Tehran Remixed (2005), a multimedia photographic series by Amirali Ghasemi that explores Tehran’s underground scene and youth culture.
From Foam Magazine’s profile of the series:
In the series Tehran Remixed Amirali Ghasemi shows young urban Iranians socializing, their faces and other areas of exposed skin blanked out to protect their identities. The social activities depicted seem as though they could be happening in any city around the world. Yet the fact that the identities of the participants in these seemingly ordinary acts must be so starkly concealed underscores how specific the situation is to Iran.
Ugh, only NEARLY life-size? Sorry, that’s kind of a dealbreaker for me, Skymall.
Stadia II (2004) by Julie Mehretu, ink and acrylic on canvas.
From The Walker Art Center’s description of the artist:
Julie Mehretu’s biography reads a bit like an atlas. She was born in Ethiopia, raised in Michigan, educated in Senegal and Rhode Island, and now lives in New York. It is no surprise, then, that her work incorporates the dynamic visual vocabulary of maps, urban-planning grids, and architectural forms as it alternates between historical narratives and fictional landscapes.
[…]
Mehretu combines a personal language of signs and symbols with architectural imagery to create her elaborate semi-abstractions. Simultaneously engaged with the formal concerns of color and line and the social concerns of power, history, globalism, and personal narrative, she is interested in “the multifaceted layers of place, space, and time that impact the formation of personal and communal identity.” The underlying structure of her work consists of socially charged public spaces—government buildings, museums, stadiums, schools, and airports—drawn in the form of maps and diagrams. She inscribes her own narrative into these decontextualized, highly controlled spaces through the layering of personal markings. Mehretu achieves an effect of compositional maelstrom, as elements advance and recede within the graphically ambiguous spaces. With paintings that blur the line between figuration and abstraction while constantly referencing the world around us, she creates perfect metaphors for the increasingly interconnected and complex character of the 21st century.
Arif Mahmood. Chalk Footsteps in Mithadar, 1998.
Featured in the Asia Society’s exhibit Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan, Karachi-based artist Arif Mahmood’s work speaks to the incredibly texture of the seemingly mundane.
Mahmood describes his work as part of his participation in this exhibit:
We live in and within boundaries of our fate. We are thrown into certain situations which are beyond our control. I document what I see, but I also give a small part of myself to the image. The street teaches you the closeness that you need to have when documenting the look on a person’s face. A graphic moment of texture and composition that only exists for a split second is the ultimate gift a photographer can be given.
Selected steel sculptures by Adeela Suleman, a Karachi-based artist.
I had the opportunity to see some of Suleman’s work last year at the Aicon Gallery in New York and loved the pieces in the exhibit. Suleman, like the many Pakistani artists who respond to their country’s unstable political climate through their work, demonstrates why contemporary art from Pakistan has received so much global attention recently.
The Lost Pictures by Allan deSouza (1962-65/2004-5)
deSouza writes of this series:
The original images were 35 mm slides taken by my father between 1962 and 1965 in Nairobi, Kenya. With Kenyan Independence in 1963, the images record a pivotal historical moment with some of the images being taken during the Independence Day celebrations. These were then made into 8” x 10” color prints and were placed around my apartment for up to six months in areas of strategic use, such as in the shower, kitchen, basin, etc. Some accumulated the detritus of everyday life while others were worn away by everyday contact, recording the present while erasing the past. The prints were then scanned and outputted to their finished size.
“Killing Site” (2008) by Hema Upadhyay
Acrylic, gouache, dry pastel, photograph on paper, aluminium sheets, resin
From the Saatchi Gallery’s profile of Upadhyay:
Baroda born and Mumbai based Hema Upadhyay uses photography and sculptural installations to explore notions of personal identity, dislocation, nostalgia and gender. Upadhyay’s work Killing Site draws on the theme of migration and human displacement across Asia. The top of the work is based on Mumbai’s dilapidated shanty towns, here appearing upside down and protruding out like a canopy over Upadhyay’s decorated montage. Upadhyay draws on her own personal and family history of migration to express her concerns and this is expressed through the way she portrays herself in her works. The upturned slums reference the repercussions and socio-economic inequalities that emerge as a hidden consequence of the relentless tide of urban development in the city.
Maharaja Yeshwant Rao Holkar II and Maharani Sanyogita Devi of Indore, Photographed by Man Ray in Cannes, France, C. 1930.
Today I toured Maharaja: The Splendor of India’s Royal Courts, an incredible exhibit at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum. I’ll post more extensively about the exhibit, but I had to share this incredible photograph.
Huma Bhabha, The Orientalist (2007), bronze.
Bhabha’s The Orientalist conveys ideas of exoticism, difference, and otherness. Equally primitive and futuristic, Bhabha’s figure theatrically poses as an ominous king or deity. Cast in bronze, it sits as an imposing relic from a fictional history, a regal air emanating from its polished geometric armour, molten death mask, and ethereal chicken wire veil. Humanised through exaggerated hands and feet and sympathetic cartoon styling, its powers waver between the comically surreal and portentously intimidating, drawing narrative suggestion from the loaded clichés of late night science fiction and horror movies.
I went to St. Paul’s Cathedral today to see the piece that Banksy created as a contribution to Occupy London. It was also interesting to see the global scope of the Occupy London movement, as it seemed to be very focused on concerns over neocolonialism and global justice based on the material that was being distributed. I’m so glad I got to see the piece and the protest in person!
Recent oil paintings by T.V. Santhosh.
The Saatchi Gallery’s profile of the artist describes his work:
Employing the themes of war and global terrorism, South Indian artist T.V. Santhosh paints in lurid greens and shocking orange, recreating the effect of a colour photographic negative. The artist charges his large canvases with figures in contoured and compromising positions. Like many of his politically motivated contemporaries, Santhosh lifts pivotal episodes from recent history and renegotiates their appearance with a shock-bulb of violent energy that eclipses the work. Santhosh’s paintings of impending doom, a world at the brink of an atomic end, are intentionally more apocalyptic than cathartic.
Selections from the Doctrine of the Forest series (2009) by Surendran Nair.
Ranjit Hoskote writes of Nair’s work in Voices of Change: 20 Indian Artists, edited by Gayatri Sinha:
“We find ourselves assailed by drastically simplified, weapon-grade narratives that have been designed and launched on the fly. Such are the fictions that exercise the political imagination of many millions of Indians today. Volatile, aggressive, exclusivist in their tenor, these fictions are invariable disseminated and enforced by violent and intolerant methods. Can the artist’s counter-mythologies compete against such juggernaut fictions, which are backed by demagoguery, the force of numbers, and the will to power? His are, after all, an individual’s productions: by definition, they are episodic, tactical, and guerrilla-like. Can they prod the Indian political imagination in vigilance? Wrestling with these questions, Nair has kept the door of versatility open. He adopts a politics of lila, of play, of sport among appearances and realities…
[…]
Living and working in Baroda, Gujarat, as he does, Nair has witnessed the carefully plotted insanity of the Hindu Right from close quarters. This experience has sensitized him to the complexities of belonging, even if nominally, to a religious group; and to the responsibility of employing imagery that originates in a religious context or a sacred vocabulary, against those who misuse it.” (55-6)
![Stadia II (2004) by Julie Mehretu, ink and acrylic on canvas.
From The Walker Art Center’s description of the artist:
Julie Mehretu’s biography reads a bit like an atlas. She was born in Ethiopia, raised in Michigan, educated in Senegal and Rhode Island, and now lives in New York. It is no surprise, then, that her work incorporates the dynamic visual vocabulary of maps, urban-planning grids, and architectural forms as it alternates between historical narratives and fictional landscapes.
[…]
Mehretu combines a personal language of signs and symbols with architectural imagery to create her elaborate semi-abstractions. Simultaneously engaged with the formal concerns of color and line and the social concerns of power, history, globalism, and personal narrative, she is interested in “the multifaceted layers of place, space, and time that impact the formation of personal and communal identity.” The underlying structure of her work consists of socially charged public spaces—government buildings, museums, stadiums, schools, and airports—drawn in the form of maps and diagrams. She inscribes her own narrative into these decontextualized, highly controlled spaces through the layering of personal markings. Mehretu achieves an effect of compositional maelstrom, as elements advance and recede within the graphically ambiguous spaces. With paintings that blur the line between figuration and abstraction while constantly referencing the world around us, she creates perfect metaphors for the increasingly interconnected and complex character of the 21st century.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyzukpOXop1qbaalco1_500.jpg)
