ArteEast, in partnership with Art Omi International, is pleased to announce Bassem Yousri and Lara Tabet as the two recipients of the 2016 ArteEast Artists Residency at the Art Omi International Arts Center in Ghent, NY. This joint residency initiative began in 2011 supporting MENA artists in order to encourage and bolster a global arts exchange.
"Zig Zig opens with five women sitting behind desks in a row at the back of the stage. One plays the violin, another reads an archival document that sets the scene, and the others mime leafing through documents. I liked this set-up. They move around and return to the desks, combining dance, song and acting. Each play different roles at different moments, reading from the archives, reflecting on them, acting as the military, the native prosecution or the women themselves giving testimony and answering harsh questions in the British military court."
“I don’t really understand what ambition means. I take things one piece at a time. I’m excited about working on something, that’s all. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, and I still don’t. I don’t know if I think in terms of a career. I don’t have a strategy. It’s just the next show. I used to say to my father: ‘I’m lucky: I got this, or that.’ And he would say: ‘No, no, you deserve it. You’ve been working hard.’ But I was determined: ‘No, it’s all luck.’ I feel things happen accidentally.”
An administrative court has annulled a ministerial decision to grant powers of arrest to the musicians and actors syndicates, according to the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR). Last September, then-Minister of Justice Ahmed al-Zend issued a decree granting six council members of the Actors Syndicate – including the syndicate’s president and secretary general – judicial police powers, to be used in instances where the laws regulating the syndicate, its memberships or artistic production have been violated.
Continued neglect for the heritage of the Egyptian Surrealist movement, despite a resurgence in interest abroad, raises questions about the politics of culture in Egypt.
“They’re not there to talk about gender, but obviously it stems from a feminine and feminist perspective,” said Hafez. And, as there is a prevalent American media depiction of Middle Eastern women as disempowered, audience members who entered the venue drunk on that spiked Kool-Aid were likely to leave sobered up by the diversity and evident power of the performers. Said choreographer and NYLA artistic director Bill T. Jones, who conceived the festival with Kriegsmann, “We think [women from the MENA region] are oppressed or deluded. Then we see these women expressing themselves as individuals. That’s important for us to see.”
Taymour Grahne Gallery is proud to present Bricks, a solo exhibition of new thick oil paintings, watercolors, and sculptures by Brooklyn-based artist Nadia Ayari.
Relating to the ongoing debate on the interconnections between art, society and the public, Denormalizing Bodies. Rehearsing Citizenship will focus on the body’s capacity for action whithin these dynamics.
"On 25 January 2014, thousands of people gathered in Tahrir Square to celebrate the third anniversary of the Egyptian revolution. On that day, only the supporters of the army and the actions of its commander in chief were admitted into the square. The Muslim Brotherhood and opposition protests taking place in the vicinity were immediately crushed with tear gas and live ammunition. The proximity of the celebrations and the killings led many journalists to call it a day of 'death and dance'. The festive crowd was likened to a 'hysterical choir of fear'."
Nasser, a documentary by director Jihan El-Tahri, was recently screened as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s “Doc FortNight 2016” in collaboration with the African Film Festival. Nasser is the first part of the already completed trilogy, which further interrogates the eras of Anwar El-Sadat and Hosny Mubarak, “Egypt’s modern Pharaohs.”
