Nicolas Moufarrege

Nicolas Abdallah Moufarrege (March 23, 1947 – June 4, 1985) was an artist, curator, and art critic. He was influential in promoting the East Village art scene of the early-1980s.

Early life and education Moufarrege was born on March 23, 1947, in Alexandria, Egypt, to Lebanese parents. He studied at the American University of Beirut, earning an undergraduate degree in 1965, followed by a graduate degree in 1968. That year, he received a Fulbright Program grant and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts on a teaching assistantship at Harvard University.

Career

Moufarrege decided to pursue a career in the arts when he discovered a love for drawing and embroidery after making a patch for a pair of his jeans. In 1973 he returned to Beirut, and his first solo exhibition was held there at Triad Condas Gallery.

Moufarrege primarily worked on stretched needlepoint canvas using thread and pigment to create vibrant scenes that utilized imagery appropriated from Pop Art, Islamic patterns, and other sources. He moved to Paris when the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975.

Art criticism In 1981, Moufarrege moved to New York City and became involved with the East Village art scene. Moufarrege wrote art criticism and reviews primarily for Arts Magazine and Flash Art that were instrumental in promoting galleries such as Civilian Warfare, Fun Gallery, and Gracie Mansion Gallery that established the East Village scene art. He championed the early work of artists like Greer Lankton and Rhonda Zwillinger, and he was one of the first writers to recognize the graffiti art of Futura 2000, Fab Five Freddy, IZ the Wiz, and AVANT . Moufarrege was openly gay, and his wide-ranging essays often included explorations of his identity and personal connections to the art scene that he was embedded in. One of his early pieces, "Lavender: On Homosexuality and Art," was a longform critique of the groundbreaking 1982 exhibition, Extended Sensibilities: Homosexual Presence in Contemporary Art, curated by Dan Cameron at the New Museum. During 1983 and 1984 Moufarrege wrote a seven-part series grouped under the title "The Mutant International" that used Marvel Comics and the concept of the mutant as a conceit to show how East Village artists built on the legacies of Pop Art and Neo-expressionism in creating their own styles and movement.

Exhibitions Moufarrege had a studio at MoMA PS1 from 1982 to 1984 where he had two studio shows. His work was also exhibited in group shows there as part of the studio program. In 1983, his work was included in the show "Three Part Variety," curated by David Wojnarowicz and Richard Hambleton at the Alexander Milliken Gallery.

In 1983, Moufarrege had his first solo show in New York, "On Pins and Needles," at the Gabrielle Bryers Gallery. As a curator Moufarrege organized two group exhibitions at the Monique Knowlton Gallery, "Intoxication" and "Ecstasy", in 1983 and 1984, respectively. His final curatorial exhibition, "Correspondences" New York Art Now," opened later that year at the Laforet Museum in Tokyo. In 1986, Peter Hujar included one of his portraits of Moufarrege in what would be his last show at Gracie Mansion Gallery before his death.

In 1987, Tim Greathouse, Cynthia Kuebel, Elaine Reichek, and Bill Sterling organized what was then the largest exhibition of Moufarrege's work at The Clocktower gallery. In her review of the show for the New York Times, Roberta Smith noted that "Moufarrege lived long enough to become completely himself and to make art that reflects a particular time and place while also transcending them." Curator Dean Daderko organized the exhibition "Side X Side" for Visual AIDS at La MaMa Galleria in 2008 that included Moufarrege, Scott Burton, Kate Huh, Martin Wong, and Carrie Yamaoka. In 2019 Daderko curated Moufarrege's first solo museum exhibition, "Recognize My Sign," at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. The exhibition subsequently travelled to the Queens Museum.