2021 Program

The Environment and Ecology in Islamic Art and Culture
Ninth Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art

Online November 8-15, 2021.

As for the earth, We spread it out… and caused everything to grow there in perfect balance – Surah 15:19

An eco-conscious ethos is intrinsic to Islamic scripture and culture. This sensitivity profoundly influences the relationship between human beings, deputized as stewards of nature by Allah, and the environment they inhabit. Historical and contemporary Islamic visual traditions have demonstrated this consciousness in urban planning, landscape architecture, water management, and many other art forms. Despite this awareness, in the present epoch of the Anthropocene, human intervention has caused irreparable damage to the planet’s biodiversity and ecosystems. As art history shifts its disciplinary attention to the unfolding global crisis, this symposium considers how an ecological art history can examine objects, materials, and the built environment through the lens of Islamic culture. It also seeks to push beyond binaries of human/non-human and culture/nature in which the human and the cultural are privileged over other species and the natural world. Humans, within this ontological framework, are part of the environment and in possession of unique capacities necessary to address climate change, sustainability, and environmental conservation.

Monday, November 8
10am – 11:30am EST / 6pm – 7:30pm AST

Welcome Remarks. Co-Chairs of the 9th Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art

Keynote Address: Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT, The Quest for Thermal Delight. Audience questions and moderated conversation to follow.

Tuesday, November 9
10am – 1:30pm EST / 6pm – 9:30 pm AST

10 – 11:05am EST / 6 – 7:05pm AST

Rebecca Zorach, Mary Jane Crowe Professor in Art and Art History, Northwestern University.  Presentation title:
A luminous golden spirit owns us”: Legal Sculpting and the Rights of Nature.  Presentation followed by audience questions and moderated conversation.   

10-MINUTE BREAK

11:15am – 12:15pm EST / 7:15 – 8:15pm AST

Farid Esmaeil, Founding Partner and Principal Architect, X Architects.  Presentation title: Context as a ‘Form’ Generator.  Presentation followed by audience questions and moderated conversation.    

15-MINUTE BREAK

12:30 – 1:30pm EST / 8:30 – 9:30pm AST

T.J. Demos, Professor in the Department of the History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California, Santa Cruz.  Presentation title: War Ecology: Petropolitics and Contemporary Art in the Middle East. Presentation followed by audience questions and moderated conversation.

Wednesday, November 10
10am – 12:40pm EST / 6pm – 8:40 pm AST

10 – 11:05am EST / 6 – 7:05pm AST

D. Fairchild Ruggles, Debra Mitchell Endowed Chair in Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  Presentation title: Cultivars and Calamities in al-Andalus: On Nature and Human Will.  Presentation followed by audience questions and moderated conversation.

10-MINUTE BREAK

11:15am – 12:40pm EST / 7:15 – 8:40pm AST

Yusen Yu, Lecturer in Iranian Islamic Art History at the University of St Andrews.  Presentation title: Flora and Fauna in Timurid Painting

Stephane Pradines, Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture, Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC), London.  Presentation title: Coral Mosques and Indian Ocean Maritime Resources, from the Maldives to the Swahili Coast

Alexander Brey, Assistant Professor in the Department of Art, Wellesley College.  Presentation title: Gushing Pools and Verdant Meadows: Rural Estates and the Reshaping of Umayyad Rural Landscapes.

Panel presentations followed by audience questions and moderated conversation.

Thursday, November 11
10am – 12:40pm EST / 6pm – 8:40 pm AST

10 –  11:05am EST / 6 – 7:05pm AST

Anna M. Gade, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Education in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin. Presentation title: Truth of Consequences: The Floating Mosque and Material Ethics.” Presentation followed by audience questions and moderated conversation.   

10-MINUTE BREAK

11:15am – 12:40pm EST / 7:15 – 8:40pm AST

Nada Shabout, Regent Professor of Art History and Coordinator of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Initiative (CAMCSI), University of North Texas.  Presentation title:  A Threatened Imaginary: Environmental Interventions in Iraqi Art.

Huma Gupta, Lecturer, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, MIT.  Presentation title: Visualizing Maʻdan in Mayzara: The Hidden History of Urban ‘Wetlands’ in Baghdad.

Rachel Winter, PhD Candidate, University of California, Santa Barbara.  Presentation title: Aestheticizing the Ecologies of the Syrian Refugee Crisis.

Panel presentations followed by audience questions and moderated conversation.

Friday, November 12
10am – 1pm EST / 6pm – 9pm AST

10 – 11:05am EST / 6 – 7:05pm AST

Amanda Boetzkes, Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Guelph.  Presentation title: Behind the Sun: The Theater of Oil ExpenditurePresentation followed by audience questions and moderated conversation.     

10-MINUTE BREAK

11:15am – 1pm EST / 7:15 – 9pm AST 

Elizabeth Rauh, Assistant Professor of Modern Art and Visual Cultures, American University in Cairo.  Presentation title: Iridescent Modernism: The Troubling Artistic Legacy of Pearl Diving in the Persian Gulf.

Pamela Karimi, Associate Professor, Art Education, Art History and Media Studies, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Presentation title: Survival by Design: Oil Crisis, the Middle East, and the US Quest for Lunar Settlements.

Michelle Apotsos, Associate Professor of Art, Williams College. Presentation title: The Earth is a Masjid”: Tanzania’s First Eco-Mosque as Environmental Advocate.

Nisa Ari, Beinecke Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art.  Presentation title: Wasteland, Promised Land, Homeland: Painting “Flora Palaestina” Before the Nakba.

Panel presentations followed by audience questions and moderated conversation.

Monday, November 15
8
am – 9:15am EST / 4pm – 5:15pm AST

Roundtable Conversation with Jochen Sokoly, and artists Camille Zakharia and Tarek Al-Ghoussein, moderated by Holiday Powers and Monica Merlin, Assistant Professors of Art History at VCUarts Qatar. The artists’ work was the subject of an exhibition at VCUarts Qatar titled, Landscapes of Arabia: Camille Zakharia and Tarek Al-Ghoussein, curated by Jochen Sokoly.

Read about it here https://islamicart.qatar.vcu.edu/exhibition