Melbourne/Naarm-based curator, writer and scholar Nur Shkembi was invited by Talia Smith, curator at Granville Centre Art Gallery in Sydney, to present an exhibition inviting consideration from an art audience and the broader community in Western Sydney. The result is Destiny Disrupted, featuring the works of Australian-based Muslim artists: Abdul Abdullah, Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Hoda Afshar, Safdar Ahmed, Elyas Alavi, Khadim Ali, Khaled Sabsabi, Omar J Sakr, Shireen Taweel, and Hossein and Nassiem Valamanesh, and Phillip George.
Central to the concept of Destiny Disrupted is the artist as a social agent, occupying the ‘essential space found at the intersection of art and humanity.’ “The exhibition is based on the idea that artists are essential to our humanity, as changemakers or agitators, and as a witness to our current times,” says Shkembi.
Hoda Afshar, Agonistes (still), 2020, sungle-channel digital video, colour, sound. Courtesy the artist, Milani Gallery, Queensland and Granville Centre Art Gallery, Sydney
At the crux of the exhibition is a reimaging of futures and the act of destiny on lives through culture and faith, based on Afghan-American historian Tamim Ansary’s Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, 2009 (which also serves as the basis to Shkembi’s PhD research). “[What] Ansary ultimately offers is the idea of parallel histories, or the way in which one could be experiencing and seeing the world through a lens that is different to those around you,” Shkembi explains.
Khaled Sabsabi, 99, 2010, 99 channel SD video sculpture installation, audio, wood, steel shelving and 98 paintings, acrylic, watercolour and gouache on dye diffusion thermal transfer prints. Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Queensland
Destiny Disrupted explores how destiny often arrives outside of our control, for example, social and political constructs such as colonialism, orientalism and imperialism, and the outcomes of marginalisation, poverty, displacement, violence or war.
“There is a particular potency, power and nuance to the artists’ work that prickles the nerves but also allows you the space to see, such as Hoda Afshar’s Agonistes, 2020, Abdul Abdullah’s Cyclical Histories 1 & 2, 2020, and Elyas Alavi’s Doesn’t it taste of blood?, 2020,” Shkembi shares. “Alavi’s practice as an artist traverses poetry, literature and visual art and is exhibited alongside Omar J Sakr’s exceptionally powerful poetry which is also a feature of the exhibition.”
“There are aesthetic and conceptual connections that allow the works to sit in conversation with one another, but also as deeply personal narratives such as Hossein and Nassiem Valamanesh’s stunning single-channel video What Goes Around, 2021, and Khaled Sabsabi’s 99, 2010,” the curator continues.
Shireen Taweel, Devices for Listening, 2020, engraved and pierced copper, 25 × 25 × 40cm. Photography: Document Photography. Courtesy the artist and Granville Centre Art Gallery, Sydney
Following these themes, Abdul-Rahman Abdullah joins the discussion of personal narratives entwined with the political with his hyperreal sculpture, The king is dead, 2015, in stained wood and bronze. While Shireen Taweel has been commissioned to create a new work in her distinctive engraved copper medium, reflecting on language and the duality of her experiences as a Lebanese Australian.
In another commissioned work, Safdar Ahmed presents a new work on paper that responds to the poem written by Ahmad Ali Jafari, a refugee who died in detention. And Khadim Ali’s detailed miniature paintings narrate border politics of asylum seeking and the erasure of history, visually contrasting, yet thematically complementing, George’s reflection on known and unknown landscapes in his photograph series, New World Order, 2005.
Phillip George, Trace Tidal shift 2, from the ‘Drawing in Water’ series, 2021. Courtesy the artist and Granville Centre Art Gallery, Sydney
The exhibition poses discussion on the definition of Australian art, or thereby, the lack of definition – challenging the canon of art in Australia that reinforces notions of the white anglo viewpoint. As a result, Destiny Disrupted explores alternate histories and narratives through artwork. Shkembi concludes, “they are the work of artists who share intent and stories and truth that pierce the hegemony of the landscape… these artists are disrupting this in their own way.”
Emma-Kate Wilson is a Sydney-based arts writer.
Originally published in Art Almanac, February 2022.
Granville Centre Art Gallery
10 February to 1 May 2022
Sydney
Griffith University Art Museum
15 December 2022 to 25 March 2023
Queensland
