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I don't think it's trying to say that Muslims have to forego any form of culture (though, no doubt some interpret it that way). Instead, what I think they're trying to say is not to mix up religion and culture. I'd agree with that. Culture's far too important. Religion (Christianity as much as Islam) is just a throwback to medieval health and safety manuals that are no longer fit for purpose.
But, evidently, many people disagree with me on this and there's not enough mental hospitals in the world to treat all those suffering with religion so I guess we're just gonna have to try to get along. Maybe the religious people would like to meet us non-believers halfway and stop fucking killing everyone. That'd be progress. But then, religion isn't about progress. Sometimes even culture isn't.
Hayv Kahraman - The Translator from the series How Iraqi are you? (2015)
I'm being intentionally provocative (but still true to myself) with these contentions and of course I don't want all religious police interred for their own mental health. Some of my friends are believers. Not many, admittedly, but then, for the most part, religion is dying in the West - and I live in the West.
Also, it's not that easy to unpick religion and culture so long have they been intertwined. Think of all the great great Renaissance art, awesome Gothic architecture, beautiful gospel music, or, indeed, the hypnotic Qawwali music of Nusrat Fateh ali Khan and the splendour of many of the world's mosques.
How can I square my appreciation of them with my complete lack of faith in the beliefs that inspired them? Initially, with some difficulty. When I was younger I thought about refusing to celebrate Christmas, I graffitied cocks on the Gideon bibles handed out at school (as did most of the boys, to be fair), and I wanted to destroy religion.
Even though I'd never have the power to even dent it! But telling people who think differently to you they're stupid or wrong isn't a very good way to either change things or get through life. Not unless you actually enjoy being physically assaulted and losing all your friends. So, instead, my coping mechanism was to consider that these great buildings, these stunning works of act, these heartfelt songs were created by humans but such was the modesty of these talented humans they credited it to God.
It's not exactly right, but it's a workaround for me and it means I no longer feel conflicted visiting churches, mosques, or synagogues and why a visit to the annual Jameel Prize at the V&A meant I didn't have to broker a deal between my ethical, inflexible self and my curious, exploring self. I just jumped on the tube to South Kensington and bowled right in. As if it was the most natural thing in the world.
How can I square my appreciation of them with my complete lack of faith in the beliefs that inspired them? Initially, with some difficulty. When I was younger I thought about refusing to celebrate Christmas, I graffitied cocks on the Gideon bibles handed out at school (as did most of the boys, to be fair), and I wanted to destroy religion.
Even though I'd never have the power to even dent it! But telling people who think differently to you they're stupid or wrong isn't a very good way to either change things or get through life. Not unless you actually enjoy being physically assaulted and losing all your friends. So, instead, my coping mechanism was to consider that these great buildings, these stunning works of act, these heartfelt songs were created by humans but such was the modesty of these talented humans they credited it to God.
It's not exactly right, but it's a workaround for me and it means I no longer feel conflicted visiting churches, mosques, or synagogues and why a visit to the annual Jameel Prize at the V&A meant I didn't have to broker a deal between my ethical, inflexible self and my curious, exploring self. I just jumped on the tube to South Kensington and bowled right in. As if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Hala Kaiksow - Thoub Nashal Jumpsuit from the collection Wandress (2015)
I'm glad I did too. The Jameel Prize is in its fifth year (although I'd never heard of it before) and it aims to celebrate, a little sketchily, "art and design inspired by Islamic tradition". The V&A make great play of their Islamic collection and if there's something a little, er, colonial about the whole enterprise then that's hardly surprising. Just remember who V is.
To be fair to them, they're doing their best to be inclusive and with free membership and collections that tell a global, rather than purely 'empire' story, there is no excuse for anyone to feel they'd not be welcome down on Cromwell Road. With a Dundee outpost opening two months ago, they're even making it easier for people very far from London to visit.
When I think of the V&A, I often think of huge Roman columns, statues, architectural models, and overpriced but tasty cakes. But there's a lot of other stuff on show too. Not least dresses. So perhaps it's appropriate that on entering the Porter Gallery, where the Jameel Prize 'competitors' are exhibiting, the first thing you see is, indeed, a dress.
Well, a jumpsuit. But it looked like a dress to me at first sight. Bahrain born and based, Hala Kaiksow launched her own sustainable womenswear label two years back. She's tried to blur the lines between fashion and uniform, between east and west, and between antiquity and modernity. She's also employed local Bahrani weavers and used, where possible, recycled fabrics.
It's quite a lot to fit in but she's not stopped there. Her Thoub Nashal Jumpsuit is also inspired by the simplicity of traditional Japanese kimonos and the water bags of Cypriot shepherds. There's a lot going on but that's not readily apparent when you first set eyes on her work. In that, it is not unalike much in this show, a show that is best appreciated by employing patience and reflection.
Hayv Kahraman was born in Iraq and studied in Florence. In Italy she was taught that European art history was, essentially, all art history. A tacit expression of Western privilege and incuriosity - and one that Kahrman soon rejected. Not only did she start mixing European styles with Islamic art but she also added the influence of other non-Western forms like Japanese woodblock printing.
How Iraqi are you? (top of this blog) is inspired by 13c Arabic manuscripts showing, supposedly humorous episodes, from the lives of women living lives in patriarchal societies, which is, in itself, another unfortunate byproduct of two thousand years of living under the yoke of the Abrahamic faiths.
To be fair to them, they're doing their best to be inclusive and with free membership and collections that tell a global, rather than purely 'empire' story, there is no excuse for anyone to feel they'd not be welcome down on Cromwell Road. With a Dundee outpost opening two months ago, they're even making it easier for people very far from London to visit.
When I think of the V&A, I often think of huge Roman columns, statues, architectural models, and overpriced but tasty cakes. But there's a lot of other stuff on show too. Not least dresses. So perhaps it's appropriate that on entering the Porter Gallery, where the Jameel Prize 'competitors' are exhibiting, the first thing you see is, indeed, a dress.
Well, a jumpsuit. But it looked like a dress to me at first sight. Bahrain born and based, Hala Kaiksow launched her own sustainable womenswear label two years back. She's tried to blur the lines between fashion and uniform, between east and west, and between antiquity and modernity. She's also employed local Bahrani weavers and used, where possible, recycled fabrics.
It's quite a lot to fit in but she's not stopped there. Her Thoub Nashal Jumpsuit is also inspired by the simplicity of traditional Japanese kimonos and the water bags of Cypriot shepherds. There's a lot going on but that's not readily apparent when you first set eyes on her work. In that, it is not unalike much in this show, a show that is best appreciated by employing patience and reflection.
Hayv Kahraman was born in Iraq and studied in Florence. In Italy she was taught that European art history was, essentially, all art history. A tacit expression of Western privilege and incuriosity - and one that Kahrman soon rejected. Not only did she start mixing European styles with Islamic art but she also added the influence of other non-Western forms like Japanese woodblock printing.
How Iraqi are you? (top of this blog) is inspired by 13c Arabic manuscripts showing, supposedly humorous episodes, from the lives of women living lives in patriarchal societies, which is, in itself, another unfortunate byproduct of two thousand years of living under the yoke of the Abrahamic faiths.
House in Gaylani, from her 2014 series Let the Guest be the Master, was prompted by the sale of her childhood home in Baghdad. Men would meet in the courtyard and women would stay indoors, another way of reinforcing the gender imbalance. Kahraman's paintings manage to, simultaneously, both celebrate and criticize, or at least poke gentle fun, at Islamic culture. Other works focus on the migrant experience and the warmth with which she depicts all humanity leaves us in no doubt that Kahraman is on the side of, first and foremost, humanity. They're really nice paintings too.
Hayv Kahraman - House in Gaylani from the series Let the Guest be the Master (2014)
Marina Tabassum - Model of Bait ur Rouf (2018)
Great paintings sit alongside examples of great architecture. The Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum designed the Bait ur Rouf mosque in the suburbs of Dhaka as not just a place of worship, but also a social spaces. Something, so many religious buildings fail to do. To see signs on London churches warning homeless people away is to wonder what part of Jesus's message does the church not get? All of it?
The light that penetrates the mosque from seemingly oblique angles may give believers a sense of the sacred, a dollop of the divine, or a taste of the transcendental. This non-believer gets that. I too get a lovely feeling looking at such exquisite buildings. But even though that feeling can, at times, feel transcendental it never seems likely to come from a higher power, but from great design and, most importantly of all, the power of nature. That light is the light of the sun. People used to worship the sun and it would make a great deal more sense if they still did. For without the sun we would not be here. It is the sun that gives us life and that life gave us the freedom to create, and worship, other gods. Good job the sun isn't a jealous god.
Marina Tabassum - Bait ur Rouf Mosque (2012)
Marina Tabassum - Bait ur Rouf Mosque (2012)
Great design can be epic in scale like the Bait ur Rouf Mosque, but it can also be served up in more human sized proportions. Kamrooz Aram was born in Iran and now lives and works in NYC. His mission is to challenge the western modernist view of Islamic art as purely decorative and, initially, for me, he'd failed.
The first thing I thought when I saw his work was how pretty it was, how well designed. Practical concerns were not on my mind at all and, I must add, that even after some consideration I still felt that, yes, these works were very aesthetically pleasing - but that was all. It made me think that I am exactly the kind of western museum visitor that Aram is hoping to 'punk' and all I can say to that is "fair play, you win". I'll place Aram third behind Tabassum and Kahraman (a tie for winner) in this contest.
Kamrooz Aram - Ephesian Fog (2016)
Kamrooz Aram - Ancient through Modern (2016)
Kamrooz Aram - Ancient through Modern (2016)
Younes Rahmoun - Taqiya Nor (Hat-light) (2016)
For Morocco, it was time for Younes Rahmoun to step up to the plate. I had to go inside a slightly darkened room to look at Rahmoun's contribution. Each hat, nicely lit up as they are, represents a major grouping of Islam (showing how daft it is for non-affiliates like myself to try to understand the multiple, and confusing, interpretations of Islam) and they're all hand knitted using recycled wool from Rahmoun's hometown of Tetouan. It's a nice idea but it didn't detain me long.
Much the same could be said for the wall based geometric concoctions of the Iraqi born, Arles based, Mehdi Moutashar. It was in France that Moutashar encountered abstraction and minimalism and he soon set about incorporating them into his own work. To the extent, perhaps, that it's hard now to see anything specifically 'Islamic' about his art. Unless you consider the belief that to make representational art is in some way offensive to Allah and, therefore, all Islamic art has to be abstract. In which case it's odd that Moutashar had to move to Paris to discover this. Guess we sometimes learn more about our essence when we're taken out of our comfort zones.
Mehdi Moutashar - Un plus a 120 et un carre (A fold at 120 degrees and a square) (2014)
Mehdi Moutashar - Deux carres dont un encadre (Two squares, one of them framed) (2017)
They're as pleasant as their titles are dry and academic. I was, alas, less impressed with the miniature paintings of Pakistan's Wardha Shabbir. There was a film on show at the front of the exhibition in which you could see how much work went in to, and how much detail there is in, Shabbir's paintings. But even with one of the magnifying glasses provided I didn't get much out of it. I felt a bit disappointed and I felt a bit sorry for Wardha Shabbir - though the chances of her ever reading this are pretty remote. It's like feeling sorry for an inanimate object. Something else I actually do.
Wardha Shabbir -A Wall-1 and 2 (2017)
The text that accompanies Shabbir's work bangs on about "different configurations of hedges" representing "the barriers that block our development, the path we follow through life, or the destination we aim for". It's all a bit Chicken Soup for the Soul and it doesn't make me feel any more favourable about her work. Which made me feel old and cynical. I have to learn accept aging and to continue the good fight against cynicism.
Sisters Nisreen (an architect) and Nermeen (a graphic designer) Abudail are the founders of naqsh collective and their sculptures are influenced from their native Jordan's tradition of embroidery as well as the outfits of Palestinian women. It's not easy for an outsider like me to really see that, or understand that, but I could certainly appreciate that their Shawl was a thing of beauty and, of course, things of beauty are not there just for religious people. Or just for irreligious people. Things of beauty can be shared among us all even as they are interpreted completely differently.
With that I make my final contention that culture is more powerful, more important, and more positive than religion. If religion (Islam, in this case) mixing with culture is like pouring poison into water then please fill my glass of H20 to the brim with polonium and novichok and bring it sweetly to my lips. A world without religion I could not only survive in but thrive in. A world without culture, a world without self-expression, would be no fun at all. Praise be!
naqsh collective - Shawl (?)
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