We live in a world where the golden arches are the most recognizable icon and a mere poke replaces a hug. This global system of intertwining networks creates a double edged sword. On the one hand, it has eroded any sense of authenticity and individuality and created an ethic of mass consumption and social irresponsibility. On the other hand, it presents an unparalleled democratizing tool. This speed and ease of access in the recording and spreading of information has allowed for transparency and paved the way for bottom up change.

Our globalised world dictates a predetermined range, within which we find socially acceptable ways of being and seeing.  Through art and discourse, such notions are bravely challenged and questioned, hence the bravery of being out of range.

Concept:

“The defining ethics in our modern society have whitewashed any sense of authenticity and individuality, creating an unyielding want for more of the same. This global system of intertwining networks creates a double edged sword. On the one hand, the collective conformity that characterizes our globalised culture undermines the value of uniqueness, creativity and thoughtful deliberation of the individual. On the other hand, however, the ease in speed and universal access of information ignites patterns of behavioral change across the region which contributes to the shift in balance in societal, interpersonal and relational dynamics. It is this relationship that we wish to explore.”

The Range (Conversation 1):

Over the last couple of decades, developments in new age media have formed global webs of social networks. Not only is there more variety and options in terms of which news channel you watch, which radio channel you tune into or which products you buy but the ease of access to them has grown. You are connected everywhere and anywhere 24/7 at the click of a button. A mould has been cast that’s sets us within a preconceived range, whereby our hunger for want and more of the same is never satiated. The following works portray such a relationship and the influence that media has, from the saturation of consumer products and Hollywood flicks to the ever familiar antennas erect across our skylines that have made such connectivity and way of life possible.

The Resolute (Conversation 2):

Such networks have influenced our everyday lives- not only in the way we live but in the way we interact with each other. From the box in your living room to the radio in your car and the camera on your phone, you are always connected. You are always at the giving and receiving end of information, opinion and developments. This is an incredibly democratizing tool that encourages bottom up change- be it social, political or environmental. Billboards and advertisements have become the trees in our urban jungle and flying from country to country has become a convenient commute. This shows you the potential might of such media to not only reshape the physicality of our environment but also down to our core principles and values. It has become the driving impetus for sociability and reform.

The Breaking (Conversation 3)

This surge in mass consumerism has gradually led to the break down and erosion of any sense of authenticity and individuality. For such a world made up of numerous polarities, to have a single socially accepted range leads to difficult and dangerous outcomes. Divergences will arise and lead to rises and falls, breakdowns and revisions. The same tools that connect the world, can also disengage it.

This exhibition features works by:

• Ahmed Mater
• Aya Haidar
• Ayman Yossri Daydban
• Bassem Mansour &Dana Al Jouder
• Fatima Al Qadiri & Khalid Al Gharaballi
• Hamad Khalaf
• Hassan Hajjaj
• James Clar
• Maha Malluh
• Monira Al Qadiri
• Pouran Jinchi
• Sami Al Turki
• Tarek Al Ghoussein
• Yara El Sherbini

Recognizing as always its deep roots in the region and the wider Levant, and inspired by the wave of social and political developments sweeping the Arab world, ‘Bokja Design’ will show a series of globes and two installations at an event entitled “ Arab _ Fall” at the Sultan Gallery in Kuwait during the period from 4^th – 20^th October, 2011.

‘Bokja Design’ chose to represent solely Arab countries, and to stretch them out on a complete globe – challenging an instantly recognizable icon. By presenting the map of the Arab world in different colorfully upholstered designs, the series of globes essentially aim to draw attention to the region as a seething macrocosm of change and to express the extent of its sweep and diversity.

The globes are complemented by two installations; one of which shows the Arab world as-is. Another parallel and facing wall-hanging will show the map through according to Bokja; interpreted through the prism of what will come.

Bokja has always been an active commentator on the Lebanese social and political situation, so it is only natural that the scope be extended.  Following the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and in the wake of the demonstrations that ensued, ‘Bokja Design’ created a series of furniture commemorating those events. Similarly, in the wake of the Israeli invasion of 2006, a special salute was given to displaced citizens, by upholstering pieces in the colorful fabrics that were seen piled up on cars fleeing the south.

About Bokja

Bokja* was established in the year 2000 by Lebanese designers Hoda Baroudi and Maria Hibri who brought a similar passion for detail and history to the furniture, which they create under the same name. Baroudi and Hibri source furniture designs from the 50s, 60s and 70s, unearthed in Beirut’s flea-markets and antique dealerships, and then cover them with exuberant tapestries and textiles from the Levant and the legendary Silk Road countries of Central Asia. Combining ancient culture with repurposed modern design, Bokja is creating one-of-a-kind pieces that offer an explosion of color, pattern and a richly textured sense of history.

In 2009, Bokja was chosen to be featured in Li-Edelkoort’s (founder and former director of Eindhoven School of Design) retrospective, where she highlighted what she judged to be the most important themes that have influenced trends in fashion, photography, and design. Other designers in the exhibit included Marcel Wanders, Christian Lacroix, Studio Job, the Campana brothers and Philippe Starck, to mention a few. Li Edelkoort is one of the world’s most renowned trend forecasters. In 2003 TIME Magazine named her one of the world’s 25 Most Influential People in Fashion, and in 2004 she was listed in Icon as one of the 21 Most Important People in Design.

At Salone 2010, they presented the “Conversation Sofas” 2 curved sofas positioned face to face in an “S” shape and boasting beautiful vintage and contemporary fabrics from around the world. The project celebrates the narratives and experiences that make up a sofa.  The idea is that the object – in this case the sofa – is the moment from which conversations between time and place emerge, and that these narratives and stories don’t cease to exist with the object, but go on to live beyond it.

The Sotheby’s Material Worlds Exhibition 2011 brought together cutting-edge, one-off and limited edition works in strikingly different materials by 11 artists and designers. Among which Bokja’ s duo Hoda Baroudi and Maria Hibri presented the giant Queen Bees that were made from recycled metal and vintage fabric and were designed to highlight the plight the rapid depletion of the world’s bee population. The juxtaposition of these overtly 21st century works in the medieval setting of Sudeley Castle created a dramatic impact.

Sultan Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of ’Get Tested’, a solo show by Canada-based Iranian artist, Reza Doust.

If you look at the work of Reza Doust in retrospect, it’s not hard to notice a consistency in the manner in which he applies his body in his paintings. Although varied in theme, there is a certain reoccurring brushstroke that very gracefully ties all of the work together. He applies each mark with the tenacity of a true artist, never readily letting go of the implausible images that wander in his mind. As a young painter he began portraying his native city, Esfahan, listening carefully to how the outdoor landscape convened all of his senses to depict it. Today, an older and much wiser Doust paints in a very different context –he paints inside of his studio– but with the same amount of receptivity and curious outlook he had as a young fellow exploring the outside world.

Doust today lives in Coquitlam, a Canadian city close to the better-known industrial port city of Vancouver. In his studio he spends countless hours reflecting on the whirlwind mysteries of what mankind does to suppress creativity.

“In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.” - Raoul Vaneigem

For Doust, withdrawing to the “artist studio” is much like finding a place to meditate. It’s the only space where he is able to gain true critical distance from what we experience through the everyday, antagonistic events of our modern world and psyche. Get Tested is an exhibition that analyzes the capacity of our mind to mediate between the outside and inside world; where times change, people relocate, but the beauty is in managing this chaos. Sultan Gallery is pleased to invite you to test yourself against the rigid constraints of tradition and open yourself to the new forms of probability as portrayed by Reza Doust on Tuesday, May 24^th 2011 from 7 to 9 pm.

* Part of the sales generated in this exhibition will be donated to the cancer association in Kuwait known as Hayat4Cancer.  Hayat4Cancer was launched in 2003 and is now part of the Ruqaya A. Al Qatami Charity Foundation and Cancer Patients Helping Fund founded by Mrs. Rugaya Abdelwahab Essa Al Qatami (oum Qais Alghanim) officially launched in January 2008.

Both historian and artist, Lutfi is a bricoleur. She collects disparate iconic images and manipulates them to re-invent her vision of Egyptian culture, its histories and events. In doing so, Lutfi simultaneously comments on the political relevance of her social context, lifting old feminine icons from history and giving them new life by re-contextualising historic time lines, creating hybridised, timeless female figures.

The exhibition borrows its title from an existing market place in Alexandria, Zan’it Al-Sittat, where women are found in large numbers, and which literally means the space where women are squeezed together. This title is used conceptually to allude critically to the situation of women in Egyptian as well as other cultures at large, and how their social movement is prescribed in the public space. One feminine icon predominates in this market space, the Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum, who is reconstructed not only as an Egyptian icon but as a universal feminine icon as well.

Known for constructing the feminine archetype through juxtaposing the ancient goddesses of Mesopotamia, Egypt and India with the more “modern” goddesses such as the Mona Lisa, Umm Kulthum, Tahiyya Karyokka, the artist’s mother or aunts, Lutfi captures the women’s emotions, their sexuality and experiences in order to simultaneously celebrate femininity and expose the cultural restrictions imposed upon it. Her work attempts to “frame” women in order to create new arrangements of contemporary iconography and cultural representations.

Lutfi’s work is about revisiting the archives of the past and the present, and about manipulating objects and images to reinvent their cultural identity. As well as collage and painting, Lutfi also uses the ‘found and ready made objects’ in her installation work, usually sourced from rummaging through old artefacts and discarded items in Cairo’s markets, factories and antique shops. Her previous work has often included old statues, plastic dolls, broken chair legs and crystals from broken chandeliers to reconstruct her urban cultural context. Lutfi’s work has a strong archival feel to it, as old and modern icons sit side by side, layer upon layer, constructing a historical dialogue between them.

About Huda Lutfi
Huda Lutfi works like an urban archaeologist, constantly digging up found objects and images as loaded fragments of history. She then re-packages them using bricolage and collage as interceptive strategies. Recognizable objects, images and icons are hijacked, re-contextualized and made to tell a different story, playing on collective memory and shared iconography, Lutfi uniquely blurs cultural timelines and boundaries in her work. Multi-layered and playful, Lutfi is known to work with a wide range of media, collage, installations, assemblages, and more recently with photomontage.
Trained as a cultural historian and, with her second career as an artist, Lutfi emerged as one of Egypt’s most notable contemporary image-makers. She received her Doctorate in Islamic Culture and History from McGill University, Montreal, Canada (1983), and has been teaching at the American University in Cairo. Drawing upon the historical, cultural and local experiences and traditions of Egyptian society, she began exhibiting her artwork in the mid-1990s. She has exhibited locally and internationally, with acquisitions in Paris, London, The Hague, Virginia, Indianapolis, Amman, Bahrain, Dubai and Cairo.  Lutfi currently lives and works in Cairo.

The collection features mixed media paintings with the subject Kuwait and Arabic culture in the 1950’s and 1960’s as well as video installations. Hamad & Ali’s aim is to bring back memories of the past and conserve them for the future generations. The art work presented by Hamad & Ali invites the viewer to experience history and Arabic traditions from a playful and yet very detailed point of view. Using the history as a path to the future the artists’ work involved many contemporary and traditional painting techniques combined with digital imagery and photography.

The Kuwaiti artist Hamad Al Saab and the German Iraqi artist Ali Sultan started their collaboration in 2006 focusing on digital artwork on canvas using iris print and silkscreen. From there, the work evolved and included calligraphy, acrylics, silk paint, apoxy, Swarovski crystals, stencils and different transfer techniques. Hamad & Ali’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and in collective art shows in Doha (Qatar) and the UAE and is been collected by many art appreciators in the Middle East as well as in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, the United States and South America.

Further this year Hamad & Ali’s eighth solo exhibition will be held at Lahd Gallery in London on May 26th, 2011.

When defining the temperament of recent times, the concept of the ‘Self’ is an important one. The Self is taught to be glorified and worshipped; creating a system that can render one indifferent to others. During this process, one can become more and more isolated from the world, coming to experience certain emptiness: an emptiness that arises from the futile attempt of attaining an idealized version of self.

In this series of works, this tragic cycle of narcissism is expressed through the use of photographic self-portraits; many of them being saint-like and androgynous, with melancholic expressions, fragmented into many parts. By actively participating in the conceptual structure of her work, the artist wishes to convey that she too is not outside the cycle, reinforcing the sense of vulnerability by posing herself as the tragic subject.

About the artist:

Monira Al Qadiri is a Kuwaiti artist born in Senegal in 1983. For the past ten years she has been living in Japan where she studied fine arts and completed her PhD at Tokyo University of Arts. This exhibition will be her first solo show in Kuwait since she left for Japan, and is a culmination of her work from the past two years.

Film memorabilia began with such things as scrap-books, autographs, photographs, and industry magazines, but quickly expanded in the post-World War II era and collectors began seeking out original advertising material, and the classic “one sheet” [27 inches by 40 inches (686x1020mm), portrait format film poster] became the pinnacle object to own for any given film.* With time, what was originally intended for the sole purpose of boosting movie ticket sales became an object of interest in and of themselves. In other words, the means by which one art was promoted gradually became an art in its own right.

Recently, a newer generation of re-imagined movie posters have surfaced. They are referred to as “remixed” posters where the content of the original is altered to convey political or comedic messages. As these posters represent imagery and references that have been ingrained in the public psyche, artists have found an outlet by which to reach both the art connoisseur and members of the general public for which the original film poster was intended. As a result, the artist gains a much louder voice and delivers a message easily digested by a very wide audience utilizing the standard dimension of the classic “one sheet.”.

This adaptation of past and present pop culture icons within the Arab World has taken on many forms. Icons of Arabia such as Om Kulthoum, Feyrouz, and Abdel Haleem Hafeth have been repeatedly used as the icon celebrity or the motif in this new art trend. Furthermore, as comparisons between Arab pop icons and their international Western counterparts have always existed, merging the two was a natural extension of remixing iconic movie posters. For instance Arabian screen vixen Hind Rostom can easily be seen  in a classic Marilyn Monroe pose. In other instances it is a visual interpretation of some conspiracy theories behind famed rumors or distinct similarities between the movie actor’s names, features, attributes and title of the movie.

Whatever form these remixed posters take, whether the message is political, social commentary, or simply comedic in nature, there is no denying its far reach and great appeal for artist and viewer alike.

The exhibition will be as dramatic in its presentation as the images themselves comprising of black and white photographic art works. Included in the exhibition will be original pieces, inspired by the photographic images, from the renowned artist Dia Azzawi. His images will provide a vivid and colourful contrast to the imposing mono chrome images of Aquili, Dawton and McFarlane.

The exhibition hopes to define the process in which art can bring understanding to seemingly intractable political conflict as well as to highlight the terrible consequences long and short term of such conflicts.

Proceeds from the exhibition will go to Save the Children projects in Gaza particularly its outstanding work with conflict traumatised children. Both Al Madad Foundation and Save the Children will be on hand at exhibitions to answer questions both about the works of art and Save the Children’s projects in Gaza.

“The question of how individual memory fits or, more accurately, does not fit with history is at the heart of the question here.” – Gayatri Spivak.

As part of its mission to foment critical thinking through visual arts, Sultan Gallery has invited a number of artists, curators and similarly occupied individuals to superimpose their own visions of history in this exhibition commemorating 50 years of sovereignty within the State of Kuwait. The month-long exhibit will be held in February of 2011, with one opening on February 1^st, and the second on February 15^th beginning at 7pm.

The body of work being shown in this exhibition acts as a kind of historiographical analysis over the development of the State of Kuwait in relation to the rest of the world. Artists here explore a number of topical, socio-political issues that analyze how argument [tradition] shifts over time in response to the changing conditions of market and state [flux]. How was Kuwait culturally affected by a financial grown spurt with the discovery of petroleum? Is the country’s social and cultural development up to par with the Dinar? What is art to a society like Kuwait? These are some of the questions addressed through a range of mediums including video, photography, sound, sculpture, installations, and even the incorporation of design for debate as an aesthetic in art. Works range from individual histories, to folk, fiction, and secularist landscapes that combat stereotype, stigmas, and dogmas.

Sultan Gallery invites you to explore 50 years of independence, and 20 years of liberation through the eyes of the country’s young cultural cohort and protagonists starting February 1^st 2011.

Exhibition Schedule:

February 1^st | 7-9 pm

February 2^{nd |} 10am – 4pm & 7-9 pm

February 3^rd – 10^th| 10am – 4pm (Closed on Fridays & Saturdays)

February 15^th | 7-9 pm

February 16^th | 10am – 4pm & 7-9 pm

February 17^th – 24^th|10am – 4pm (Closed on Fridays & Saturdays)

It’s the second time the artist is exhibiting in Kuwait, as Nedim Kufi is undoubtedly a man of talent. The way he undergoes transformation in his work, transforming himself from subject to object, is testament of the living energy instilled in such original artwork. Kufi uses pigments, twigs, leaves, seeds, henna and mud in his oeuvres. For him, the art-master is nature and we, the scrimmaging subjects of this world, are forever nature’s students.

For this exhibition Kufi was inspired by the physical and relational characteristics of a notebook. The thematic “daftar” (Arabic for workbook) has for long been a source of revelation throughout the development of his work. In 2004, the artist founded the online quarterly magazine called daftar, which can be visited at www.nkufi.com/daftar.html.  Part of this project was to take physical iterations, as the objective has always been for it to occupy a place between theory and practice –either as seminars, publications, performances  or presentations of work– hence the exhibition being announced herein. Here Kufi aims to open up to the audience through his artwork much like a notebook opens up to it’s owner. Partially reminding of the things we have noted down like points on a page, and partially giving us the freedom to fill up empty spaces through our own imagination. For Kufi the meaning of artwork is where it’s merit lies; not in it’s appearance, but in many cases the title. He insists on working on the end of the story more than on the start of it, as he encourages the viewer to do when analyzing his work.

It is with this objective that Sultan Gallery invites you to explore Nedim Kufi’s  ‘20 Seasons a Day’, where he analyzes the garden and questions the changing value of nature and the environment over the span of one day (Tuesday, January 11, 2011 from 7 to 9 p.m.).