Exhibition: Retracing A Disappearing Landscape

Today I attended the opening of the exhibition "Retracing A Disappearing Landscape’,  held at the P21 Gallery in London, which runs from 29 March-15 May, 2018 and explores "people’s direct experience of and fascination with memory and personal history as well as the collective narratives that arise in connection with modern day Libya."  Artists featured included Elham …

Al Hangar and the New Generation of Saudi Artists

Myrna Award writes about  Al Hangar (The Warehouse) an initiative by young Saudi artists, who describe it as a cultural movement which aims to “ignite a sense of community.” Artists are individually invited to show work at Al Hangar, similarly to a biennial. And so far, they’ve been inundated with requests to participate, an indication of …

From Mathaf to Madrid

The exhibition Looking at the World Around You: Contemporary Works from Qatar Museums is being held from 9 February to 19 June 2016 at the Santander Art Gallery in Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, the "first major loan exhibition in Europe of works from Mathaf, the Arab Museum of Contemporary Art in Doha."   This selection, more …

Sara Ouhaddou: Reinventing Old Patterns

French Moroccan artist Sara Ouhaddou will be taking part in a residency program in Brooklyn, New York at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP). Ouhaddou's art is based on the reinvention and transformation of traditional patterns and designs in collaboration with Moroccan craftswomen. In this interview, she describes her work as a "deconstruction": "I …

Highlights of Shubbak 2015

In a wide-ranging article which provides an overview of the Arab art scene in the West, Lana Asfour writes about the commission and performance of an opera based on the acclaimed novel Cities of Salt by Abdelrahman Munif as part of this year's ongoing Shubbak festival. As Asfour writes, Cities of Salt is "arguably [Munif's] greatest work, …

Palestinian Land Day

Yom Al Ard, the Palestinian Land Day commemorates the protests that took place on 30th of March 1976, against the government's decision to expropriate 20,000 acres in the Sakhneen area, for “security and settlement purposes.”  During the protests, six unarmed Palestinian citizens were killed.This year, the Land Day comes very soon after the Israeli elections, with Netanyahu's victory …

Houmam Al Sayed’s Pickles

Syrian artist Houmam Al Sayed explores the effects of oppression on the individual in the Arab world in “Pickles”, on exhibition at Beirut's Mark Hachem gallery until June 30 As the name suggests, the exhibition takes a darkly comical or satiric angle on its theme, as represented by the squat deformed figures in his works. …

Space and Power: Dina Haddadin

As a practicisng architect, multidisciplinary artist Dina Haddadin's work often focuses on the visual tension between the clean architectural lines of construction and the disordered, unorganized aspects of empty spaces and the ephemereality of place. Her bio from her site describes her work as dealing with "the struggle over the right to the city and …

From Iraq to Syria

I recently came across "Roads to Damascus", a musical and visual art collaboration by the composer Kinan Abou-afach and Armenian-Syrian visual artist Kevork Mourad, which uses music and live painting as vehicles to create a new way of storytelling, making usually static paintings that people stand and look at for a few seconds into works …

Leftovers of War

Three examples of art and bullets as the leftovers of war in Arab contexts: The Bullet Collection by Patricia Sarrafian Ward Throughout their childhood, Marianna watches Alaine collect the detritus of war—bullets, grenades, shrapnel, a gas mask. These objects, some taken from corpses, line Alaine’s bedroom shelves, a catalog of her retreat into a profound …

Making History in the Middle East

Glenn Lowry, former F|S curator of Islamic art and now director of the Museum of Modern Art, talks about contemporary art in the Middle East. In this presentation he looks at how history is constructed, in a region characterized by deja-vu, by the constant return of history. He mentions the Gulf and Levant, and in …

Art Exhibition The Libyan

"The Libyan, curated by Noon Art and supported by the British Council, will bring together, for the very first time in London at the Arab British Centre, the work of eight living Libyan artists." So there is an art exhibition that highlights the work of eight Libyan artists, both men and women, until 30 November. …