All Photos By Gail
Even in the steady drizzle that fell over Central Park on the day I snapped these photos, Monira Al Qadiri’s new public art sculpture First Sun looked radiant. Installed at Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the park’s southeast entrance, the 17-foot-tall work commands the space with an otherworldly presence that feels both ancient and futuristic.
Continue reading First Sun By Monira Al Qadiri Radiates at Doris C. Freedman Plaza
All Photos By Gail
A close observer of the human condition, artist Anna Boghiguian (b. 1946) draws on the past and the present, poetry and politics to interpret our interconnected world. Based in Cairo Egypt, Boghiguian travels extensively across the globe. These journeys bring knowledge of ancient and contemporary world cultures and politics to her work. This large scale installation, Institution vs. The Mass (2019) was conceived as a dynamic chest set, which builds on her interest in cycles of revolution and sociopolitical change throughout history. The figures of the ‘institution’ evoke ancient and contemporary power structures that are distanced from the lives of everyday people. The ‘mass’ is comprised of activists, demonstrators and thinkers, aspiring towards fundamental human rights and freedoms.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Anna Boghiguian, Institution vs. The Mass
Photo By Gail
In 1938, Egyptian-born Surrealist Laurent Marcel Salinas (1913 – 2010) signed the group manifesto Art et Liberté that denounced attempts to bind art to the political demands of the state. The signatories declared art a means to liberate society and the individual from the “artificial restrictions” of nationality, religion, and ethnicity. In Naissance (1944) Salinas’s choice of a disembodied and tentacled eye takes up a subject – the naked eyeball – frequently depicted by Surrealists in other locations as a surrogate for male castration anxieties. By the early 1950s, the Cairo group had begun to disband; following the coup in 1952 led by Mohamed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, Salinas fled to Paris.
Photographed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Tonight’s Episode (Airdate March 12, 2013): Mummy Mayhem
After what has been eight weeks of separating the wheat from the chaff, is anyone really surprised to see Anthony, Kris, Wayne and Eric Fox in the top five? I’m not. House, who’s had a few good ideas but basically avoided winning a challenge or being eliminated by treading the middle ground, could sneak into the Top Four if these other guys with Top Looks and Wins under their belts slack off at all. It’s anyone’s game to lose at this point. Continue reading Face Off Episode 409 Recap: Mummy Mayhem!