Contact Kim Silarski
313.624.0206
ksilarski@accesscommunity.org
Deborah Deacon Odette
313.624.0209
ddeaconodette@accesscommunity.org
ARAB AMERICAN NAT’L MUSEUM, U.S. STATE
DEPT. COLLABORATE TO PRESENT ARAB AMERICAN
ARTISTS AT 12th INTERNATIONAL CAIRO BIENNALE
Dearborn, MI (November 22, 2010) – The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and
Cultural Affairs (ECA) has selected the Arab American National Museum (AANM) to organize
the United States’ representation of American artists at the 12th International Cairo Biennale,
to be held in Egypt from December 12, 2010 through February 12, 2011.
The United States pavilion will feature the work of American artists Annabel Daou, Dahlia
Elsayed, Rheim Alkadhi and Nadia Ayari. Ranya Husami curated the group exhibition, entitled
Orienteering.
“The Cairo Biennale gives the AANM the opportunity to present the work of some of our most
important contemporary Arab American artists in an international forum, to promote their role
both domestically and internationally, and to foster an important new dialogue between Arab
American, Arab and international artists,” says Museum Director Dr. Anan Ameri.
“It will demonstrate America’s support for and pride in its Arab American artists and citizens.
The Biennale represents a unique opportunity for the Museum, for the artists and for the
nation.”
“Art needs no translation – it bridges barriers and connects people of all cultures. The Cairo
Biennale will feature the talent and diversity of Arab American artists,” said Ann Stock, Assistant
Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs.
The four artists will exhibit work that examines issues of time, place, and identity. Daou has
created a site-specific, time-based paper installation piece entitled from where to where.
Elsayed will show conceptual maps, text-driven paintings that serve as records of internal and
external geographies. Alkadhi’s work is an installation of two components entitled Domestic
Floor Covering and Conference of Flies. Ayari’s paintings are visual narratives that explore form
or depict surrealist characters in non-specific landscapes.
The Arab American National Museum has created a series of public programs for Biennale
audiences related to the artists’ works. AANM Director Dr. Anan Ameri and Museum staff
member Deborah Deacon Odette will visit Cairo for the opening of the Biennale.
ECA’s Cultural Programs Division supports and manages the official U.S. participation at the
Cairo Biennale. U.S. representation at this global event ensures that the excellence, vitality and
diversity of the arts in the United States are effectively showcased abroad and provides an
opportunity to engage foreign audiences to increase mutual understanding.
Deputy Assistant Secretary Maura Pally will represent the U.S. Department of State at the
Biennale opening.
Since its inception in 1984, the Cairo Biennale has become one of the most important cultural
events in the Middle East. Conceived and initially designed to explore contemporary art in the
Arab World, the concepts of the successive artistic directors expanded the interest to the
international arena.
The Biennale is produced by the Sector of Fine Arts at the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and
exhibited primarily in its Palace of Arts. Continuing success in sustaining the event has had a
direct impact on contemporary art practices arising from Egypt and other Arab World nations in
the past two decades. Further information is available at http://www.cairobiennale.gov.eg/.
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The four Arab American artists exhibiting in Cairo are remarkably diverse and complex in terms
of their styles, subjects, and approaches to imagery. Some of this work may at first blush appear
simple, accessible, easily grasped. Yet all of these artists somehow subvert, critique, or
complicate simplistic readings of their ideas in their work.
MEDIA NOTE: IMAGES OF THE ARTISTS AND THEIR WORKS ARE AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST,
VIA THE CONTACTS AT THE TOP OF THIS RELEASE.
Annabel Daou has created a site-specific, time-based installation entitled from where to where,
which throws into confusion concepts of time and place—indicators essential to how art is
traditionally selected, organized, identified, contextualized, displayed, and understood. In New
York and Beirut, Daou asked strangers: Where are you now? Where are you coming from? and
Where are you going to? and “mapped”/wrote down the responses she received. The piece is
accompanied by a sound installation, created by Daou and Greta Byrum, which incorporates the
same answers to the same questions, in the same languages, recorded simultaneously. The
piece’s title makes it an inquiry into how identity is asserted, undermined, and/or reconstructed
through the ongoing exchange between “location” and state of mind.
Annabel Daou is of Lebanese descent and is based in New York, New York.
Click HERE for further information.
The art of Dahlia Elsayed also, upon first impression, resembles a map. Since childhood, Elsayed
has kept journals, incorporating images overlapped with text. These have evolved into largescale paintings, some in diptych form, that use image and text to create detailed, visual
narratives of locations and experience. Part data-tracking and part typography, the paintings
examine the aesthetic surfaces and ephemeral cultural markers of recent immigrant
populations, of which Elsayed is a part; political strife has caused each of the last three
generations of her family to immigrate to a new continent. The paintings are depictions of both
external and internal geographies, neither of them rooted in the physical world. Elsayed has
come to believe that cities are shaped less by architecture than by the social experiences and
memories that occur there; it is these experiences and memories which are depicted in her
work.
Dahlia Elsayed is an Egyptian American from Palisades Park, New Jersey.
Click HERE for further information.
Rheim Alkadhi has used found objects to construct her work in two parts:Domestic Floor
Covering and Conference of Flies. The first, an Oriental rug caked with dirt, evokes a domicile
that has been soiled and corrupted. Circular portions of varying sizes have been extracted or
replaced with the statistical and geographical accuracy of a map, in direct reference to Iraq's
displacement crisis. The second element, Conference of Flies, presents these insects as material
manifestations of a sweltering atmosphere, an absurdist representation of the perpetual state
of indeterminacy that hijacks both public and private spaces.
Rheim Alkadhi, of both Iraqi and American background, is based in Los Angeles, California.
Click HERE for further information.
Nadia Ayari grew up in the religiously tolerant culture of Tunisia. She did not begin depicting
Middle Eastern subject matter in her paintings until she came to the U.S. and began confronting
notions of cultural heritage and identity. Her work involves the deliberate positing of opposing
ideals and expectations. She sometimes depicts threatening, violent characters in absurd, comic
scenarios. These are rendered in sensuously textural impasto paint and bright candy colors,
negating and poking fun at their subject matter. The cartoon-like subject matter, simplistic
imagery and bubblegum palette belie a deeper meaning. Ayari employs these means, as well as
icons of Western Art history like surrealism. She deftly manipulates Western notions of how
contemporary “Arab” art should look, turning such notions squarely on their heads. Her
Biennale works are entitled Camo, Wild Flowers and Blue Domes.
Nadia Ayari was born in Tunisia and now resides in New York, New York.
Click HERE for further information.
Independent curator Ranya Husami recently obtained an M.A. in Modern Art and Curating at
Columbia University. Her master’s thesis, The Dog Ate My Framework: The Originality of the
Post-War Lebanese Avant-Garde and Other Post-Modernist Myths, examines the formation of
narratives and origin stories that have crystallized around conceptual art practices in post-war
Lebanon She is currently a researcher and writer at an art advisory firm in New York, which
curates the private collections of some of the top modern and contemporary art collectors in
the U.S. She specializes in conceptual art, with an emphasis on art from the Middle East.
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About the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs
The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) promotes international mutual
understanding through a wide range of academic, cultural, professional, and sports
exchange programs. ECA exchanges engage youth, students, educators, artists, athletes,
and emerging leaders in many fields in the United States and in more than 160 countries.
Alumni of ECA exchanges comprise over one million people around the world, including
more than 50 Nobel Laureates and more than 300 current or former heads of state and
government. For more information, visit www.exchanges.state.gov.
About the Arab American National Museum
The Arab American National Museum documents, preserves, celebrates and educates the public
on the history, life, culture and contributions of Arab Americans. It serves as a resource to
enhance knowledge and understanding about Arab Americans and their presence in this
country. The Arab American National Museum is a project of ACCESS, a Dearborn, Michiganbased nonprofit human services and cultural organization. Learn more at
www.arabamericanmuseum.org and www.accesscommunity.org.
The Arab American National Museum is a proud Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, D.C. Read about the Affiliations program at http://affiliations.si.edu.
The Museum is located at 13624 Michigan Avenue, Dearborn, MI, 48126. Museum hours: 10
a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; noon-5 p.m. Sunday.
Closed Monday, Tuesday; Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Admission is $6 for
adults; $3 for students, seniors and children 6-12; ages 5 and under, free. Call 313.582.2266 for
further information.
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