Dubai Ladies Club hosts lecture & workshop on 'Multiculturalism and Art'

Manager of Art & Talent Center at DLC, Colette Mol said, 'Art can never be overestimated in its role in the development of cultural and social awareness. The Dubai Ladies Club Art and Talent Centre hopes to play on active role in the discovery, development and promotion of talent. We hope to encourage female artists to increase their artistic impact into the community and to expand their career as a legitimate and serious profession.'

Colette Mol added, 'The DLC chooses a theme every month around which activities are organized and our theme for this month is 'multiculturalism'. Multiculturalist thinking changed the art-world's demographics and expanded its frame of reference far beyond Western horizons.'

The Art and Talent Centre invited a very knowledgeable speaker Ingrid Stevens from South Africa for the event. Ingrid Stevens is an academic, art critic, sometime-practicing-artist, research journal editor, and vice chairperson of Crafts Council of SA.

She discussed issues related to the role of multiculturalism in art and addressed the relevance of art theories in the context of non-Western art. Ingrid Stevens also addressed workshops on critical writing in an attempt to create a greater awareness and understanding of the discipline.

She started with a brief account of personal experiences of multiculturalism in South Africa; some international examples like biennales, world music, film etc. Then talked about more theoretical issues about cultures meeting and the fact that there is usually a dominant (or even oppressor) culture and a subservient (or oppressed) culture; colonialism; post-colonialism; how the oppressor culture reacts to artifacts of the oppressed culture by exclusion, commodification, universalizing or exoticising. Then looked at examples of selected artists: American Indian Jimmie Durham, Ingrid Mwangi (Kenyan-German), Shirin Neshat and Mona Hatoum (Arabic women).