THE CULTURAL OXYMORON | Art talk curated by Al-Tiba9 Contemporary Art at the opening of Intersect Art and Design

Al-Tiba9 is pleased to invite everyone to the art talk “The Cultural Oxymoron”, organized on the occasion of the VIP launch of the Intersect21 art fair.

The talk will be hosted on Zoom live, on February 16th, 2021 at 1 p.m. (EST).

MODERATOR:

Mohamed Benhadj, Founder & Curator, Al-Tiba9 Contemporary Art

PANELISTS:

Laura Gallon, Founder of Arte Laguna Prize Arsenal of Venice, for the importance of the cultural exchange between Europe and North Africa.

Amirah Sackett, American Muslim Hip-Hop dancer and internationally established dancer for her identity as a Muslim American in the US and dancer woman in the Arab world.

Massimiliano Moro, an artist who creates new equilibriums between light and architecture through the practices of design and sculpture.

Panelists

Laura Gallon

Laura Gallon is an art entrepreneur from Treviso with a great love for her work.

She has been active in art and communication for years: she started a studio with her partner Beatrice Susa in Mogliano Veneto, near Venice, and together they started collecting artistic proposals from all over the world thanks to Arte Laguna Prize. The partner died prematurely in 2017, and since then, Laura has led the business with her team.
In 2006 she founded the Cultural Association MoCA - Modern Contemporary Art, based in Venice, a non-profit association created to enhance contemporary art, which today includes over 200 members, including entrepreneurs, professionals, collectors, and art lovers.

With MoCA, Laura has created Arte Laguna Prize, the most democratic international art competition. Born from the need to discover new talents and bring new life to the contemporary art scene, it received two medals from the President of the Italian Republic and collaborates every year with the major international institutions.
Thanks to the passion and determination of its founders and the team, in 15 years, Arte Laguna Prize has created a huge network of international collaborations involving high-profile galleries, art residences, companies, and jurors at each edition.

A network that starts from Venice offers artists opportunities worldwide, giving life to collaborations that act as catalysts for their professional careers.

Laura has always been able to anticipate the times and find new possibilities, as with the Arsenale of Venice, a place that at the time still needed to be renovated because it was closed for most of the year. The Arte Laguna Prize exhibitions have paved the way for the Arsenale Nord to flourish and become an important hub for various events. She has always been very attentive to environmental issues. In 2015, with the Arte Laguna Prize, she established a special award dedicated to Sustainability, involving the national recycling consortia, Comieco, Coreve, Corepla, Cial, to enhance sustainable, original, and creative art.

Laura also has great communication and promotion experience, which allowed her projects to reach the international dimension as with Arte Laguna World, the art platform founded in 2018 to give visibility to contemporary artists online.

Amirah Sackett

Amirah Sackett (dancer/ choreographer/ teacher) has performed and had her choreography featured locally, nationally, and internationally. Amirah was honored as one of the first female hip-hop artists to receive the Jerome Travel/Study grant in 2008. She curated the international festival for women in Hip-Hop, B-Girl Be in 2009-2010 at Intermedia Arts. In 2011 she curated her own show called “The JOINT Project” in an effort to push hip-hop artists to create work outside of their comfort zone. She created the group “We’re Muslim, Don’t Panic” with dancers Iman and Khadijah, to promote understanding and respect of the female Muslim style of dress called hijab, to non-Muslim audiences.
Since then they have been featured in rapper, Brother Ali’s, music video “Mourning in America” as well as performing all over the country.

Amirah was honored to receive the prestigious Sage Cowles Award “Best Ensemble Performance” for the performance of her choreography “Mourning in America” in 2013. In 2014, Amirah traveled to Dhaka, Bangladesh as part of "Next Level", a hip-hop cultural exchange program by the U.S. State Department and University of North Carolina. In April 2016, Amirah was honored to be part of "Caravanserai- American Voices", a Midwest tour of American Muslim hip-hop artists, including The Reminders, Dj Man-O- Wax, and fellow dancer Mary Mar a.k.a B-Girl Mama. They spent one week in each of the three cities they visited, teaching workshops, performing, and meeting the local communities. Amirah believes hip-hop culture, as a whole, gives voice to those often unheard and is a way to uplift, inspire, and bring change to those communities that need it the most.

Massimiliano Moro

Massimiliano Moro, born in Cittadella (Italy) in 1986 and currently lives and works between Lugano (Switzerland) and Barcelona (Spain). In his artistic practice, he seeks to create new equilibriums between light and architecture through the practices of design and Sculpture. Its interdisciplinary methodology results in interventions that modify the perception of space.

In 2006, he began his artistic training at La Escola Massana, where he studied Sculpture and later graduated in Art and Design. At the European Institute of Design in Barcelona, he obtained the Master IED in Architectural Lighting, where he currently teaches Light Art. During his student years, he collaborated with the international artist Tom Carr, participating in creating the TCTeamwork group with which he made several exhibitions (Centro Huarte en Navarra, Centre Cultural El Carme en Badalona, Museu de Tortosa, among others).
Since 2015, he has been working independently carrying out exhibitions throughout Europe and North Africa (Palermo, Milan, Rome, Lugano, Barcelona, Algiers…). He has also collaborated in numerous projects such as Circolo Turba, Artificio and LlumBCN, and his works are part of various private collections. In 2017 he was elected “Emergent light designer of the year” for the LIT Award. @massimiliano.moro