© Shadi Ghadirian. From the series Miss Butterfly, 2011.The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art and Society (Rutgers University Institute for Women and Art) presents the work of 24 contemporary women artists of Middle East heritage who examine matters of gender, homeland, geopolitics, theology, and the environment through painting, video, photography, sculpture, film, performance art, and multimedia. These artists challenge Western stereotypes of women in the Middle East, while acknowledging existing social and theological restrictions that have caused many of them to leave their homelands. The book presents artists well known in Euro-American countries such as Mona Hatoum, Parastou Forouhar, Shirin Neshat, Sigalit Landau and Shazia Sikander, but also artists whose work is primarily known only in the Middle East.
This volume is edited and with text by Judith K. Brodsky and Ferris Olin, co-directors of Rutgers University Institute for Women and Art with additional essays by Margot Badran, historian of the Middle East and Islamic societies, and a specialist in gender studies; author and curator Kelly Baum, and curator and writer Gilane Tawadros. The authors in this volume address trans-nationalism, the artists’ sense of unease about the world today, and their responses to the political uprisings and events in their countries of origin. The book also addresses the historic and contemporary impact of Middle East culture on black Africa and South Asia. The book is published in conjunction with a fall 2012 multivenue exhibition at Rutgers and Princeton Universities and the Princeton Arts Council/Paul Robeson Center for the Arts, among other locations.
© Shadi Ghadirian. From the series Miss Butterfly, 2011.
© Shadi Ghadirian. From the series Miss Butterfly, 2011.
© Parastou Forouhar, Swan Rider III from the four-part series Swan Rider, 2004, Courtesy of the RH Gallery, New York, and the artist.
© Parastou Forouhar. Freitag (Friday), 2003, Aludobond. Courtesy of the RH Gallery, New York, and the artist.
© Shirin Neshat. Rebellious Silence, 1994, from the eleven part series Women of Allah, 1993–97, Cynthia Preston, Courtesy of the Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.
© Shirin Neshat. Rebellious Silence, 1994, from the eleven part series Women of Allah, 1993–97, Cynthia Preston, Courtesy of the Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.
© Fatimah Tuggar. Hot Water For Tea. Courtesy of BintaZarah Studios, New York
© Fatimah Tuggar. At the Water Tap. Courtesy of BintaZarah Studios, New York
© Fatimah Tuggar. Currency & Constrains. Courtesy of BintaZarah Studios, New York.
