Art Matters announced the recipients of their fall 2014 grants. They awarded 28 grants ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 USD to artists for specific projects, travel and research, and ongoing work that breaks ground aesthetically and socially. One of those grants went to Fine Arts Professor Kamrooz Aram for his project, Ancient Through Modern.
Kamrooz Aram (Brooklyn, NY)
Ancient Through Modern, an ongoing project that intervenes in museum collections of Islamic Art.
Artist Statement
Using a variety of forms including painting, collage, drawing, and installation, I find the potential of image-making to function as a tool for a renegotiation of history. In my paintings, I have explored the complex relationship between Western modernism and traditional art forms from the East. Patterns taken from Persian carpets are combined with the language of modernist abstraction to question the hierarchies set forth by Western art history. My collages and installations explore the role that encyclopedic museums in the West play in representing the history of non-Western cultures. I am interested in the cultural nostalgia associated with these museums, where many expatriates go to gaze into the glorious past of their mother culture.
Read about the rest of the grantees here.
