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LECTURE 

Innocent Ornaments? Weaving a Distance from the Canon 

Nadia Radwan 

The Courtauld Institute, London 

26.2.24, 17:30-19:00

 

This paper focuses on abstract artists from the Middle East, who have lived and worked in Europe and the United States between the 1950s and 1970s. As they belonged to the diaspora, these artists engaged with Western pictorial traditions of abstraction, while referring to elements of belonging, Islamic art and architecture and the concept of the ornament. While these elements are linked to decolonisation and the disputed heritages of Orientalism, they are however not immediately visible from a formal point of view. They are nevertheless discreetly present and convey significant counter-narratives to Western discourses on Islamic art and the ornament, as well as resistance to dominating canons of abstraction. From that perspective, this paper aims to address the following questions: How can abstract art reveal forms of resilience? How can the politics of ornament inform us about modern and contemporary art production? What is the contribution of Middle Eastern artists to discourses of Western modern abstraction?