Art And Culture
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Gallery in Britain Hosting Middle East Contemporary Art

“Hint of Love” by Nurieh Mozaffari
“Hint of Love” by Nurieh Mozaffari

Wetpaint Gallery in Gloucestershire, UK, is showing “Contemporary Art of the Middle East.”

Featuring paintings and sculptures, the exhibition is organized in association with Janet Rady Fine Art, a London gallery focusing on  Middle Eastern art. It opened June 14 and will run for a month, Tandis visual art magazine reported on its Persian website.

According to the event’s introduction published on the website of Wetpaint, artistic expression in the Middle East is experiencing something of a renaissance. Domestic patronage is flourishing, and an impressive array of new museums and art fairs across the region is helping to stimulate international interest in an increasingly influential movement.

However, the contemporary art market in the Middle East is still comparatively young, only attracting international recognition around 2003 when works began to be included in Islamic auctions in London and Paris. Since then the market for Middle Eastern art has grown rapidly, not least in the Persian Gulf region which has seen the establishment of specialist art fairs, dedicated auctions and commercial art galleries, all fuelling a growing appreciation and understanding of Middle Eastern artists and their practices.

Contemporary Middle Eastern art is one of the fastest growing markets in the UK. Despite the downturn in the global economy, interest in the Middle East has never been stronger and the emergence of new artists has created an exciting opportunity to discover fresh talent and to participate in a new and culturally different aesthetic.

The most common focus for contemporary artists in the Middle East is the adaptation of traditional motifs and ideas drawn from millennia of artistic production. Many Middle Eastern artists also grapple with notions of identity, as well as the cultural and political events that change the way people think and live.

Issues of self-identity are most prevalent among artists who have left their homeland to live and work abroad. There is also a new appreciation for female artists, previously overlooked in what has traditionally been a male-dominated world.

The exhibition features artists from Iran, Bahrain, Egypt, Lebanon and the UAE, as well as artists from the region who are living and working in the UK.

Iranian artists participating at the exhibit are painters Shahram Karimi, Azadeh Qotbi, Kourosh Salehi, Mahmoud Sabzi, Neda Dana-Haeri and Nurieh Mozaffari; painter and photographer Shahrzad Ghaffari; painter, sculptor and graphic artist Jason Noushin and photographer Bahman Jalali.

All works are for sale and will be available for view on the website of the gallery, Wetpaintgalleryonline.com.

 

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