Following on from the success of the first three editions of the Report, this dual-language edition of the Annual Report focuses on the track record and advances made by the university over the course of the 2017-18 academic year.
The first edition of the report
The second edition of the report
The third edition of the report
From across Saudi Arabia, local artisans have passionately laboured and innovated to take part in a landmark exhibition that reflects the scale, diversity and wealth of their country’s cultural and artisanal heritage. This publication sheds light on the legacy of craftsmanship and illustrates how beautiful and ancient crafts can play an important role in terms of social and economic growth in a contemporary world.
في شهر مارس من عام 1900م (1313 هـ)، أصدر السلطان عبد الحميد الثاني مرسوماً «فرماناً» بإنشاء سكة حديد الحجاز. وكان الغرض من إنشاء هذه السكة التي تمتد من دمشق إلى الحرمين الشريفين في مكة المكرمة والمدينة المنورة، توفير وسيلة نقل حديثة للوافدين من آسيا وأوروبا وبلاد الشام لأداء فريضة الحج، فضلاً عن توطيد أواصر الأخوّة بين دول العالم الإسلامي المجزّأ آنذاك. نتمنى أن تستمتعوا بقراءة هذا الكتاب، وأن تتعرّفوا أكثر إلى هذا الجزء الرائع من التراث الثقافي للمملكة العربية السعودية.
The artwork of Swiss artist Zimoun is sculpture, music, composition, soundscape, and installation; it is minimalist, conceptual, expressive, technical, natural, open, rigid, and chaotic. The essays in this book each take different approaches to the question of how to frame, contextualize, and discuss Zimoun’s artwork, beginning with art historical framing, proceeding through music and soundscape, and finally concluding with an interview with the artist himself. There, Zimoun offers: “I like to think of my works as audible buildings that can be entered and explored as much with your ears as with your eyes.”
This self-titled publication presents the first monograph on the nearly 25-year-long art practice of the US-Iranian artist Pouran Jinchi. Helping to reimagine the engagement of Persian calligraphy within a contemporary art discourse, this title follows a prolific career, examining work that has been exhibited across the world in solo and group presentations and produced across varied media.
As the top-ranking public arts graduate programme in the United States, VCU became the first American university to come to Qatar. This title reflects on and celebrates the 20 years since VCUarts Qatar began its mission of providing a steady source of innovation, exploring alternative ways of looking at the world and at ourselves, and proving that the arts is the connective tissue that supports and binds together the full spectrum of disciplines as we aim to solve today’s most pressing challenges.
Following on from the success of the first two editions of the Report, this dual-language edition of the Annual Report focuses on the track record and advances made by the university over the course of the 2016-17 academic year.
The second edition of the report
The first edition of the report
Showcasing 26 internationally acclaimed artists and art collectives from the Gulf region and the world, and directly referencing John Berger’s seminal 1972 eponymous text on visual culture, this publication invites the viewer to actively engage with the artwork, and to explore the ways by which artists assign forms and concepts that seem familiar with renewed appearances and meanings.
Born in Damascus in 1935, where he stills lives and works, Elias Zayat is one of the founders of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus, where he taught until his retirement in 2000. As a painter and icon restorer, his art is influenced by religious and popular iconography. Zayat’s oeuvre remains intimately concerned with the history, terrain and psyche of his homeland. His parallel life as an art restorer and historian is evident in his rich vocabulary drawn from Byzantine, early Christian, Sufist, and popular iconography. He has published several studies in the history of art, iconography and art criticism. Despite emerging at the height of Pan-Arabist fervour that culminated in the Naksa of 1967, Elias Zayat managed to resist this sweeping aesthetic hegemony to develop his own inimitable visual language. His works are often emotionally charged, with symbols and pleas for peace caught within seemingly impossible struggles to flee human chaos in order to arrive at a better world. His works on paper form a crucial backbone of his practice and philosophical stance, depicting the movements of birds and new lines of flight.
This represents the first publication covering the practice of Toronto-based artist Abbas Akhavan, examining a large body of his work over the course of his career, ranging from site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video and performance. The domestic sphere, as a forked space between hospitality and hostility, has been an ongoing area of research in Akhavan’s work. More recent works have shifted focus, wandering onto spaces just outside the home – the garden, the backyard, and other domesticated landscapes. This title, co-produced with Skira, reflects the conceptual aesthetics of Akhavan’s practice and includes essays by leading curators and professors of art, including, among others, Omar Kholeif and Marina Roy.