Time
+ Venue >>
Azra Akšamija explores various ways of negotiating
spatial relationships of Islamic religious practices and identities
in a secular and contemporary context. Her mosque projects address
various states and needs of a cosmopolitan generation of Muslims,
and provide a reinterpretation of the underlying histories and
cultural traditions. Her projects reveal the variable typology
of the mosque, which can and must adapt itself to the different
contexts and cultures. One example of this is Kunstmoschee
which reinterprets the art historical and architectural tradition
of the Secession into a multifunctional ornamental landscape of
prayer-rugs installed in public space. The other example is her
Wearable Mosque project-series, clothes
that can be transformed into minimal prayer-spaces, thorough which
Akšamija investigates the formal limits of the mosque. While
breaking down the territorial claims of religious places, she
brings the aesthetic, artistic, socially constructive and educational
aspects of the mosque to the fore, and transforms them into a
meeting place and communication forum for people with different
cultural needs. With this, Akšamija aims to shift the focus
from the biased and politicized representations of Islam in favor
of the beauty of artifacts from Islamic aesthetic culture.
Azra Akšamija is an Austrian artist and architect
based in Cambridge, USA. Since fall 2004 she has been affiliated
with Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Ph.D. candidate
in the Department of Architecture (History Theory and Criticism
Section / Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture). Born in
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1976, she graduated from the
Faculty of Architecture at the Technical University Graz, Austria
in 2001, and received her M.Arch from Princeton University, USA
in 2004. Her work has been widely published and exhibited in venues
such as the Generali Foundation Vienna (2002), Biennial de Valencia
(2003), Berlin Art Fair (2003), Graz Biennial of Media and Architecture
(2003), Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig (2003), Liverpool
Biennial (2004), Witte de With Rotterdam (2005), Sculpture Center
New York City (2006), and Secession Vienna (2007). She is currently
researching her dissertation on contemporary mosque architecture
in post-socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina.
|