10 / AMAM.OBERLIN.EDU ON VIEW / RIPIN GALLERY / JAN 3–AUG 6 FEMME ’N ISMS, PART I: BODIES ARE FLUID Bodies Are Fluid is the first in a series of exhibitions over the coming semesters that celebrate women, femmes, and the feminine at the Allen Memorial Art Museum. Like most art collections, the Allen’s formed around deceptively neat categories that are both art historical—Realism, Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism—and based on social groups and identities—man/woman, religious/secular, young/old, fat/skinny. This intergenerational constellation of artworks presents a capacious spectrum of individuals and experiences that the “isms” of art have long failed to grasp. Many of the art practices represented in this exhibition emerged amid second-wave feminism, a movement that largely neglected the intersections of sex discrimination with race, class, and gender diversity. For more than a century, Black feminists—fromMary Church Terrell (OC 1884) to bell hooks (OC professor 1988 to 1994)—have shown how those forces of oppression are interlocking and compounding. This exhibition suggests a reassessment of feminist artmaking with a commitment to learning from intersectional femininities that are nonwhite and non-cis-heteronormative. Organized by SamAdams, Ellen Johnson ’33 Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, with Fudi Fickenscher (OC 2023). ON VIEW / RIPIN GALLERY / JAN 3–AUG 6 BETWEEN PAGE AND PICTURE: HISTORY AND MYTH IN THE PERSIAN BOOK OF KINGS The Shahnameh, or “Book of Kings,” is an epic written by the Persian poet Albo’l-QasemFerdowsi (940–ca. 1025). A partly historical and partly mythical tale, the Shahnameh was written to preserve the historical imprint of the ancient glory and vast influence of the civilization of Persia (today’s Iran). The text follows the creation of the world and the first man, to the rise and fall of the Persian Empire, to the subsequent Muslim conquest of Greater Iran in the early 7th century. The lengthy epic, consisting of 50,000 couplets—or paired rhyming lines—also serves as a political, religious, andmoral treatise. The poem includes battles of good against evil, sons against fathers, and heroes against tyrants or beasts. There are tales of love and loss, the rise and fall of power, and the ultimate corruption of man. All of the characters in the narrative are bound by the inescapable shackles of fate. A few hundred years after the Shahnameh was written, artists and calligraphers began to produce beautifully illustrated and written versions of the text. This exhibition presents examples of illustrated Shahnameh pages from the 15th to the 17th centuries, along with contemporary works by the Iranian-American artist Ala Ebtekar, whose work draws from this tradition. Organized by Roya Ahmadi-Moghadam (OC 2023) and Kevin R. E. Greenwood, Joan L. Danforth Curator of Asian Art, with special thanks to Selin Ünlüönen, Oberlin College Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History, and Driek (OC 1965) and Michael (OC 1964) Zirinsky. Betye Saar (American, b. 1926), Untitled, 1971. Watercolor and gouache on paper. Gift of the Louis and Annette Kaufman Trust, 2016.36.33. Unidentified Persian Artists, Leaf from a Shahnameh (Book of Kings), from the story of Bizhan, early to mid-16th century. Tempera and ink on vellum. Bequest of Parks and Christie Campbell, 2020.17.25.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTczNTM=