HOME GROUND: CONTEMPORARY ART FROM THE BARJEEL ART FOUNDATION at the Aga Khan Museum (77 Wynford), to January 3, 2016. $20, stu/srs $15, free Wed 4-8 pm. 416-646-4677. Rating: NNNNN
Twelve artists explore the theme of homeland in this extraordinary show from the collection of Sharjah’s Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi. The political commentator and Arab Spring tweeter’s mission to support contemporary Arab art dovetails nicely with the Aga Khan’s to showcase historic Islamic culture.
Asim Abu Shaqra‘s small grey painting is one of many he made of the sabra cactus, a Palestinian symbol co-opted by Israel. The sombre image, separated from the viewer by frame-like borders, is made more poignant by the knowledge that the promising artist died at 29.
There’s a lot of backstory to Dia Al Azzawi‘s small bronze sculpture of a boy with arms crossed behind his back, his eyeless face positioned toward the wall. He’s Handala, a child who appeared in Naji al-Ali’s political cartoons as a mute observer and symbol of Palestinian defiance, as well as an alter ego. Strangely, the cartoonist’s 1987 assassination never comes up in discussions of Charlie Hebdo.
Videos mine the artists’ backgrounds: Youssef Nabil‘s cinematic You Never Left features an Egyptian man undergoing death and rebirth as a metaphor for immigration Adel Abidin based Memorial, a hypnotic animation of a cow trying to cross a bombed-out bridge, on memories of the 1991 U.S. attack on Baghdad.
Raafat Ishak has translated his project of requesting immigration information from 194 nations into 194 oddly logo-like paintings of head-sized ovals that are decorated with washed-out pastel versions of the nations’ flags overlaid with quotes in Arabic from their replies.
Work by women is especially moving: Manal Al Dowayan gives bite to her graceful porcelain doves by printing text on them from documents male guardians must fill out to allow Saudi women to travel. In her Nation Estate video, Larissa Sansour envisions Palestine as a futuristic luxury high-rise where citizens press an elevator button instead of navigating Israeli checkpoints.
All the artists except Mona Hatoum (familiar from AGO’s Cube, here showing a sculpture involving toy soldiers) were new to me, and researching them has been a fascinating education. It’s a show of uniformly excellent work by artists whose voices deserve to be heard.
art@nowtoronto.com
