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Safar/Voyage: Contemporary Works by Arab, Iranian, and Turkish Artists at MOA will be the first major Canadian group exhibition of 16 internationally lauded, contemporary artists from the Middle Eastern region. The exhibition follows the universal theme of voyage applied in this case to artists of Arab, Iranian and Turkish origins. Gradually, it takes viewers from the planet earth, down to maps, and further to specific cities such as Tehran and Cairo, after which it proceeds to reveal internal and meditative spaces, from emotional and existential to spiritual imaginings. The journey acknowledges the realities of war, revolution, and the diasporic or migrant conditions, as well as the engagement of artists with cultures outside the Middle East. Personal, political, philosophical, and spiritual perceptions of artists from a variety of national backgrounds such as Iranian, Turkish, Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, and Egyptian, are juxtaposed to provide insights into the great variety of voices characterizing the art of the region. Using a wide range of media, from painting and sculpture to video and audio installations, the artists celebrate individuality as well as our common humanity. Safar/Voyage will be exhibited in the Audain Gallery and the OBrian Gallery. The two galleries are state-of-the-art and combine more than 8,000 sq ft of exhibition space.
The creation of this exhibit would not have been possible without the commitment and expertise of the Safar/Voyage Volunteer Committee, Safar/Voyage Benefactors, and the generous support from the following sponsors:
Presenting Sponsor
Publication Sponsor
Artist Statement
I came up with the idea when I visited Iraq in 2004 and was greeted at a checkpoint by an American soldier, who said, Welcome to Baghdad! I realized I was being welcomed by an occupier of my own city. This experience made think about cities in war and their messy transformations. After the occupation and gentrification of a city in a conflict zone, you would need a guide, even if you grew up there. This is what I saw happening in Baghdad. So I created a travel agency, using holiday travel as a point of departure and Iraq as a destination, to explore the idea of tourism and consumerism in general, and how these generic models break down when applied to a country ripped apart by war. I created this work to draw attention to the new Iraq, the democratic Iraq, a mythical place where, in reality, possibility and opportunity barely exist.
Tarek Al-Ghoussein Untitled 1, Untitled 2, Untitled 3, Untitled 5, Untitled 7, Untitled 8, Untitled 9 (Self-Portrait Series), 2003-6
Biography Born in 1962 in Kuwait, of Palestinian origin, Al-Ghoussein lives and works in Sharjah, UAE. He received a BFA from New York University, New York, and an MA from the University of New Mexico. He has launched solo exhibitions throughout the Middle East and Europe, with group exhibitions also in Asia.
Artist Statement The Self-Portrait series represents a personal journey, a coming to terms with who I am as a Palestinian-Kuwaiti with a physically distant connection to Palestine. While the images may rightly be interpreted by some as a political statementowing to the keffiyeh, which has often been associated with terrorismthey also convey a personal struggle to reconcile who I am with the place in which I live. These self-portraits are about the reciprocal relationship between the individual and the inhabited landscape. The incomplete nature of the narrative established by the series was something I hoped would result from the lack of a fixed meaning for the individual images or for the collection of images.
Untitled 1, Untitled 2 chromogenic prints 55 x 75 cm Courtesy of the artist and The Third Line, Dubai
carpet; hand-woven wool, silk, and cotton 360 x 252 cm Courtesy of the artist. Collection Abraaj Capital Art Prize, Dubai. Photography by Negar Arkani
video still dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery, London
Destination X is an old car piled high with the hastily gathered belongings of a refugee family luggage, everyday objects, and colourful cloth bundles tied to the roof. During the Lebanese civil war these floral fabrics, regional and postcolonial at the same time, replaced fabrics embroidered with local peasant motifs, mirroring the lost agricultural paradise. The overloaded car suggests movement and absence, urgency and wandering. The letter X symbolizes forced flight into exile to places unknown. Distance is swallowed in an aimless journey, when time and duration become vague. The journey and its hardships, the risk of leaving home, the difficulty of resettling. Drugged by displacement, these people learned to lose and lose themselves.
Mixed media installation dimensions variable Installation: The Bluecoat, Liverpool, 2010. Courtesy of Rose Issa Projects, London. The Farjam Collection, Dubai. Photography by Omar Mazhar.
Artist Statement When I paint I go into a sort of trance, so that time and place disappear and it becomes about mind travel. The worlds in my work are archetypes, a combination of different elements, fragments from different places within my memory. In 2006 during a residency in Normandy, I visited the D-Day site. As I walked around the site a flood of memories came back to me from my childhood in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war. I was surprised how familiar the site looked even though it was my first time there. Until then, I hadnt been conscious of the fact that the things I had experienced growing up had an impact on my work. Seeing the D-Day site brought all these impressions to mind, and I started to put these sights and sounds into my work. Travelling in general is an important part of my practice, as my experiences always find their way into my work somehow.
Oil on linen 152.4 x 203.2 cm Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Private collection, London. Photography by Jeffrey Sturges
performance/installation; colour photography on paper, pencil shavings photograph: 150 x 100 cm; installation: dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Hamburg. Photography by Taysir Batniji
stainless steel and neon tube 217 cm diameter Courtesy of the Rennie Collection, Vancouver. Photography by SITE Photography
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wood and ink 200 x 200 cm Courtesy of the artist. Photography by Achim Kukulies
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Raafat Ishak Responses to an Immigration Request from One Hundred and Ninety-four Governments, 2007-9
Biography Born in 1967 in Cairo, Ishak lives and works in Melbourne. Having received his BFA in painting from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, he received a PostGraduate Diploma in Architecture from the University of Melbourne. He is a current PhD candidate at Monash University, Melbourne. Ishak has launched solo exhibitions in Melbourne, and his work has featured in group exhibitions in Europe and Australasia.
oil and gesso on medium density fibreboard panels: 30 x 21 cm (194 total) Installation: Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2009. Courtesy of the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne. Collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah. Photography by Andrew Curtis
Artist Statement I left Egypt for Australia at fourteen, without my parents. The move was an adventure, albeit a long one. Consequently my identity is based on a position of independence, freedom, and protest, best supported by my early decision to become an artist. The genesis of the Responses project, of writing to 194 governments requesting immigration, lies in the Australian governments position in the early 2000s toward asylum seekers arriving by boat. The art community supported allowing the refugees to settle in Australia, despite popular opposition. I participated in a few fundraising exhibitions; for one, I made a simple text work stating Send me home, proposing that I should leave to make room for a more needy refugee. This led me to question what that home would be and where. Is there such a thing as a home? Was either Egypt or Australia a home as such? Continuing along this line of thought, I decided to investigate which countries would welcome me and provide me with a home. The ninety-seven responses I received meant an equal number of non-responses, allowing for the words no response in Arabic transcript to create a noticeable division without having acceptance and refusal literally stated. I wanted
the reading of the actual responses to be secondary to the viewing of the project in its entirety. Arabic script can be more visually compelling than the message it carries. The use of Arabic facilitated the viewing of the responses as a fluid set of rules, a set of temporary statements. Arabic is inherently and historically fluid.
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iris-printed photographs with oil painting on paper 408 x 221 cm Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery, New York. Photography by Robert McKeever
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Swarovski crystals on canvas on board 138 x 223 cm Courtesy of Gold Tulip Art Foundation. Photography Christies Dubai Ltd.
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hand-coloured gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist and Nathalie Obadia Gallery, Paris/Brussels
Biography Born in 1972 in Cairo, Nabil lives and works in Cairo, Paris, and New York. He studied French Literature at Ain Shams University, Cairo. Nabil has launched solo exhibitions in Paris, New York and Rome. His work has featured in group exhibitions in London, the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, and in Venice.
Artist Statement I grew up in Egypt, where we talk a lot about the afterlife. Death has always been an important subject in my work and in my self-portrait series. But I also discuss existence and my own life in particular. My recent film project, You Never Left, 2010 (8 min), talks about the relation between leaving home and dying. I have always felt like a visitor wherever I go: Im there for only a few days and then I must leave. My relation to my whole life is the samefor me it is about coming to a place that is not yours, then having to move on. People tend to forget about the spiritual journey, especially now, in the age of digital, instant communication. But I believe that we are capable of great things, if we go in the right direction.
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Biography Born in Tehran, Tabrizian lives and works in London. She received a BA and MPhil from the University of Westminster, London. In 2001 she was granted professorship at the University of Westminster also. Tabrizian has launched solo exhibitions in New York, Milan, and London. Her work has featured in group exhibitions in Australia, Italy, USA, and Belgium.
Artist Statement Tehran 2006 differs from the usual representations of Iran: the social documentary or journalistic approach; the constructed images, often on a big subject (favoured by some photographers working in Iran); the abstract photography with a poetic slant; or the tendency to exoticize (in photography or video). Rather, it echoes contemporary Iranian cinema, which often uses non-actors and focuses on an apparently small subject that is treated allegorically, alluding to wider social issues. In general, the work attempts to problematize the dominant representation of the East in the Western art worldthat is, as victim or the exotic other. Instead, it focuses on survival as a strategy of resistance. I hope Tehran 2006 creates curiosity about the cultural context within which it was made, while remaining open to interpretation. As Roland Barthes aptly observed in his essay Death of the Author, the author is simply a scriptor, who exists to produce but not explain the work. In critiquing the authority of the author/artist, who controls the meaning of the work, he attempts to open up interpretive horizons for the active reader. As Barthes puts it, the death of the author is the birth of the reader.
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Artist Statement I travel annually from Vancouver to Tehran not ordinary travelling but a seasonal migration. Like my ancestors, when spring arrives I pack up and move to my other land, putting winter behind me. From Vancouver, with my battery fully charged, my studio in Tehran is the perfect place to land. When the heat arrives, I eagerly return to Vancouver, where the summer is unique, the best on earth. There, although I do not work hard, the works left behind easily fill my time. Vancouver is also the place I write. My next seasonal migration is again to Tehran in the fall, which is as exciting as the spring migration. I cannot separate myself from my past. A verse of Persian poetry or a stone from Persepolis can get my blood moving more than the entire contents of a contemporary art museum. There must be a reason the ancient site of Persepolis has such an impact on me. Remembering Persepolis and reflecting it on a wall is not just nostalgia, it is also to show that even now, good things can be made.
bronze 186 x 128 x 25 cm Courtesy of the artist. Photography by Kyla Bailey, MOA
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Biographies:
Exhibition Curators
Fereshteh Daftari - Curator, Safar/Voyage
Dr. Fereshteh Daftari is a renowned expert in Middle Eastern art and was curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC) from 1988 to 2009. During this time she organized a number of exhibitions with contemporary artists such as Xu Bing, Paul McCarthy, Shahzia Sikander, Shirin Neshat and Y.Z. Kami. Interested in global modernities and cross-cultural currents, she guest curated an exhibition of Iranian modern at New York Universitys Grey Art Gallery (2002). In 2003, she collaborated with Mona Hatoum on Artists Choice: Mona Hatoum, Here is Elsewhere. Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking at the Museum of Modern Art was Daftaris last major exhibition at MOMA (2006). Since 2009, she has written several essays on contemporary Iranian artists such as Ali Banisadr (Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Paris). Safar/Voyage: Contemporary Works by Arab, Iranian and Turkish Artists marks Dr. Fereshteh Daftaris first contemporary art exhibit in Canada. She will also be participating as part of the Global Dialogues series.
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Biographies:
Derek Gregory
Dr. Derek Gregory is the Peter Wall Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography at UBC. He has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada and the British Academy, and has received the Founders Medal of the Royal Geographic Society. In 2012, he was invited to present the British Academys Annual Lecture in London. His distinctions also include the UBC Killam Research Prize and the UBC Killam Teaching Prize. His diverse interests include British and American travel writing in the Middle East and the renewed power of orientalism in the post-9/11 world, among other topics. He brings his work to audiences beyond the academy through his writing contributions and public lectures.
Jian Ghomeshi
Jian Ghomeshi is an award-winning broadcaster, writer, musician, and producer. He is the host and co-creator of the national daily talk program, Q, on CBC Radio One and Bold TV. Torontos NOW Magazine named Jian Best Media Personality in TV or radio, in the fall of 2009. As a writer and interviewer, Jian has been published in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The National Post, El Mundo, and The International Herald Tribune. As a singer, songwriter, and musician, Jian was a member of multi-platinum selling folk-rock group, Moxy Fruvous. He has worked with numerous arts groups, including the National Ballet, the COC and the Radio Starmaker Fund, and is a former member of the Board of Governors at the Stratford Theatre Festival. Born in London, England, of Iranian descent, Jian now lives in Toronto.
Dr. Anthony Shelton has been the Director of the UBC Museum of Anthropology since 2004. He is a distinguished anthropologist and curator, and has curated or co-curated thirteen exhibitions, including the landmark exhibition African Worlds and Exotics: North American Indian Portraits of Europeans. His research and writing examines the theoretical foundations of the anthropology of art and aesthetics, as well as critical museology, and he has published on topics ranging from African visual culture and Chinese puppets to Western constructions of tropes of otherness.
Anthony Shelton
Laura Marks
Dr. Laura Marks is a theorist, critic and curator of independent and experimental media arts. She is the author of The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Duke University Press, 2000) and Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (Minnesota University Press, 2002), as well as numerous essays. She has curated programs of independent and experimental media for festivals and art spaces worldwide. Her research includes: Islamic genealogy of new media art, as well as
Further information: Laura Murray Public Relations 604.558.2200 lmurray@lauramurraypr.com 21
Biographies:
Venetia Porter
Dr. Venetia Porter is a curator of the Islamic and contemporary Middle Eastern art collections at the British Museum. Having lived in Yemen, her research has focused on medieval Yemeni history and architecture. She curated Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam at the British Museum in January 2012. Venetia studied Arabic and Islamic Art at Oxford University before obtaining a PhD on the medieval history and architecture of the Yemen at the University of Durham. Venetias work has focused on Islamic ceramics, particularly medieval Syrian pottery and Islamic tiles, Islamic coins and medieval Yemen. Prior to her position in Islamic and contemporary Middle Eastern art collections, Venetia was an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum. Her publications include Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East, The Art of Hajj and Islamic Tiles.
Peter Morin
Peter Morin, of the Tahltan Nation of northern British Columbia, is a Victoria-based performance artist and curator. His ideas about museums and their transformation through indigenous ways of knowing began in his cousins cabin, where visits with friends, relatives, and elders offered him a gradual understanding of Tahltan history and means of sharing it with one another. In 2011, Peter Morin created an installation Peter Morins Museum, curated by MOA curator Karen Duffek. His work is a dynamic mix of his own art work and curatorial practice. Recent curatorial work include Revisiting the Silence (2011), and "Irregardless": Humour in Contemporary Northwest Coast Art (2012) .
Tony Chakar
Beirut-based architect Tony Chakar's practice involves ways of thinking about the built environment that go beyond traditional architectural approaches, by incorporating literature, philosophy and theory. His works include: A Retroactive Monument for a Chimerical City (Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, 1999); Four Cotton Underwear for Tony (Ashkal Alwan, TownHouse Gallery, Cairo; also shown in Barcelona (Tapies Foundation) and Rotterdam (Witte de With) as part of Contemporary Arab Representations, a project curated by Catherine David (2001-02); and Beirut, the Impossible Portrait (The Venice Biennial, 2003). He teaches History of Art and History of Architecture at the Acadmie Libanaise des Beaux Arts (ALBA), Beirut. His current project, One Thousand Solitudes, is his attempt to grasp and to comment, hence to participate in, what is currently happening all through the Middle East.
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Biographies:
Jayce Salloum
The grandson of Lebanese immigrants, Jayce Salloum was born in Kelowna, British Columbia in 1958. After studying arts in the United States, he began his artistic career in 1975, the year that civil war broke out in Lebanon. Already marginal because accompanied by "shock-texts," his first photo exhibits were rapidly transformed into installations as he progressively associated his photographs with archival objects and documents, and as he resorted to other mediums, such as video. Jayce Salloum gives special weight to the constituent elements of representation and, more particularly, to their underlying historical, social and cultural context.
Glenn Alteen
Based in Vancouver, Glenn Alteen is a curator, writer and director of the Grunt Gallery. He has worked extensively with performance art and co-founded the LIVE Performance Biennial. He has curated many performances and community engaged projects, such as The Mattering Map (1996) by Pia Masse, which involved working-class diner owners and patrons in the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood of East Vancouver. He also curated The Nova Library in 2005, working with substance abusers.
Karen Duffek is the Curator, Contemporary Visual Arts & Pacific Northwest at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. Her curatorial interests extend to contemporary aboriginal and international art, Northwest Coast First Nations art and she is responsible for Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth collections, and MOA Satellite Gallery at MOA. Karen is an award-winning writer whose publications include Bill Reid: Beyond the Essential Form and The Transforming Image: Painted Arts of Northwest Coast First Nations. Her recent exhibitions include Border Zones: New Art Across Cultures (2010), Peter Morins Museum Satellite Gallery (2011) and **** hiroshima, works by Ishiuchi Miyako (2011).
Karen Duffek
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Biographies:
Nader Ardalan
Nader Ardalan is an Iranian architect, urban planner and writer. He studied architecture at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh and at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. In 1972 he set up his own practice in Tehran, the Mandala Collaborative. Ardalan, whose work ranges from private residences to master plans for new towns, is one of the most important architects to emerge from Iran in the recent past. His work reflects his particular concern for cultural and ecological aspects of architecture; in Iran it is strongly rooted in an understanding of the traditions and forms of Iranian Islam, although his buildings are in a totally contemporary idiom.
Hossein Amanat is an Iranian-Canadian architect, best known for designing the Azadi Tower in Tehran, Iran and the Bah Arc buildings in Haifa, Israel. Hossein won a nation-wide competition to design the Shahyad Freedom Monument in Tehran as a young graduate. The monument has since become a symbol of modern Iran. Since, Hossein has designed some of Irans most prestigious buildings including universities, libraries, a town on the Caspian Sea and the embassy of Iran in Beijing. Hossein moved to Canada in 1980, diversifying his work. He has designed factories in China, high-rise buildings in San Diego, and a temple in Samoa. Hossein recently completed a transit-oriented mixed commercial and residential high-rise project along the Vancouver mass-transit line.
Hossein Amanat
Daniel Roehr
Daniel Roehr teaches studio, site engineering, advanced graphics and green roof research seminars in the University of British Columbias Landscape Architecture program. He is a registered landscape architect in British Columbia and Germany as well as a horticulturist and gardener. His current research focuses on the integration of green roofs as part of a holistic system for stormwater management. Daniel regularly publishes, and his forthcoming titles include: Some Thoughts on the Internationalisation of Landscape Architecture in: Rainer Schmidt - City of Landscape. (Birkhaeuser 2012) and Representing Landscapes: A Visual Collection of Landscape Architectural Drawings, with M. Beall, Nadia Amoroso Editor (Routledge March 2012).
Further information: Laura Murray Public Relations 604.558.2200 lmurray@lauramurraypr.com 24
Biographies:
Performing Arts
Iman Habibi
Iman Habibi, MMUS (UBC 2010), BMUS (UBC 2008), is an award-winning composer and pianist. His music has been performed by a number of noted ensembles and performers such as musica intima, The Standing Wave Ensemble, The Vancouver Bach Choir, The Prince George Symphony Orchestra, and has been workshopped by The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and The Aventa ensemble. He has received numerous awards including First Prize at the SOCAN Foundations Awards for Young Audio Visual Composers for two consecutive years (2011-2012), The International Composers Award at the Esoterics Competition (2012), and The Vancouver Mayors Arts Awards for Emerging Artist in Music (2011). Iman was a finalist at the Inaugural Knigge National Piano Competition, and is also well-known for his collaborations with pianist Deborah Grimmett.
George Sawa
George Sawa is a musician and scholar of Middle Eastern music. was born in Alexandria, Egypt. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, he immigrated to Canada in 1970, where he studied ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto, and obtained his doctorate in historical Arabic musicology at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on medieval, modern, and religious music of the Middle East at York University, and at the University of Toronto (1982-1995). George is the author of the fundamental and well-received study Music Performance Practice in the Early cAbbasid Era, 132-320 AH/750-932 AD. He is founder and director of the Traditional Arabic Music Ensemble, which has been heard in venues across Canada and the USA, and has been broadcast on the CBC. He has appeared as a guest soloist with several groups specializing in Middle Eastern music, and Early Music, and he has been a musical director for many of the productions of the Arabesque Dance Academy.
Kereshmeh Ensemble
Kereshmeh Ensemble is one of todays leading Persian music ensembles that has worked entirely to build a bridge between East and West. All of the members of Kereshmeh Ensembles have developed unique techniques over years of study and research. Kereshmeh Ensemble is based in Vancouver and has performed in numerous concerts in Canada and the USA and in a variety of folk festivals around the world.
Abegael Fisher-Lang is an acclaimed British Columbia storyteller known for her repertoire of the everyday to the mythopoetic. Among her large body of work, she has told world tales at business conferences, Celtic myths to university classes, Hannukah legends in a wintry barn, funny Jack tales at Word-on-theStreet, and a baby crone cycle to womens initiation circles. As artistic director for World Storytelling Day events and Vancouver International Storytelling Festivals, Abegael is known for bringing people together to celebrate good storytelling.
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Ali Razmi obtained his MA in music at the Art University in Tehran. He is an innovative and creative tar and setar musician with over 17 years of experience as a soloist. Ali has performed in a wide variety of genres, including traditional, pop, and fusion . Among his many achievements, he has performed as a soloist for the Iranian Philharmonic Orchestra, improvised with Master Shajarian (Irans leading singer in traditional Iranian music), and worked with Mehran Modiri, and Mohamad Esfahanis group, Irans top pop music performers. In 2002 Ali performed at the Jahane Khusrau Music Festival in New Delhi as a member of the Rumi Group.
Raqib Brian Burke has 28 years of study and experience under the Mevlevi Sheikhs Reshad Field, Suleyman Dede and Jelaluddin Loras, and Rifa'i Sheikh Sherif Baba Catalkaya. He performs Original Sema Whirling Dervish ceremony. He performed in the first ever Sema Ceremony by North American dervishes in Konya, Turkey, at the tomb of Mevlana Celaluddin Rumi founder of whirling and has since performed in Canada and the United States at numerous spiritual gatherings, weddings, memorial services, arts festivals and music events.
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Biographies:
City-wide Programming
Simon Shaheen
Presented by The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
Simon Shaheen is one of the most significant Arab musicians, performers, and composers of his generation. His work incorporates and reflects a legacy of Arabic music, while it forges ahead to new frontiers, embracing many different styles in the process. This unique contribution to the world of arts was recognized in 1994 when Shaheen was honored with the prestigious National Heritage Award at the White House. A Palestinian, born in the village of Tarshiha in the Galilee, Shaheens childhood was steeped in music. He began playing on the oud at the age of five, and a year later studying violin at the Conservatory for Western Classical Music in Jerusalem. In addition to performing with his two bands, Qantara and the Near Eastern Music Ensemble, Shaheen tours as a solo artist internationally and as a lecturer throughout the academic world promoting awareness to Arab music through numerous lecture and workshop presentations.
John Brookes
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