Marina Lorenzini

Capturing the Sound of Abandoned Space

Jacob Kirkegaard, still from Aion, 2006.

Aion (2006) is a recording of some of the abandoned spaces of Chernobyl. It is a portrait of four empty spaces: a swimming pool, a concert hall, a gymnasium, and a church. Kirkegaard recorded ten minutes within each space and then played the recording back into the room, layering the sound to create a unique tone emanating from a seeming void.

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Cicero's Presentation of Epicurean Theology

Book I of Cicero’s De Natura Deorum summarizes several theological doctrines that were being investigated during this time. Through the character of Velleius, Cicero presents the Epicurean perspective on particular properties of their god(s)’ existence. Velleius proposes many points for why this is a flawed argument. Two assertions that are key to Epicurean theology are also heavily remarked upon in Velleius’ monologue: the necessity for gods to have a means for sensation and thus a divine shape.

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Developments during the Baroque Age: A Prefiguration for Installation Art

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, 1647-1652.

Baroque artists embraced dynamism and theatricality. The picture plane of Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas involves multiple perspectives that extend outside of the painting. Sculpture itself expands the physical movement of the subject and the viewer, as demonstrated in Giambologna’s The Rape of the Sabine Women. Furthermore, sculpture became an integral part of architecture, culminating in Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s The Ecstasy of St. Teresa. In this instance, the chapel did not solely frame the sculpture, rather it became the sculpture, the work of art. The unity of all parts of the artwork, an expansion of the concept of an artwork, and the combination of artistic disciplines reconsecrated the viewer, the artist, and the subject’s vision regarding the artwork. Four centuries later, contemporary artists have applied these theories of multiple perspectives and media, evolved throughout previous artistic movements, to installation art.

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Ethical Debates Surrounding the Return of Egyptian Antiquities

Mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer, 19th Dynasty (1307-1196 BC).

Economists have estimated that today’s illegal antiquities trade has become a multi-billion dollar business, more profitable as well as lesser consequences than the narcotics industry. Multiple legal and ethical questions have arisen focused on how the objects have been attained, what that means for their return, and ultimately who is the just owner of these artifacts. While there has been some political and legal precedent set for objects that do have proper documentation, governments have been brought into disputes concerning the repatriation of antiquities.

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Interior Spaces' Connection to Female Identity

Lalla Essaydi, Harem Revisited #51, 2013.

In the work of Rania Matar, Shadi Ghadirian, and Lalla Essaydi, viewers receive three perspectives on the dynamics at play between women and the interior space. Matar speaks to the young girl’s bedroom as a liberal space for academic and artistic expression. Ghadirian displays an interior as a place for confronting tensions between past and present political climates. Finally, Essaydi uses the harem as a place to exhibit the contemporary Arab female identity.

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Islamic Influence on Art and Architecture of the Mediterranean: Sicily and Venice

Two distinct moments in history are exemplary of the intertwined relationships that the Islamic world had with the larger Mediterranean world and, ultimately, how it is a vital part of the Mediterranean history and culture: Sicily from the 9th to the 12th centuries and Venice during the 15th to 17th centuries. This lecture aims to challenge the definition of what is considered an “Islamic” piece of artwork. Is an object “Islamic” due to its ability to invoke spirituality? This is a topic that I have thoroughly avoided discussion here. Is it because it comes out of territory ruled by an “Islamic”-style of governance? Or, is it “Islamic” because it recalls the technological advancements arising from the “Islamic” society?
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Jean-Léon Gérôme's Role in Constructing A Secular French Nation

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Whirling Dervishes, c. 1895.

The components of a Nation are often unclear and there is no predictable way to achieve a Nation. The 1980s saw radical changes in how scholars analyzed Nations and Nationalism. This paper uses the theories behind Nationalistic identity set forth by scholars such as Fredrik Barth, Ernest Gellner, and Eric Hobsbawm as the basis for argumentation. In particular, how the quest to define a Nation usually involves obscuring history, engaging the mass population under an ideology, and defining boundaries between one society and another. These themes become clear through the paintings of organized religion by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 - 1904). The second half of the nineteenth century saw France transform from a stronghold of the Roman Catholic Church into an increasingly secularized country. His paintings, created while traveling or after having returned, of the Near East show religion as not within the boundaries of the French Nation-State or their culture. Common to other narratives during the creation and maintenance of a Nation-State, an Other was necessary to create and this was plenty pervasive within Near Eastern society.

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Motives behind Refugee Policy in Switzerland

Swiss Propaganda Poster for the Initiative against the construction of minarets, 2009

The massive influx of refugees to Europe in the past few years has sparked a tension in Switzerland between its humanitarian identity and commitment to self-preservation. The laws in Switzerland regarding asylum-seekers are becoming more strict than the surrounding Schengen Area countries. However, Switzerland has opted-in to a European Union program to reallocate refugees and is increasing its 2018 immigration budget. This dichotomy emerges from two key facets in Swiss contemporary conscience: the enduring role of humanitarian and inter-governmental organizations in the country and the rejection of Jewish refugees during World War II by the Swiss government. The global impact of these organizations and the rejection of Jewish refugees during WWII each has unique implications to the perceptions of Swiss neutrality and the population’s anxiety about retaining their neutral status. Furthermore, Swiss citizens today have not reacted as strongly to the treatment of Syrian refugees as they did in the 1990s during the revelation of Switzerland’s policy towards Jewish refugees during WWII. If Switzerland seeks to avoid another “dark past”, the population and government must recognize the distinct parallels in refugee policy and rhetoric between WWII and today.

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On the Dichotomy of Perceptions Regarding Sicily

The Palatine Chapel, c. 12th century.

Sicily has played host to various cultures throughout history. Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, and Normans have seen the incredible opportunities in the largest Mediterranean island. With the change in power, marked a variety of peoples journeying to see its wonders. However, the diversity in the religious and cultural backgrounds remained of significant importance for how the island was perceived by such people either traveling to Sicily or already having been born there. Throughout primary sources, there is a sense that the conglomerate of cultures creates a perpetual sense of otherness. Whether as an otherness of incredible and exotic beauty or an otherness of customs; Roman, Arab, Andalusian, Sicilian, and Muslim writers commented on the Sicilian situation.

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Sultan Mehmet II Construction of Muslim and Ottoman Prestige"

Gentile Bellini, Sultan Mehmed II, 1480.

When the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, many European elites felt threatened. The Pope, Nicholas V, called for a crusade against the Ottomans and many saw the Turks as barbaric and lawless. However, the Ottoman Turks saw themselves as the true heirs to the Roman Empire. Emerging from the Byzantine Empire, the Ottomans were desperate to define themselves as a culture separate from and superior to the Byzantines. Aware of the developments, most notably within the city-states of the Italian Peninsula, termed the Renaissance, Sultan Mehmed II invited many European scholars to his court to help elevate the Ottoman Empire.

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The Camaraderie of Living in the Skies

Lucien Samaha, Cat Eyes in the Galley (The Flight Attendant Years), c. 1985, printed 2013.

Samaha, born in Beirut, was accustomed early to the airline lifestyle. He has fond childhood memories of airline food and plush first class chairs. He began taking pictures in high school and continued doing so throughout his time working for Trans World Airlines, 1978 to 1986. Then, at the Eastman Kodak Company after his time as a flight attendant. He’s been a meticulous documenter and archivist of his life for decades, a role that’s echoed in his founding of the Arab Image Foundation.

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Women of the Garden

Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni d’Alemagna, The Enthroned Madonna and Child with Angels and the Church Fathers Jerome, Gregory, Ambrose, and Augustine, 1446.

Centuries of artistic desires have tailored images of the garden, an enclosed area with bounds of vegetation, to their era. In the fifteenth century, Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni d’Alemagna made the garden’s walls analogous to Mary’s virginal womb. The Netherlandish painter Gerard David propagated this sentiment during the the sixteenth century. Though, in the early seventeenth century with a Dutch painter David Vinckboons, the garden begins to evolve into a realm of theater, abandon, and sexuality. Historians can pin this on the transition of patronage, from the Catholic Church to the Protestant aristocracy. Continuing into the eighteenth century, Jean-Antoine Watteau and Jean-Honoré Fragonard push this even further. The death of Louis XIV meant a lack of religious authority on the country and the aristocracy gained more authority and social liberty. The final work in the analysis, Fragonard’s The Swing, encapsulates a reversal from the hortus conclusus to the hortus apertus. Artists still relate the garden with feminine sexuality, but switch from virginity to promiscuity.

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10 Facts You May Not Know About Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1614–20.

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