April 9, 2016
SHUROOQ AMIN
It's a Mad World
Curated by Martina Corgnati.
Ayyam Gallery in collaboration with Contemporary Art Platform Kuwait.
It has been 4 years since the shutdown of Shurooq Amin’s last show in Kuwait and the subsequent censorship of her paintings. Since then, she has only exhibited her work abroad. She has been fortunate to have the representation and backing of Ayyam Gallery, who believed in her, gave her a platform to raise her voice uncensored, and invited her to show her work in Dubai and London, and now Contemporary Art Platform – Kuwait. It’s a Mad World will be curated by Martina Corgnati with whom Shurooq Amin had collaboration at the 56th Venice Biennale where Corgnati curated the pavilion Shurooq Amin was part of: Contemporary Practices Pavilion.
It is only fitting that the original title for this show – Apocalypso Now – should be changed to It’s a Mad World, to arrive full circle from her last show in Kuwait, It’s a Man’s World. As simple as the title is, as meaningful as it is for Shurooq Amin, since the pattern (semantically, syntactically, and phonetically) – and full circle – from It’s a Man’s World to It’s a Mad World is explicit.
It’s a Mad World consists of 18 artworks and an installation.
Born to a Kuwaiti father and Syrian mother, Shurooq Amin is a mixed-media interdisciplinary artist and an Anglophone poet whose purpose is to instigate positive change in society. She has a PhD in Ekphrasis, the relationship between art and poetry, and has been published and anthologized internationally. She has been a guest speaker at various universities, a judge for various events, including panel examiner at various Viva Voces.
Amin has had 14 solo exhibitions, more than 45 group exhibitions, her paintings have been sold at auctions, commissioned privately and publicly, awarded prizes locally and internationally, and shown at biennales and art fairs. A retrospective of her work was featured in the biannual art journal Contemporary Practices: Visual Arts from the Middle East.
Amin is the first Kuwaiti female artist to show her work at the Venice Biennale and auctioned at Christie's auction house.