Jameel Prize 3

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

11 December 2013 – 21 April 2014

 

The Jameel Prize is an international award for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition. Its aim is to explore the relationship between Islamic traditions of art, craft and design and contemporary work as part of a wider debate about Islamic culture and its role today.

There were almost 270 nominations for the Jameel Prize 3 from countries as diverse as Algeria, Brazil, Kosovo, Norway and Russia. A panel of judges, chaired by V&A Director, Martin Roth, selected the shortlist of ten artists and designers. The work of the shortlisted artists and designers was shown at the V&A from 11 December 2013 – 21 April 2014.

THE JUDGES

Martin Roth, Former Director of the V&A

Thomas Heatherwick, designer and founder of Heatherwick Studio

Rashid Koraïchi, winner of the Jameel Prize 2011

Nada Shabout, Associate Professor of Art History and the Director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Institute (CAMCSI) at the University of North Texas, USA

Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès, Founding Director of the Khatt Foundation, Centerfor Arabic Typography

The late Zaha Hadid, award winning architect, was Patron of the Jameel Prize.

 

THE SHORTLISTED ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS

Faig Ahmed, Nada Debs, Mounir Fatmi, Rahul Jain, Waqas Khan, Laurent Mareschal, Nasser Al Salem, Florie Salnot, Pascal Zoghbi.

 

Mounir Fatmi:

In his multi-media installations, Mounir Fatmi often uses Arabic calligraphy in new ways. One traditional calligraphic convention is to arrange texts in impressive wheel-shaped compositions. In the video work Modern Times: A History of the Machine, Fatmi uses these circular compositions literally as wheels, the parts of a noisy locomotive that hurtles forward relentlessly. The work points to the dystopic world we are creating. In the Middle East, ramshackle cities grow without stopping, while prestige building projects are commissioned on an inhuman scale as displays of power.

Technologia offers a metaphor for the contemporary world in constant, erratic movement, with no end to production and consumption. The images repeat so rapidly that they cannot transmit their content – we do not get the message. The forms suggest both the circular compositions found in Arabic calligraphy and Marcel Duchamp's Rotoreliefs, the first examples of kinetic art.

 

London, December 2013