The exhibition brings together more than forty-five artists from over fifteen countries, many of whom live and work internationally. In keeping with the New Museum’s dedication to showcasing the most engaging new art from around the globe, “Here and Elsewhere” is the most recent in a series of exhibitions that have introduced urgent questions and new aesthetics to US audiences.
Through different methodologies, an unconventional form of lyrical documentary and personal reportage emerges in works in which the artist is vested with the responsibility of revising dominant historical narratives.
Traditional mediums like painting, drawing, and sculpture record subtle and intimate shifts in awareness, Anna Boghiguian’s dense and meditative drawings follow her everyday urban experiences, and among the works included in the exhibition are some she created in Cairo during the 2011 revolution. The rough- hewn, figurative terracotta effigies of Simone Fattal appear as ancient artifacts, but simultaneously call attention to current events and relations of power.
Following the critical discussions that have animated contemporary art in recent years, the exhibition does not propose a fixed definition of Arab art or a distinctive regional style. Just as the show’s title calls attention to multiple places and perspectives, “Here and Elsewhere” highlights specific cities and art scenes while emphasizing the importance of dialogues that extend internationally. Further, the exhibition illuminates similar insights and affinities as well as dramatic differences, revealing multiple social and aesthetic landscapes rather than a fictional sense of unity. Emerging from the works of a particularly strong and diverse group of artists are less the contours of an imagined geography — to paraphrase the words of Edward Said — than new critical attitudes toward art and images that encourage us to look “elsewhere” in order to understand our “here.”
