Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: In June 2024, the artist Jananne Al-Ani sat down with art historian and curator Massumeh Farhad to discuss some of the ideas explored in Al-Ani's recent work.The following is the edited extract of the interview.Massumeh Farhad: I first encountered your work in the late 1990s through a postcard of a photograph from your MA show at the Royal College of Art.It immediately grabbed my attention, and I wanted to know more about it and the artist.And still after all these years, when I see the works (Untitled I and II, 1996; fig.1), now in the collection of the National Museum of Asian Art, they stop me in my tracks.The contemplative nature of these monumental photographs, which forces us to look closely and carefully, is a quality that I also see in your subsequent video work and inspires a kind of slow looking.In part, it is because of your eloquent way of making elements appear and disappear.Can you tell us more about your approach?Jananne Al-Ani: Yes, to put it crudely, I think one of my roles as an artist is to draw attention to things in the world.Simply saying, "Have another look at this, a closer look." Massumeh Farhad:But not all artists do that. Jananne Al-Ani:No, but that's what I'm interested in doing.I'm inviting people to look again at what's already out there in the world.We can fantasize about all the things that have been lost, and so much has been lost, but there's still such a rich repository of material culture available to us, and we often accept the way it has been interpreted and historicized without question.What I try to do is look again at an image or an object and ask if there's another story that could be told about it.To ask if it's possible to look at something familiar in a different light.It's actually a very simple strategy.It's one of the reasons I'm so interested in archival material.Why were things collected?Who collected them?Why were they valued and what was the wider historic and political context when they were first collected?These are all questions that really interest me.In addition, so much of what's been collected has never been seen again.It's been buried in storage.I like the idea of the museum itself becoming a kind of archaeological site, one that invites excavation.In museums attention is often focused on star objects like the so-called Freer canteen or the Courtauld metal bag, which are prized highlights of each collection (figs.2, 3). Conversations from the FieldJananne Al-Ani is an artist and Reader in Photography and Moving Image at the University of the Arts London.Recent exhibitions include Timelines, co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Towner Eastbourne with Art Fund support (2022, Towner Eastbourne), and Landmarks (2023, Ab-Anbar Gallery, London).Her work can be found in collections including the Imperial War Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, DC; and Darat al Funun, Amman.She is currently a member of the Management Committee of the Nahrein Network, supporting the sustainable development of Iraqi history
Source: Ars Orientalis
DOI: 10.3998/ars.7034
Authors: Jananne Al-Ani, Massumeh Farhad
Language: English
Topic: Photographic and Visual Arts
Subfield: Museology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4405527204