https://arab.news/9r87n
TEHRAN: More than 20,000 people have flocked to an Iranian museum showcasing renowned Western artists’ works, some for the first time — part of a treasure trove amassed before the Islamic Revolution. The museum’s collection is reputed to be the greatest line-up of modern masterpieces outside Europe and the United States, and includes multi-million-dollar pieces, much of which has been kept under wraps since the 1979 revolution. The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art “surprises me every time,” said visitor Shahin Rajabi, 35. “The current show is no exception.” The current “Minimalism and Conceptual Art” exhibition features 132 works by 34 world-famous contemporary artists, museum director Ebadreza Eslami said, including Marcel Duchamp, Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd and the duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude. “The reception has been marvellous,” Eslami said, particularly after long closures in recent years due to the Covid-19 pandemic. He said one of the main factors for the footfall of this exhibit was that “38 masterpieces” were being displayed “for the first time.” AFP saw visitors at the museum this week, some stopping to study details while others were busy taking photos as they made their way intently through the museum. “I loved the last room of the exhibit in particular, where the artist had worked with the fluorescent light,” said visitor Rajabi, referring to American artist Dan Flavin’s “Untitled” work.
The museum was inaugurated in 1977 during the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was deposed by Islamic revolutionaries two years later. Its design was inspired by Iran’s desert wind towers — an architectural element used to catch and circulate cool air in hot environments. Most of the collection was built up by the shah’s wife, former queen Farah Pahlavi, who deployed a team of experts to tour Western auctions and snap up prestigious paintings and sculptures to boost the country’s cultural profile. The museum also holds an important collection of Iranian modern and contemporary art. But the international works went underground after the Islamic republic’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini railed against “Westoxification,” deploring Western moral and sexual depravity which he said had infected the Islamic world. The themes of many of the Western works have been considered too risque to be publicly shown, and have spent much of the past decades languishing in storage. The museum counts some 3,500 works, hundreds of which are “very valuable,” head of public relations Hassan Noferesti said. They include masterpieces by Western artists from Paul Gauguin to Pablo Picasso, Rene Magritte, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol and Alberto Giacometti, according to Iran’s culture ministry.
The current show, which runs until mid-September, includes a collage by Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto titled “Green Curtains,” and an untitled work made from hemp by Canadian-American sculptor Jacqueline Winsor. Curator Behrang Samadzadegan said “some 20,000 people” have visited since the show opened in late June — about twice the normal turnout. Describing the theme of the show, he added “when we are talking about minimalism, we are primarily talking about the environment not the work.” Standing in front of the “Rock Salt & Mirror” by American artist Robert Smithson, 28-year-old painter Solmaz Daneshvar said she “greatly enjoyed” the display. The exhibition, however, was at the center of controversy this month when an amateur video surfaced showing two silverfish insects underneath the frame of a rare image by the late German photographic duo of Bernd and Hilla Becher. The video, whose authenticity could not be independently verified by AFP, went viral. The museum later made a formal apology, assuring concerned art lovers that the work by the Bechers, who are known for their photos of industrial structures, was not damaged. It also closed its doors for two days for fumigation. In 2015, the museum held an exhibition of 42 works by Western artists including Pollock’s masterpiece “Mural on Indian Red Ground,” valued by Christie’s auction house experts in 2010 at $250 million.
DUBAI: If the Muggle in you has been craving some wizardry and magic, a Harry Potter stage show may be just what the doctor ordered. The “Potted Potter” play — a 70-minute parody that summarizes all the major plot points of the seven Harry Potter books — is headed to Dubai this October. Fans can expect two shows a day on Oct. 22 and 23 at the Theatre by QE2.
Playing to sold-out theaters all over the world, the Olivier Award-nominated “Potted Potter” has been created by and stars Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner. From a live Quidditch game and a fire-breathing dragon to all the major characters from the beloved book series by J.K. Rowling, the show aims to be a treat for both Harry Potter fans and newbies alike.
The show was staged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2006 and has had two off-Broadway runs over 30 weeks, along with five West End runs and has also traveled to Las Vegas, Canada and Australia.
Tickets to the show start from AED140 ($38).
DUBAI: The first track on Soolking’s latest album, “Sans Visa,” is called “Kurt Kobain.” It’s a nod to his roots as a fan of Nirvana and other grunge bands who started his music career as a drummer in a rock band in his native Algeria.
It’s just one example of the wide array of music that Soolking (real name Abderraouf Derradji) enjoys listening to and is influenced by, even if that influence isn’t always clear in his own material.
“I listen to a lot of different music, so my influences were a little bit from everywhere,” Derradji tells Arab News. “From the traditional music of Algeria, like raï, American rap, French rap, reggae music, pop music like Michael Jackson, jazz… I’m not listening only to hip-hop or anything.
“My own music is Soolking music,” he continues. “I don’t want to give it a label, you know? My music is my music.”
However you want to describe that music (media write-ups usually reference rap, R&B, reggae and raï as the most obvious touchstones), it’s clearly connecting with people. Since 2018, Soolking has racked up 8 billion streams on various platforms. The clip for the album’s third track, “Suavamente,” released in February, has over 143 million views on YouTube. He’s one of the biggest pop stars in the world whose primary language isn’t English — which isn’t to say he doesn’t pull in English-speaking audiences; he’s played North America many times, including New York’s storied Apollo Theater in May. In France, he’s famous enough that when I ask whereabouts in Paris he lives at the start of our interview, the reply is brief: “I can’t tell you that.”
It’s been a remarkable journey for Derradji, who was born and raised in Algiers. While he’s quick to stress that growing up in Algeria’s capital city was “a real enrichment and life experience for me,” he’s also frank about the fact that it was hard, as a young man, to see any real future for himself there.
“I think maybe 90 percent of the boys my age were in the same situation,” he says. “All of them were looking to go and find a better chance somewhere in Europe, or the States. That’s the reality. I was looking for the same thing.”
His wanderlust had only been increased by international tours he had done with the professional dance company he joined as a teenager. “I’d had this experience of seeing how people lived in the rest of the world — in Europe and the USA. So, when I came back to Algeria, I just didn’t want to accept the situation I was living in. That’s why I decided to leave,” he says. “Maybe if you haven’t seen (other places), it’s just a dream that pushes you to leave. But when you see, and you come back, it makes it, like, ‘I have to leave.’”
A post shared by soolkingofficiel (@soolkingofficiel)
Creative physical expression of some kind has always been a part of Derradji’s life, he says. From martial arts and acrobatics as a kid, then break dancing, then professional dance of all kinds (he still keeps up his dance training now).
Derradji’s father was a drummer in a band in Algeria when he was in his early twenties, which inspired Derradji to try it out himself — a natural fit for someone with such a clearly developed sense of rhythm. The two mediums — music and dance — give him different ways to reach an audience.
“You can say what you have in your heart in music. But you can say it by your moves in dance too,” he says. “It’s two feelings — which I can’t really explain — but they’re not so different. You can feel it when you’re on stage — it’s quite similar reactions (from the audience), but maybe it’s a little more intense when you’re singing, because you’re talking directly to the people. But that’s really the only point of difference between the two types of art.”
When Derradji decided to somehow get himself to France, he “was hoping to make music. Or to dance. To stay an artist anyway. I was sure that an artist’s life in Europe would be much better than an artist’s life in Algeria. I was sure of that.”
The move definitely worked out for Derradji. But sometimes it seemed like it might not. The album title “Sans Visa” is a nod to the fact that he arrived in France without the necessary documentation to stay there.
“I had no papers. I had no house. I had no food. I was sleeping on the streets,” is Derradji’s blunt assessment of his bleak situation there. “It was very difficult at the beginning. First, I had to find work ‘on the black,’ as we say here — meaning you’re working without papers. Once I started to get some money, I could pay rent on a room here in Paris. After that I managed to get my papers, and was a bit more stable. That’s when I began to think about art again. Those first years, I wasn’t thinking about art, I was thinking only about how to live. But then I began to work on my music again.”
A post shared by soolkingofficiel (@soolkingofficiel)
His big break came when a friend invited him onto a radio show to perform a freestyle rap, titled “Guerilla,” that quickly went viral.
“It’s talking about my life, about my character, about my music. Talking about me. It’s a song for me and for the people in Algeria living like I was,” he says. “I didn’t think it was such a big deal, but it went huge. I was shocked.”
He hasn’t really looked back since, forging a name for himself in the French music community and beyond, and working with numerous collaborators.
“I produce music, but I work with a lot of producers as well. I write all my lyrics. I do maybe 90 percent of all my melodies. But I love to work with people and try to take a little bit from their inspiration and mix it with my inspiration. That’s important,” he says. “You can’t do everything alone. It’s not possible. And it’s not fun.
“I don’t go to someone because they have a ‘name,’ you know? I go to someone because I heard what they do and I want to work with them. It’s about feeling.”
“Feeling” is perhaps the most important factor in Derradji’s work — the thing that has most helped him forge a connection with hundreds of millions of people across the globe.
“I’m a great optimist by nature. Optimism is what kept me going, so, as long as I can, I’ll continue to convey that to my audience,” he says. “My music is universal; it has no borders and does not stop at a single musical genre. That’s where the strength of my music lies; to be able to unite so many people behind a single objective: To make people happy.”
"In the Footsteps of Cai Lun II," a showcase of artists using drawing and printmaking as a primary medium, runs until Sept. 5 at Ayyam Gallery in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai.
This exhibition’s title references the Chinese official credited as the inventor of the modern papermaking process and “assembles a group of artists who have used drawing and printmaking as primary media,” the gallery’s site states. Among them is acclaimed Palestinian artist Halaby, whose painted silkscreen proof is typical of her pioneering works of contemporary abstraction.
The full title of this work is “Nothing is Certain, Everything is Melting, and that’s Okay 14” and it reflects the gallery’s description of the Iraqi artist’s work as “studies of color and spatial composition.” It’s also a fine example of his trademark use of three-dimensional elements and how he “manages to find the middle ground between fluid organic forms and hard-edge geometric shapes.”
One of the central themes of the Syrian artist’s work, according to the gallery, is an exploration of “the endurance of man amid the power struggles of good and evil.” His “labored portraits of dissident Syrians,” such as this 2015 work, “reveal the manic nature of the painter’s hand as he depicts stylized figures with meticulous detail using a ballpoint pen.”
DUBAI: At first, it’s hard to know what to think of “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.” The latest live-action Marvel series, now streaming on Disney+, has a ridiculous premise — the cousin of green giant Bruce Banner/Hulk accidentally gains his superpowers, but then continues to live the life of a lawyer, focusing on court battles and dating apps — all while gigantic and green herself. It’s silly, bawdy and off-kilter (that it comes from the mind of the woman who wrote the “Pickle Rick” episode of cult cartoon “Rick and Morty” is no surprise). It really shouldn’t work. Yet, somehow, “She-Hulk” is the most fun Marvel series to date.
“I wanted to see what happens when superheroes have to go have dinner with their parents and listen to their mom get on them about giving her grandchildren, because that happens in real life. You just don’t get to see it in these movies,” Jessica Gao, the series’ creator and “Rick and Morty” alum, tells Arab News.
In some ways, this is the show that Marvel has been itching to make ever since the end of the first “Avengers” film in 2011. In that film’s post-credits scene, after saving the earth from invading aliens, our bloodied and bruised heroes sat together at a shawarma stand, exhausted, chewing in silence. “She-Hulk” takes that underlying humanity that has made its characters resonate and stretches it as far as possible.
“This show really aims to capture life, despite having this outlandish premise. It feels real in a lot of ways. In life, you have funny days and terrible days, and we wanted to explore all of that,” says director Kat Coiro.
“Yes, there are big set pieces, but we also deal with her helping her dad carry stuff into the garage. It’s those little sweet moments that really made me excited to do this show,” adds its star, Tatiana Maslany.
It needed an exceptionally gifted actress to make “She-Hulk” work — someone who could not only handle the switch between the super and the mundane, but also the show’s huge tonal shifts between comedy and drama. In the wrong hands, it would quickly become the wrong kind of ridiculous.
“Part of what drew us to Tatiana is that she has played this role where she showed a range that is almost inhuman on (cult sci-fi series) ‘Orphan Black.’ We looked at that and said, ‘We need an actress who can really tap into all these different feelings and emotions and personas,’” says Coiro.
“She-Hulk, as a character, is different, because she retains her sense of self despite her changes, and it’s the way she's perceived in the world that changes her. We knew that Tatiana could deliver that, and she's been incredible. Everything you think about her is true — she comes so prepared, she comes with so many ideas, so that when you get onto set, it's really about refining and exploring, rather than starting from the beginning and trying to build something from there,” Coiro continues.
Maslany’s sure-footedness allowed Gao and Coiro to push things further, turning the series into something closer to absurdist comedies such as “Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23” and the late 90s hit “Ally McBeal” than anything we’ve seen thus far in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And it’s a show tailor-made for cameos, turning it into a creative haven for actors usually handed material that takes itself much more seriously.
“It was so interesting for all of these existing MCU characters, from Wong to Abomination to Daredevil, to come into what is essentially a new genre. Because they’re all such adept actors, the adjustment period was very quick, and they all had so much fun doing it,” says Coiro.
As the guest stars shuffled in and out, that also gave the “She-Hulk” set something of a party atmosphere, where actors such as Benedict Wong (Wong) and Charlie Cox (Daredevil) could come and let their hair down before gearing back up to fight whatever supervillain will try to destroy the universe in the next Marvel saga.
“Benedict Wong would DJ for us if we needed a pick-me-up. He played a lot of Sister Sledge. There was always kind of a good vibe from each of these cast members,” says co-star Ginger Gonzaga, who plays She-Hulk’s best friend and paralegal Nikki Ramos.
“While Wong played these great songs, Tatiana and I would do puzzles and play a lot of board games. Her dog's favorite song is that (Daddy Yankee) ‘Gasolina’ song, so we’d play that and dance with her dog,” Gonaga adds. “You know, it was a lot of the very professional stuff they teach you in acting school.”
DUBAI: Comparisons between “Mo,” currently streaming on Netflix in the Middle East, and the Emmy-nominated “Ramy” are inevitable. For one thing, the eponymous star — Mo Amer — stars in “Ramy,” whose eponymous star Ramy Youssef co-created “Mo” with Amer. Second, both shows are about the experiences of young Arabs in America, struggling to reconcile their Muslim heritage with the Western culture that has helped form them.
Those comparisons should not obscure the fact that “Mo” is very much its own show — and an extremely good one.
Amer — a Kuwait-born Palestinian whose family fled Kuwait during the Gulf War and ended up in Houston, Texas, where he became a comedian and actor — plays Mo Najjar, a Kuwait-born Palestinian whose family fled Kuwait during the Gulf War and ended up in Houston, Texas, where he scrapes a living doing whatever work he can find without official documentation and selling knock-offs from his car boot. He lives with his mother and his socially anxious elder brother Sameer, idolizes his late father, and is happiest spending time with his girlfriend Maria (a Mexican catholic) and his best friend Nick.
The central plot line deals with his family’s long-running (22 years and counting) campaign for asylum in the US, painfully stymied by inept bureaucracy and red tape.
The ensemble cast does a wonderful job bringing the story to life — playing it as straight as any top-class drama. At its heart is Amer as Mo — a big-hearted, flawed, frustrated, charismatic hustler who is immediately engaging. You want things to work out for him. And it’s not an easy role. So much of Mo’s life could be overwhelmingly depressing, but Amer brings the character’s tireless optimism to the fore, while still offering glimpses of the tension, anger and sense of injustice he (mostly) manages to keep bottled up. He’s helped by the excellent Teresa Ruiz as Maria, who helps make their relationship instantly believable, such is the warm chemistry between the pair.
While it’s a genuinely funny show, “Mo” is also a thought-provoking one, covering topics including the Palestinian experience, religion, race, love, identity, duty versus desire, and the increasing gap between the haves and have-nots with a light but intelligent touch that packs a punch without being preachy.
The only slight misstep comes at the very end. It may be a deliberate move — a statement that life doesn’t provide neatly packaged conclusions — but so much is left unresolved that it feels rushed. Hopefully, that’s just because a second series is on the way. “Mo” (whether the show or its creator) has more than earned it.