Is this the Islamic Turner Prize?
The shortlist for the Jameel Prize
As Guggenheims, Christies, Louvres and other outposts of the European art world spring up over the Middle East and famous Impressionist paintings find their ways into the homes of oil-rich Saudis, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Arab world had finally succumbed to Western cultural imperialism. On the contrary. The truth is that there is, and always has been, a vigorous art scene in the region; it’s just that its international importance is growing. The influential Saatchi gallery in London has just held an exhibition called New Art from the Middle East. This month, the first ever Jameel Prize for contemporary art and design “inspired by Islamic traditions” will be awarded at the V&A museum.
The £25,000 prize is sponsored by Mohammed Abdul Jameel, who made his billions running the world’s largest Toyota dealership. Based in Saudi Arabia, the Abdul Latif Jameel Group has operations in the Middle East, United Kingdom, Central Asia and China. The idea for the prize came when Jameel was supporting the renovation of the museum’s gallery of Islamic art – the aim is to help the museum develop the V&A’s collections of 20th century Middle Eastern work, but also to inspire new generations of designers with the finely wrought, mathematically exact, abstract beauty of Islamic art.
The nine shortlisted artists certainly show the vast diversity of the Islamic world – inspired by everything from the hectic street bazaars of Morocco to the serene geometric abstraction of mosque decorations. What ties them together is a reliance on craft and visual design, often eschewing representative art for more direct communication, and an international outlook that allows them to skip easily over perceived cultural barriers.
Reza Abedini
Reza Abedini has rediscovered Iran’s graphic design heritage and now he’s bringing it to the rest of the world. When he started a career as a graphic designer at the end of the 1980s – after training as a painter at Tehran Art University – most of his contemporaries were aping what they saw from Europe or America.
“Most of them were comparable with Western graphic design,” he says. “There was no special Iranian accent in those posters. It was only by the Farsi writing that you could recognise that these were Iranian – not by the structure, not by the elements they used, not by the subject sometimes.”
Abedini decided to base his work in Iran’s rich visual heritage, using calligraphy and architecture as the key: “From architecture I can get the structure of Iranian art, and from calligraphy I can get the spirit of Iranian art.” The resulting posters – usually advertisements for Middle Eastern art exhibitions – are the descendants of centuries of Islamic and pre-Islamic Iranian culture.
One of the periods he is most interested in is the Savafid, around the time of the Renaissance in Europe, when people from the region engaged with the West for the first time. Dutch painters visited and exchanged information on techniques. Appropriately, Abedini now lives in Amsterdam, and he speaks English with a Dutch accent. He has recently set up an organisation called Orientation (www.lava.nl/en/node/297), which aims to bring together the city’s many cultures through design.
Western designers have shown a strong interest in Abedini’s work and he thinks that design can cross the cultural divide. I wonder how oft-licentious Western art goes down in conservative Iran. “The situation isn’t much different now to how it has been since the revolution,” says Reza. “Always the artist has to find a solution to talk about the things they are interested in. They find a way to show them without getting in trouble. This has become part of the Iranian approach to art. But I have to answer this question many times, living in Amsterdam. Many people say, ‘You’re here, you’re free to do everything as you want.’ However, just because I live in Amsterdam I’m not going to use a naked woman in my posters. It’s not part of my culture.”
Susan Hefuna
Susan Hefuna’s woodwork screens, inspired by the mashrabiyyahs (latticed windows) of Cairo, could be seen as a metaphor for the mutually suspicious relationship between Western and Islamic art and how they might be reconciled.
“The screens separate, but also filter and join,” she says. “It is a response to space, how we see ourselves when inside looking out and outside looking in.” Just as the screens protect the inside world of the house from the prying eyes of stranger, they allow the inhabitants to look out unobserved.
Hefuna herself spans the cultural divide, living and working both in Cairo and Germany, and this “in-betweeness” is reflected in the work. “More and more I have included different layers of cultural codes and meanings,” she says. “My screens act differently depending on who is reading them and in which cultural context.”
They can be seen as abstract patterns, architectural artefacts, or you might pick out Arabic or English words woven into the patterns. “Each observer reads each work differently depending on their knowledge and depth of understanding.”
Hefuna, however, is not deliberately political, and she believes artists should create without worrying about divisions. “I think we all have to be patient with each other and have to look carefully at everything around us,” she says.
“We have to be aware of the clichés which more and more are created through mass media around the world. Artists should continue to do their work, this is my advice. If they have the passion to do their work and continue on their path, maybe they will find happiness and success.”
See the mashrabiyyahs that inspired Susan Hefuna at the Gayer Anderson Museum in old Cairo, +20 2 364 782
Afruz Amighi
Arabic carpet designs and architectural decoration inspires Afruz Amighi’s 1,001 Pages. Cut into thin sheets of plastic and illuminated from behind, they create an ethereal interplay of patterns and shadows.
Camille Zakharia
Islamic sacred art, forbidden to be representative, instead exploits the possibilities of mathematics and geometry. Camille Zakharia, who was born in Lebanon and lives in Bahrain, honours this tradition by making collages from street markings and Middle Eastern carpets.
Sevan Bicakci
Istanbul-based Bicakci’s work has perhaps the strongest connection to traditional Islamic art and craft. In his breathtakingly detailed jewellery, he compresses entire cityscapes into a single ring, using painting, engraving, calligraphy and micro-mosaic setting.
Seher Shah
In Shah’s delicate pencil drawings on paper, impossible dream worlds unfold. Some resemble the work of MC Escher, but others dissolve into abstractions, in which the black cube of the Kaaba – the centrepoint of Mecca, and the most sacred object in Islam – is frequently invoked.
Hassan Hajjaj
Hassan Hajjaj’s artwork is as chaotic and colourful as the Moroccan bazaars he grew up around, and as open and invigorating as the London music scene he has made a living in. He moved to the UK as a teenager, and like many children who have grown up between two cultures, says he got used to switching between the “different mentalities” – his work joins them together.
After running clubs and managing up-and-coming bands, Hajjaj launched his own clothing label, RAP, in 1984. From his shop in Covent Garden, he dabbled in everything from accessories to restaurant interiors, before finally getting into making installation art. This new line has proved successful and in the last decade he has exhibited in London, Marrakech and Dubai.
The north African flavour of Hajjaj’s work was introduced from visiting home as an adult and “seeing everything was still there,” he says. The installation for the Jameel Prize will be a replica of a Morroccan salon, where visitors can sit and relax. The wallpaper and furniture will be designed by Hajjaj, as will the shelves of traditional Arab products, branded with Western-style logos – a wry but positive take on the effects of globalisation.
Khosrow Hassanzadeh
The history and stereotypes of Iranian imagery are played with in Khosrow Hassanzadeh’s work. His screenprints on canvas show antique photographs of wrestlers – an aspect of Iranian culture captured on film but being lost today. The title, Ya Ali Madad, is a traditional invocation asking the Imam Ali for help, and the repetition of Ali’s name forms the background of the piece. 
Hamra Abbas
Like many of the artists nominated for the Jameel Prize, Hamra Abbas has a roving international career, spanning many cultures. Born in Kuwait, she lives in Pakistan and the United States and has previously lectured in Berlin. Her work, Please Do Not Step 3, drapes an intricate Islamic pattern across the gallery floor, challenging visitors’ natural reluctance to walk over an artwork, mirroring the unavoidability of the role of Islam in today’s world.
The winner of the inaugural Jameel Prize will be announced on 8 July. The exhibition runs 9 July-13 September. V&A, Cromwell Road, London SW7, +44 (0)20 7942 2000, www.vam.ac.uk
