Curated Experiences & Installations
EYE OF HEAVEN
Media Archeology
Eye of Heaven is a site-specific exhibition by visual artist Ahmed El Shaer, commissioned by Dr. Guerrero-Mostafa for in an office building in Manhattan’s midtown area. The installation transformed an office cubicle on the 11th floor of 625 Madison Avenue into a site of media archeology. AI projections reflected on glass, water, wood, and plastic, in a re-mediation of optical experiments by medieval scientist Hassan Ibn Al-Haytham. Al-Haytham was the first to use devices to see, magnifying and projecting with shadows, glass, light and water while under house-arrest in ancient Cairo. A pioneer of the new media art scene in Egypt, El Shaer mines ancient poetry and science to explore the limits of machine learning, human understanding, and the representation of things unseen. El Shaer represented Egypt in the Venice Biennale of 2022 with a collaboration featuring AI Heaven, a series of works which includes Eye of Heaven.
“Ahmed El Shaer’s AI Heaven, a series of work created with the use of artificial intelligence to imagine what the afterlife could look like. In training AI model to visualise the metaphysical and transcendental, the artist utilises the machine as a portal into accessing imagination that goes beyond what is human and innate to us. Through this process, the artist also takes an intentional departure from what was understood to be Orientalist art from the 18th and 19th century, to reimagine and reinterpret what Islamic art could look like in the 21st century as it becomes integrated with machine learning. The generated visuals is also demonstrative of how artists like El Shaer are seeking to use technological innovation to bridge current digital aesthetics, which is often sterile and devoid of cultural specific motifs, with their own heritage and attempt at preserving visual histories in digital art.”
UNCHARTED STORIES
The Art of Research
Uncharted Stories featured as the inaugural exhibition at the CCW Graduate School of University of the Arts London, in the Triangle Space at Chelsea College of Art & Design. The exhibition featured 18 artworks, including four site specific pieces and a new commission, each resulting from doctoral research in the fields of contemporary art and design. The exhibit was curated by the Uncharted Stories discussion group of research practitioners convened and led by Sara Angel Guerrero-Mostafa, based at the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity, and Nation. Collectively, the artworks explored a landscape of counter-narratives on representation. Following the exhibition, an annual exhibition of arts research became a tradition at the CCW Graduate School, comprising Camberwell College of Arts, Chelsea College of Art & Design, and Wimbledon College of Art. Participating artists and designers included Daniel Baker, Pedro Carvalho de Almeida, Annabel Dover, Dettie Gould, Rossella Emanuele, Hannah Hurst, Ope Sarah Lori, Catherine Maffioletti, Aaron McPeake, Marcela Montoya-Turnill & Cayetano H. Ríos, Idit Nathan, Jane Norris, Deepan Sivaraman, Tansy Spinks, Deborah True, Anna Vickers, and Senem Yazan.
MARVELS OF MEDIA EXHIBITION
A Media History of Self-Advocacy
Marvels of Media at Museum of the Moving Image showcased the creative vision of media-makers on the autism spectrum in the Spring of 2022. It featured 14 short films, 3 video games, and framed objects relating to the media-makers’ creative processes. A commissioned digital mural became a part of the MoMI collection. The exhibit was part of a larger initiative founded by philanthropist and visionary Josh Sapan, with a platform for recognizing artists on the spectrum that included a film festival, workshops on film and disability, panel discussions, and an award ceremony. The curatorial narrative was informed by working with an advisory group of experts who met monthly with the curator over the course of two years prior to the exhibit, including artists and filmmakers on the spectrum, self-advocates and activists. The exhibit spanned two galleries and was attended by approximately 9,000 people.
- Jackson Tucker-Meyer’s mockumentary Satan Cured My Autism, (2021), is a spoof on “inspiration-porn” documentaries about autism.
- Julio Garay created the puppets for Dak’ Toká Taíno/ Yo Soy Taíno/ I Am Taíno, (2019), directed by Alba Enid García Rivas. It celebrates the indigenous heritage of Puerto Rico. Executive produced by Heather Henson’s Ibex Puppetry.
- Autistic artist and blogger Mel Baggs, who passed in 2020, created the experimental documentary In My Language (2007) for YouTube. An autobiography by a non-verbal activist, it was one of the first new media works to shine a line on self-advocacy in the disability rights movement. The video went viral and was controversial, taking issue with widespread discrimination against disabled artists.
- A large-scale digital mural by April Lin 林森 was commissioned for this exhibit, titled (Tending) (to) (Ta): REMIX (2022). In this remix of (Tending)(to)(Ta) 2021, the artist casts ‘ta’, as an infinite cosmic entity that exists across universes. ‘Ta’ is present in all beings and in all matter. ‘Ta’ is the monosyllabic sound which encompasses all third person pronouns in Mandarin.
- Carrie Hawks exhibited Kameelah Janan Rasheed: The Edge of Legibility, (2021) (an Art 21 documentary segment which they directed) and an experimental moving image collage, Origin of Hair (2020). The film explores Black queer identity and self-acceptance as a pathway to personal utopia. It culls from Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s legacy as a Black queer woman in the 1950s and 1960s, claiming power through musical invention and radical self-love.
- Bradley Hennessey’s An Aspie Life (2018), an award-winning video game, allowed museum visitors to interact with one person’s experience of life on the spectrum. This version of the game was presented for the first time in playable format, and included the world premier of An Aspie Life Beginnings, an RPG prequel to An Aspie Life.
“Marvels of Media, an exhibition, awards ceremony and festival… celebrates media-makers on the autism spectrum. Twenty media works were chosen for awards from more than 3,000 nominations received from 117 countries. The selected pieces range from DIY projects to those created with large production budgets.
The London-based artist April Lin 林森 created a giant moving-image mural that was commissioned for the museum’s lobby wall. “Film is the way I communicate,” Lin said. “The specific contributions that autistic people make often get sidelined or don’t get the chance to blossom. This exhibition is a chance for us to be seen on our terms, without having to make ourselves smaller or dilute things to fit someone else’s vision.”
The submissions were reviewed by a panel of experts that included Sapan; the actors Joe Pantoliano and Tony Goldwyn; Cheryl Henson, the president of the Jim Henson Foundation; and the producer Brian Grazer. The festival includes a workshop on creating access riders for artists with disabilities, an animation workshop and film screenings. ’The message behind the show is self-advocacy,’ said Sara Guerrero-Mostafa, the museum’s deputy director of education and community engagement, who organized the effort with two other staff members — Miranda Lee and Tiffany Joy Butler — along with [museum trustee] Josh Sapan and an advisory committee of advocates, experts and artists.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Museum Show Highlights Media-Makers on the Autism Spectrum by Robin Pogrebin.
