WHERE: Portland Museum of Art.
WHEN: Opening Saturday, September 7 and on view through December 8, 2013.
TITLE: Ahmed Alsoudani: Redacted
BRIEF ABOUT: The first major museum exhibition of the work of American-Iraqi artist and Maine College of Art graduate Ahmed Alsoudani, will feature nearly 20 of the his tumultuous and innovative paintings, which reflect on the horrors of war with a unique artistic voice. “Challenging the viewer with nuanced art historical arguments and blatantly difficult, abject, and grotesque imagery, Alsoudani does what few artists can do: he successfully translates the complexity of contemporary politics into meaningful painting,” said PMA Director Mark H.C. Bessire.
About
Ahmed Alsoudani was born in Baghdad in 1975 and grew up under the regime of Saddam Hussein. He left Iraq as a teenager and lived in Syria before immigrating to the United States in the late 1990s. He studied in Maine at the Maine College of Art (BFA, 2005), and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (2006), and graduated with a MFA in painting from the Yale School of Art (2008). In 2011, his work was featured in the Iraq Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale, in the exhibition The World Belongs to You, and at The Francois Pinault Foundation at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice. His other major international exhibitions include: La Route de la Soie at Tri Postal in Lille, France (2010); Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East at the Saatchi Gallery in London (2009); as well as shows at the National Gallery of Saskatchewan, Canora, Canada (2007) and the Gwangju Museum of Art, Korea (2007). He lives and works in New York.
MORE DETAILS: Call 207.775.6148 or see www.portlandmuseum.org.