From The Studio

Is art with a message less art and more message? Is it posssible for people with bad character or odious practices to make great art? Can we use art to promote peace? Is art made by folks who preach love and high ideals superior to that of aggressive people?

These are some of the timely, post-Sept. 11 questions we face at a group show of some 30 Islamic artists, half of them women, at the AE Gallery opposite East Hampton's train station. It was conceived by Alex Echo on Sept. 12, when the spirited painter and gallery dealer contacted a friend, the Moroccan-born painter Selimah Raoui, now living in Westhampton Beach, to help curate a show of Sufi and Muslim artists. Joining their mission, to "create understanding through art and music," was an American Sufi, Melody Shekinah Winnig.

Together, they organized a varied and diverse show of painters, sculptors, printmakers, photographers, videographers, and filmmakers with Muslim connections. With many of them originally having come to this country from the Mideast, the exhibitors now live mostly on Long Island and in New York and New England, with roots in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and North Africa.

Certainly, the curators succeeded in making a multicultural ambience for a world in which wars are not begun or waged by artists. Each piece in the exhibit seems to be saying, if the world were peopled by artists there would be human interaction on only the most life-enriching levels.

While abstract and calligraphic works in this selection are the strongest artistically, figurative works in all media outnumber the others. Generally speaking, this show is a mixed bag, running the gamut from distinguished, dandy, and dreamy to downright dreck.

At times you may feel as though you are looking at the dregs of a yard sale. Yet that's what's refreshing about it. There is no pressure to follow the rules as there is in the cultures from which most of the exhibitors originally came. The challenge here is to pursue the personal, to let the struggle to make art show, to let it all hang out. For many of the artists in this presentation, the experience of individuality and allowing process - discoveries and mistakes as well as successes - to be a part of the finished piece is new.

Since Islamic tradition forbids iconic art, the show will, undoubtedly, receive a thumbs down from fundamentalists for the presence of figurative paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs. Clearly, the artists in this exhibit are showing their divergence from the Islamic anti-figural tradition as well as their rupture from the Taliban, which, last March, destroyed two 1,500-year-old giant Buddhas in their sandstone niches in the Valley of Bamiyan of central Afghanistan.

These exhibitors are letting us know that, while they came from Islamic countries, they are western artists, members of an international culture that emphasizes the freedom of artistic expression, with its values and variety emanating from the individual rather than communally prescribed practices as in the "old country."

The exhibit, in all its mixture of values, celebrates the right of the artist to fail in the pursuit of his own image - with or without figuration. The freedom of the artist to fail is, perhaps, the most treasured value of contemporary culture in contrast to the old Islamic conventions.

In turn, what an American gets from the Islamic culture is equally inspiring, as in the work of Michael Green, an American Sufi, who renders the poems of the Sufi poet Rumi in the calligraphic tradition. In its spirit of abstraction, it appears to have as much in common with the expressionist energy of Jackson Pollock as with Islamic visual practice. Mr. Echo also takes a poem by Rumi and paints it, layer on layer, with a twisting calligraphic scribble of his own, turning the words of the poem into a verbal vortex as well as a painting.

With the rise of interest in Islamic culture, other shows like this one are popping up throughout the country. There is, furthermore, a dramatic increase in conversions to the Islamic faith, according to the Islamic Center of Westbury, with approximately 20,000 Muslims now living in Suffolk County alone.

The exhibiting artists are Ahmed Abdalla, Amal Alwan, Hala Awach, Pat Martin Bates, Taher Behzadi, Kaoutar Bel Bacha, Hayette Boutiba, Anissa Bouziane, Yamina Bouziane, Sabina Haque, Mitch Kaman, Sajed Kamal, Khalid Kodi, Yasmin Pyarali Karmin, Roseline Koerner, Deirdre Lapenna, Shafie Mohamed, Zohair Naghmi, Papa Nurun Nahar, Feridun Ozgoren, Hafeez Shaikh, Bekir Sulunhat, Shekaiba Wakili, Manajee Zarghamee, Emna Zghal, and Lora Zorian.

The exhibit concludes Dec. 31.