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"Outer and Inner Space: A Video Exhibition in Three Parts"
2002-04-06 until 2002-06-02
Virginia Museum of Fine Art
Richmond, VA, USA

Part two of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' three-part video-art exhibition opened Saturday, April 6, featuring "Rapture," a major recent work by Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat. "Rapture" presents lush black-and-white projections on opposing walls in an exploration of the strict division in some Islamic countries between men and women.

A selection of early videos by artists such as Marina Abramovi and Ulay, Juan Downey, Mona Hatoum, Gary Hill, Daniel Reeves, and Howardena Pindell treats related themes of gender roles, cultural identity and spatial divides.

Neshat (b. 1957) left Iran in 1974 to study art in California. In 1979, the Iranian Revolution left her as an exile in America. In 1990, she moved from California to New York. That same year she visited Iran for the first time in 12 years. Since her visit to her homeland, her work has focused on the role of women in Islamic cultures.

She was named one of the “Best of 2001” by Artforum magazine in December. “Rapture” consists of two 12-1/2-minute videos played simultaneously. “Placing the men and women on opposite walls crystallizes their segregation in Islamic culture,” says John Ravenal, curator of Modern and Contemporary art at the museum and organizer of the exhibition.

“Unlike the generally passive viewing conventions of theater, film and TV, ‘Rapture’ activates the viewing space, involving its audience physically and psychologically,” he says.

“Outer & Inner Space: A Video Exhibition in Three Parts” represents a seven-month focus on video art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Part one, featuring a major work by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist, was on view for two months beginning Jan. 19.

Director Dr. Michael Brand says the exhibition “offers the museum a chance to bring a vitally important recent art form to the public and a chance for our audience to reflect on the tremendous artistic, cultural and technological changes that have brought us to where we are today.”

The final part of “Outer & Inner Space,” spotlighting Jane & Louise Wilson’s “Stasi City,” will debut June 22 and continue through Aug. 18. Using four projections, “Stasi City” presents what Ravenal calls “a dynamic and disorienting view” of the abandoned headquarters of the former East German secret police. Accompanying “Stasi City” will be works by Peter Campus, Dan Graham, Joan Jonas, Mary Lucier, Bruce Nauman, Steina, and Bill Viola, among others, that explore themes of vision, anxiety, surveillance and power. A newly acquired video installation by Bill Viola, “Quintet of the Unseen” (2001), will also premiere in the permanent galleries on June 22. “This major work, featured at the 2001 Venice Biennale, continues Viola’s use of sophisticated new technology to explore traditional art historical themes, in this case the Classical and Renaissance theme of the passions,” Ravenal says.

IMAGE:
Rapture, 1999,
by Shirin Neshat
(Production still (c) 1999 Shirin Neshat,
courtesy Barbara Gladstone)


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