This essay revolves around a very personal question for me -- the name of the language I spoke with my grandparents and parents. Baghdadi-Jews like my family spoke the language, first in Iraq, then in Israel, and later in the US. For us, it was simply Arabic, although we also knew of course that it was a dialect, a specific form of an ‘amiyya; in our case, Iraqi, Baghdadi, Jewish Arabic. Within the Jewish-Baghdadi dialect itself, we commonly referred to it as haki mal yihud (the speech of the Jews) in contrast to the neighboring dialect, haki mal aslam (the speech of the Muslims).
Review of Speed Sisters, directed by Amber Fares. Palestine, 2015
This winter's Selections looks at works in the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection acquired from Sharjah Biennials or Sharjah Biennial artists. The works on view include Lara Almarcegui's work shown in SB8, Basma Alsharif's experimental-documentary video and installation, as well as works from SB9 and SB10 by Iman Issa and Slavs and Tatars and a sculptural work by Adrián Villar Rojas.
Debating Modernism II focuses on figurative works of art in the Barjeel Art Collection produced between 1968 and 1987.
Literature and fine art are conjoined in Iran born New York based artist Pouran Jinchi’s current solo exhibition Black & Blue on view at the Leila Heller Gallery from September 17 – October 24, 2015. Calligraphy is crucial to Jinchi’s process of eliminating objects and images in order to focus on meaning conveyed through abstraction.
