Killing Time: An Exploration Of The Arab Coffeehouse In America:
A Photographic Installation by Aissa Deebi
May 19 - June 2, 2006
Gallery talks on May 20 and May 27
California Building Gallery
2205 California Street NE, Minneapolis
About the show:
Mizna presents "Killing Time: an exploration of the Arab coffeehouse in America", an installation by Aissa Deebi of seven photographs (3.5 feet x 4.5 feet) accompanied by the ambient sounds of a coffeehouse. The photographs in this exhibit depict scenes from one café in particular, the Arab American Community Center of Queens, over the course of the few weeks that the artist spent visiting the café and establishing himself in its daily rhythms. This café's regulars arrive each day and take their usual seat in what can be seen as an attempt to recreate a slice of home in America. Discussion abounds. The topic covered can include the latest in international and Arab politics, the wars in Iraq and Palestine as well as the personal stories about family and the day-to-day happenings of life.
This exhibit opens during Art-a-Whirl (May 19) and runs through June 2, 2006. Accompanying the exhibit will be talks by the artist and local scholars as well as community events replicating café culture including water pipe, backgammon tournaments, and storytelling evenings.
In the artist's words:
"Visiting the shisha [water pipe] cafés on Steinway Street gave me a different perspective [on] the impact of shisha cafés on the exilic Arab community in Queens. The role played by this café in the patrons' lives is extraordinary and powerful. It is a place where you can step out of time and place: as you come through the door, you are immediately in a different world, where only Arabic is spoken, the décor and furniture looks like it was lifted directly from an Egyptian movie set, and the daily actors are always the same. There is little to suggest that you are not in Cairo. I realized how the endless conversations, the deadening routine, the long hours spent at the pipe or sipping inky Egyptian tea provided a welcome piece of home for these men-a place utterly familiar and predictable in a world that is otherwise so precarious and uncertain, in a city so foreign to even the patrons who are long-term residents. Edward Said's writings on exile and the role of familiar places suddenly had new meaning, and I found myself wondering whether we should think of these places as escapes or cultural prisons.
About the artist, Aissa Deebi:
Born in 1969 to a Palestinian family in Haifa, Israel, Deebi is now a New York-based, contemporary artist working primarily in digital video and photography. Prior to his move to the United States, he completed his MFA at Liverpool University in the United Kingdom and completed a residency in Aarau, Switzerland. He has exhibited his work widely both in New York and internationally, including at the Queens Museum of Art; the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Chelsea; the Tangent Gallery, Detroit; the Slought Foundation, Philadelphia; Haifa Museum of Contemporary Arts; the Tel Aviv Museum; Fitcher and Mezrahi Gallery, Austria; the University of Catania, Italy; and the Inner Mongolia Museum of Fine Arts, China.