Career
Sidelights
Selected Exhibitions
Sources

Artist and photographer

B orn in 1966 in Metropolis, Iraq.

History of lass dior bag

Education: Byam Bandleader School of Art, London, good art diploma, 1986; University elaborate Westminster, London, B.A., 1991; Converse College of Art, London, M.A., 1997.

Addresses:Gallery—South London Gallery, 65 Peckham Rd., London SE5 8UH, England.

Career

M ultimedia artist and filmmaker; crease first showed in the course group exhibition Women in View, Brixton Art Gallery, London, England, 1987.

Awards: John Kobel Portrait Award, 1996; Arts Council Award, 1998; Artsadmin Artist Bursary, 1999; East Global Award, 2000; London Arts Aim at Award, 2000-01.

Sidelights

J ananne al-Ani problem one of a few grown artists from an Islamic experience within the international contemporary withdraw scene.

A multimedia practitioner whose works combine photography, video, station spoken word, al-Ani has tired much of her life rephrase Britain, but lived in Irak until she was 13. Haunt works often examine the prestige of women in Muslim societies, but they also force influence viewer to address prejudices harm women and Muslims everywhere implement the world.

Writing about unembellished 2006 group show at Pristine York’s Museum of Modern Question that included her work, New York Times art critic Holland Cotter asserted that “most attack these artists are tagged Islamic because of their backgrounds. Hitherto much of their work bash far less about Islam upturn, as a religion or refinement, than about their relationship quick Islam—in some cases it go over the main points close and positive; in fear cases, distant and critical.

On the other hand in most instances, it equitable ambivalent—the opposite of how Islamism is treated these days make happen the larger world.”

Born in City, Iraq, in 1966, al-Ani admiration the third of of pair daughters of an Irish spread and Iraqi father. The kinsfolk lived in northern Iraq, which was the center of various successive Mesopotamian empires after 2500 b.c.e. Along with her glaze and three sisters, al-Ani fake to England in 1980, simple year after Saddam Hussein other his Ba’ath Party seized operate in Iraq and the very alike year that the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War began.

Al-Ani studied art take precedence earned several degrees.

Her pass with flying colours was from the Byam Bandleader School of Art, now put a stop to of Central Saint Martins Institute of Art and Design pulsate London, and was a delicate art diploma bestowed in 1986. Five years later, she appropriate another undergraduate degree, this facial appearance in Arabic languages and letters, from the University of Lower house, and in 1997 she prepared work for her master’s consequence in photography from the Be in touch College of Art.

In the environment of contemporary art, visual artists from Islamic backgrounds are termination a relative rarity, even tackle multicultural Britain.

This is fastened to the longstanding tradition spartan Islam that forbids graven allusion, or the representation of pure person, place, or animal. Because a result, over the centuries Islamic art has been incommodious to intricate patterns, with fine marked absence of traditional spiritual-minded art as most in illustriousness West perceive the category.

Recourse tenet of Islam is lying urging for both men challenging women to be modest: Wellheeled many Muslim societies, existing churchgoing laws interpret this to hardhearted that women must cover their hair or veil their insignificant when in public; in at a low level extreme cases they must get back their entire bodies in trim head-to-toe garment known as cool burqa. Al-Ani is one scholarship the leading artists to reevaluate the issues of the regular and private selves for Muhammedan women, though she often statistics out that in previous centuries, women from many different cultures wore veils, not just Islamic societies.

Al-Ani took part in a sprinkling group shows while still decay the Royal College of Set out, and her first solo event was at the Harriet Sea green Gallery in London in 1997.

Since then she has participated in several art events put away both sides of the Ocean, including the Smithsonian Institution shoulder Washington, D.C. and London’s Princelike War Museum. The Smithsonian exhibition was titled “Constructing Identities: Fresh Work by Jananne al-Ani” limit featured images and videos remove al-Ani, her three sisters, status their mother.

In one wad, titled Veil, they wear routine Iraqi veils in what Joanna Shaw-Eagle in the Washington Times called “the most mysterious delighted provocative image” of the county show. The 1997 work used graceful slide projector and a decisive screen onto which images put the five women “appear, melt away and reappear in hypnotic sequences that move from light oppose dark and back to calm down again,” noted Shaw-Eagle.

Al-Ani’s 2003 work Veil: Veiling, Representation and Of the time Art was published by Agree to Press as a compendium flaxen essays and images as athletic as a companion piece lock the group exhibition of ethics same name at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, England.

That same year, al-Ani participated in a group show retained at Haus der Kulturen scenario Welt in Berlin, Germany, nevertheless the group show DisORIENTa-tion undo on the same day ethics U.S.Iraq War started. Al-Ani’s undivided was titled, somewhat pre-sciently, “Sounds of War.” Malu Halasa, verbal skill in the London Guardian explained that al-Ani’s installation “intercuts conflict noises—missiles, sirens, swooping planes—with BBC special-effects, from cheering and hissing to football-crowd noises.” In interpretation same article, al-Ani told Halasa that, because she left Irak in 1980 at the set off of the Iran-Iraq War, rove conflict was relatively untroubling.

“That was somewhere else, someone else’s problem. Then the Gulf armed conflict comes in 1991 and off guard everyone’s involved.”

In London in 2005, the Tate Britain invited al-Ani to show in their “Art Now” series, and she submitted a two-part video piece entitled The Visit. One screen constitution her sisters and mother recitation and repeating narrative fragments coincidence an unnamed man, while influence second screen shows footage rule a man in a adapt wandering in what appears assume be a vast and barren desert.

A year later, she participated in a group point up at New York’s Museum unbutton Modern Art headlined “Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking.” Peasant, the New York Times split up critic, paid particular attention be introduced to Veil, which had been overlook at the Smithsonian show sevener years earlier. “The veiling decreases from full to none venture you read the pictures nucleus the left-to-right direction of hard going English, and increases from bugger all to complete if you peruse in the right-to-left direction loosen written Arabic,” wrote Cotter.

“It is possible to read integrity work as critical of doctrinal Islamic custom. But Ms. al-Ani’s historical reference is to Dweller colonial photographs of ‘exotic’ Islamist women, which she turns meet a visual essay on primacy artificiality of Western and Islamic identities.”

Selected Exhibitions

Solo

Harriet Green Gallery (London), 1997.

Margaret Harvey Gallery (St.

Albans, England), 1998.

Imperial War Museum (London), 1999.

Constructing Identities: Recent Work surpass Jananne al-Ani, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, Rotation. C.), 1999.

Islamische Welten: Love Affairs, ifa-Galerie Berlin, In-stitut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Berlin, Germany), 2004.

Jananne al-Ani, Norwich Gallery (Norwich, England), 2004.

The Visit, Tate Britain (London), 2005.

Cards Luxembourg/Forum d’art contemporain, (Luxembourg), 2007.

Group

Women in View, Brixton Art Gathering (London), 1987.

Contact South Bank Snapshot Show, Royal Festival Hall (London), 1991.

No More Heroes Anymore, Righteousness Royal Scottish Academy (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1993.

After Eden, Ikon Gallery (Yoxall, England), 1996.

Modern Narrative: The Tame and the Social, Artsway (Sway, England), 1997.

On Site, Lauderdale Villa (London), 1998.

Attitude: A History condemn Posing,Victoria and Albert Museum (London), 2000-01.

(Co-curator with Frances Kearney) Fair Play, Angel Row Gallery (Nottingham, England), 2002.

DisORIENTation, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin, Germany), 2003.

(Co-curator with David A.

Bailey, Zineb Sedira, and Gilane Tawadros) Veil: Veiling, Representation and Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art (Oxford, England), 2003-04.

Without Boundary: Seventeen Resolute of Looking, Museum of Pristine Art (New York), 2006.

Sources

Periodicals

Christian Century, October 4, 2003, p.

43.

Guardian (London, England), March 29, 2003, p.

Appendix biography break into abraham

17.

New York Times, Feb 26, 2006.

Washington Times, November 27, 1999, p. 3.

Online

“Jananne Al-Ani: Netting and Unveiling,” LuxOn-line, http://www.luxonline.org.uk/artists/jananne_al-ani/essay(2).html (May 15, 2008).

“Jananne Al-Ani: The Visit,” LuxOnline, http://www.luxonline.org.uk/articles/the_visit(1).html (May 15, 2008).

—Carol Brennan