Kaelen wilson-goldie biography of mahatma
Bidoun
As our readers may have noted, since its inception in 2004 Bidoun has evolved from a scrappy quarterly spurred by the sweat of its editors and a monthly check from a single benefactor into a slightly manic nonprofit that publishes books, curates exhibitions, organizes educational initiatives, and even has its own library. Now we run on paperwork, mountains of it, and the love of our six hundred (600) subscribers (whom we love right back: we lose money on each and every one of you!). Despite — or maybe because of — these changes, we’ve been doing some of our best work ever. But since becoming a nonprofit last year, with all its attendant stresses, we’ve been asking ourselves how we might improve Bidoun. Perhaps Bidoun will never be an all-powerful cultural megalith, but it could be (cue grant-speak) a fully sustainable organization, the kind of place that can afford to pay its monthly rent and salaries on time, and then some.
If we were a country, how would we exercise soft power in order to enhance Bidoun’s credibility in the global marketplace and desirability among international cultural elites? Our last issue, which was made in Cairo and evoked, through interviews and photographs and a wide range of ephemera, the ongoing Egyptian revolution, seemed to mark a turning point: we crafted an editorial voice that was inclusive, collective, and yet distinctively our own. How might we amplify this voice to appeal to a greater number of readers — not just those overeducated and undercapitalized youths in Cairo, London, Beirut, and so on, but the business people who sell to them, the gallerists who represent them, the diplomats who appreciate them? Could Bidoun be to Emirates what Monocle is to Lufthansa?
According to Branding for Dummies, “Commodity products become branded products, usually known as consumer brands, when a manufacturer wins awareness in the marketplace that its product has compelling characteristics that
The Met Breuer hosts the artist’s sensuous rope sculptures.
Phenomenal Nature: Mrinalini Mukherjee, installation view. Image courtesy Met Breuer.
Phenomenal Nature: Mrinalini Mukherjee, Met Breuer, 945 Madison Avenue, New York City, through September 29, 2019
In the early 1960s, two prominent teachers at one of the most famous art schools in India—the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda (the city known today as Vadodara)—hit upon an ingenious idea for a biannual fundraising event. Instead of presenting the work they were doing in school, students were encouraged to get out of their classrooms and into the artisanal traditions of their wider community. The result was the Baroda Fine Arts Fair, where students and teachers alike experimented with making crafts, toys, and other such functional objects, which were sold to raise money for the economically underprivileged among them. The fair, which is still going strong, was a runaway success, not only because it tied a high-minded educational institution to the lives, makers, and rhythms of the city around it, but also because it pushed students off their academic perches and out of their proverbial comfort zones. As a result, some found the exact thing they had been looking for in their studios—a gesture, a material, a technique—to form the core of an exceptional art practice.
Phenomenal Nature: Mrinalini Mukherjee, installation view. Image courtesy Met Breuer.
Mrinalini Mukherjee, who, in 1965, at the age of sixteen, entered Baroda as a painter and then continued on as a graduate student in the decidedly medium-fluid program for mural design, apparently found all three at once while messing around with some rope from a Baroda market for the fair. She started making rugs and wall hangings by knotting the strands of a local variety of hemp c
Born in Zahlé, Lebanon, Chawky Frenn lived his formative years in a country that nurtured him not only with mysticism, spirituality, and beauty, but also with paradoxes, conflicts, and delusions. Before emigrating to the United States in 1981, he witnessed six years of civil war whose devastating effects and consequences would powerfully influence his life, art, and teaching.
Frenn received a BFA from Mass College of Art and Design in Boston, MA in 1985, and an MFA from Tyler School of Art of Temple University in Philadelphia, PA in 1988. He completed the second year of graduate studies at Temple Abroad in Rome, Italy. Frenn taught at Bridgewater State College in Bridgewater, MA; Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA; and Edinboro University of PA, in Edinboro, PA. He is currently an Associate Professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.
Frenn exhibited in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Paraguay, and India. He participated in museum exhibits including the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts in New Castle, PA; Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, CT; Erie Art Museum in Erie, PA; Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, NY; and Sursock Museum in Beirut, Lebanon. His work is included in the collections of MARe, Museum of Recent Art, Bucharest, Romania; Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, CT; the Springfield Museum of Art in Springfield, OH; and in private collections.
Frenn received critical acclaim by the New York Times, NY ARTS, Art New England, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Washington City Paper, East City Art, Old Town Crier, Bethesda Gazette, The Dartmouth, Erie Times-News, Concord Monitor, Connecticut Post, Atlanta Magazine, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the United States, and An-Nahar, L’Orient - Le Jour, and The Daily Star in Lebanon.
In 2017, Frenn was awarded the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award, a research/teaching award in New Delhi, India. He received numerous awards including the T .