Received this from the Mizna e-mail list. Mizna is an organization based in Northeast Minneapolis, encompassing and presenting the many facets of Arabic art, culture, language, music, etc.
This is the last weekend of their Latitudes exhibition, a program featuring art by the recipients of Mizna’s first ever granting program. The program was designed to facilitate and support original artistic work created by community members who identify as Arab, Muslim, Berber, or Iranian.
Exhibition Location
California Building Gallery
2205 California Street NE
Minneapolis
Dates and Times
May 25-26, Fridays and Saturdays
7:30 pm – $5.00
Exhibition Details
Jumana al Hashal
Film
Taous Khazem
Performance piece, Tizi Ouzou
Abdellah Ouchagour
Salla Moracaine (Moroccan living room) and gallery talk
Layla Dowlatshahi
Staged reading, “Elevator”
Artists Bios and Project Descriptions
Jumana Al Hashal
Title: Film
My current work explores the turbulent geopolitical Arab
experience at home, in diaspora, and in exile. I use various media including printmaking, drawing, photography, and film to expose the absurdity in cultural and political preconceptions in my current home, the United States, and in my homeland, Jordan. In the midst of tension between home and homeland, the impulse to create becomes a survivalist one; art becomes a semi-public means of communicating urgency. I am an Arab Jordanian artist, currently living and working in the Seattle area.
Bio:
Jumana is a 2005 graduate of Macalester College where she graduated Cum Laude in Studio Arts. Her recent exhibitions include:
• Tekween: Making Art in Arabic, Mira Gallery, Mpls, MN, Aug-Sep
2006
• Prism of Longing, Phipps Center for the Arts, Hudson, WI,
January-Feb 2006
• Graphic Images, Stevens Square Center for the Arts, Mpls, MN,
Feb-March 2005
• Haneen: Between Home and Homeland, Mira Gallery, Mpls, MN,
Feb-March 2005
• Art of Democracy: Tools of Persuasion, Minneapolis Institute
of Arts, MN; Oct-Nov 2004
Taous Claire Khazem
Title: Tizi Ozou
Written and performed by Taous Khazem
Directed by Zaraawar Mistry
Created in Collaboration with Mizna and Dreamland Arts and set to the dynamic pulse of Berber and Algerian music, Tizi Ouzou is a story of love, struggle and awakening in the small city of Tizi Ozou, the historically strife torn capital of the Berber Kabylia region of Algeria. Taous Khazem portrays a multitude of colorful and compelling characters — in search of their history, their country and themselves.
Bio:
Taous Claire Khazem trained at the Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School in Paris, France and Macalester College. She is an actor, director and teaching artist and has performed in Minneapolis with Frank Theater and 2 time Ivey award winning Off
Leash Area Performance Works. She recently directed A Lion’s Tale: Somali Folktales for SteppingStone Theatre where she is also the Education Coordinator. Taous serves on the Mizna Board of Directors.
Abdellah Abd Ouchagour
Title: Salla MAROCAINE.( Moroccan living room)
An ensemble of six pieces of furniture created, designed and built by the artist. Oak carved wood and upholstered functional and traditional Moroccan items used in everyday life, with modern touch, to harmoniously feet in modern life.
Bio:
Abdellah was born in the South of Morocco. He has a B.F.A in Furniture Design and Painting from MCAD. Watercolorist, he has had many individual and group shows in Morocco and Minneapolis
Layla Dowlatshahi
Title: The Elevator
An ousted dictator tries to steal a bride away from her groom on his last night in power.
Bio:
Layla Dowlatshahi graduated from UC Berkeley and received her MFA from Goddard College. Her play, Joys of Lipstick was staged at The Producer’s Club and at Lark Theatre, New York. The Waiting Room had a staged reading at the Annenberg Studio Theatre and was included as coursework for a class entitled East Meets West on Stage and Screen at UPenn. She is a Playwright’s Center Many Voices Resident for 2007 and was recently awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant to travel to Bosnia and Croatia for research on a new play. She has written three additional plays, a teleplay and a novel. Her latest play, Ogham Stones, tells of the strain of familial bonds among four isolated women in southern Ireland.
For more information on Latitudes, visit Mizna’s website.
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