Permanent Exhibition, First Floor Galleries
Opens 1st November, 2014
Shafic Abboud / Hamed Abdalla / Youssef Abdelke / Said al-Adawi / Etel Adnan / Yousef Ahmad / Ghada Amer / Nabil Anani / Farid Aouad / Layla al-Attar / Dia al-Azzawi / Amine el-Bacha / Marwan Kassab Bachi / Farid Belkahia / Habib Bida / Kamal Boullata / Mounir Canaan / Ahmed Cherkaoui / Saloua Raouda Choucair / Chaouki Choukini / Faraj Daham / Jafaar al-Deshty / Saliba Douaihy / Manal al-Dowayan / Wafika Sultan Saif al-Essa / Balqis Fakhro / Moustafa Farroukh / Mohammed Hosni el-Baba / Lisa Fattah / Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar / Paul Guiragossian / Kadhim Haidar / Mustafa al-Hallaj / Wafa al-Hamad / Jamil Hammoudi / Ali Hassan / Faiq Hassan / Adam Henein / Khalil Jibran / Fouad Kamel / Ahmad Kanaan / Amal Kenawy / Mohammed Omar Khalil / Miloud Labied/ Faisal Laibi/ Hussein Madi/ Nja Mahdaoui / Baya Mahieddine / Nadira Mahmoud / Salman al-Malik / Ahmed Mater / George C. Michelet / Aisha Al-Misnad / Sami Mohammed / Aimé Nicolas Morot / Fateh al-Moudarres / Mahmoud Mouktar / Ahmed Moustafa / Abdullah al-Muharraqi / Hassan al-Mulla / Hamed Nada / Omar el-Nagdi / Rafa al-Nasiri / Ahmed Nawar / Mahmoud Obaidi / Samia al-Said Omar / Hamed Owais / Khalifa al-Qattan / Khalifa al-Qattan / Mohammed Racim / Omar Racim / Shakir Hassan Al Said / Mahmoud Said (1897 - 1964)/Abbès Saladi / Ibrahim el-Salahi / Ibrahim el-Salahi / Issa Saqer / Jewad Selim / Saad Shakir / Abdul Rahim al-Sharif / Hassan Sharif / Gazbia Sirry / Salah Taher / Tawfiq Tariq / Couider Triki / Ismail Fattah al-Turk / Seif Wanly / M’hamed Yssiakhem / Jassim Zaini / Fahrelnissa Zeid/Hazem al-Zubi
The collection of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art is the largest of modern and contemporary art in the region. Established in the early 1990s, it continues to grow and today contains more than 8,000 objects from the Arab world, Iran, Turkey and other regions historically connected to the Arab Peninsula.
Summary, Part 1 inaugurates the permanent display of Mathaf’s collection in the second-floor galleries with a first selection of 100 artists to give an overview of its breadth. The curatorial concept looks beyond traditional linear histories of art to highlight diverse attitudes, and contextualize intellectual production within multiple modernities.
This collection show positions art as a formal and conceptual force, demonstrating artistic intervention as a manifestation of modernity. African and Arabic representations meet in the paintings of Ibrahim el-Salahi, the work of Baya Mahieddine exemplifies her unique style of free figuration developed under the limitations of colonial rule in Algeria, Seif Wanly depicts modern Egyptian symbols of social and industrial progress, and Hassan Sharif and Farid Belkahia use natural materials, found objects, and local languages to express strong statements on the making of art in their contemporary contexts. The exhibition also presents the work of Jassim Zaini, Jewad Selim, and Mahmoud Mouktar, who were pioneers in establishing the art scene in their own countries. These works and artists are witnesses of their times and play active roles in articulating new artistic tendencies and alternative models of society.
By telling the story of the collection and documenting its art histories, Summary Part 1 initiates new routes to interrogate the cultural and ideological changes that have taken place in the transition to a shared global modernity.
The methodology of display adopted in this exhibition is informative rather than spectacular, proposing new relationships between works and key moments in history. From the outdoor piazza to the second-floor galleries, the works show the originality of artistic production, the invention of materials and forms, and artists’ new approaches to making art active in their contexts.
This exhibition is curated by Mathaf Curators and Researchers.