Issue 14: OBJECTS
In the latest, double-sized, Bidoun, debuting at Art Dubai and arriving on newsstands in early April, the Middle Eastern arts quarterly considers OBJECTS. Thirty of them, a veritable catalog: of monuments and momento mori; iconic props of iconic people; trusty or beloved cars, desks, blankets, and drums. A treasure trove of stories, of things in their particularity. In their Bidounity, if you like. Anwar Sadat’s pipe. The angel Metatron’s breastplate. Naguib Mahfouz’s white linen suit. Condi Rice’s ice skates. Eldridge Cleaver’s fanciest pants. Muammar Qaddafi’s shifting spectacles. Idrissi’s map. Xerxes’s headlace. The taqwacore bus. The Allah-fish and the fish-girl. The telltale ass. The beating heart of our editor in chief.
Allah’s mighty tag can be found in the froth of the sea and the pulp of the tomato, in the wool of the lamb and the rubber of the Nike. But one of Allah’s favorite mediums is certainly fish scale.
—Sophia Al-Maria
Xerxes has a certain joyfully swishy quality, taking languorous sniffs of Leonidas’s scalp when they meet to parley, wearing clear lip gloss, and dressing like the sartorial stepchild of Liberace and Dhasim from Street Fighter II.
—Tom Morton
It turns out that meeting a Nobel laureate is far easier than meeting a washed-up and possibly castrated pop star. The difficult part is figuring out what to wear.
—Anand Balakrishnan
Bidoun’s regular arts coverage includes a profile of Rosalind Nashashibi by Will Bradley and works in progress from Abbas Akhavan, Christodoulous Panayiotou, Raphaël Zarka, and Tarek Zaki. A new column by Madelon Vriesendorp opens up the quasi-hermetic world of the private collector and her prized possessions. A new department, the gallery, presents works by Hicham Benohoud, Roman Ondák, The Atlas Group, Trisha Donnelly, and Shirana Shahbazi, while Vadim Fishkin’s Children’s Museum, an artist’s project, unleashes the curatorial instincts of ten-years-old-and-under kids. All that, plus Chromeo in conversation, Heavy Metal in Baghdad, profiles in objectum-sexuality, and hieroglyphics for tourists.
Also appearing at Art Dubai 2008: the Bidoun Artists Cinema and Video Bar, featuring three video programs curated especially for the fair by Bidoun and guest curators Nav Haq and Tirdad Zolghadr. Artists include Haluk Akakce, Ziad Antar, Shahab Fotouhi, Nadine Khan, Rosalind Nashashibi, Shahryar Nashat, Yoshua Okon, and Akram Zaatari.
Bidoun is also presenting Panoptikon, a remarkable film by Istanbul-based artist Emre Hüner, at the contemporaneous Creek Art Fair in Bastakiya.
Finally, Bidoun will be launching its inaugural print project at Art Dubai with photographic works by artist Haris Epaminonda, who represented Cyprus at the 52nd Venice Biennale.
Bidoun 14 • OBJECTS • 228 pages • www.bidoun.com
Subscribe at bidoun.com/shop.php
