SHAHEEN
MERALI -
Exhibitions
U blow me away.
Shaheen Merali
Central Saint Martins,
!07 Charing Cross Rd,
London WC2 ODU
July 23 - August 6, 2001
Window One:
Hancocks Universal marker on Lastolite Background paper, electric fan
with
red string and Coolglass greenhouse shading.
Window Two:
Negrophilia toy, polystyrene bubbles, electric fan with red string and
Coolglass greenhouse shading.
U blow me away is an installation that works specifically with notions
of identity. Its persistent play with materials and images hold specific
clues to a turbulent history of race and racism, of memories that persist
within the kitsch and the everyday.
Black collectibles or negrophilia were tokens of affection, constructed
in the spirit of juvenile folly; a compressed mode of representation,
to be consumed by the eye, that could occupy visible places in the domestic
environment. Today, these objects from the past incongruously survive
in their attendant form to envelop the present within the past. These
dark souvenirs move history into private time and space, miniaturise and
interiorise those distanced experiences which on the whole remain outside
most white European contemporary lived experiences. These negrophile objects
(later animated through specific traditions such as the Black and White
Minstrel Show) whilst describing exactly the defects and deformities of
the original, only partially reveal the true nature of the subject. Here
is the history of colonialism and colonial bearings presented as still
life; in status, stasis, statue. They, the negrophile objects and minstrel
images, portray an aggregated identity of the colonial subject and subjugation,
creating a cultural other - clumsy, distant, discontinuous and deformed.
These miniatures, these souvenirs, these minstrels typify and account
memory, of childhood and stunted civilisations, and ultimately by
application of a secondary relation to history and civility.
Dressing - Readdressing
Shaheen Merali & Mai Ghoussoub, artists
Saqi Books
26 Westborne Grove
London W2
June - July 2001
Claiming multiple identities
Genuine culture can never claim a unique origin. Human society has
been interacting for a very long time. The centre of what is called civilisation
has been travelling at the same pace as human curiosity, and curiosity
is as old as being.
We are seeking to reposition symbols placed on the facades of historical
buildings in Europe. By dressing some of the facades of conservation buildings
with symbols linked in popular memory to the >other=, we hope to continue
to bring to the fore the question of the meaning of art and the ambiguities
of cultural identity. >The ways in which identity can be thematised
is multifold: it is made and un-made in many sites and crosses many paths.
Rethinking identity entails a demand: to split the traditional link between
self and identity =Steyn, Julia in Other than identity. Manchester University
Press. 1997. Making and un-making, temporarily, the message of the original
architects. We would like to find out if this temporary change will have
an effect on the understanding of the passer-by that goes beyond a temporary
visual experience.
Site
The façade of the building needs to express its (Middle) Eastern
identity to the passer- by in the same manner a street loves to put ornaments
when it celebrates a happy event or when men put on a tie and women wear
a suit to attend an official ceremony. Since the artists grandfathers
wore the Turkish Fez, they wanted the theatre personalities sculpted on
26 Westbourne Grove to try the Fez on for a few weeks. Near & Middle
Eastern women wore the veil traditionally. Most of them covered their
faces at the time when the figures sculpted on the façade of the
building were active in the theatre. The veil was hastily raised as a
negative symbol in the West and by Middle Eastern >modernists= in a
way that was totally oblivious of customs and traditions.
By re-dressing 26 Westbourne Grove in a nineteenth century Near &
Middle Eastern symbols we hope to make a shift in people=s visual concepts
and myths. -- MG & SM
 host: re-inventing the museum curated by Mario Rossi |
Hastings Museum and
Gallery
Hastings, Sussex
June
- September 9, 2001
Group exhibition featuring Shaheen Merali, Gary Perkins, Mario Rossi,
Alker & Liddell, Lenka Clayton, Grenville Davy, Jeremy Deller, Dorothy
Cross, and many others.
Servitude
Zico House
Beirut, Lebanon
To be confirmed
Solo exhibition about service, servitude and race.
MIG
The Rome State Archives
Rome, Italy
To be confirmed
Group exhibition about masculinity and its traces. Artists include Ben
Joiner and Jeremy Mulvey
Text and images: courtesy of Shaheen Merali
Artist Statement
SHAHEEN MERALI is a visual artist and educator of South Asian descent, living and working in Berlin, Germany. He is currently Head of Department for Exhibition, Film and New Media at House of World Cultures. A former lecturer at Central St. Martins School of Art and the University of Westminster, Merali is also cofounder of Panchayat Arts Education Resource Unit, an issue based archive currently held at the University of Westminster. Some exhibitions have included AXIOM arts Centre show-Empire and I and The Crown Jewels exhibition at Kampnagel, Hamburg, 'Translocation' Photographer's Gallery ; 'Musee Imaginaire', Museum of Installation: Men and Masculinities, James Hockey Gallery, Farnham ; and two survey shows in New York, 'Out of India', Queens Museum and 'Transforming The Crown', Bronx Museum. His video work 'Paradigm Lost' commissioned by the Scottish Arts Council has extensively toured Internationally and is currently included in the showreel 'Alien/Nation' compiled by Sixpack films, Austria.
Merali is also an active member of the Male Identity Group for whom he is co-editing conference papers for a future publication.
The installations over the last fifteen years address a manifold of issues in that they bring together a multiplicity of languages from different discourses namely that of the historical, the political, the kitsch and play on the absence of knowledge about the effect of the everyday object and unacknowledged 'unexplored' territories…. . whether as acquisition or escape - art has always fallen within a wider appropriation of colonised cultures and territories. The installations reflect both on the construction of images, their context and the historical place of post colonial discourses around identity and their contemporary mutations.
Shaheen Merali can be contacted at:
School of Communication and Creative Industries,
University of Westminster,
Harrow Campus,
Watford Rd,
Northwick Park,
Harrow,
Middlesex HA1 3TP
shaheen@btinternet.com
ARTIST