Musa Al Shadeedi, His Look, 2016, Print on paper, 40 x 60 cm ***
Opening is on Thursday, 28th of April, 2016 at 6-9pm
Abolish 153 will host its second annual art exhibition at JAMM Art Gallery in Dubai to fundraise for the campaign. The exhibition will include 40 artworks in various media by 11 emerging artists from the GCC and Iran. The seven Kuwaiti artists include photographers Maha Al-Asaker and Farah Salem, as well as artists Thuraya Lynn Al Jasem, Zahra (Zouz The Bird) Al-Mahdi, Amani Althuwaini, Deena (Machina) Qabazard and Tarek Sultan. Other artists include Iranian painter Mehdi Darvishi, Bahraini multi-media artist Zuhair Alsaeed and Iraqi artist Musa Al-Shadeedi. Fifty percent of the proceeds from the sale will benefit the campaign.
All artworks shown at the exhibition were created for the purpose of this exhibition.
*** Iraqi artist Musa Al-Shadeedi uses La Grande Odalisque, an oil painting dated 1814 by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, which hangs at the Lourve in Paris, to demonstrate symbolic distortion. The painting became infamous because the female subject was drawn with two or three lumbar vertebrae too many. Recent studies have shown that her elongated spine was a deliberate distortion, a way to contrast the seductive posture of her body, meant only for the Sultan’s pleasure, and her facial expression, which is equally sad and indifferent. Al-Shadeedi uses the painting as a reference point to demonstrate how modern men still view women as bodies to be used for their own pleasure and as private property, with the right to cover them or even kill. In his photograph with the curtain, the female subject becomes a thing, no longer a human being.
Ehibition is ongoing until 8th of May, 2016
JAMM Art Gallery
Address: Street 8, Building 1, Warehouse 11, Al Quoz 1, Dubai
Tel: +971 4 328 5169
E-mail: info@jamm-art.com
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