DOHA: Scholars from around the world will explore the role of light in Islamic art and culture during the Fifth Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art in Palermo, Italy.
The three-day symposium, ‘God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth’, features 13 speakers, all leading scholars in Islamic art and architecture, who will address the role of light in Islamic art and culture from a wide range of perspectives, from the metaphoric imagery of light in the Quran and the literatures of the Islamic lands to the practical role of light in buildings, paintings, performances, photography, and other works of art produced over the past 14 centuries.
The Quran is rich in references to light, and light consequently permeates the culture and visual arts of the Islamic lands; one of the most famous passages in the Quran, the Light Verse (24:35) majestically extols God as the Light of the Heavens and the Earth, a metaphor for His guidance and illumination over all creation.
The keynote address, ‘Contemporary Islamic Art’, will be delivered by the acclaimed artist Shirin Neshat, an Iranian born artist-filmmaker living in New York. She has held solo exhibitions at galleries and museums internationally, and is represented by Gladstone Gallery in New York.
She won the International Award of the LXVIII Venice Biennale in 1999 for films Turbulent and Rapture. In 2006 she was awarded the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and in 2009 she won the Silver Lion for best director at the 66th Venice Film Festival for Women without Men. She is working on her second feature film Oum Kolthum on the Egyptian singer, expected to be released in 2015.
The symposium is organised by Sheila S Blair and Jonathan M Bloom who have shared the Hamad Bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at Virginia Commonwealth University since its establishment in 2006.
The symposium is sponsored by Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Qatar Foundation, Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, Hamad Bin Khalifa University and the University of Palermo.
Twenty experts have been selected for the Hamad Bin Khalifa Travel Fellowships out of over 200 applications. They will be invited to attend special events and awarded the fellowship certificate.
The Peninsula
