Art Instructor Chosen to Showcase His Photography in Prestigious Art Fair
Burning Bush: 40"x60" Carbon pigment print
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Amjad Faur, an instructor in the art department, has been chosen to exhibit a collection of his photography at the Pulse Miami art fair, a showcase for established and emerging contemporary artists from around the world.
Faur’s work deals with current issues in the Middle East and attempts to translate those issues through a visual language of colonialism. The Palestinians' lack of mobility and rights to their land is a very important element to this set of photographs. Faur uses Western art references in order to demonstrate the colonization and disintegration of Palestinian land and the Western, Orientalist fantasy complicit in this process.
“Although there are a lot of different formal elements going on at once in each image, there is symbolic weight in each object and decision that is intended to resonate thematically with the iconography of occupation and dispossession,” Faur said.
The PDX Contemporary Art gallery in Portland, Ore., chose Faur as one of its three artists to exhibit in Miami.
“It is a huge development for me because I will be exhibited with artists that I have incredible admiration for,” Faur said. “I am very quiet, and to go from quietly working in my studio to the kind of exposure a show like this offers an artist is quite a dynamic turn of events. It’s empowering and nerve-wracking.”
A native of Northwest Arkansas, Faur earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Arkansas and continued his education with a Master of Fine Arts and Photography at the University of Oregon. Next semester he will be teaching a new course titled Contemporary Arab Art, which he says will be a great resource for students interested in art from that part of the world.
Contacts
Amjad Faur, instructor
Art Department
479-575-5202,
amjad.faur@gmail.com
Sydney Dunn, intern
University Relations
479-575-5555,
sedunn@uark.edu