Where's Osama?

This current work is on display at the Second Annual Black and White Show/ Artwork

featuring creative use of only black & white.

Maple Grove Arts Center 7916 Main StreetMaple Grove, MN 55369 www.maplegroveartscenter.org August 9 - September 24, 2010

Opening Reception - Friday August 12, 7:00-9:00pm

Open Gallery: Mondays & Thursdays 7-9pm

The art work is a portrait of another artist working in Minneapolis - the "Monday Market" photograph of Osama Esid's work typifies our looming preoccupation with the Middle East and the Orient - it also creatively uses only black & white to identify the socio-political ideas about which it masks. "Where's Osama" is a colossal reinforcement of a statement on the scale where a title can allude to a different context. Asking where Osama Esid "is" is as much being part of our West's projection upon a particular jihadist Muslim man, as the thing it questions in our community that could identify him as belonging to a similar type.

I collaged a photocopy of Esid's "Monday Market," (skyline of Cairo, Egypt) whose original was currently on exhibit at Franklin Arts, last month, in Minneapolis. Osama is also a member of www.mnartists.org and a studio artist in the Castket Arts Building of NE, Minneapolis.