Zarafa Unfolding

Middle Eastern, South Asian artists tell their stories through art works, installations

In the late 1820s, the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt gifted the
king of France a giraffe from Sudan. The charming animal, which was new to the
Parisians, inspired giraffe-themed wallpaper, spotted fabric and even
horn-shaped hairstyles among the French. The giraffe lived for 18 years in
Paris, attempting to adapt to a new land – and a new culture. She is now known
as Zarafa, a word in Arabic that means “charming” or “beautiful” and is a
phonetic variant of the word for giraffe, zerafa.

“Zarafa Unfolding,” an art exhibition at the SP/N Gallery
that runs from Jan. 14 to Feb. 15, holds true to its name: it is a collection
of stories from artists who have adapted to a new land, a home away from home.
In one piece, delicate calligraphy adorns transparent panels, with the word
“love” in Arabic, repeatedly drawn over and over. The artworks, which are
primarily crafted by Middle Eastern and South Asian artists, are soulful and
expressive, depicting both the brutality and beauty of adapting to a new
homeland, often due to war.

Greg Metz, an arts and humanities professor at UTD and the
curator of “Zarafa Unfolding,” said that the stories in the exhibition are from
artists who have successfully adapted and lent their contribution to the
cultural fabric of Dallas.

“One of them is from San Francisco, one of them is from
Virginia, one of them is in Maryland, one of them is in New York, but from
Istanbul,” Metz said. “I wanted to demonstrate that there isn’t a signature
style that says Middle East, South Asian art. There’s an Islamic kind of
referencing in some of the work. There is a lot of reference to contemporary, a
contemporizing of calligraphy.”

A soulful recording of a man reciting adhan, the Islamic
call to prayer, rings out softly in the background of the entire exhibit. The
voice is melodious and reminiscent. Perhaps that is like the exhibit itself, a
reminder of what loveliness resides in our diverse universe – and how swiftly
it can be stripped away. 

One hanging installation created by Fahimeh Vahdat, a
Bahá’Wí from Persia who immigrated to the U.S., features circular panels
dangling from the ceiling, with women’s faces printed on many of them.  In one rose pink illustration, magenta
smudges partially obscure a woman’s somber face, while in another piece, gray
lettering is drawn repeatedly over another woman’s face.

“(Vahdat) … has gone on to really make a name for herself,
and all of her work is about injustice and domestic violence mostly in her
country that she’s come from, but also how some of that is held over and demonstrated
here,” Metz said. “That hanging piece has portraits of women who have been
disfigured by having acid thrown on their faces. So when you look at that and
you see the drops and things that are drawn into those prints or etched into
those prints, that’s the acid disfiguration of an identity trying to be
erased.”

A heartbreaking video installation depicts a man named Abdul
Ameer Alwan painting soft pink landscapes in front of the camera and watching
his daughter play in a park, hoping that she doesn’t forget Iraq.

“All my friends and I are hoping to return to Iraq sooner,”
he said in the video., “Today before tomorrow.”

The video evokes a solemnity that is peaceful with a touch
of sorrow. One cannot forget that this man was displaced from his home due to a
violent, bloody war. Metz said that Alwan never truly adapted but passed away
of, more or less, a broken heart. His art, so celebrated in Iraq, was not
considered with the same interest in America.

“He’s someone who came over as a mid-career artist who was
well-respected in Baghdad. After the war started in 2003 as we invaded Iraq, he
was exiled to Jordan and then he lived in Jordan for four years until they
closed the galleries down there,” Metz said. “When he got here in Dallas, he
experienced a tornado for the first time. So he compared what he went through
and what his family went through with the invasion of Iraq as a tornado, you
know, their tornado or their version of the tornado.”

here’s a little bit of everything in the show, Metz said, but
there’s not a signature style or a stereotypical way of looking at the art
created by the artists in this exhibition.

“The story trying to be told by this exhibition is how
creatives adapt to a new homeland, how they creatively express themselves in a
different surrounding reflective of both their culture, their historic
descendancy, but also trying to adapt to a very contemporary world and trying
to compete on the level of a larger contemporary art world,” he said.
“‘Unfolding’ is the telling of that story.”