Seher Shah - Jihad Pop

“Viewers never approach a work of art with an innocent eye. This is certainly the case when viewing the work of Seher Shah, whose detailed drawings and prints merge diverse iconographies. Having lived multinationally, between Pakistan, the UK, Belgium, and the US, Shah has absorbed more perspective than most. Combining that experience with her dazzling aesthetic sensibility and draftsmanship, Shah produces drawings that are as smart and relevant as they are beautiful.

The title Jihad Pop engages with two loaded words. They are words that have been loaded by the media to imply that Muslims are extremists and Americans are facile. Yet Jihad by definition does not call for armed conflict, and pop culture is not the harbinger of American consumerism. The work in this show revives the traditional definition of jihad, of an inner struggle to resolve contradictions. In both the media’s and the traditional definitions, both jihad and pop are self replicating, finding resolution through their own inner logics. However, the drawings of Shah find resolution in more than one world, where, in theory, only contradiction should exist. The black cube (the holy Kaaba) unfolds into a cross; Islamic ornamentation takes on the characteristics of animation or graffiti; architectural traditions destroy each other and reform; childhood snapshots get confused with fairytale – until Shah’s migratory drawings collect her memory into collective symbols familiar to everyone and to none, into the Black Star of Jihad Pop.”

Momenta Art
359 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn
Reception: Friday, September 7th, 7-9 pm
September 7th through October 8th, 2007

The Art Parade

“Deitch Projects, Creative Time and Paper Magazine are pleased to announce the third annual Art Parade. The parade will take place on Saturday September 8, at 4PM, on West Broadway. Following the success of the past two Art Parades, artists, performers and designers are again being invited to create floats, placards, portable sculptures, kites, performances and street spectacles. Highlights from previous years have included The Dazzle Dancers, Yoko Ono, E.V. Day, The Citizens Band, Taylor McKimmons, Pia Dehne, Steve Powers and Fisherspooner.

Saturday, September 8th 2007 4:00pm
on West Broadway

Photos Mabou Mines Performance: Song for New York

"It's been over three decades since experimental theater company Mabou Mines arose out of a collaboration – which took place in the small Nova Scotia town of Mabou – involving JoAnne Akailitis, Lee Breuer, Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, and David Warrilow. In the years since, the company has become renowned for restlessly shoving the boundaries of theater in myriad different directions. Tomorrow a new production directed by Maleczech begins a five night run outdoors in Long Island City, Queens. Called Song for New York: What Women Do While Men Sit Knitting, the ambitious multi-disciplinary work will be performed on a barge anchored in the East River at Gantry Plaza State Park. The production celebrates each borough through live music, oral history and poetry commissioned from five New York writers." –Gothamist

September 7th and 9th at 8pm

Gantry Plaza State Park
4-74 48th Avenue
Long Island City

New York Times: Portable Theater (Just Go With the Flow)