12.00 – 13.00 GMT, Zoom Webinar
Installing Islamic Art: Interior Space and Temporal Imagination
With the establishment of new cultural institutions in the Middle East and Africa, major Islamic art collections have relocated across the globe during the past decade. A number of Euro-American museums, too, have embarked on remodelling their decades-old gallery configurations for presenting material remains from the Muslim-majority societies of the Arab lands, Iran, Turkey and South Asia and have continuously sought compromised, if not ideal, display modes. On the other hand, such efforts have revitalised the following contentious debates concerning the display genre of “Islamic art”: to what extent fragmental archaeological finds, restored objects and detached manuscript painting pages can be installed as the unified image of Muslim civilisation within a self-contained space; how such decontextualised objects might speak for themselves; and how they reflect current politics of representation in the midst of global transformations.
This Masterclass will explore the history, culture and politics of the interior space in the field of Islamic art and architecture from around 2006 to the present, as well as to those that extend discussion into the future.
Yuka Kadoi
Yuka Kadoi, PhD (University of Edinburgh) has long worked in art history, museum studies and cultural heritage and has specialised in Islamic art and architecture in global contexts. Currently a senior scientific staff member at the Institute of Art History, University of Vienna, she has published extensively on various aspects of Islamic art and architecture and has curated several exhibitions in the past (Chicago 2010, Edinburgh 2014, Hong Kong 2018). The topic of her Masterclass this year is based on her guest-edited special issue of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture (2018) as well as her on-going teaching course on Islamic art and the Museum.
