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Exhibition Overview

This exhibition draws on a diverse selection of Arab modern and contemporary works from the collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation, United Arab Emirates, that illustrate an array of technologies of conflict. In this case, however, conflict is defined in a wider sense. It can take place on either a sociological or psychological plane, through assertions of language, between histories or between peoples, and the body itself can be a site of conflict.

These technologies include the evacuation of memory, the division of space, the removal or distortion of language, and the imposition of alien needs and narratives. These are the latent aspects that create the conditions for a manifest act of violence. They allow the conflict to take place, to render it palpable--or even desirable--to the perpetrators.

This exhibition then explores mechanisms of power, and of the power of artists to recognize these mechanisms and employ them in their work, either directly addressing the issues of conflict, or more abstractly, notions of space, language, image, memory, geography, categorization, and identification (and identity) that are part of conflict - on the internal, individual, social, and global levels.

Curated by Karim Sultan

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