Tweet
Adam Ferguson/VII Network for The New York Times “Area Pollution,” by Arezo Waseq, part of a large exhibition in June by the Center for Contemporary Arts — Afghanistan at Kabul University.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Under the watchful eye of a male instructor, a teenage boy is deep in focus, trying to trace and copy from a postcard as accurately as possible. For years, this has been the art scene in Afghanistan: stale, and dominated by men. Realism has long ruled as the only accepted style.
The degree of accuracy in copying from a picture — and occasionally a live model — has been the only yardstick by which artists have been judged.
The tide, however, seems to be turning, even if gradually. For one week in June two spacious auditoriums at Kabul University hosted a large exhibition on the themes of pollution and the environment.
The exhibition had two remarkable qualities: All 18 participating artists were women, and the genre was modern art, a rarity in Afghanistan. Even today Kabul and Herat are the only Afghan provinces — out of 34 — to have a faculty of fine arts in their universities.
“The curriculum at most of our arts institutions has not changed for years,” said Rahraw Omarzad, the director of the Center for Contemporary Arts — Afghanistan.
“Such copying and copying only kills the creativity of our artists,” Mr. Omarzad said. “It gives them no opportunity, no room to develop a style of their own.”
The public, too, has always been skeptical of a formal arts education. “Families saw art only as vulgar song and dance and nothing more,” said Prof. Alam Farhad, the director of fine arts at Kabul University. “A fine arts degree did not lead to a job, or a prosperous life.”
Adam Ferguson/VII Network for The New York Times A collaborative piece titled “Fall in Spring,” by Arefa Honryar, Zarghona Hotak, Sodaba Mehrayan, Sara Nabil and Arezo Waseq, part of the arts center’s exhibition.
Then, in the 1990s, came the Taliban. Music was banned, and art was limited to calligraphy and the drawing of immortal shapes. The first image that one encountered, upon entering Afghanistan from Pakistan through the Torkham Gate, was broken drums and destroyed film tape hanging from a tall mulberry tree.
“When the Taliban left in 2001, we had seven professors and eight students in our department,” Professor Farhad said. But in the past three years, the art scene has changed in terms of inclusiveness and creativity.
“Today, I have 700 students here, and close to 20 percent of them are girls. Quite often, I have to turn down students because we don’t have enough space for them,” Professor Farhad said, his eyes gleaming in triumph.
“We are going through a period in which the society is having a deep realization about art and what it can offer,” he said. “The presence of 20 to 22 television channels, and the market that they bring with them, has really changed people’s perceptions about art and its practicality.”
Professor Farhad and his department have adapted to the demands of the new media. “Today, we know that our people want actual, real jobs for their children, and we also know the market,” he said.
Over the past three years he initiated two new majors in the fine arts department: digital graphic and cinema. The interest has been tremendous. In digital graphic, 94 students are enrolled, 53 of them women, the highest percentage in any of the faculties.
Mr. Farhad believes that the interest among women in the digital graphic course is due to the rising market demand. “Television stations and magazines come to us often, asking for the services of our students,” he said. “The prospect of actual jobs excites people, encourages them.”
Adam Ferguson/VII Network for The New York Times “Health and Fission,” by Manizha Ahwad, at the arts center’s exhibition.
Another, and more important, reason for the popularity of majors like digital graphic among female artists is their low profile; the artists remain behind the scenes, represented in their work only by their names.
Appearing on television or in other media still carries a social stigma for women. The low number of students in departments like cinema and theater also reflects the fear in society among women who are artists.
In the first couple of years of President Hamid Karzai’s government, the appearance of women on television was frowned upon. Television channels broadcast only male singers and artists.
Gradually, the presence of women increased, but it cost the lives of several young women in the media to get there. Zakia Zaki, Sanga Amach and Shaima Rezayee are among the many female artists and presenters who were killed for the crime of appearing on television and trying to widen the role of women.
Some female artists continue to battle the stigma, while others have turned to single-sex art centers that are more socially acceptable.
The Center for Contemporary Arts — Afghanistan is one of these centers. Founded in 2004, it welcomed both male and female artists, but Mr. Omarzad soon realized that it was women who were most in need of a safer environment in which to work. For Environment Day, auditoriums at Kabul University were turned into galleries dedicated to the theme.
Mariam Kamal, an independent documentary maker and photographer, had two short films exhibited.
The first one, called “Silence,” portrayed the abundance of noise in the city. “From the howling of the dogs in the morning, to the cries of many children around breakfast, to the ignition of car engines, to the horns and beeps on the streets it is only noise and noise,” Ms. Kamal said.
“If there happens to be a moment of silence in our day, a suicide explosion in a distance reminds us that the silence is only an illusion.”
Adam Ferguson/VII Network for The New York Times ‘Scream’, by Marzia Nazary, at the arts center’s exhibition.
Another piece was a mud sculpture called “Scream” by Marzia Nazary, a fourth-year psychology student at Kabul University. On a small, loose piling of dried branches and limbs sits a square platform made out of mud. Cracks run throughout the platform. In the center of the platform is a pile of six heads, their mouths open to different directions.
“I read in a newspaper that a boy was killed by his own father,” Ms. Nazary said, describing her inspiration. “All night, I just kept thinking and thinking about the story.”
Although the women of the arts center have made tremendous strides, the future remains unclear.
As our colleagues Alissa J. Rubin and Rod Nordland reported, recent talk of negotiations with the Taliban has caused fear and uncertainty among Afghan women.
Despite the government’s repeated claims that none of the constitutional rights acquired by women will be compromised, there is no guarantee that the progress will not be undermined by integration of the Taliban into the government.
Even now the arts center is already very careful about social barriers within Afghan society, because it is promoting an art form that is taking its infant steps.
“If we do not adhere to the social and cultural norms at such an early stage, what has the potential of becoming a movement could be suppressed and killed easily,” Mr. Omarzad said.
“So we are very careful, very aware that no eyebrows are raised at how we behave here.”
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/...tan/?ref=world
KABUL, Afghanistan — Under the watchful eye of a male instructor, a teenage boy is deep in focus, trying to trace and copy from a postcard as accurately as possible. For years, this has been the art scene in Afghanistan: stale, and dominated by men. Realism has long ruled as the only accepted style.
The degree of accuracy in copying from a picture — and occasionally a live model — has been the only yardstick by which artists have been judged.
The tide, however, seems to be turning, even if gradually. For one week in June two spacious auditoriums at Kabul University hosted a large exhibition on the themes of pollution and the environment.
The exhibition had two remarkable qualities: All 18 participating artists were women, and the genre was modern art, a rarity in Afghanistan. Even today Kabul and Herat are the only Afghan provinces — out of 34 — to have a faculty of fine arts in their universities.
“The curriculum at most of our arts institutions has not changed for years,” said Rahraw Omarzad, the director of the Center for Contemporary Arts — Afghanistan.
“Such copying and copying only kills the creativity of our artists,” Mr. Omarzad said. “It gives them no opportunity, no room to develop a style of their own.”
The public, too, has always been skeptical of a formal arts education. “Families saw art only as vulgar song and dance and nothing more,” said Prof. Alam Farhad, the director of fine arts at Kabul University. “A fine arts degree did not lead to a job, or a prosperous life.”
Adam Ferguson/VII Network for The New York Times A collaborative piece titled “Fall in Spring,” by Arefa Honryar, Zarghona Hotak, Sodaba Mehrayan, Sara Nabil and Arezo Waseq, part of the arts center’s exhibition.
Then, in the 1990s, came the Taliban. Music was banned, and art was limited to calligraphy and the drawing of immortal shapes. The first image that one encountered, upon entering Afghanistan from Pakistan through the Torkham Gate, was broken drums and destroyed film tape hanging from a tall mulberry tree.
“When the Taliban left in 2001, we had seven professors and eight students in our department,” Professor Farhad said. But in the past three years, the art scene has changed in terms of inclusiveness and creativity.
“Today, I have 700 students here, and close to 20 percent of them are girls. Quite often, I have to turn down students because we don’t have enough space for them,” Professor Farhad said, his eyes gleaming in triumph.
“We are going through a period in which the society is having a deep realization about art and what it can offer,” he said. “The presence of 20 to 22 television channels, and the market that they bring with them, has really changed people’s perceptions about art and its practicality.”
Professor Farhad and his department have adapted to the demands of the new media. “Today, we know that our people want actual, real jobs for their children, and we also know the market,” he said.
Over the past three years he initiated two new majors in the fine arts department: digital graphic and cinema. The interest has been tremendous. In digital graphic, 94 students are enrolled, 53 of them women, the highest percentage in any of the faculties.
Mr. Farhad believes that the interest among women in the digital graphic course is due to the rising market demand. “Television stations and magazines come to us often, asking for the services of our students,” he said. “The prospect of actual jobs excites people, encourages them.”
Adam Ferguson/VII Network for The New York Times “Health and Fission,” by Manizha Ahwad, at the arts center’s exhibition.
Another, and more important, reason for the popularity of majors like digital graphic among female artists is their low profile; the artists remain behind the scenes, represented in their work only by their names.
Appearing on television or in other media still carries a social stigma for women. The low number of students in departments like cinema and theater also reflects the fear in society among women who are artists.
In the first couple of years of President Hamid Karzai’s government, the appearance of women on television was frowned upon. Television channels broadcast only male singers and artists.
Gradually, the presence of women increased, but it cost the lives of several young women in the media to get there. Zakia Zaki, Sanga Amach and Shaima Rezayee are among the many female artists and presenters who were killed for the crime of appearing on television and trying to widen the role of women.
Some female artists continue to battle the stigma, while others have turned to single-sex art centers that are more socially acceptable.
The Center for Contemporary Arts — Afghanistan is one of these centers. Founded in 2004, it welcomed both male and female artists, but Mr. Omarzad soon realized that it was women who were most in need of a safer environment in which to work. For Environment Day, auditoriums at Kabul University were turned into galleries dedicated to the theme.
Mariam Kamal, an independent documentary maker and photographer, had two short films exhibited.
The first one, called “Silence,” portrayed the abundance of noise in the city. “From the howling of the dogs in the morning, to the cries of many children around breakfast, to the ignition of car engines, to the horns and beeps on the streets it is only noise and noise,” Ms. Kamal said.
“If there happens to be a moment of silence in our day, a suicide explosion in a distance reminds us that the silence is only an illusion.”
Adam Ferguson/VII Network for The New York Times ‘Scream’, by Marzia Nazary, at the arts center’s exhibition.
Another piece was a mud sculpture called “Scream” by Marzia Nazary, a fourth-year psychology student at Kabul University. On a small, loose piling of dried branches and limbs sits a square platform made out of mud. Cracks run throughout the platform. In the center of the platform is a pile of six heads, their mouths open to different directions.
“I read in a newspaper that a boy was killed by his own father,” Ms. Nazary said, describing her inspiration. “All night, I just kept thinking and thinking about the story.”
Although the women of the arts center have made tremendous strides, the future remains unclear.
As our colleagues Alissa J. Rubin and Rod Nordland reported, recent talk of negotiations with the Taliban has caused fear and uncertainty among Afghan women.
Despite the government’s repeated claims that none of the constitutional rights acquired by women will be compromised, there is no guarantee that the progress will not be undermined by integration of the Taliban into the government.
Even now the arts center is already very careful about social barriers within Afghan society, because it is promoting an art form that is taking its infant steps.
“If we do not adhere to the social and cultural norms at such an early stage, what has the potential of becoming a movement could be suppressed and killed easily,” Mr. Omarzad said.
“So we are very careful, very aware that no eyebrows are raised at how we behave here.”
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/...tan/?ref=world
Comment