JAMIL YAMANI & LOUISA DAWSON

2014

Visual Arts

Artist/s: Jamil Yamani, Louisa Dawson

This exhibition of new and existing works echoes Yamani’s inquiries into the political and socio-cultural phenomena of social structures within communities through complex video installations. Multiculturalism and its role within this structure over arches the exhibition commenting on how it implies a shared celebratory sense yet reality tells of the exclusions that divide this sense.

The works in the exhibition contend and infiltrate the perceived cultural stereotypes around the social and political perceptions of cultural conformity, assimilation, otherness and displacement.

Drawing associations from Islamic and western cultures, alternate perspectives are created that seek to shift identity beyond what has superficially been demanded by a dominant hegemony.

Yamani engaged with the local Islamic community in a newly commissioned work, Müzzie, Müzzie, Müzzie, Oi Oi Oi!. With his highly aesthetic practice, Yamani explores traditional Islamic practices with contemporary art, integrating scared tradition with western architectural design. Working within two sphere’s western and eastern one is made to question how they coincide with each other and within a society that places great importance on ownership, place, culture, heritage and identity. Drawing linkages between these provokes a response, a question to placement or displacement within our society.