THE UGLY
Politics and Aesthetic of Taste
Art Direction
While understanding beauty commonly signifies intellectual refinement, appreciating ugliness reflects cultural vulgarity, or lack of good taste. In this exhibition, for example, while making a comment about an art work can render you an aesthete, connoisseur, or an arbiter of taste, it can also make you a vulgar, pervert, or a tasteless person. What makes an art work ugly or beautiful, worthy of praise or condemnation, has to do with the dominant politics and aesthetics of taste in the era in which we live in. This exhibition examines why the ugly has been continuously represented, appreciated, and preserved across the globe. To do this, it delves deep into the ugly through its common global manifestations, such as: kitsch, pornography, abjection, profanation.
Curation: Ali Shobeiri
Politics and Aesthetic of Taste
Art Direction
While understanding beauty commonly signifies intellectual refinement, appreciating ugliness reflects cultural vulgarity, or lack of good taste. In this exhibition, for example, while making a comment about an art work can render you an aesthete, connoisseur, or an arbiter of taste, it can also make you a vulgar, pervert, or a tasteless person. What makes an art work ugly or beautiful, worthy of praise or condemnation, has to do with the dominant politics and aesthetics of taste in the era in which we live in. This exhibition examines why the ugly has been continuously represented, appreciated, and preserved across the globe. To do this, it delves deep into the ugly through its common global manifestations, such as: kitsch, pornography, abjection, profanation.
Curation: Ali Shobeiri