Arab Contemporary

“Arab Contemporary. Architecture, culture and identity” at Louisiana focused on how architecture is a bearer of identity and helps to shape the cultural distinctiveness of a country.

The exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art “Arab Contemporary. Architecture, culture and identity” features architecture and art as well as documentary film and photography to tell the contemporary Arab world.

This world is first and foremost united by language, but there are other shared features that point both to a particular understanding of space and to a visual culture that can be traced from calligraphy through simple construction elements to architecture on the truly grand scale.

The exhibition “Arab Contemporary” presents several of these common features for consideration with the wish that an image of “the Arab” will emerge in stories from places where significant development is taking place: from the Mashreq, which means “the East” or “where the sun rises” (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Israel, Palestine and to some extent Egypt and the Sudan) and from the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain) to the Maghreb,“the West” or “where the sun sets” (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania).

The exhibition spotlights among other things new cities such as Dubai, old Yemenitic civilizations and new architectural projects that relate to the desert as place. It shows how studios like Ateliers Jean Nouvel, X-Architects and Henning Larsen Architects, intervene in the region with new interpretations. A topical focal point for the exhibition is the relationship between private and public space, which in recent years has been undergoing constant transformation socially, politically and architecturally.

The Arab world consists of 22 countries with the only common feature that the principal language is Arabic. There are other languages than Arabic, other religions than Islam are practiced, the landscape varies – and this also influences lifestyle and architecture. It is not possible to speak of Arab culture in the singular. But the exhibition paints a broad picture and draws certain lines by pinpointing particular areas and deals with a number of themes which together shed light on the development of meaning-bearing elements in the culture of this part of the world.

Arab Villas (Dubai), 2011. Photo: Richard Allenby. Pratt / ArabianEye

Tahrir Square, Cairo, January 2011. Photo: Jonathan Rashad

Material World (Kuwait), 1994. Photo: Peter Menzel / Inaagency

The Desert City of Shibam, Yemen 2012. Photo: John Andersen

until May 4, 2014
Arab Contemporary
Architecture, culture and identity
curated by Kjeld Kjeldsen and Mette Marie Kallehauge
exhibition architect Luise Hooge Lorenc
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Gl. Strandvej 13
Humlebæk (Denmark)

Arab Contemporary

“Arab Contemporary. Architecture, culture and identity” at Louisiana focused on how architecture is a bearer of identity and helps to shape the cultural distinctiveness of a country.

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