ArtCalendar
Bahrain - December
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December 2010
Aissa H Deebi
FLYWAY
Albareh Café Gallery
23 November - 9 December
FLYWAY
Albareh Café Gallery
23 November - 9 December
alsajanjal
Group exhibition 4 contemporary art practices
Bahrain Contemporary
Art Association
30 November - 12 December
Group exhibition 4 contemporary art practices
Bahrain Contemporary
Art Association
30 November - 12 December
About the Artist
Aissa Deebi is a Palestinian - American artist (born in Shatat, 1970). He has produced a body of work in photography, video, new media and graphic arts. He is currently a assistant professor in graphic arts at The American University in Cairo, Performing and Visual Arts Department. Aissa is conducting a PhD research in Art and Design at the University of Southampton, examining photography and migration within the New York City émigré culture, investigating questions of identity in relation to masculinity and cultural integration.
An award winning artist Aissa’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States. He has exhibited at the Queens Museum of Art, the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Chelsea, the Tangent Gallery in Detroit, and the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia. He has also exhibited at the Fitcher and Mezrahi Gallery in Austria. In addition, to the University of Catania in Italy, and the Inner Mongolia Museum of Fine Arts in China, and the Virginia Commonwealth University Gallery in Qatar (VCU).
Aissa is residing between Cairo and New York, and he is a practicing artist/ researcher and a lecturer in graphic arts.
http://www.aissadeebi.info
About the Curator
Aida Eltorie (born Cairo, 1983), is an independent cultural producer and director to a newfound organization: Finding Projects.Org. Curating the film program of Manifesta 8, under the curatorial auspices of The Chamber of Public Secrets, and the first video art biennial in the Middle East: CAVE, Eltorie was also the Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Practices Journal: Volumes 4, 5, and 6, and has worked with a myriad of galleries, museums and cultural agencies in Cairo, New York and San Francisco. She has worked with The Townhouse Gallery of contemporary art, The Brooklyn Museum, The International Museum of Women, Christie's auction house (New York), and independently produced a number of international projects with artists and cultural practitioners from the Middle East and Europe, with the support of ProHelvetia Swiss Arts Council, The Ford Foundation and The American Center Foundation. She is completing her Masters degree in Islamic Art and Architecture from the American University in Cairo.
www.findingprojects.org
Aissa Deebi is a Palestinian - American artist (born in Shatat, 1970). He has produced a body of work in photography, video, new media and graphic arts. He is currently a assistant professor in graphic arts at The American University in Cairo, Performing and Visual Arts Department. Aissa is conducting a PhD research in Art and Design at the University of Southampton, examining photography and migration within the New York City émigré culture, investigating questions of identity in relation to masculinity and cultural integration.
An award winning artist Aissa’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States. He has exhibited at the Queens Museum of Art, the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Chelsea, the Tangent Gallery in Detroit, and the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia. He has also exhibited at the Fitcher and Mezrahi Gallery in Austria. In addition, to the University of Catania in Italy, and the Inner Mongolia Museum of Fine Arts in China, and the Virginia Commonwealth University Gallery in Qatar (VCU).
Aissa is residing between Cairo and New York, and he is a practicing artist/ researcher and a lecturer in graphic arts.
http://www.aissadeebi.info
About the Curator
Aida Eltorie (born Cairo, 1983), is an independent cultural producer and director to a newfound organization: Finding Projects.Org. Curating the film program of Manifesta 8, under the curatorial auspices of The Chamber of Public Secrets, and the first video art biennial in the Middle East: CAVE, Eltorie was also the Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Practices Journal: Volumes 4, 5, and 6, and has worked with a myriad of galleries, museums and cultural agencies in Cairo, New York and San Francisco. She has worked with The Townhouse Gallery of contemporary art, The Brooklyn Museum, The International Museum of Women, Christie's auction house (New York), and independently produced a number of international projects with artists and cultural practitioners from the Middle East and Europe, with the support of ProHelvetia Swiss Arts Council, The Ford Foundation and The American Center Foundation. She is completing her Masters degree in Islamic Art and Architecture from the American University in Cairo.
www.findingprojects.org
During the last five years, Aissa Deebi conducted a visual, theoretical and historical research dealing with issues of migration and displacement. In the process, he visited many bird migration scopes in New York, London, Haifa and Mexico, and found that human migration is embodied in nature and links back to primitive, basic needs of social mobility. As an Arab of Palestinian descent, he wanted to understand his position about the Arab history of nomadic life using personal experiences learned.
The starting point of the FLYWAY Project was focused on the crucial point between departure and arrival, whereby you have no return. You make the choice to leave and this is the point where migration starts; where you take-off and keep going through that journey without return. This is what interested Deebi the most: That moment of departure was final and absolute.
"In the last 20 years of my life, I have been living a lifestyle that starts between 2 points and ends between those same two points. Those two points are very crucial in my work - whereby there is a beginning and an end, and it changed my perception in art. Everything had to fit in that suitcase. Everything was temporary and nothing was permanent, because there is a production period that terminates, and you must then start all over again. The only physical evidence of my practice is the carrying of my mobile studio, which changed the way of producing work. Something that many artists do today is work as a post-studio artist, and my space is my laptop."
FLYWAY is an outcome of multiple journeys’ that start and end between those two destinations, and Deebi's work comes out of the mapping of the act of mobility. The border between the "self" and "Other" are removed.
When Deebi obsessively starts thinking about nature, and how mobility is embodied in nature almost as a natural habit, his interest in social behaviors that represent a set of social metaphors are embodied into a typeface - that typeface then returns to the image by becoming the written word that dictates the artwork. The visual diary goes through an abstraction of its meanings by emphasizing birds as metaphors.
This project has been recognized under the auspices of The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (Amman, Jordan), The Qattan Foundation (London, UK/Ramallah, Palestine), and handled by Finding Projects.Org (Rome, Italy/Cairo, Egypt)
The starting point of the FLYWAY Project was focused on the crucial point between departure and arrival, whereby you have no return. You make the choice to leave and this is the point where migration starts; where you take-off and keep going through that journey without return. This is what interested Deebi the most: That moment of departure was final and absolute.
"In the last 20 years of my life, I have been living a lifestyle that starts between 2 points and ends between those same two points. Those two points are very crucial in my work - whereby there is a beginning and an end, and it changed my perception in art. Everything had to fit in that suitcase. Everything was temporary and nothing was permanent, because there is a production period that terminates, and you must then start all over again. The only physical evidence of my practice is the carrying of my mobile studio, which changed the way of producing work. Something that many artists do today is work as a post-studio artist, and my space is my laptop."
FLYWAY is an outcome of multiple journeys’ that start and end between those two destinations, and Deebi's work comes out of the mapping of the act of mobility. The border between the "self" and "Other" are removed.
When Deebi obsessively starts thinking about nature, and how mobility is embodied in nature almost as a natural habit, his interest in social behaviors that represent a set of social metaphors are embodied into a typeface - that typeface then returns to the image by becoming the written word that dictates the artwork. The visual diary goes through an abstraction of its meanings by emphasizing birds as metaphors.
This project has been recognized under the auspices of The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (Amman, Jordan), The Qattan Foundation (London, UK/Ramallah, Palestine), and handled by Finding Projects.Org (Rome, Italy/Cairo, Egypt)
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