Jun 08 2016

Jameel Prize 4

by HG Masters

It was a strange morning for a press preview of the Jameel Prize 4 in Istanbul: a car bomb had destroyed a bus carrying police officers in the historical district, a little over an hour earlier. Events continued as scheduled, however, as 10 of the 11 artists and designers who were nominated for the biannual prize were in attendance at the Pera Museum to talk about their works, which had been selected from more than 200 nominations received from all parts of the world, from Mali to Puerto Rico to Thailand. Later in the day, a jury comprising Rose Issa, Ece and Ayşe Ege, winners of last year’s Jameel Prize, artist Alan Caiger-Smith, Hammad Nasar of Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong and V&A director Martin Roth, chose Ghulam Mohammad as the winner of the GBP 25,000 prize. Established in 2009 in a partnership between the V&A in London and Art Jameel, a Saudi Arabia and Dubai-based foundation that supports initiatives promoting art from Muslim countries and the Middle East (including Edge of Arabia), the Jameel Prize has more of a contemporary art focus in the current edition, although the elements of design were integral to many of the works. Arabic typography, Islamic geometry and architecture, miniature painting, and the history of the region were explored across a diverse range of media. Here’s a quick look at some of the projects by the artists shortlisted for Jameel Prize 4.

The Pera Museum is a private museum supported by the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation, with two floors dedicated to a collection of Ottoman-era paintings and design objects. The Jameel Prize 4 exhibition was hosted in the upper galleries, with a sculpture by SAHAND NESAMİYAN on the left.

Here is a 19th-century carpet that DAVİD CHALMERS ALESWORTH, a landscape architect and artist who had lived in Karachi and Lahore for 20 years, had embroidered with a 1746 map of Versailles’s gardens for his work Garden Palimpsest (1850–1990, and 2012).

BAHİA SHEHAB’s two-part project, A Thousand Times No (2010), comprises hanging Plexiglas sheets with Arabic letters that form a curtain, and a book that documents the typographical history of the two letters ( lam and alif ) that comprise the word “no” ( la ), which the artist had sprayed on different walls of the city during the Egyptian uprisings of 2011–13.

In his sculptures, SAHAND HESAMIYAN takes forms from traditional Iranian architecture. Khalvat (2014), seen here, is made from paper, but echoes the sacred feelings of space found in homes of the Iranian Safavid era (1502–1736).

Istanbul’s own CEVDET EREK displays two of his unorthodox rulers: this one is a “timeline,” marking off the years of the 20th century, beginning with the years
written in Ottoman letters and then transitioning to Roman numerals in 1929 when Turkey switched its alphabet and numbers to a Latin script.

SHAHPOUR POUYAN’s ceramic objects, part of his “Unthinkable Thought” series (2014–16), are based on the domes of existing and imagined buildings. In the front is the roof of the Pantheon, in Rome, with the turquoise conical form of the Masjid-ı Shah, in Isfahan.

Using colors that reference the spring flowers of Karachi, RASHEED ARAEEN’s Bahar Lye, Khushiaan Lye: Spring Come, Happiness Come (2015) is a hybrid painting-sculpture, using forms and shapes that equally recall his training in structural engineering and Islamic geometry, as well as the nonreferential forms of postwar minimalism.

CANAN ’s painting of protestors crossing the first Bosphorus bridge captures an infamous moment from the 2013 Gezi protests. She works in the style of a miniature painter, because, in her words, “the language of miniatures is like the language of tales, and it reflects the memories of society.”

The industrial forms of LUCIA KOCH’s Mostruário (acrilico-espelho) [Showcase (acrylic-mirror)] (2012) are architectural interventions that recall the
traditional mashrabiyas (lattice window coverings) found in Arab architecture, as well in her native Brazil, where they were imported by Portuguese traders
beginning in the 16th century.

The youngest artist in the exhibition, GHULAM MOHAMMAD makes delicate untitled collages from tiny cut-out Urdu letters, which he combines with graphic elements
such as gold and silver leaf. This one is approximately 10 centimeters high.

LARA ASSOUAD is a graphic and type designer who lives in Dubai, and her project, The Modular Arabic Alphabet (2015) uses simple geometric forms stamped
with wooden blocks—here represented in photographs printed on the hanging sheets.

The exhibition is on view at the Pera Museum in Istanbul until August 14.

HG Masters is editor at large of ArtAsiaPacific.

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Feb 2012