OTHER
By Maymanah Farhat

“The mission of OTHER is to create a supportive organization that provides a collaborative environment for aspiring artists of Arab heritage. We envision for our collective a vibrant, community-engaged, multi-faceted arts and media organization that promotes self-representation of artists by inspiring and supporting social movement and youthful creativity.”-- OTHER: Arab Artists Collective (more...)

Cultural Understanding in the Art of Helen Zughaib
By Maymanah Farhat

In the Modern period, artists impacted by Western modes of aesthetic representation through migration, colonialism and imperialism/globalization have developed hybrid forms of art that function as tools of self-determined expression. Arab artists living in the Arab world and Diaspora are prime examples of those who have used the influence of Western schools of art combined with expressions of their cultural heritages to address issues pertinent to their communities. (more...)

CONTEMPORARY “ISLAMIC” ART IN CONTEXT
The Discourse of Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking
By Maymanah Farhat

In the current vain of heightened interest in Islam and the Middle East, the Museum of Modern Art in New York presents Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking.
The exhibition opened February 26, 2006. The work of fifteen artists born in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia is featured in an attempt to shed light on the classification, production and discourse of contemporary “Islamic” art. The artists of Without Boundary live and work in Europe or the United States but remain connected to their native countries in varying degrees. (more...)

Contemporary Palestinian Art: Moving in from the Margins
By Jessica Robertson Wright

“Art has no country.” Y.Z. Kami

The issue of regionalism in the visual arts is controversial. Most artists deflect national or ethnic categorizations to avoid the tendency to interpret their work within certain ethnic or ‘other’ contexts. While artists may be extremely identified with their ethnic or national roots, they often long to break free of the types of narrow understandings that are implicit in viewing art through an ethnic lens. (more...)

WAFER SHAYOTA: THE WAR YEARS
By Maymanah Farhat

In Wafer Shayota’s paintings perspective is no longer confined to linear planes; multiple dimensions overlie where sky and land converge, with little distinction of spatial definitions. Several realities occupy the same space. An unrecognizable world becomes the juncture for an intentional attack on the senses. Amidst chaos and near total destruction, anthropomorphic figures are shown in mid-flight. His representations give way to multifarious narratives that speak of both the fragility and brutality of humanity. The damage of such a world is irreversible, leaving little room for resolution. (more...)

Short Story: Mariam Athra
By Deborah Najor Alkamano

Khokheh had visions.

Her father left Iraq, her mother, and her when she was five. 1908. He planned to find money in America; instead he found Mexico, a second wife, and a new son. Khokheh always expected her Baba to come back. He lived in Mexico his whole life with his second family, but he sent money every few months for the rest of their lives. (more...)

Historical Constructions of Arab Art and Visual Culture
By Maymanah Farhat

Throughout history, art has served as an imperative form of communication, as visual culture is part of the essential makeup of any given society. Art has the ability to function as a universal language capable of expressing the ideas, experiences and sentiments of an individual or people across cultural, societal and political borders. Under ideal and uninhibited circumstances, art as an outward manifestation of self-expression can initiate cross-cultural exchanges. (more...)

Art Exhibition Review: Word into Art
By Susan Platt

Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East at the British Museum (May 18 – September 2, 2006) is a major contribution to our perceptions of contemporary art in the Middle East. I attribute its engaging nature to a combination of aesthetic seduction, clear organization, and compelling subject matter. (more...)

Ismail Shammout 1930-2006
By Maymanah Farhat

July 9, 2006—Leading Palestinian artist Ismail Shammout died this week at the age of seventy-six. With a career that spanned over fifty years, Ismail Shammout was one of the most influential Palestinian artists in the history of contemporary Arab painting. His presence will be greatly missed in the contemporary Arab art world. (more...)

Staging a Walkout - Shahram Entekhabi
By Sara Raza

From the realm of video games to the video art of contemporary Berlin based artist Shahram Entekhabi, whose highly performative, sophisticated works suggest that he is also a key player in re-staging the practices of everyday life, albeit his motives are aligned with that of a cultural critic’s rather than an entertainer. (more...)

My Lover in Unequal Parts: A Found Photo Project
By Rheim Alkadhi

My lover stayed in Lebanon, on the sixth floor of an apartment building with magnificent red theatre curtains shading the balcony. Since this is the only building left standing (the others collapsed in a giant heap), I imagine my lover was able to circumvent the bombing by drawing the curtains shut. (more...)

The Poetry of Elmaz Abinader
By Aimee Suzara

To enter Abinader’s poetry is to enter a dream, now war-torn barren, now lush with imagination. A true storyteller, Elmaz Abinader unites the memoirist’s attention to detail with the songwriter’s penchant for precision of sound, bringing the reader into intimate relationship with her subjects, be they a family preparing for occupation, a sorrowful woman and “war-addicted” child, or herself as the daughter of Lebanese immigrants. Equipped with her own experiences of emigration and travel throughout North Africa, the Middle East and beyond, Abinader writes about occupied and invaded territories, about forced and voluntary migrations, with a voice that is at once humble and prophetic. (more...)

War Diaries of a 30 Year Old Woman
Artwork and written entries by Lebanese artist and curator Zena el-Khalil

Introduction By Maymanah Farhat

With the current Israeli invasion of Lebanon, artists, writers, filmmakers, scholars and poets have been speaking out against the indiscriminate bombardment of civilians and the destruction of the country’s civil infrastructure. Many Lebanese have been publishing their daily experiences under the incursion via blogs and “diary entries” on websites such as the Electronic Intifada. Lebanese artist and curator Zena el-Khalil was one of the first to publish her accounts of life in Beirut at this time. Her writings call attention to the severity of the current situation and capture Lebanese civilian life as it is interrupted and assaulted by what was an unforeseen conflict. (more...)

Review: Zaha Hadid
The Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum
June 3-October 25, 2006
By Lara Shihab-Eldin

Zaha Hadid is more than a “diva.” She is a prize-winning architect (she became the first woman recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004), and besides an architect, she is described as a radical, a pusher of boundaries, an experimenter, a teacher, and a researcher. (more...)

Poetry
By Lamya El-Chidiac

Lamya El-Chidiac is a 27-year-old queer and transgendered Arab poet. Lamya is currently working on receiving an MFA from New College of California in Writing and Consciousness. Much of his work reflects on deconstructing and moving between the borders of gender, race, and sexuality. (more...)

A tribute to Naguib Mahfouz: 1911-2006

Naguib Mahfouz, the father of “the Arab novel” and the 1988 Nobel Laureate in Literature, died in a Cairo hospital on August 30, 2006, at the age of 94. The youngest of six, Mahfouz was the son of a high-ranking Egyptian civil servant. He graduated from the University of Cairo in 1934 with a degree in philosophy. His literary work was first published in 1938 in the form of a collection of short stories titled The Whispers of Madness. His output includes 350 short stories, numerous plays, memoirs, articles, and dozens of screen plays, some of which contributed to the ushering of Egyptian Cinema’s realist wave in the 1950s.

Mahfouz’s intimate literary landscape was brewing Cairo, the protagonists of his novels were based on the people he saw and knew in his beloved city. Although many of Mahfouz’s thirty three novels are considered masterpieces, he is best known for the three works comprising the Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street (1946-1952). This work, written during his realist style, chronicles three generations (spanning the first half of the twentieth century) of a family headed by the patriarch El-Said Ahmed Abdel-Gawwad. The characters of this grand narrative are unforgettable. Like Tolstoy, the lives of his characters and the societal implications of their actions are deeply philosophical, needing their ordinariness and humble reality (albeit fictive) to convey them.

In the span of sixty years, Mahfouz traversed through many stylistic modes in the development of the novel, influencing Egyptian literary culture, cinema and society. He continued to experiment into his late work. The impact of this titanic figure reached far beyond the Arab world with many of his novels translated into several languages and adapted by international filmmakers into award winning films.

Summary and Sketch by Athir Shayota, an Iraqi artist based in New York.

Text Messages: Five Contemporary Artists and the Art of the Word
Exhibition essay by Polly Savage

The October Gallery in London recently organized “Text Messages”, an exhibition of contemporary Arab art featuring the work of prominent artists Rachid Koraichi, Hassan Massoudy, Fathi Hassan, Wijdan and Laila Shawa. The exhibition was held from June 28 to July 22, 2006 at a time when a great interest in the use of Arabic text and calligraphy in contemporary art seems to have taken hold of the London art scene. “Text Messages” featured several of the artists included in The British Museum’s “Word into Art” exhibition (May 16-Sept 3, 2006), while Aya Gallery’s “words... fragmented... unbroken” will open October 7, 2006 and presents the work of eight artists who use the Arabic written word.

ArteNews is grateful to October Gallery for allowing the republishing of the timely and illuminating essay which accompanied the exhibition. Polly Savage’s writing examines the profound relationships between text, spirituality and culture within the tradition of Arab art. We are also indebted to the artists and Gallery for providing reproductions of the works. Our intention with presenting the exhibition is to highlight the discourse on this artistic practice.

Introduction by Maymanah Farhat

Sour Times
By Erden Kosova

It is needless here to revisit the accounts about the advance of reactionary politics on the globe in the aftermath of September 11, and to reiterate the details about the ways in which the administrative configuration named as nation-state, whose stability was being undone by the intensifying forces of globalization, found the opportunity to reinstate and enhance its authority in various ways.

Depoliticizing Modern and Contemporary Arab Art:
Christie’s and the Rush to “Discover” the Arab World
By Maymanah Farhat

The May 2006 opening of Christie’s Dubai marked a new era for modern and contemporary Arab art. Establishing record prices for several pioneering artists, the inaugural auction affirmed the growing popularity of art from the region. With sales reaching well over $8.4 million, many observers of the field predict the auction could generate a greater place for Arab art in the international market. Some have even gone as far to claim that the record prices will serve to further legitimize Arab artists in the global art scene. Since market values do often dictate the momentum of the international art world, there may be some truth in these remarks. Given the social history of art however, the introduction of the major international auction house to the Arab world should be measured with caution.

Special Issue: "Alternative Perspectives on Turkey’s Cinematic Landscape"
Edited by G. Carole Woodall

In recent years, Turkish cinema - be it produced by Turkish, European companies or joint ventures - has garnered more attention in international film festivals and competitions. Internationally recognized and awarded films by directors, such as Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Fatih Akin, have been instrumental in situating Turkish cinema within a European cultural arena. One aspect of this resurgence reflects a trend both in scholarship and cultural production which counters dominant nationalist narratives. One need just be reminded of the recent controversy surrounding the Turkish state’s cases against noted authors Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak on the grounds of freedom of expression, or for “insulting Turkishness.” These examples only allude to tension stemming from the overwhelming, albeit dwindling, demand of the Turkish public for European Union membership and the country's politically fraught history. It is against this backdrop that Turkish cinema has recently tackled a variety of controversial topics, i.e. migrant communities in Istanbul, the Turkish army, relocation of the Greek community, and political corruption. As this edition of Arteeast’s online journal coincides with the 8th Annual New York Turkish Film Festival organized by the Moon and Stars Project, each contribution seeks to address an aspect of the contemporary Turkish cinematic landscape from the local, regional, and international realms.