Provocative ‘Parallel Kingdom’ shows Saudis have something to say
A chain-link mosque has temporarily consumed the parking lot at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art.
A non-Muslim can only imagine how Ajlan Gharem’s art installation “Paradise Has Many Gates,” which measures 32 by 98 feet, might appeal to modern believers: It reduces iconic mosque elements — a dome, a minaret and ornate windows — to clean, perfect lines and transparency. A base of prayer rugs underscores the sacred inspiration.
On the other hand, one might see the piece as a protest against conservative ideology, which can be a kind of cage. The installation also recalls a prison cell at Guantánamo Bay. And during the opening-night party, when Houstonians first saw it, Gharem’s art simply offered an inviting experience. Women and men mingled freely in it, wearing shorts.
This is America, after all, and Houston, and it’s hot, and anything goes at the Station, where the shows often push radical buttons.
Gharem’s installation is one of the highlights of “Parallel Kingdom: Contemporary Art From Saudi Arabia.”
The real showstopper is a more intense variation on a mosque: Abdulnasser Gharem’s “Capitol Dome,” a 13-foot replica of the U.S. Capitol dome that sits on an oily-looking sea of reflective black material in the middle of the museum, where walls have been removed to accommodate it.
The structure is precariously tilted, like a trap about to spring, so that you can see the intricate, backlit metalwork inside — a sleek blend of Western neoclassical design and Islamic geometry, democracy and religion. A quotation from the Quran is stamped into a shiny ring near the base, in English and Arabic: “Guide us to the straight path.”
Gharem’s treatment of Thomas Crawford’s 19thcentury goddess “Freedom,” the statue atop the real capitol, makes “Capitol Dome” more provocative: She stands on the ground, with a long rope around her neck.
Read into it what you will. Your take will likely depend on your politics, but “Capitol Dome” welcomes all comers equally.
You might remember this Gharem — the older brother of Ajlan — from FotoFest’s 2014 biennial, which presented art from across the Middle East. An unlikely international art star who served as a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Saudi Arabian Armed Forces, he knew two of the 9/11 hijackers in high school and discovered art late, diving in seriously about 15 years ago
Gharem co-founded Edge of Arabia, which promotes contemporary art from Saudi Arabia in the outside world; and three years ago founded Gharem Studio in Riyadh to help guide and inspire young talent within the kingdom.
It looks like the ultra-conservative Saudi government, which still exercises strict censorship controls, is tolerating this new, outspoken generation, which is globally connected and tech-savvy.
But there’s more to it than that. These artists also have become useful cultural ambassadors.
“Parallel Kingdom” is sponsored by the Saudi government through the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, an organization that grew out of the state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco.
Gharem Studio and the independent, Londonbased group Culturunners collaborated to produce the show as one element of a multi-city art blitz that aims to change perceptions about Saudi Arabia, long an uneasy U.S. ally. In the catalog, the organizers write that they want to provide “a peer-to-peer platform for alternative discourse and cultural empathy between nations.”
The Gharems also believe art can help combat jihadism, giving young people positive ways to express themselves.
“I want them to look around and develop their humanity,” Abdulnasser Gharem told the Guardian last year.
So, there’s context. But is the art any good? Yes. “Parallel Kingdom” features seductively beautiful and sophisticated works by 12 artists — four of whom are female.
The elder Gharem dominates the walls as well as the floor, with a series of beautifully executed and complex “rubber stamp paintings” that superimpose ornately detailed images onto “canvases” made with thousands of bureaucratic stamps. All riffing on the dome motif — as an ancient warrior’s helmet, a mosque doorway where an artillery tank is firing and a flying warplane — they are the show’s thematic glue.
Ahmad Angawi’s zigzaggy lenticular photograph “Wijha 2:148 — And everyone has a direction to which they should turn” juxtaposes views of the Masjid Al-Harram (the Grand Mosque of Mecca) from the 19th and 21st centuries. Stand to one side, and you see the old; move a few inches, and you see the new. Stand directly in front of it, and you see abstract, parallel lines.
Humor turns out to be the show’s most surpris- ing and perhaps most insightful element.
Comedy sketches air in a lounge featuring the Riyadh-based internet TV network Telfaz 11. (The “11” in the name refers to the year of the Arab Spring uprising.)
The video I watched uses gentle slapstick: A group of slight daffy young men introduces a naive, eager American to Saudi culture and — oops! — accidentally kills him after he asks to meet women.
There’s also sly fun in the Photoshopped images of Shaweesh, who inserts Western pop-culture figures into historical Saudi photographs. For instance, Darth Vader appears among the dignitaries in a group portrait from the Versailles Peace Treaty.
The show’s female artists have a more potent sense of protest.
In the quiet 2011 video “Saudi Automobile,” up-and-comer Sarah Abu Abdallah paints a wrecked car pink, struggling to keep her abaya out of the way. It reminds us that women aren’t allowed to drive cars in Saudi Arabia — unthinkable to a Westerner. Is it really any consolation that female artists are allowed to show their frustration, within reason?
Slightly more alarming is a video showing young Saudi girls doodling on Njoud Alanbari’s “Elementary 240,” a mural that depicts a host of no-no’s, written in Arabic script over ominouslooking sabers: no drugs, idle time, porn, traveling abroad, forbidden music, bad company, embodying infidels — and a central tenet, “Do not embody the Jews.”
You marvel at the irony of it and fear for the artist, who is also a teacher. Although maybe in the Middle East, people read it differently.
“We think of Saudi Arabia in black-and-white terms,” said Sean Foley, an expert on contemporary affairs in the Middle East who teaches at Middle Tennessee State University.
Americans often want to “synthesize” ideas about Islam and modernism, but Saudi Arabia’s young artists want to “harmonize” their globally savvy outlook with the ultra-conservative beliefs of their elders, Foley explained. “That’s a different thing.”
Did I understand that approach any better after seeing “Parallel Kingdom”? Not really. But I am still pondering the complexity of the art, and admiring its spirit.