Abir Boukhari
- Wednesday, June 15, 2016
- 7:00pm – 9:00pm
- Canadian Museum for Human Rights, 85 Israel Asper Way
This talk will be presented at 7pm
Abir Boukhari, founder of the first contemporary art centre in Syria, will trace the impact of profound geopolitical shifts on women and artists in her country. Despite the fact that creative expression is now seen as a brave political art, Boukhari and the artists of Syria continue to draw the world’s attention to issues such as child marriage, sexual slavery, and state-enforced control of women. Boukhari will discuss the resistant power of art for her country, and particularly its women, even as so many have been forced into exile. She will also trace the changes she has experienced in her lifetime with respect to the rights of women, as a cautionary tale regarding the fragility of human rights.
Co-presented with the Canadian Museum of Human Rights
Free with admission to CMHR (adults $18, senior and students $14)
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Abir Boukhari is the director and co-founder of AllArtNow, the first contemporary art centre in Syria, founded in Damascus in 2005. AllArtNow helps emerging Syrian contemporary artists to produce and diffuse their artworks. It is devoted to contemporaneity and experimentality (controversial ideas in Syria). Previously, Boukhari was the Artistic Director for Living Spaces Festival for Contemporary Arts, the Artistic Director of Studio (an informal school for contemporary arts in Syria) and the co-founder of Boukhari House for Artist Residencies and Maktab Creative Zone, all of which were located in Damascus. She has worked as an independent curator since 2006, creating exhibitions for institutions and galleries as varied as Taksim Gallery (Istanbul), the Arab Short Festival (Cairo), Les Instants Festival (Marseille) and Gotham Arts Studios (Western Australia). She augmented her training through internships at the Tate Modern (London) and the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum (Germany). She is also the sister of Nisrine Boukhari, who was an artist in residence at MAWA in 2014.