Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Reflections and Interactions

In 2007 Bristol Museum & Art Gallery was awarded £1m from the Art Fund to develop an international contemporary art collection. The new collection arose in the context of the historic international collections especially with work from the Middle
East, reflecting upon contemporary situations in the region. Between 2007-2012 the museum acquired work from Egypt, Morocco, Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and Pakistan including installation, film and photography, as well as painting and drawing.

Hala Elkoussy, b. 1974, Cairo

Peripheral, 28 minute video, Peripheral Stories and Peripheral Landscapes 1-5, series of five digital images, 2005

‘Within the parameters of a visual culture, which is trying to come to terms with an inherited discouragement of figurative representation, there is a continuous feeding-off, assimilation, recycling and adaptation of western popular and mass media
imagery.’ Hala Elkoussy

Hala Elkoussy is an Egyptian artist whose practice is rooted in photography and the moving image and how western mass cultural imagery and idioms have entered the popular imagination in a culture that is traditionally mistrustful of the image. peripheral
is an installation featuring wallpaper prints of new developments on the outskirts of Cairo and a video, peripheral stories, which originated in local newspaper and gossip magazine stories. From an elderly woman totting up the inflated costs of living
today, to the middle-aged client in a beauty parlour discussing the gender politics of the cosmetics industry, 25 fragmentary narratives performed by actors are juxtaposed, to the accompaniment of a soundtrack, edited seamlessly to follow from the
previous episode, so that a dreamlike quality is achieved. The work is a visual and aural prose poem that feels like the collective unconscious of the metropolis, in the era immediately preceding the fall of Mubarek.

"Lady with cactus" from Hala Elkoussy, b. 1974, Cairo - Peripheral, 28 minute video, Peripheral Stories and Peripheral Landscapes 1-5, series of five digital images, 2005

"Lady with cactus" from Hala Elkoussy, b. 1974, Cairo - Peripheral, 28 minute video, Peripheral Stories and Peripheral Landscapes 1-5, series of five digital images, 2005

"Ululating women" from Hala Elkoussy, b. 1974, Cairo - Peripheral, 28 minute video, Peripheral Stories and Peripheral Landscapes 1-5, series of five digital images, 2005

"Ululating women" from Hala Elkoussy, b. 1974, Cairo - Peripheral, 28 minute video, Peripheral Stories and Peripheral Landscapes 1-5, series of five digital images, 2005

"Woman at the window" from Hala Elkoussy, b. 1974, Cairo - Peripheral, 28 minute video, Peripheral Stories and Peripheral Landscapes 1-5, series of five digital images, 2005

"Woman at the window" from Hala Elkoussy, b. 1974, Cairo - Peripheral, 28 minute video, Peripheral Stories and Peripheral Landscapes 1-5, series of five digital images, 2005

 

Shirin Aliabadi, b. 1973, Iran
Girls in Car 1-4 (1, edition 1 of 5, 2 AP, 3, edition 2 of 5 and 4 edition 1 of 5) C-prints 70 x 100 cm


‘The great thing about photography is that you don’t have to create an illusion as you do with painting or drawing. You just point your camera and press a shutter and you capture reality which is always stranger than fiction. ‘ Shirin Aliabadi.

Shirin Aliabadi’s work focuses on mass culture and women in her native Iran, in particular transgressive behaviour as manifested through fashion and leisure in the metropolis of Tehran. Aliabadi’s focus on the westernised world of certain circles of Tehrani
society is her own form of editorial, one which seeks to peer beyond the mainstream at a sensibility Aliabadi locates in a place she calls “Tehrangeles”. The gender and youth of these young women make them easy to ignore or disregard, and freer to
enact their own secret transgressions.

Girls in Cars was made in 2005 under the ironic title Freedom is Boring, Censorship is Fun, a title which immediately conjures a sense of the lightheartedness of Aliabadi’s subjects. Their transgressions are minor, yet significant: having fun, out on
the town, at night, in their cars. The images of these young women appear almost fugitive, as if made by a local variant on a paparazzo (hinting at the celebrity glamour the young women seek in their lives). They reveal a subculture that is usually
hidden from or disregarded by the mainstream: perhaps a more sinister kind of voyeurism or spying is also being alluded to by the artist. It is a world away from the western understanding of Iran.

Shirin Aliabadi, b. 1973, Iran Girls in Car 1-4

Shirin Aliabadi, b. 1973, Iran Girls in Car 1-4

 

Islamic Art & Material Culture SSN

The principal aim of this network is to share expertise, ideas and best practice on Islamic art and material culture with a focus on museum collections from across the United Kingdom and Ireland. Many of our members are museum and heritage professionals, but we also welcome the involvement of students, academics and artists.

The network is currently free to join. For further information on membership, please visit the main website at: http://krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/iamcssn

Contact us

Islamic Art & Material Culture SSN

Ashmolean Museum
Beaumont Street
Oxford
OX1 2PH
UK

islamicartnetwork@gmail.com