Fall 2022: PRACTITIONER-IN-RESIDENCE
What Art Can Do: Art, Politics, and Potential
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
Why are some of the most interesting artists of our time drawn to some of the most devastating conflicts on earth? How do artists from the Middle East and North Africa in particular respond to such difficult subject matter? What does it mean in formal, political, and ethical terms when artists transform challenging, often chaotic material into works of art that are orderly, contemplative, even redemptive?
What Art Can Do: Art, Politics, and Potential is an opportunity to think through the theory, practice, and impact of contemporary art according to its function. Through a collective process of close looking, formal analysis, and discussion, workshop participants will explore a series of recent artworks, from in and around the Middle East and North Africa, divided into three plausible categories: the documentary, the restorative, and the imaginative. Then, working together as a group, they will propose a fourth category, adding to or departing from the previous three, and present it to the public, answering the question of what art can do by developing a theme, bolstering it with research, and sharing works of art in a form adequate to their potential.
While not a comprehensive survey of contemporary art in the Middle East and North Africa, the workshop focuses on a range of artistic practices that have emerged from the region over the past ten to twenty years, emphasizing projects that are politically engaged, critically reflective, and concerned with the work of history.
Deadline to Register: August 29, 2022
Please submit this Google Form to register.
*NYU students who want to take the course for credit, must also register through Albert with the following course number: NEST-GA 2005-001
The Practitioner-in-Residence workshop will run on Fridays, 12:30pm–2.30pm, in person, at the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at 255 Sullivan Street. The workshop will run from September 9 to November 4, 2022.
September 9, 2022
September 16, 2022
September 23, 2022
September 30, 2022
October 7, 2022
October 14, 2022
October 21, 2022
October 28, 2022
November 4, 2022
We will potentially have one more class for a final presentation that will be determined at a later time.
- Space is limited, our first priority for registration will be for students enrolled in the MA program in Near Eastern Studies (or GloJo-NEST), second will be for NYU students. If you are a non-NYU student, please submit the Google form and depending on space, we will inform you before the start of the semester.
- The syllabus and required reading list will be sent to you at the start of the workshop.
- Participants from all disciplines are welcome to join.
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie is a writer and critic based in Beirut and New York. She is a contributing editor of Bidoun and writes regularly for Artforum, Aperture, and Afterall, among other publications. She spent more than a decade working as a reporter and editor for newspapers in the Middle East, and taught courses on criticism and contemporary art at the American University of Beirut, Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, and the School of Visual Arts in New York. She is the author of Etel Adnan (2018), on the paintings of the Lebanese American poet Etel Adnan, and a contributor to numerous books on modern and contemporary art, including Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s (2020), Huguette Caland: Everything Takes the Shape of a Person (2018), Saloua Raouda Choucair (2013), and Out of Beirut (2006). Her workshop for the Kevorkian Center’s Fall 2022 Practitioner-in-Residence Program builds on her research for Beautiful, Gruesome, and True: Artists at Work in the Face of War (2022), a book about art and conflict newly published by Columbia Global Reports.
Images:
Cover Image: Katia Kameli. L’oeil se noie. lightbox 2016. Courtesy of the artist/ADAGP
Figure 1: Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme. Screenshot 2015-08-14 19.28.36, from the series “Screenshots,” 2014–ongoing. Courtesy of the artists.
Figure 2: Bassem Saad. Still from Congress of Idling Persons, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
Figure 3: Bassem Saad. Still from Congress of Idling Persons, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
Figure 4: Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme. Still from May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth, 2020–ongoing. Courtesy of the artists.
