Crossing the Line 2: Drawing in the Middle East
by JANET McKENZIE
Crossing the Line was a conference that brought
together specialists to examine the role of drawing in the Middle East
with the aim of breaking down the cultural barriers to personal
expression
Department of Visual Communication, School of Architecture, Art &
Design, American University in Dubai, Dubai (in partnership with the
Global Centre for Drawing, Melbourne)
12 – 14 September 2014
Geometric Aljamia: A Cultural Transliteration
Total Arts Gallery, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
27 August – 13 September
Crossing the Line 2: Location
Jam Jar, Dubai
12-14 September 2014
Crossing the Line 2: Drawing in the Middle East – intersections of
trans-disciplinary practice and understanding was organised by Dr Irene
Barberis, director and founder of the Global Centre for Drawing in
Melbourne, Julia Townsend, professor of visual communication at the
American University in Dubai, and Dr Marcelo Guimarães Lima, director of
CEPAOS Arts and Culture Center, Brazil. It followed Across the Gulf
(2008-9) and Crossing the Line 1 (2011). Crossing the Line 2 brought
together specialists from a number of fields of research and practice to
examine the role of drawing in the Middle East. It looked at drawing as
a medium, a tool, notation, performance and as a specific mode of
thinking and imagining in the processes of invention, production and
reproduction and communication within and across fields and disciplines:
from art to science, from technology to ideology and cultural
practices. In addition to papers on drawing practice and theory, there
were eight artist’s talks.
The Global Centre for Drawing initiates and produces drawing projects
around the world, which seek to avoid the cumbersome nature of
large-scale academic conferences, preferring to work quickly, and to
capture the spirit of artistic practice in societies in flux. The first
conference succeeded, but the organisers wanted an ongoing dialogue so
expanded and developed the project for a second. Artists and academics
were selected from submissions from art schools and universities within
the Middle East, including the American University in Dubai (AUD), the
American University of Sharjah and Zayed University, and a number came
from universities in the United States. Their papers and artist’s talks
were mostly based on significant personal and academic experience of the
Middle East. Further speakers and artists came from Australia, the UK,
Portugal and Cyprus; a significant number, including those who had been
students or graduate students from Dubai and Doha in Qatar at the time
of the first conference, attended the second. Saba Qizilbash from
Pakistan, and now a professor at American University in Dubai, presented
her artwork and provided great insight in to the numerous roles a
female artist is required to play.
Crossing the Line 2 included several exhibitions. Location, curated
by Barberis at the Jam Jar gallery, comprised 34 works by invited
international artists and the conference speakers, and On Location
included student works from the New York-based Rome Art Program, founded
and directed by Carole Robb. The results of workshops held before the
conference were exhibited on the AUD campus. Geometric Aljamia: A
Cultural Transliteration,a group exhibition featuring works by Reni
Gower and Jorge Benitez, both of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU),
Richmond, US, Julia Townsend and visiting artists from Afghanistan, was
held at Total Arts Gallery, Dubai. The large paper-cuts by Gower
dominated the space, remarkably evocative abstract works that resonated
with a spiritual power. The exhibition explores the connections between
Europe, the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East by addressing the
fundamental geometry embedded in 2D art. Aljamia is the adaptation of
the Arabic script to transcribe texts in European languages. Aljamia
manuscripts have long played a significant role in preserving Islam and
the Arabic language in the west. By understanding the visual arts as a
transliteration of one form of thinking to another, the exhibition
revisits the continuing impact of Islamic art, science and philosophy in
the modern world.
Under the direction of Susan Schüld, professor of theatre at VCU,
Geometric Aljamia and Reclaiming the Wild Colours of our Voices resulted
in performance pieces with Benitez at the conference and at Jam Jar
gallery. Benitez stated: “As a native speaker of Spanish, I am keenly
aware of the amount of Arabic that exists in my language. Many of those
words cross into English. After the events of September 11, I wondered
how two cultures that shared so much could come to such a terrible
moment, and I began to seek an artistic understanding of the tragedy.
There had to be some common ground, something beyond religious, cultural
and national differences. I looked into the past to find those moments
when the west and the Middle East informed each other in ways that are
all too often relegated to the history books. Eventually I learned that
the Renaissance discovery of linear perspective owed a great deal to
Arab experiments in optics.”
In the 30 years since my first survey of contemporary drawing, the
definition of drawing has changed beyond measure: conceptual, spatial
and subjective, and employing a wide range of materials beyond the
traditional. What has not changed, in my view, is the fact that drawing
is the most sensitive tool for exploration, the most immediate form of
expression and, in turn, the most effective way to define self. Drawing
enables the exploration of identity and enables shifts in one’s
perception of life, to reposition oneself when faced with change and
loss. Perhaps an obvious example is how we adapt to a new place, how we
learn to define ourselves in relation to the circumstances brought about
by moving cities or through migration, both disorienting and
challenging experiences. In the context of Crossing the Line 2 at the
AUD, the city itself forms an appropriate backdrop for a society in
flux, where the student body is made up of young men and women from many
cultural backgrounds. Here, the projects that employ drawing as an
appropriate means to explore self and one’s identity were eagerly
absorbed.
In my keynote paper: Drawing on Two Worlds: The Osgood Suite, I
quoted Tania Kovats from her book Drawing Water: Drawing as a Mechanism
for Exploration, a collection of drawings and writings connected by the
sea. She describes her drawing practice as “the shelter I run from and
return to”. It is a journey pulled by the tides, blown by changeable
winds. The works can be likened to a chart of intersecting lines that
crisscross over the water. “I draw to find my way out. Drawing fills the
space,” she says. “I see drawing as a way of thinking and also evidence
of thinking; of going from one place to another. One draws to define
one thing from another.” However, to qualify the possibilities in
contemporary drawing practice, Kovats quotes Francis Alÿs, who makes an
important distinction: “A journey implies a destination, so many miles
to be consumed, while a walk is its own measure, complete at every point
along the way.”
Crossing the Line can be described as a conceptual drawing project
with multifarious applications. The cultural barriers to personal
expression in the Middle East were explained in a number of papers, such
as that of Professor Bob Dahm from the American University of Sharjah:
Reluctant Image-Makers: Teaching Drawing in Arabia. Dahm explained the
difficulty of teaching drawing in the animation school to mostly local
students. The majority have not drawn before and there is little history
of image-making; students tend to revert to European or Japanese images
or prefer to copy photographs. The inclusion of figures is
controversial and in some parts prohibited. Dahm’s teaching centres on
creating narratives to accompany images; he encourages the students to
work from aural historical stories and to paraphrase them in their own
words.
The Artist’s Talk by Valerie Hird from Vermont, presented projects
she has undertaken in Iran, Egypt and Jordan. After reading personal
diaries written during the American civil war, which contained mundane
and intimate details of life during wartime, Hird sought to enable
female artists in the Middle East to find their own voices. She worked
to enable the women to create a narrative that could then be
illustrated, thus injecting a non-conflict reality into their lives, a
new conversation. One of the most gratifying aspects of speaking to
young women students at the conference – whose mothers could not have
pursued a creative career – was to be approached and thanked for sharing
personal experiences and ideas with them, to be told that it had
inspired them.
Barberis, with her indomitable spirit, has instigated and organised
numerous cross-cultural and cross-faith art projects. Metasenta and,
more recently, the Global Centre for Drawing, Melbourne, were
established through her links to universities or cultural organisations
in societies in flux. Across the Gulf (2008-9) partnered with Tashkeel,
the unique art and design centre in Dubai established by Sheikha Lateefa
Bint Maktoum, an important artist in her own right. The major
exhibition of works by Emirate artists from Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and Dubai
was shown at the 2009 Arc Biennial in Brisbane. Across the Gulf has
informed Crossing the Line: indeed, all Barberis’s projects are
organically linked and have an increased following. By contrast to other
Middle East exhibitions around the world, Across the Gulf showcased
emerging and established artists, all of whom practised from within
their culture, rather than creating a practice in the west.
Drawing is key to the practice of artists who seek to come to terms
with the momentous changes taking place around them in political and
cultural terms. The definition of personal identity through art practice
can be seen to have been of great personal, societal and artistic
value. The Dubai conferences will be followed next year by Crossing the
Line conferences in Brazil and Jordan.
STUDIO INTERNATIONAL
