Senior Portfolio Exhibition

Date:	Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Time:	7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location:	American University of Kuwait, Auditorium

Professor Maryam Hosseinnia Students: Shaza Abdelazim Khadija Ahmed Amina Al-Anssari Dalal Al-Enizi Suad Al-Fraih Sara Al-Gharabally Shaha Al-Khaddah Ranya Al-Mastaki Sarah Al-Mejreb Fatma Al-Qames Lamia Al-Salahi Nora Al-Twaijry Jassem Al-Wazzan Fatemeh Dadkhah Rana Emera Faisal Mohammad Exhibition 16 students, 16 weeks, 16 problems, 16 solutions Opening Night - June 1st June 1st 5:00 - 7:00 open to companies only 7:00 - 9:00 open to friends and families (public) June 2nd 10:00 - 6:00 open to public June 3rd 10:00 - 5:00 open to public

Sultan Gallery opening TONIGHT!

COMPACT HOME
Mixed Media by Mahmud Obaidi

The 'flying' Iraqi-Canadian artist Mahmud Obaidi's new exhibition offers viable alternatives to a post-globalized art world where local singularities often contribute to a still legitimized Western centre.

The show reunites the "Compact Home" (2003) and "Disposable Home" projects (2004) and more recent work: "How Not to Look Like a Terrorist" (which will be shown at LTMH Gallery in New York this month), and the "Fair Skies®" project that has received critical and public acclaim in Art Dubai 2010. On this rare opportunity in Kuwait, the viewer will get the chance to judge how one artist can coincide contemporary conceptual work with aesthetic and formal art making.

Obaidi's work addresses themes of 'flight' linking through his art the different meanings of the term; from that of the perpetual flight of a hyphenated Middle-Eastern artist with no place to call his own, to that of 'flying while Arab' and the racial profiling of a man boarding a KLM flight (aka the "Flying Dutchman"). Now that's irony for you, not to mention word play, a bit of art on the side.

Artist: Mahmud Al Obaidi
Title of Exhibition: Compact Home
Exhibition Dates & Timing : May 11th – June 3rd
Opening without artist (artist could not get VISA!) : May 11th: 7-9pm
May 12th: 10am – 4pm & 7-9pm
May 13th - June 3rd: 10am – 4pm

Venue: Sultan Gallery
South Sabhan , Block 8, Street 105
Tel : +965 24714325 Ext 110
Fax : +965 24714301

2nd Annual International Design Conference, Oman

Last week, a colleague and I, and five of our graphic design students, traveled to Ibri to take part in the 2nd Annual International Design Conference and Exhibition at the Ibri College of Applied Sciences, Sultanate of Oman from May 1st - May 3rd, 2010.

 

Ibri is a 3 1/2 hour drive southwest of Muscat with a population of thirty thousand. In the heart of the desert, there is a design program with majors in digital media and print design. This year's conference theme was “design identity” and the notion of how identity can at times be seemingly neglected in the process of globalization and modernization.

The paper that we presented was based on a collaborative project that my colleague and I created for a curated art exhibit at the Evanston Art Center in Illinois. The five students that traveled with us all had helped with the research and process of our project. The students also gave presentations at the conference on their graphic design class projects.  

As you can see from my photos, Oman is quite different from Kuwait and the other Gulf countries that I have visited. It is a mountainous country with much more greenery. Every town that we visited - Nizwa, Bahla' and Ibri - all had old and crumbling fortresses, some going back to the 13th century. The students in Oman also have a much stricter dress code; the males all in white dishdashas and unique traditional hats, the females all in black (and all ran away when I tried to take any photos). Much more than in other Gulf countries, ordinary people also wore traditional Arabic clothing, although often more colorful and varied than the students'.  

It was a wonderful experience, despite having too rushed of a schedule, and I can't wait for another opportunity to visit!

Oman!

...when I mention that I am traveling to Oman, every Arab person tells me to be careful since Oman is filled with magic - jinn that can walk in the air and turn into animals... Nizwa and Bahla, that we just drove through tonight to get here to Ibri, are supposedly the center of this magic...

...if you look carefully at my second photo that I shot of one of the mosques in Nizwa, you see strange colorful lights flying around... at first I thought they were street lights but, no, you can see a street light or two, but they are closer to the ground... (theme music to the X-files plays here)

...if you look carefully at my last photo, you can see that the toilet in my Oman hotel room has no seat as well as no toilet paper... I guess they do things different here... (theme music to the X-files plays here) (also, this was not just like this in my room but also my colleague's room and all of the student rooms...)

...below is link to a pretty interesting story from a recent traveler that catches some of the mystery and flavor of Oman.  Enjoy!


Oman: The Jinn Of Nizwa Souk