What a Palestinian-born artist makes of America

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On the same day that 50 Muslims were killed in New Zealand, including six Palestinians, a couple of dozen people gathered on the second floor of the Student Union at Michigan State University to hear Qais Assali, 32, a visiting artist from Palestine, speak about his latest solo exhibition, “Costume Party at the Moslem Temple.”

Assali’s exhibit, at the Union until May 11, exemplifies the connections among communities and sites he’s discovered, such as New Palestine, Ohio, New Palestine, Indiana, the Moslem Shriners and Dearborn.

Assali first learned of the Moslem Shriners while living in Chicago. The religious organization has footholds around the world and is known for bedazzled fezzes and boisterous parades.

Assali described the Shriners as a “typical Orientalist group” created in the 19th century by Freemasons who appropriate Arabic culture.

Assali is looking for archaic uses of “Arabesque” aesthetic in Shriner temples. A site he specifically researched was the Medinah Temple in Chicago, which inspired the piece “Ahl Al Medinah, Shurafa’ Al Ayn.” The temple once belonged to The Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, a fraternity or secret society of Freemasons unconnected to Arab culture or Islam.

 

Assali collaborated with Iranian American artist Amanda Assaley to take the mold and cast of the Medinah Temple’s bawaba — Arabic for gate — that is “very misspelled and doesn’t make any sense.”

The final project is Assali’s rumination on the contradictions of the Medinah Temple — a mosque that was technically never a mosque — as the former gathering place for a secret brotherhood now turned into a Bloomingdale’s department store. He sees the building as a running joke that “continues to confuse the location, function and framing of site.”

The irony of the fear and desire of Arabic culture in the West can be understood through the contradictions of the Shriners. “Costume Party at the Moslem Temple” includes documentation of his surreal visit to the Medinah Temple, as well as the title installation, inspired by visiting the Detroit Shriners in Southfield for their annual Halloween Party.

Assali took pictures at the Southfield temple of walls lined with photographs of white men dressed as clowns, Arabs, cowboys and Indians. He also found a picture of a nude Playboy bunny he later identified as Ginger Peachy.

The artist wondered if he was overreacting to the site, which he felt mocked and silenced Muslims. Staying true to his voice, Assali blew up his photographs to massive proportions to create a billboard-sized collage that read “Moslem is Family”—also taken from the Detroit Shriner’s temple. Next, he met with three advertising agencies in Dearborn to pitch having the billboard on display over West Grand River Avenue between Southfield and Dearborn.

In the end, the billboard called “Costume Party at the Moslem Temple” was rejected by all three agencies, including an Arab-owned agency, even after removing the nude Playboy model. This was the artist’s plan. By having his billboard-sized collage of images taken from the Detroit Shriner’s temple deemed as “too offensive” in some way validated his issues with Arabic iconography used in the temple.

While Assali’s work highlights the disconnect and confusion between America and the Middle East, his work in the classroom aids in filling those communication gaps.

In January, Assali began offering a course called Critical Geopolitics and Collaborative Practices at MSU, which features a virtual collaboration between students and artists from the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art in Ramallah, on the central West Bank. The goal is to break down barriers such as politics, language, time zones and stereotypes to have conversations.

“I’m trying very hard to have an equal exchange of teaching, learning and giving back,” Assali said.

One of his students, Jaime Davidson, recognized the weight of this task in the first assignment, an introductory video to their collaborative partners in Palestine.

“As an American-Jewish person, I was thinking a lot about what it means to be working on an art project with someone in Palestine. It’s very heavy,” Davidson said. “I was thinking so much about how is it important for me, the oppressor, to introduce myself to the oppressed.”

Since that assignment and working with their collaborative partner, May Marei, Davidson has come to new revelations about their identity as a gender non-conforming person —a concept not supported in the Arab language.

Assali is pleased with the progress his students have made. He explains his main objective is to have them “find more borders” while getting their answers from someone their own age.

But he was sure to make it clear that this is not an art class. It is a comprehensive course teaching his students how to ask the right questions to reach solutions before tragedy strikes.

"I want them to dig locally and globally," Assali said.

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