Women Redrawing the World Stage

January 29 - February 23, 2013

––SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery––547 West 27th Street, #30––New York, NY 10001––www.soho20gallery.com

Artists: Samira Abbassy –– Zeina Barakeh –– Nezaket Ekici –– Dahlia Elsayed –– Chitra Ganesh –– Mona Hatoum –– Farah Ossouli –– Armita Raafat.

The Fertile Cresent: Gender, Art, and Society

The Fertile Crescent book and core exhibition focus on 24 artists from the various countries that comprise the area (see list below), among them 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. These artists address the status of women in the Middle East today, drawing from such themes as orientalism, cultural heritage, colonialism, globalization, surveillance, regional conflict, identity and the impact of multi-national geographic existence, and the iconography of the veil. The essays dissect the artists' work and investigate the theoretical, historical, and political sources that have shaped their creative achievement.

Panels

POWER WEEK I:

––Sunday, September 9, 2-6pm
––Inaugural Symposium and Reception: The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art and Society
in the Middle East Diaspora
––Zimmerli Art Museum, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ
––Moderator: Alison Bernstein (Director, Institute for Women's Leadership, Rutgers)
––Participants: Negar Ahkami (artist), Margot Badran (Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars and Prince Alwaleed Bin-Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University), Zeina Barakeh (artist), Kelly Baum (Haskell Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Princeton University Art Museum), Ayana Friedman (artist), Fakhri Haghani (Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Rutgers), and Fatimah Tuggar (artist).

POWER WEEK II:

––Tuesday, October 2, 4:30pm
––Panel and Reception for The Fertile Crescent
––Moderator: Stanley N. Katz (Director, Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Princeton). ––Panelists: Zeina Barakeh (artist), Sylvia Chan-Malik (Rutgers University), and Max D. Weiss (Princeton University).
––Bernstein Gallery, Robertson Hall 016, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University
Prospect Avenue at Washington Road, Princeton, NJ