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25/5/2005

West by East

Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona CCCB, Barcelona

West by East

The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona presents the exhibition WEST BY EAST, curated by the Tunisian writer Abdelwahab Meddeb, which will run in Gallery 3 at the CCCB from 26 May to 25 September 2005.

The show is a coproduction of the CCCB and the Fundació Bancaixa de València with the support of the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya Catalan regional government. The exhibition will run in Valencia from 15 October 2005 to 15 January 2006.

West by East is an exhibition about how Westerners, Europeans in particular, have been seen, past and present, by the Islamic East. During the preparation of the exhibition, it very soon became evident that historically, Easterners have paid a lot less attention to Europeans than we have to them. While Orientalism is a cultural tradition in the West, it is rare to find the West in creativity in Eastern cultures. For this reason, the CCCB has invited a series of artists and intellectuals from these countries to give their views of the West. The resulting works form a major part of this exhibition and cannot be ignored if we really want to know more about them but also about ourselves.

The layout of the show allows visitors to observe how Islam has been divided in the way in which it sees the West and highlights the different viewpoints and attitudes that have existed side by side throughout history. Conflict, solidarity, interchange, fascination—rather than alternating in time, they coincide. And they often reveal a complex love-hate relationship combining fascination and irritation, emulation and rejection, which we try to express in the exhibition. We also aim to highlight many signs of proximity that sometimes go unnoticed, overshadowed by the larger confrontations.

In an attempt to better understand this complex situation, the exhibition presents seven different sequences and a total of 215 works. Each sequence or section of the exhibition confronts views from the past (12th-19th centuries) with those of the present. Miniatures, manuscripts, maps, paintings and photographs illustrate how Islam has seen Europe over the centuries, mirrored by images in other artistic languages that offer a contemporary key to the question.

The contemporary voices are represented firstly in the work of nine visual artists (Marjane Satrapi, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Mohamed el Baz, Shadi Ghadirian, Jellel Gasteli, Bouchra Khalili, Hassan Musa, Khosrow Hassangadeh, Touhami Ennadre) who are invited to try and do what traditionally they never have: present their views of the West. Then five writers have recorded their testimonies: Houda Barakât, Nilufer Gölë, Sorour Kasmaï, Daryush Shayegan and Salah Stétié. The resulting interviews will be screened in the galleries and, together with the works of the above-mentioned artists, they constitute brand-new material to throw light on the body of reflection proposed by the CCCB.

THE SEVEN SEQUENCES OF THE EXHIBITION

1 - al-Idrîsî. A description of Europe
The point of departure for the exhibition is the map drawn by the Arab geographer al-Idrîsî when in the service of the Christian king, the Norman Roger II of Sicily (1105-1154). The monarch commissioned him to produce a systematic description of Europe. The description begins with the territories that now correspond to Italy and Spain, reaching as far as England, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland and Russia, via Brittany, France, Flanders, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Saxony and the Balkans.

The Iran-born artist Marjane Satrapi reflects this sequence in an original work painted in situ.

2 - Ibn al-Munqîdh. Between the Jihad and the Crusades
The Syrian Usâma Ibn al-Munqîdh (1095-1188) represents the Islamic view of the Crusades. He was an enlightened Muslim, an impartial observer who shared the chivalrous spirit practised both in the West and in the East. At one point, Usâma refers to the Western Other as an enemy to whom friendship may be extended.

The Algerian-born video artist Zoulikha Bouabdellah will reflect the figure of Ibn al-Munqîdh by filming the remains of his family castle, a fortress in Shaizar in the north of Syria.

3 – Difference in similarity
The Koran contains elements of the Bible and of Jewish literature that are unknown in the Bible, as well as episodes taken from the Gospels and the Apocrypha. The religious iconography of Islam takes its inspiration from these episodes.
It was surely coexistence with Christians that lies at the origin of this pictorial tradition. Christian vicinity was a stimulus that prompted Muslim painters to portray the life of their prophet, despite the iconophobia traditionally attributed to them, which is manifested in the absence of icons in Muslim temples.

To accompany this sequence, the Morocco-born visual artist Mohamed El Baz will produce an installation inspired by Abraham’s sacrifice and its present-day repercussions.

4 – Painting the West
Painting has played a major role in the relation of mutual recognition between Europe and Islam. As of the 15th century, and in many different ways, Islamic painting has manifested its knowledge of the West.

The Iranian photographer Shadi Ghadirian will produce a work that, starting out from Teheran, shows East’s representation of the Western Other.

5 – The desire for Westernisation
Islam’s fascination with Europe coincided with the impact of the Industrial Revolution and everything this involved.
Islam witnessed a major debate about how to adapt to new material conditions while remaining faithful to its own heritage. The Westernisation process began in this way, with a desire to discover or to assimilate European fashions and the philosophical, political and moral reasons that caused them to emerge.
Europe constituted a theme for debate for Islam as a whole starting in the 19th century. The debate grew in intensity when the hegemony of the Old Continent began to threaten Islamic territoriality in the form of colonialism. It was in the name of democratic and enlightened principles that the pro-West Muslim reformists decided to fight against local despotism and Western domination.

5.1 - Photography and Kings
The fascination of some monarchs with photography as of the last few decades of the 19th century is well known. This space is proof of it, with portraits of four heads of state.

5.2 – The modernisation of Islamic societies
All of these transformations were documented by new photographic technology. In the process of Westernisation as a state policy, sometimes under sufferance, we can also highlight the emergence of artistic figures who adopted the technologies and formats of European visual arts, thereby recording, by means of photography or easel painting, the state of their society amid the transformations they lived through or the continuance of traditional rituals.

5.3 – The journey West
Starting in the 1830s, the journey to Europe became a vital step for reformist politicians, enlightened moderns, theologians set on reform and students eager for knowledge.

Moroccan video artist Bushra Khalili will respond to the taboo of foreign love in the heart of an Islamic woman, with the aim of relating the Zoraida syndrome in a form adapted to our times.

6 – From love to tension
A liking for all things Western was expressed by Islamic collectors’ love for Western art. In the early 1930s, the president of the Egyptian senate, Mahmut Khalil, put together a collection of 19th-century European art, including masterpieces by Delacroix, Fromentin, Millet, Degas, Manet, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Rodin, among others.

Then, in 1974, on the initiative of the Empress Farah Dibah, the Museum of Contemporary Art was founded in Teheran, with emblematic works from various 20th-century European and North American trends (from Max Ernst to Andy Warhol, via Pollock and Tàpies). After Khomeini’s revolution, under the government of the Islamic Republic, the collection was put into storage.

7 – The war of images
In the late 1920s, radical anti-Western feeling was theorised and incorporated into political discourse by the combative ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. In these between-the-wars years, supporters of the adaptation and imitation of the Western model gradually refined their protest. Ever since, the history of Islamic countries has been marked by the dividing line that separates pro-Western from anti-Western tendencies.
This antagonism has become more marked in recent decades due to new communication technologies (satellite TV, Internet, etc.), marking the declaration of the war of images between East and West.
The filming of the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban and al-Qaeda (March 2001) or the images of the destruction of New York’s towers shows that the war of images clearly forms part of the strategy of anti-West terrorists. But it is important to remember that the war of images is waged not just between Islamic terrorists and the West, but also between two irreconcilable camps within Islam, divided by the way they see the West as a problem of thought and being.

The works of four artists of very different origins Hassan Musa, Khosrow Hassangadeh, Samira Mahkmalbaf and Touhami Ennadre come together and address this conflict with different accents and nuances.

CURATOR

Abdelwahab Meddeb is a writer and poet. He was born in Tunisia and now lives in Paris. He is a lecturer in Comparative Literature (Europe/Islam) at the University of Paris X. He is founder director of the international transdisciplinary journal Dédale and presents the weekly programme ‘Cultures d'Islam’ on France-Culture (Radio France). He has published 16 books, and was awarded the Max Jacob Prize for his volume of poetry Matière des Oiseaux (2002) and the François Mauriac Prize for his essay La Maladie de l'Islam (2002). His work has been translated into 15 languages.

EXHIBITION OPENING TIMES
Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4 to 8 p.m.
Wednesdays and Saturdays: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Sundays and holidays: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Mondays: closed (except public holidays)

Opening times from 21 June to 21 September:
Tuesday to Saturday: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Sundays and holidays: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

PRICE OF ADMISSION TO EXHIBITIONS
Admission: 4.40 € / 3.30 € (concessions)
Free admission: under-16s and Friends of the CCCB
Concessions on Wednesdays (except public holidays) and for senior citizens, students and the unwaged.
Articket: 17 €. Admission on a single ticket to the CCCB, the MACBA, the MNAC, La Pedrera, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies and the Fundació Joan Miró
Friends of the CCCB. Become a Friend for a year. Individual: 27 € / Students and senior citizens: 20 € / Family: 35 €
Ticket sales at the offices of the CCCB, branches of Caixa Catalunya and by calling the Tel-Entrada service on 902 10 12 12
Guided visits to the exhibitions: Tuesday to Friday at 6 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 11.30 a.m.

Press conference: 26 May at 1 p.m.
Opening: 26 May at 7 p.m.

Press Service
Teresa Roig
93 306 41 23/ 93 306 41 00

CCCB
Montalegre, 5 – 08001 Barcelona

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