Free
About the Roundtable
For the past twenty years, Islamic art has been garnering more and more attention. However, the exhibition of traditional Islamic visual and material culture has been increasingly juxtaposed against contemporary creation. In addition to reflecting on the issues inherent in the term “Islamic art” to refer to both old objects and contemporary works, this discussion will explore avenues for curatorial innovation and give rise to a critical discussion about the exhibition of traditional and contemporary art, cultural representation, and decentred art histories.
This roundtable discussion is one of three planned for this year under the Rethinking the Museum program, an initiative funded by the Conseil des arts de Montréal. The goal of these roundtables is to reflect on the representation of multiple perspectives in museums, as knowledge-based institutions that mirror the issues of the day.
About the moderator
Claudia Polledri teaches Islamic Art History in the Department of Art History at Concordia University and is also a professional researcher in the Laboratoire CinéMédias of the Université de Montréal. A specialist in Middle Eastern contemporary photography, she curated the exhibition Iran: Visual Poetries, which was presented at the Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie in 2019.
About the panellists
Monia Abdallah is a professor in the Department of Art History at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Her research focuses on contemporary art practices from the area known as the “Middle East” as well as the history of artistic modernisms outside Europe and North America. Her recent publications explore discourses that connect art, Islam, and modernities and particularly the notion of contemporary Islamic art.
Born in Tehran, Iran, Leila Zelli now lives and works in Montreal. With a master's degree (2020) and bachelor's degree (2016) in visual and media arts from UQAM, she is interested in our relationship with ideas from “others” and “elsewhere” and particularly within the geopolitical space often referred to with the questionable term “Middle East.” Her body of work can be found in the collections of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée Pointe-à-Callière, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Prêt d’œuvres d’art collection), Musée d'art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul, and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. In 2021, she received the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art. She is represented by Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain.
Michael Chagnon is Curator at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, where he has curated numerous exhibitions, such as the recent multimedia installation Hakan Topal: The Golden Cage (2022) and the digitally enhanced exploration of the Museum’s masterpieces of Persian, Turkish, and South Asian manuscript illustration, Remastered (2020-21). A specialist of painting and the arts of the book from the Persianate cultural sphere, Dr. Chagnon has held previous curatorial posts at the Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Japan Society (New York). He received his PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, in 2015.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Location: To access the event, please enter through the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace, located at 2075 Bishop Street.
Reservation terms: Free event. Reservations are not required.
