NYAB Event - “Artistic Weapons of Mass Communication” Exhibition

“Artistic Weapons of Mass Communication” Exhibition

FiveMyles

This event has ended.

A common thread connects the selected works being shown in this exhibition.
Represented in “Artistic Weapons of Mass Communication” are five artists who utilize different artistic means in order to communicate strong statements through their work. In this context weapons may be construed to include art that is used to gain a strategic, material or mental advantage over traditional mindset.

With the Middle East in focus, the show reflects opposition to wars of aggression, military occupations of foreign lands, and the necessary change to the destructive reality of “empire as a way of life.”

Samira Abbassy includes a fragmented painting from her “Eternal War” series. The timelessness and repetitive nature of cycles of war, occupation and exile throughout history is captured here. With similarities to Persian miniature painting, the artist portrays the dismal realities of combat. Abbassy uses brown oil paint on gesso panels which deliberately places the work in the “Western Canon” and brings to mind Goya’s “Disasters of War.”

Samira Abbassy shows multi panel modular oil paintings from her “Eternal War” series. Deliberately echoing Goya’s “Disaster of War”, the work captures the timelessness and repetitive nature of cycles of war, occupation and exile throughout history. The artist examines the construction of mythologies around “Holy Wars” such as the Crusades, and more specifically drawing on ideas around the Cult of Martyrdom in Shia Islam.

Ganzeer concentrates on civic responsibility and social justice.
He takes a poem which can be considered a rather outdated form of mass communication, and not only repackages it in a singing style that matches the spirit and times of today, but also in an artistic music video that can be shared on the internet and distributed to the masses at large.

Through her use of incorporeal forms Mary Tuma’s work portrays a sense of loss. It invokes a feeling of distant memories; Images are like shadows or ghosts, something not quite whole and no longer real. Reality and surreality or humor and sadness usually come into play,

The works of John Halaka and Rajie Cook are specific to the Israeli-Palestinian “conflict.”

The Palestinian-American artist Rajie Cook constructs intricate miniature silent theaters, small boxes attached to the wall, that conveying his feelings about the tragic situation in the Middle East.

Through John Halaka’s fabric photographs of fragmented portraits, he puts a human face on the abstract notion of the displaced masses, making the experiences of the refugees more real, comprehensible and unforgettable.

Souhad Rafey has an M.A. in Museum Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has worked in over a dozen NYC museums and galleries, among which are the Cooper Hewitt, American Craft Museum, Museum of American Folk Art, Galerie St. Etienne, and Andy Warhol’s Studio. Currently, she is the Curator of Exhibitions at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and she oversees a private art collection.