates encased
in plastic, was one of the more experimental projects.
“This kind of work is very new to Baghdad,”
says Hashim, where politically inoffensive abstract
expressionism honed during years of dictatorship still
enjoys oicial sanction. Subject to funding, Hashim hopes
to bring Canadian artists on board for the second iteration
of Karrada at the Ruya Foundation in November. The not-
for-profit foundation, established in 2012, organised the
Iraqi Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale and works with
Iraqi and international artists, including Ai Weiwei and
Francis Alÿs.
Hadani DitmarsThe ruins of the Al-Hadi shopping centre in the Karrada areaCULTURAL EXCHANGE
Yinchuan. China is increasingly engaging
with countries with mainly Muslim
populations through cultural exchanges
as its government champions the
creation of a new, economic “Silk Road”.
Two biennials opened this autumn in
the country’s far-flung western regions,
which are the respective homelands of
China’s two largest Muslim minorities,
the Turkic Uyghurs and the more
assimilated Hui. Meanwhile, the 11th
Shanghai Biennale, which is due to open
on 11 November (until 12 March 2017),
features an unprecedented number
of international artists from Muslim
countries, even though China’s own
Muslim minorities remain marginalised.
The third Xinjiang International Art
Biennale was organised by the ministry
of culture of the Xinjiang Uyghur Auton-
omous Region in Urumqi (8-31 October).
Featuring folk and popular art, which
reflect oicial preferences, it contrasts
starkly with the global contemporary
approach of the first Yinchuan Biennale
(until 18 December) at the new, private
MoCA Yinchuan, in the capital of the
Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
Urumqi and Yinchuan are stops on
China’s ancient Silk Road, the over-
land trade route that led to the mostly
Muslim countries to China’s west. Their
biennials coincide with an increase
in China’s cultural engagement with
neighbouring countries and the Middle
East. For example, Doha’s Museum of
Islamic Art is currently showing Treas-
ures of China (until 7 January), includ-
ing terracotta warriors from Xi’an—the
start of the Silk Road—as part of the
oicial Qatar-China Year.
The cultural exchange with Qatar is
part of China’s massive One Belt, One
Road Initiative, championed by presi-
dent Xi Jinping as a way to counteract
slowing domestic growth. The Chinese
government aims to develop new
markets to China’s west and south.
Official cultural exchanges under
One Belt, One Road’s auspices now
abound, such as a thematic section of
the 18th China Shanghai International
Arts Festival (until November 15), fea-
turing projects from Qatar and Egypt.
Unofficially, such events may encour-
age institutions in coastal China to
show more work by contemporary
artists from Muslim-majority countries.
However, there are no indicators that
state scrutiny of unofficial shows will
relax. Other Gallery Shanghai’s March
2011 group exhibition The Third Eye,
which featured works by nine Iranian
artists, was closed after the Iranian
consulate complained to the Chinese
authorities about its content.Religious and political taboos
In the past two decades artists from
across Asia, the Middle East and North
Africa have rarely been shown in
Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou,
partly because politics and religion,
major themes in contemporary art
from these regions, are major taboos in
China. Meanwhile, negative stereotypes
of the Hui, Uyghurs and foreign Muslims
remain common among Han Chinese.
“It is impossible to attract publicity and
visitors without famous artists’ works ina show. Chinese art museums are still
early in their evolution, and well-known
Islamic artists are very few,” says MoCA
Yinchuan director Liu Wenjin. “I will
not use Islamic identity to promote
artists —their background is incidental
to whether their art can move the audi-
ence.” She blames Chinese audiences’
hesitancy towards art from the Islamic
world on sensationalist media reports.
While Chinese institutions and col-
lectors are often uninterested in, or
wary of, contemporary art from coun-
tries with mainly Muslim populations,
the Shanghai Biennale will feature
work by artists including Beiruit-based,
Iraqi-American Rheim Alkadhi and
Indonesia’s Agan Harahap. The show,
which is organised by Raqs Media
Collective, founded by three New Del-
hi-based artists, stresses “south-south
co-operation”.
Lisa MoviusOBSTACLES FACING CHINESE MUSLIMSThere are more than 21 million Chinese Muslims, about
1.6% of the country’s population, and they are largely
concentrated in the poorer, and increasingly Han-
dominated, western regions. Educational opportunities
for young artists are often limited to ethnic universities,
where conservative art departments emphasise paintings of
idyllic ethnic peasant life. One exception is Aniwar Mamat,
a Kashgar-born Uyghur artist active in Beijing’s avant-garde
since 1988 who creates abstract paintings and tapestries
referencing Xinjiang handicraft traditions. L.M.Oicial cultural
exchanges under
One Belt, One Road’s
auspices now aboundWork by the Saudi-
Palestinian artist
Dana Awartani
at the Yinchuan
Biennale (top),
and tapestries by
Aniwar Mamat
inspired by
traditional Xinjiang
designs