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Alf Layla Wa Layla
The Thousand Nights and a Night
You can read the 16 volumes here:
http://www.wollamshram.ca/1001/index.htm
Introduction
One Thousand and One Nights (Arabic: أَلْف لَيْلَة وَلَيْلَة, translit. ʾAlf layla wa-layla)[1] is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition (c. 1706 – c. 1721), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.[2]
The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central, and South Asia and North Africa. Some tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Greek, Indian, Jewish and Turkish[3] folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Abbasid and Mamluk eras, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hezār Afsān (Persian: هزار افسان, lit. A Thousand Tales), which in turn relied partly on Indian elements.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Thousand_and_One_Nights
Related Videos
In Search Of History - Arabian Nights (History Channel Documentary)
1001 Arabian Nights (Egyptian TV)
Shahrzad (Tales of 1001 Nights) - Rimsky Korsakov
Recent News
US artists reinterpret Arabia’s ‘1001 nights’ in Beirut exhibition
Maria Brito, the show’s US-based Venezuelan curator of Lebanese ancestry, said the theme is close to her heart being familiar with Arab and Middle Eastern culture.
Sunday 31/03/2019 - https://thearabweekly.com/us-artists-reinterpret-arabias-1001-nights-beirut-exhibition
BEIRUT - The “One Thousand and One Nights” folk tales, known as “Arabian Nights,” have inspired artists, film-makers, choreographers and writers for centuries. It was also the theme of the inaugural exhibition of Artual Gallery in Beirut showcasing artistic interpretations of the fantastical narrative by seven contemporary American artists.
Maria Brito, the show’s US-based Venezuelan curator of Lebanese ancestry, said the theme is close to her heart being familiar with Arab and Middle Eastern culture.
“When I was a child, I had to read “One Thousand and One Nights” at school and I was always fascinated by the idea of this woman who was telling stories to a man who wanted to kill her,” Brito said. “It was also a fascination about how the interiors looked like and this place where Scheherazade was lying down on a bed filled with pillows of silk.
“Even back then it was about strength, feminism and creativity as well as (Scheherazade) having the intelligence to save her life.”
Brito said she selected young, established artists who could focus on bodies and figures while working on interiors and space. “Those are the two most important parts to me that could visually translate the tale. The works came out very beautiful and very colourful,” she said.
“Every artist in this show put out what they hide in their heart and are related to the tales. The works are very colourful and very positive. So I want to think about the idea of having hope of seeing a different side of the Middle East, seeing the positive legacy and looking to the future,” Brito said.
None of the seven artists had previously exhibited in the Middle East and their works have been created specifically for the new gallery’s launch. Two of them, Canyon Castator and Jonathan Chapline, travelled to Lebanon for the exhibition opening.
Castator drew on Scheherazade’s much-loved story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” In his work “Den of Thieves,” he depicted various figures, including America’s founding fathers, pickpockets, cartoon characters and artefacts such as the “Mona Lisa” and Nefertiti’s bust.
“As a kid I remember the tale of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves as being the hideout of all these bad guys. In a more contemporary sense, I wanted to reimagine theft as a greater term from border theft, to wage theft, theft of property and copyrights, theft of identity, et cetera,” Castator said.
“The ‘Mona Lisa,’ the most famous stolen painting of all time, and Nefertiti’s bust displayed in Berlin museum where it obviously does not belong represent cultural theft that happened during World War Two. The green Grinch cartoon character stole Christmas. I also wanted to evoke the theft of a nation so I incorporated the founding fathers; after all, America is stolen land,” Castator said.
“A person can only rob you one time but these terrible figures seem to rob us every day,” he added.
Chapline’s “The Book” and “The Room” and four sculptures sought to portray the space and objects related to the tale.
“I have always worked with some kind of domestic-based interiors that are deeply personal. I really wanted to talk about how I visualise this narrative that I grew up as a child knowing about,” Chapline said.
“The Book” is a kind of introduction, almost like in the very beginning of a fairy tale movie where you have the book opening up,” Chapline said.
Describing his portraying of the setting of the tale in “The Room,” Chapline said: “For me it is like when you exist in a narrative and in a kind of dream lights your senses are high, you can go anywhere, you can do anything.”
His sculptures, including a lamp, a dagger and a head, are an extension of the paintings that talk about the narratives of “One Thousand and One Nights,” he added.
Monica Kim-Garza’s “Woman Sitting on Carpet,” “The Magic Carpet” and “Some Kind of a Story” celebrate women. Rosson Crow’s “Scheherazade’s Domain” is a colourful visual of objects that depicted the tale’s setting. In “Steeplechase,” Allison Zuckerman uses art history. Her rendition of Scheherazade is as if she was running away at night while her sister is telling stories to the king, who is minimised in the painting.
Jamea Richmond-Edwards’ untitled painting shows a “black Scheherazade” on an extremely colourful background. Holly Coulis represented the tale’s “collation” in her works “Figs and Coffee, Moon and Sun” and “Water, Apples, Pomegranates.”
Gallery owner Hind Ahmad described the show as “the perfect launch project” for Artual Gallery, which aims to introduce international emerging and established artists to the Arab world and to initiate a true cultural dialogue between East and West.
“The Thousand and One Nights” exhibition runs through May 3.
The Thousand Nights and a Night
You can read the 16 volumes here:
http://www.wollamshram.ca/1001/index.htm
Introduction
One Thousand and One Nights (Arabic: أَلْف لَيْلَة وَلَيْلَة, translit. ʾAlf layla wa-layla)[1] is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition (c. 1706 – c. 1721), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.[2]
The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central, and South Asia and North Africa. Some tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Greek, Indian, Jewish and Turkish[3] folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Abbasid and Mamluk eras, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hezār Afsān (Persian: هزار افسان, lit. A Thousand Tales), which in turn relied partly on Indian elements.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Thousand_and_One_Nights
Related Videos
In Search Of History - Arabian Nights (History Channel Documentary)
1001 Arabian Nights (Egyptian TV)
Shahrzad (Tales of 1001 Nights) - Rimsky Korsakov
Recent News
US artists reinterpret Arabia’s ‘1001 nights’ in Beirut exhibition
Maria Brito, the show’s US-based Venezuelan curator of Lebanese ancestry, said the theme is close to her heart being familiar with Arab and Middle Eastern culture.
Sunday 31/03/2019 - https://thearabweekly.com/us-artists-reinterpret-arabias-1001-nights-beirut-exhibition
BEIRUT - The “One Thousand and One Nights” folk tales, known as “Arabian Nights,” have inspired artists, film-makers, choreographers and writers for centuries. It was also the theme of the inaugural exhibition of Artual Gallery in Beirut showcasing artistic interpretations of the fantastical narrative by seven contemporary American artists.
Maria Brito, the show’s US-based Venezuelan curator of Lebanese ancestry, said the theme is close to her heart being familiar with Arab and Middle Eastern culture.
“When I was a child, I had to read “One Thousand and One Nights” at school and I was always fascinated by the idea of this woman who was telling stories to a man who wanted to kill her,” Brito said. “It was also a fascination about how the interiors looked like and this place where Scheherazade was lying down on a bed filled with pillows of silk.
“Even back then it was about strength, feminism and creativity as well as (Scheherazade) having the intelligence to save her life.”
Brito said she selected young, established artists who could focus on bodies and figures while working on interiors and space. “Those are the two most important parts to me that could visually translate the tale. The works came out very beautiful and very colourful,” she said.
“Every artist in this show put out what they hide in their heart and are related to the tales. The works are very colourful and very positive. So I want to think about the idea of having hope of seeing a different side of the Middle East, seeing the positive legacy and looking to the future,” Brito said.
None of the seven artists had previously exhibited in the Middle East and their works have been created specifically for the new gallery’s launch. Two of them, Canyon Castator and Jonathan Chapline, travelled to Lebanon for the exhibition opening.
Castator drew on Scheherazade’s much-loved story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” In his work “Den of Thieves,” he depicted various figures, including America’s founding fathers, pickpockets, cartoon characters and artefacts such as the “Mona Lisa” and Nefertiti’s bust.
“As a kid I remember the tale of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves as being the hideout of all these bad guys. In a more contemporary sense, I wanted to reimagine theft as a greater term from border theft, to wage theft, theft of property and copyrights, theft of identity, et cetera,” Castator said.
“The ‘Mona Lisa,’ the most famous stolen painting of all time, and Nefertiti’s bust displayed in Berlin museum where it obviously does not belong represent cultural theft that happened during World War Two. The green Grinch cartoon character stole Christmas. I also wanted to evoke the theft of a nation so I incorporated the founding fathers; after all, America is stolen land,” Castator said.
“A person can only rob you one time but these terrible figures seem to rob us every day,” he added.
Chapline’s “The Book” and “The Room” and four sculptures sought to portray the space and objects related to the tale.
“I have always worked with some kind of domestic-based interiors that are deeply personal. I really wanted to talk about how I visualise this narrative that I grew up as a child knowing about,” Chapline said.
“The Book” is a kind of introduction, almost like in the very beginning of a fairy tale movie where you have the book opening up,” Chapline said.
Describing his portraying of the setting of the tale in “The Room,” Chapline said: “For me it is like when you exist in a narrative and in a kind of dream lights your senses are high, you can go anywhere, you can do anything.”
His sculptures, including a lamp, a dagger and a head, are an extension of the paintings that talk about the narratives of “One Thousand and One Nights,” he added.
Monica Kim-Garza’s “Woman Sitting on Carpet,” “The Magic Carpet” and “Some Kind of a Story” celebrate women. Rosson Crow’s “Scheherazade’s Domain” is a colourful visual of objects that depicted the tale’s setting. In “Steeplechase,” Allison Zuckerman uses art history. Her rendition of Scheherazade is as if she was running away at night while her sister is telling stories to the king, who is minimised in the painting.
Jamea Richmond-Edwards’ untitled painting shows a “black Scheherazade” on an extremely colourful background. Holly Coulis represented the tale’s “collation” in her works “Figs and Coffee, Moon and Sun” and “Water, Apples, Pomegranates.”
Gallery owner Hind Ahmad described the show as “the perfect launch project” for Artual Gallery, which aims to introduce international emerging and established artists to the Arab world and to initiate a true cultural dialogue between East and West.
“The Thousand and One Nights” exhibition runs through May 3.
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