Madness of the Anthropocene: Thinking with an image
Overview
Co-published with 421 Online.
This book brings together artists and writers who use image-making and text as means to understand ecological change. By presenting their work here, including ongoing projects and commissioned pieces, the publication conveys knowledge within attentive proximity to the contributor’s own definitions of the subject and their governance of observation and analysis of global crises in the age of the Anthropocene.
This experimental approach is inspired by Bayan al-Madrasa al-Kristaliyya (The Crystal Manifesto), published in 1976 by the Crystalist School in Khartoum, Sudan, consisting of Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq, Muhammad Hamid Shaddad, Naiyla al-Tayib, Hisham Abdallah, and Hashim Ibrahim.
The editor wanted to utilize this modernist text as a curatorial lens to explore contemporary art, asking primary questions, focusing on recent artistic productions from West Asia and the Gulf region. The manifesto delves into artistic and philosophical commentary on topics such as time, science, space, and language. They also critiqued art-making practices within a growing “universal” imperialist discourse. Their collective thinking, led by Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq (b. 1939, Omdurman), their teacher, resonated with existing African liberation movements of the South as well as Arab and African visual art movements from the 1960s. These movements examined post-independence art making and the challenges of modernist definitions that attempted to flatten identities, events, geographies, and cultures.
Madness of the Anthropocene draws inspiration from the “no-color phenomena” within the crystal—an object seemingly colorless whose visibility emerges under pressure—that they highlight. This dual state serves as a metaphorical and literal embodiment, echoing the overarching theme of the book chapters that embrace, in other words, what I call madness as an artistic methodology for image-making today. How do artists articulate or respond to subjects about the Anthropocene? How can we visually rethink disasters and madness, and, what do we do with those resolutions?
About the Authors
Rojda Tuğrul
(b.1986, Diyarbakır) Rojda Tuğrul is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher based in Vienna, whose practice focuses on the notion of identity in relation to space and time. Her doctoral dissertation sought to analyze the effects of war on ecological and cultural heritage within the socio-political framework of Kurdish territories. Whilst examining the spatial transformation and deterioration of the habitat as a trace of change in the culture and collective psyche of society, her work also explored the politics of art, the autonomy of artistic representations, and the power of images. Tuğrul holds an MSc in Veterinary Studies and she graduated from the PhD-in-Practice Program in the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Nour Shantout
(b. 1991, Damascus) Nour Shantout is an artist and researcher. She began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Damascus in 2009 and continued her work abroad. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts in Beirut (2014), the Helen Khal prize (2014), and pursued her studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She received a diploma in Fine Arts from the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien (Textual Sculpture, Prof. Heimo Zobernig) in 2020. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Philosophy from the same academy and is a visiting lecturer at IZK the Institute for Contemporary Art, Architecture Faculty of the Graz University of Technology. In 2021, her research-based project "Searching for the New Dress" received the Production Award; Culture Resource, as well as The Visual Arts grant; The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (Beirut). Shantout has shown her work internationally. In 2022, she had her solo exhibition Searching for the New Dress at Minuseins Offspace, Vienna. Austria and at Stroboskop Art Space, Warsaw, Poland. Her articles have appeared in JEEM, Al-Jumhuriya, and elsewhere. She works around subjugated heritage, counter-memory, labor, and alienation, from a post-colonial feminist perspective.
Lina Ramadan
(b. 1990, Doha) A curator and writer in contemporary and modern art, Lina Ramadan develops research on post-colonial MENA regions, women artists, and solidarities. Between 2016 and 2022, she served as a curator at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha. Her recent curated exhibitions include: Like Every Leaving Wasn’t a Country: Ibi Ibrahim (2024); Taysir Batniji: No Condition is Permanent (2022- 2023), (co-curated with Abdellah Karroum). As assistant curator; Kader Attia: On Silence (2021); Raqs Media Collective: Still More World (2019); Mohamed Melehi: 1959-1971 (2017-2018). Ramadan's publications include: “Moments of Return in the work of Mohamed Bourouissa, Yto Barrada and Iman Issa” in Avant-garde & Liberation. Contemporary Art and Decolonial Modernism 2024, Ed. Kravagna, C. Mumok, 2024; “Foreword” in Photography from Yemen Ed. Vartanian Collier, L & Ibrahim, I. Makan Press, 2024; “The Palaver Tree'' in Farid Belkahia: For A New Modernity. Ed. Gauthier, m. Centre Pompidou & Mathaf, 2021 among others. She is the recipient of the 2024- 2025 Darat al Funun Fellowship. Currently, Ramadan is a PhD Candidate in Art Theory and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Art Vienna.
Ritika Biswas
(b. 1995, Kolkata) Ritika Biswas grew up in Kolkata, India, and holds a Liberal Arts degree from Yale-NUS College, Singapore, and an MPhil in Film and Screen Studies from the University of Cambridge. She was a curator and special projects producer at New Art Exchange, Nottingham, and Nottingham Arts Mela in the UK from 2019-2021, co- curator of the fifth iteration of Museum Without Walls (2021) for the British Council, and artistic director for the 2021 Sea Art Festival for the Busan Biennale. She has also worked in curatorial capacities in Singapore and New York. Currently working on decolonial virtual art platforms and non-human ecologies, Biswas sees her practice as existing at the nexus of deep research, eco-critical play, collaborative kinships, and justice, particularly within majority world contexts. She was the 2022 International Research Fellow at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul.
Reem Ibrahim Al Sehlawi
(b. 1990, Doha) Reem Ibrahim Al Sehlawi is an Islamic environmental ethicist, farmer, and textile artist, working to raise awareness on the relationship between humans and the natural environment through impact-driven initiatives built around the intersection of ecology, art, and culture. She is the co-founder of Atlas Bookstore (2015), a transient bookstore specialized in the natural and built environments in the Arab world and the founder of SEAM (2017) a tailoring studio based in Qatar championing a holistic human / environment-centered approach to design, production, and consumption. She is also the associate director at the Arab Youth Climate Movement Qatar. Al Sehlawi's research spans a wide range of topics with a focus on the revival and advancement of traditional ecological knowledge in the Arab world and applied Islamic environmental ethics in addressing contemporary environmental dilemmas. Her active interests include permaculture farming, growing and cultivating natural dye plants, native insects macro photography, and observing micro-climates. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Real Estate Development from Kingston’s University in London and a Master of Arts in Applied Islamic Ethics from Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar.
Fatma Ebrahim Al Sehlawi
(b. 1986, London) A Doha-based architect, urbanist, and beekeeper, Fatma Ebrahim Al Sehlawi is the co-founder of Atlas Bookstore (2015), a transient bookstore specialized in the natural and built environments in the Arab world, and co-founder of Studio Imara (2017), an interdisciplinary design practice. Since 2020, Al Sehlawi has been directing the Qatar Blueprint initiative in the Office of the Chairperson of Qatar Museums, a project planning the cultural activation of Qatar’s eight municipalities. Her work spans multiple areas of research, including the evolution of Qatar’s architecture and urbanism, oral histories relating to bygone settlements, and the productive farmlands and rural regions of Qatar. Her side interests include documenting and growing native flora, seed collection and preservation, and practicing Prophetic Medicine. Al Sehlawi holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Sharjah and an Urban Design Master of Architecture from the Bartlett, University College London.
Moza Almatrooshi
(b. 1991, Dubai) In her practice, Moza Almatrooshi looks at narratives from ancient and contemporary mythologies in the Arabian Peninsula. This culminates in fictions and metaphors derived from regional food production practices and food politics. In 2019, Almatrooshi obtained a Master of Fine Arts from the Slade School of Fine Art (UK) and a diploma in culinary arts from ICCA Dubai (UAE) in 2020. Her artworks have been performed in the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), selected by the ICA and BBC for the New Creatives project, and displayed in the second Lahore Biennale. Her writings have been published in ArabLit Quarterly, and by the Contemporary Image Collective in Cairo. She is currently a faculty fellow in the Sheikha Salama Emerging Artists Fellowship in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Almatrooshi is the recipient of the Warehouse 421 Artistic Research Grant (2021–2022).
Asmaa Al-Issa
(b. 1991, Baghdad) Asmaa Al-Issa cultivates an artistic practice that responds to her lived experiences and interactions with the land, materials, and people around her. Her recent works explore regenerating and reviving ancestral lands and cultures, while focusing on the power and potential of imagination within these processes. al-issa's projects are sometimes developed alongside workshops and gatherings as a way of nurturing creativity, while building relationships and cross- cultural alliances. Her formal education includes a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Studies from the University of Calgary, Canada and a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. al-issa was a fellow and instructor in the Painting and Printmaking Department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar. She has been an artist-in-residence at Studio Kura in Itoshima, Japan, and Manarat Al Saadiyat Art Studio in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Her artwork has been exhibited across Canada, and in Spain, Japan, the US, and Qatar. al- issa's artistic practice has been supported by her family, Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and Calgary Arts Development.
Technical Details
- Publication Date:
- Saturday, February 1, 2025
- Language:
- English and Arabic
- Format:
- Softcover
- Dimensions:
- 16 x 21 cm
- Weight:
- 0.7
- ISBN:
- 978-614-8035-66-1
- Number of Pages:
- 216
- Publisher:
- Kaph Books
- Categories:
- Art Books