The exhibition ARAB CONTEMPORARY attempts to home in on features shared by the Arab countries – from the Arabian Peninsula through Lebanon to Morocco.
For the second edition of their “Architecture, Culture and Identity” series the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art are presenting an exhibition aimed at exploring contemporary Arab culture as defined/explained/understood by architecture. To help us move away from our generic understanding of the Arab lands. Looking at both traditional Arab architectural and urban planning systems as well as the modern, high-tech glitz as probably best symbolised by the self aggrandizing hubris of Dubai, Contemporary Arab aims to present an overview of what links the Arab lands. And so by extrapolation what separates them. The Arab world is first and foremost connected by language, but there are other common features that point both to a shared understanding of space and a visual culture where one can draw lines from calligraphy over certain construction elements to architecture on the very grand scale. ARAB CONTEMPORARY traces some of these common lines for consideration, and a picture of the notion of ‘the Arabian’ will arise through various stories from places where significant developments are happening right now. The exhibition takes us to new cities like Dubai, old Yemenite civilizations and new architectural projects that relate to the desert as place. And it shows how architectural offices such as Atelier Jean Nouvel, Paris, X-Architects, Dubai, and Henning Larsen Architects, Copenhagen, intervene in the region with new interpretations. A current focus is the relationship between private and public space, which is presently changing socially, politically and architecturally. ARAB CONTEMPORARY is a cross-over exhibition that mixes architecture, art, photography, documentary and film.
"ARAB CONTEMPORARY - Architecture, Culture and Identity"
January 31 - May 4 2014
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Gl. Strandvej 13 3050 Humlebæk
