Darat al Funun currently on

Jordanian arts foundation unveils a new facade and a new acquisition

The grounds of Darat al-Funun - the 12-year-old arts foundation where much of Jordan's cultural life takes hold - slide down a steep hill on the eastern edge of Amman's old and densely residential Jabal Weibdeh district. A labyrinthine network of walkways, wildflower gardens, and stone stairwells link three renovated buildings from the early 20th century to the ruins of a sixth-century Byzantine church, thought to be built on the remains of a Roman temple.

This is a site that is steeped in history. The main building, constructed around 1918, once served as the official residence for the British commander of the Arab Legion, then housed a British Officer's club, and played host to a certain guest named T. E. Lawrence sometime in between. A second structure was built by Circassian workers for the former governor of Akka in Palestine. A third provided a home for leftist Prime Minister Suleiman Nabulsi in the 1950s.

But for the opening of the fall art season, Suha Shoman, President, has placed two decidedly contemporary brackets on either end of Darat al-Funun, known locally as the "Darat." Last week, at the top of the site, she unveiled new renovations to the foundation's front facade, produced in angular concrete and sleek steel by architect and artist Sahel al-Hiyari.

At the bottom, she curated an exhibition of 30 works culled from the foundation's permanent collection, all of which revolve around the themes of exile and alienation raised in a single, newly acquired piece, Mona Hatoum's 1983 video installation "So Much I Want to Say."

"I knew Sahel as an artist, as an architect, and as a person," explains Shoman. "I wanted to do this restoration, he showed me a proposal, and I loved it. We were conceiving it as a work of art."

There is, indeed, a sculptural dimension to the new wall and entryway to the foundation, with its linear incisions and rectangular concrete protrusions. Hiyari, who was born in Cairo and is based in Amman, looked to the site's existing architecture and its different materials and building techniques for inspiration. In his practice over the last 10 years, he has distinguished himself from many of his peers by engaging rather than shunning the results of rapid urbanization, apparent in the proliferation of cheap and speedily done concrete structures throughout the developing world.