Jananne Al-Ani (born 1966) is an Irish-Iraqi artist.

Personal life

Al-Ani was born in

Kirkuk Kirkuk ( ar, كركوك, ku, کەرکووک, translit=Kerkûk, , tr, Kerkük) is a city in Iraq, serving as the capital of the Kirkuk Governorate, located north of Baghdad. The city is home to a diverse population of Turkmens, Arabs, Kurds, ...

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

in 1966 to an Iraqi father and Irish mother. She studied Fine Art at the

Byam Shaw School of Art The Byam Shaw School of Art, often known simply as Byam Shaw, was an independent art school in London, England, which specialised in fine art and offered foundation and degree level courses. It was founded in 1910 by John Liston Byam Shaw and ...

and graduated with an MA in Photography from the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...

in 1997. She is currently Senior Research Fellow at the

University of the Arts London University of the Arts London is a collegiate university in London, England, specialising in arts, design, fashion and the performing arts. It is a federation of six arts colleges: Camberwell College of Arts, Central Saint Martins, Chelsea Coll ...

, and lives and works in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Career

Working with photography, film and video, Al-Ani has an ongoing interest in the documentary tradition, through intimate recollections and more official accounts. Her work also engages with the landscape of the Middle East, its archaeology and its visual representation. Summarising her work in an interview with curator and criti
Nat Muller
Al-Ani said: "I have a longstanding interest in the representation of the body. The earliest works I exhibited were concerned with the way women's bodies have been represented throughout the history of western painting. In advance of the development of photography and film, the shifting ideals of feminine beauty were clearly mapped out in the work of artists. However, the media coverage of the 1991 Gulf War, which focused on aerial and satellite images of a depopulated, barren landscape, had a major impact on my work. What followed was a reassessment on my part of the work of Orientalist painters and the way in which fantasies about the body and the landscape of the Middle East were constructed in their works. I began to see the body itself as a contested territory and during the 90s produced a series of works that attempted to counter the European obsession with uncovering and exposing the bodies of veiled women. More recently, with the ''Aesthetics of Disappearance'' project, I've attempted to re-occupy that space so, while the presence of the body is implied rather than explicit, the traces of human activity in the landscape are clear to see."

Awards

*1996: John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award. *2000: East International Award. *2011: Abraaj Capital Art Prize.

Exhibitions

Selected solo exhibitions

*''A Loving Man'',

Imperial War Museum Imperial War Museums (IWM) is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military ...

, London (1999). *''Art Now: Jananne Al-Ani: The Visit'',

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

, London (2005). *Darat al-Funun – The Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman, Jordan (2010). *''Shadow Sites: Recent Work by Jananne Al-Ani'', Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C. (2012). *''Groundwork'',

Beirut Art Center Beirut Art Center is a space for exhibiting contemporary art in Beirut, Lebanon History Beirut Art Center opened to public in January 2009. It is managed as a non-profit organization whose founders and executive board members were Sandra Daghe ...

, Lebanon (2013). *''Excavations'',

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Roy ...

Project Space, London (2014).

Selected group exhibitions and screenings

*''Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking'',

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York (2006) *''The Screen-Eye or the New Image: 100 Videos to Rethink the World'',

Casino Luxembourg The Casino Luxembourg is a forum for contemporary art which was adapted and renovated in 1995 to fit its new role of housing temporary exhibitions of Luxembourg art. It opened in 1882 as the Casino Bourgeois, and was a centre for cultural and soc ...

(2007) *''Closer'', Beirut Art Center (2009) *''Women War Artists,'' Imperial War Museum, London (2011) *''The Future of a Promise,'' Magazzini del Sale, 54th

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

(2011) *''Topographies de la Guerre,'' Le Bal, Paris (2011) *''Arab Express: the Latest Art from the Arab World,'' Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2012) *''all our relations,'' the 18th Biennale of Sydney (2012) *''Before the Deluge,'' CaixaForum, Barcelona and Madrid (2012-2013) *''Re:emerge, Towards a New Cultural Cartography,'' Sharjah Biennial 11 (2013) *''Mom, Am I Barbarian?,'' 13th

Istanbul Biennial The Istanbul Biennial is a contemporary art exhibition that has been held biennially in Istanbul, Turkey, since 1987. The Biennial has been organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV) since its inception. Format Istanbul Bien ...

(2013) *''She Who Tells a Story,''

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

(2013) *''Assembly: A survey of recent artists’ film and video in Britain 2008–2013,''

, London (2014) *''Memory Material: Jananne Al-Ani & Stéphanie Saadé,'' Akinci Gallery Amsterdam (2014) *''Concrete,''

Monash University Museum of Art The Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), formerly the Monash University Gallery, is a contemporary art museum on Monash University's Caulfield campus on Dandenong Road, Melbourne, Australia. History The Museum grew out of a number of ear ...

, Melbourne (2014) *''My Sister Who Travels,'' Mosaic Rooms, London (2014) *''Rituals of Signs and Transitions (1975''–''1995)'', Darat al-Funun – The Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman, Jordan (2015–16) *''Traces of War'', Inigo Rooms, London (2016)

Exhibitions co-curated by Al-Ani

*''Fair Play'' (co-curated with Frances Kearney), Danielle Arnaud gallery, touring to Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham (2001–02) *''Veil'', The New Art Gallery Walsall, touring to Bluecoat Arts Centre and Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, Modern Art Oxford and Kulturhuset Stockholm (2003–04)

Collections

Jananne Al-Ani's work is held in the following collections: *

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

, London. *

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, London. *

Arts Council Collection The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

. *Pompidou Centre, Paris. * Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation, Paris. *

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

, Washington, D.C. *Museum Moderner Kunst ( mumok), Vienna. *Darat al-Funun – The Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman, Jordan.

References

External links

Technologies of History: Jananne Al-Ani in conversation with Nat Muller, Ibraaz online (2014)
* ttp://www.luxonline.org.uk/artists//jananne_al-ani/(printversion).html Marcus Verhagen commissioned text for LUX online (2004)
Jananne Al-Ani monograph, Film & Video Umbrella (2005)