Dis[Locating] Culture: Contemporary Islamic Art in America
Co-curated by Reem Alalusi with Michael Berger
Keynote address by Reza Aslan
Artists: Negar Ahkami, Shiva Ahmadi, Jowhara AlSaud, Shoja Azari, Sandow Birk, Amir Fallah, Anoka Faruqee, Asad Faulwell, Farah Ossouli
April 15 - July 30, 2011
We are living in a time of binary thinking and exclusionary conclusions. Based on manufactured boundaries between cultures, these barriers lead to ever more fear and mistrust. Mistaken notions about one another travel far and wide, sometimes carried by political and religious subtexts that inform both popular and 'high' culture.
Dis[Locating] Culture will be Pittsburgh’s first exhibit of contemporary Islamic art, and certainly one of the first in America’s Midwest; the exhibit will showcase some of the finest American Islamic artists – whether Muslim by faith or not. Dis[Locating] Culture aims to problematize stereotypes and challenge notions of cultural and religious homogeneity. This exhibition is designed to build bridges of intercultural understanding via the universal language of art.
Some of the artists included come from the Islamic world but do not live there; some neither live nor have roots in the so-called Islamic world, but yet their works are classified under the Islamic umbrella as a result of their political, social, or even technical choices. Islamic art is conventionally thought of as a separate category from Western art, but these artists blur the categories. These works are neither Islamic by nature nor Western, per se; this is Contemporary Art.
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Exhibition includes a weekend kick-off of events throughout Pittsburgh:
Symposium at the Warhol Museum
Keynote Speaker: Reza Aslan
Moderated by: Tom Sokolowski
View the Symposium in three parts on Michael Berger Gallery's Vimeo Page
"Children of God: Learning to Play Together" : An Afternoon with Dr. Reza Aslan
|Author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam
Featuring a timely discussion on Islam and building interfaith understanding.
Presented by the Pittsburgh Middle East Institute, Temple Sinai, the Pittsburgh Area Jewish Committee and the Michael Berger Gallery