This article was originally published in Harper's Bazaar Art Arabia in their June 2018 issue
From the ‘Redressing the Renaissance Series’ 2018. Image courtesy of Aashish Rajesh.
by Suzy Sikorski
Many are familiar with the timelessness of Raphael’s ‘School of Athens’, one of the most famous frescoes by the Renaissance painter found in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. Depicting an ideal community of the greatest thinkers, artists and scientists of classical antiquity, the work’s vanishing point centers on Plato on the left and Aristotle, his student, on the right. However, if we are to look closely at the image above, we notice this photograph is a compelling reenactment of the Renaissance scene from a group of sixty-one staff, faculty and students in the American University of Sharjah (AUS). Plato is in fact played by Professor Martin Giesen, the founding dean of AUS’s College of Art, Architecture and Design (CAAD) and to his left, the current acting Dean Varkki Pallathucheril, plays Aristotle.
Seven graduating female architecture students at the American University of Sharjah are challenging the timeless elements of this work out of their love for Renaissance. They choreographed a complete reenactment of these iconic scenes, staged in places from the Hatta dam to the AUS campus. Over the years, they have reenacted paintings which culminated in ‘The School of Athens’ as part of a a series titled ‘Redressing the Renaissance,’ of which they exhibited in their college last month. ‘Redressing the Renaissance’ looks to reconsider the inherent themes and stereotypes of the canon of Western art history and firmly grounds the work in the local cultural context
In this reenactment of Raphael, these seven students dedicated this to their Professor Giesen, actually surprising him that early Friday morning when he was brought to the main faculty building by Dean Varkki and subsequently ‘stepping into’ a fully choreographed frame of 60 other faculty, staff and students. All were perfectly in position in accordance to their respective roles, each expected to study the work, in an attempt to mimic their role’s demeanor. In this process materialized a completely perfect moment deeply rooted in the shared sense of the college community culturally specific to their education and careers in Sharjah.
From left to right: Divya Mahadevan, Farah Monib, Zahra’a Nasralla, Uthra Varghese, Gopika Praveen, Tasnim Tinawi, and Nabeela Zeitoun. ‘Redressing the Renaissance’ exhibition, April 2018. Image courtesy of Noor Eid.
As these seven students mention, ‘The overarching themes of our recreations are to reconsider the rather limited representation, per today’s context, in celebrated works from the past and to spark conversation about accepted conventions.’
Here, Raphael’s scantily clad figures are swaddled in an abundance of fabrics and the Roman Catholic elements in this Vatican Fresco are now played out by Hindus, Muslims and Christians. Adorned in shaylas, bedsheets and saris and armed with architectural tools, the sitters were color-coded in accordance to the labeled sections to which they were assigned, each organized by a member of the group.
As Professor Giesen mentions, ‘The students' re-enactment debunks Renaissance notions in post-modern fashion. High and low culture hierarchy is shattered. Commercial exploitation of an original product is avoided. The cult of originality, embodied in the single-minded grouchiness of Michelangelo, is replaced by cheery teamwork. The almost all-male cast in the fresco is rebalanced by plenty of women, in recognition of the gender ratio of the College's student body. High-brow pretensions of the fine art of painting – a solitary affair of the lonely genius – are replaced by clever crafts, historically associated with women's work: the textile world, linked to weaving, tailoring and dressing.’
Exhibition at the American University of Sharjah. Image courtesy of Noor Eid.
The evolution of these student’s project is compelling; ‘The School of Athens’ is their most advanced recreation among others, requiring weeks of Photoshop most notably from one of their creators, Tasnim Tinawi, to fine-tune its details. The work not only celebrates their passion to savour this fleeting moment of their senior year, but also complements well the vibrancy of the Sharjah arts community with biennales and museum exhibitions that set out reanalyze the canons of art history within the Middle Eastern and local context.