2018 > Waqt al-tagheer: time of change

Waqt al-tagheer: time of change
ACE Open | March 3 - April 21

An eleven collective project featuring Abdul Abdullah, Nur Shkembi, Khaled Sabsabi, Eugenia Flynn, Abdullah MI Syed, Hoda Afshar, Khadim Ali, Shireen Taweel, Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Zeina Iaali and Safdar Ahmed.

Milk of Millenia

For hundreds of thousands of years I have been dustgrains
floating and flying in the will of the air,
often forgetting ever being
in that state, but in sleep
I migrate back. I spring loose
from the four-branched, time-and-space cross,
this waiting room.

–Jaluldeen Rumi

Waqt al-tagheer: Time of change employs the meeting of time and space to explore
the individual experiences of specific years or time frames - whether current, recent
or historical - which have altered personal understandings of being. Each artist in
this exhibition brings alternate histories that have defined or redefined them; be that
through migration, exile, social and political upheaval or fundamental realisations that
have characterised how they see themselves and perceive the world around them.
Functioning in a broader Australian context that consistently seeks to politicise the
artist’s identities, the exhibition provides a platform to collectively voice some of the
complexities within the Muslim Australian experience.

Ideas of ‘national identity’ often confound alternative versions of history and are
commonly defined and sustained through time in the way of the commemoration
of specific events such as the First Fleet, 1788; Federation of Australia, 1901; the
Gallipoli Landing, 1915, with the nation’s patriotic fervour further elicited in such
events as the Australian Bicentenary, 1988; and Sydney Olympics, 2000. Waqt
al-tagheer thereby parallels the notion of a sanctioned narrative, focusing on the
personal consequences of particular events and time frames within Australia and
around the world from an individual perspective, sometimes intertwining with such
national or global events, but also include that of the deeply personal, the hidden
or of the Divine. Within this engagement with time and space, we can witness the
experiences of the human condition beyond the apparent to grapple with the poetic,
disturbing, beautiful and fractured realities of one another.

Co-curated by Nur Shkembi & Abdul-Rahman Abdullah