{"id":256,"date":"2015-06-01T19:12:24","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T19:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/demos.press75.com\/attache\/?p=151"},"modified":"2015-06-01T19:12:24","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T19:12:24","slug":"the-problem-with-shangri-la","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demos.press75.com\/massive-news\/the-problem-with-shangri-la\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem with Shangri-La"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/36789299\" width=\"750\" height=\"422\" frameborder=\"0\" title=\"YACHT - Shangri-La\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Try to picture \u201cShangri-La\u201d and your mind might conjure up an Orientalist fantasy, a syncretic world, folding all the cultural distinctions that characterize diverse nations into a single category.<\/h2>\n<p>In <em>the<\/em> <a class=\"managed-link external-link\" href=\"http:\/\/laislamarts.org\/exhibitions\/doris-dukes-shangri-la-architecture-landscape-and-islamic-art\" target=\"_blank\">Shangri-La<\/a>, a Hawaii-based center for the arts in the former home of American heiress Doris Duke, this is the resplendent world that spectators are drawn into, one that takes artifacts from India, Turkey, Iran, Morocco, and beyond and neatly bundles them under the banner of Islamic Arts. Ornate wooden furniture from Iran, colorful wall rugs from Uzbekistan, and painted earthenware from Spain\u2014the items on display evoke vaguely exotic but decidedly distant lands.<\/p>\n<p>A selection of Doris Duke\u2019s carefully curated possessions, collected from all over the Middle East, North Africa, and the Asian subcontinent have been packaged into a traveling exhibit that began showing in Los Angeles this past weekend. But the exhibition arrived with a companion show, located right across the hall from <em>Shangri-La<\/em>. Titled <em>\u201cShangri La: Imagined Cities\u201d<\/em> and overseen by Iraqi art curator <a class=\"managed-link external-link\" href=\"http:\/\/sadairaq.org\/about\/people\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rijin Sahakian<\/a>, the exhibit represents a stark contrast to Doris Duke\u2019s exoticist, depoliticized visions of the Orient. Palestinian artist Taysir Batniji\u2019s <em>To My Brother<\/em> features inkless etchings of his brother\u2019s wedding photos. An Israeli sniper killed Batniji\u2019s brother just two years after the happy photos were taken. In another room, George Awde\u2019s photos of Syrian workers in Lebanon explore themes of masculinity and manual labor. Presented alongside Doris Duke\u2019s extravagant furniture and curiosities, these pieces flesh out historical narratives that are considerably more nuanced and politically charged.<\/p>\n<p>Both the Doris Duke exhibit and <em>Imagined Cities <\/em>were funded through the <a class=\"managed-link external-link\" href=\"http:\/\/laislamarts.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">LA\/Islam Arts Initiative<\/a>, a citywide program that fosters cross-cultural understanding by bringing art from majority-Muslim countries to Los Angeles. Iran-born artist<a class=\"managed-link external-link\" href=\"http:\/\/amitismotevalli.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Amitis Motevalli<\/a> is the director of the initiative, recruiting organizations and institutions all around the city to present work that falls within this category. When she was brought on to help present the Doris Duke exhibition in L.A., Motevalli enlisted the skills of Sahakian, who is currently based in Beirut. Together, the two have helmed a jam-packed, season-long program that challenges the very notion of Islamic arts\u2014or, at least, broadens the category to a point where the antiquated concept\u2019s irrelevance becomes clear. The dichotomous presentation of the combined Shangri-La exhibits is part of an effort to problematize Islamic Arts as a formal classification. \u00a0\u201c[We need to question] what people call \u2018Islamic art.\u2019 Many of the people who fall under the umbrella of Islamic art a lot of the times are not even Muslim,\u201d says Motevalli.<\/p>\n<p>For the next two months, the LA\/Islam Arts Initiative will be holding events at art and culture institutions all across the city, showcasing multidisciplinary arts from all over the world. Film students at Cal State Long Beach have been hosting a film series that included Rola Nashef\u2019s <a class=\"managed-link external-link\" href=\"http:\/\/laislamarts.org\/events\/detroit-unleaded-2012\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Detroit Unleaded<\/em><\/a><em>,<\/em> about an Arab-American-owned gas station in Detroit. Early next month, the Chinese American Museum will host a dinner of Chinese Islamic cuisine, a lamb-heavy variety of Chinese food that is quite different from the fare you might get at your usual take-out spot. These exhibitions are defined not by Islam itself, but by the experiences of Muslims or people from Muslim-majority countries. But they all invoke histories that are otherwise excluded from other exhibitions of Islamic art.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"hangpunc\">\u201c<\/span>We need to be able to do away with these definitions when they don\u2019t make sense anymore,\u201d says Sahakian.<\/p>\n<h6>(Original article by <a href=\"http:\/\/magazine.good.is\/articles\/the-unislamic-arts\" target=\"_blank\">Good Mag<\/a>)<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Try to picture \u201cShangri-La\u201d and your mind might conjure up an Orientalist fantasy, a syncretic world, folding all the cultural distinctions that characterize diverse nations into a single category. In the Shangri-La, a Hawaii-based center &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","category-video","post_format-post-format-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.press75.com\/massive-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.press75.com\/massive-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.press75.com\/massive-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.press75.com\/massive-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.press75.com\/massive-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demos.press75.com\/massive-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.press75.com\/massive-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.press75.com\/massive-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.press75.com\/massive-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.press75.com\/massive-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}