Mapping Memory: How Almaha Jaralla Documents the Shifting Histories of a Region in Flux
Color Theory: On Farah Al Qasimi
Etel Adnan: Painting the Horizon Between Exile and Light
In Attunement
Seeking Home
The Late Saturationist: On Farah Al Qasimi
Architecture, Place, and Memory in the Work of Asma Belhamar
Mother and Child
The Idea of Landscape
What Ruin Can Mean
Feminist Materialities in the Work of Three MENA Artists
From Sustenance to Signifier: Food in Contemporary MENA Art
Techniques of the Body
The Museum as Method
Across Four Cities: Rethinking Modernist Art in the SWANA Region
Objects, Domestic and Everyday
Institutions without Curators: Finding New Perspectives
Modularity and Modulation: On the Subtle Art of Sarah Almehairi
Truth In Memory: A Critical Commentary on the Juxtaposition of Memory and Truth
Untold Stories: Exploring the Use of Narrative in the Work of Aya Haidar
Seeing Otherwise, The Eye as an Icon in the Art of Baya Mahieddine and Alymamah Rashed
Art Spaces not IRL: The Rise of Digital Museums
Art Spaces without Storage: The contemporary burden of “stuff”
New Ways of Artmaking: Contemporary Art after the 1979 Iranian Revolution
Artistic Mission: The Role of Pioneering Arab Women Artists in Modern Arab Art
Female Arab artists of the 20th century are coming into their own for their indelible contribution to the history of Modern Arab art
Echoes of Trauma and Identity in Syrian Contemporary Art
The practices of Fateh Moudarres and Safwan Dahoul are almost half a century apart. Whilst the artists share obvious connections to the Syrian cultural and social landscape, their works resonate with universal themes of existentialism, trauma, and national identity.
A Vibrant Pre-1979 Art Scene in Iran
In the decades prior to the fateful 1979 Iranian Revolution, modern artists in Iran sought to break away from a rigid, European style academic painting and form their own artistic language rooted in Iranian past and present references
Mystical African Abstractions: The Pioneers of Sudanese Modern Art
The avant-garde works of Sudanese artists, such as Ibrahim El-Sahali and Kamala Ibrahim, reveal gems of abstract art hailing from East Africa
Collections without Buildings: Spreading the Art
Museums without Art: The Kunsthalle Model
Laying the Groundwork: The Early Pioneers of Saudi Arabia’s Contemporary Art Scene
Uncovering the Rise of the West African Contemporary Art Scene
Mohammed Kazem and Conceptual Art in the UAE. Conversations from June 2024
Shaikha Al Mazrou in conversation with Asmaa Al-Shabibi
Baya As I Knew Her
As a proud Algerian and someone with a lifelong passion for the arts passed down to me by my father, it seems a right of passage to know and love the work of Baya. Her work, a natural phenomenon, decorated the walls of many bourgeois Algerian families whose houses I frequented growing up, adding vivacity to otherwise bare walls. During my youthful years, Algiers was a very bourgeois and conservative city which is why I was fascinated by the warm and colourful works of this new female artist Baya who painted and drew exactly like a child.
The Khair Collection
The behaviour of collectors varies from searching for works within one genre or medium to identifying pieces that fit into broader categories. The growth of an art collection is an organic process, it grows innocently from one sketch, a few watercolours, an interesting drawing, and then on, to another more serious composition. No one can know exactly when the fever strikes. No one can measure exactly when the casual hobby of buying art shifted into a serious pattern of collecting for Mr. Munzer Khair, but once his addiction hit, it didn’t stop. To him, the acquisition of every new artwork became a crucial step to heightening the integrity of his collection.
Willy Aractingi in The Mokbel Art Collection
Johnny and Nadine Mokbel are fervent collectors of Lebanese art and have been since they founded ‘The Mokbel Art Collection’ in 1998. Their collection has grown to house one of the most discerning collections of artworks by pioneering contemporary and modern Lebanese artists. With a distinct national character and identity, ‘The Mokbel Art Collection’ serves to promote Lebanese artists throughout the Middle East and across the globe - one of which being an artist they discovered themselves, the late Willy Aractingi (1930 - 2003).
Unmasking Sabhan Adam’s Creatures of Isolation
Syrian artist Sabhan Adam is a prolific and subversive artist. For more than 20 years, Adam has become widely known for his rich production of a very distinct, yet odd body of work. His intense creative experience is not one that can be pigeon-holed into one genre, for he creates a world of his own.
An Evolution of Style: Dia al-Azzawi works in the Dubai Collection
The works by Dia al-Azzawi in the Dubai Collection provide a compelling overview of key developments and moments in Azzawi’s career since the mid-1960s. Born in Baghdad in 1939, Azzawi’s ongoing, limitless exploration of art includes painting, sculpting, printmaking, graphic design, digital art and more. His influences—ancient, medieval and modern, investigate the aesthetic, cultural and philosophical histories of pre-Islamic civilisations, the evolution of manuscript traditions, the legacies of heroes and martyrs, the impact of both ancient and modern Arabic poetry and the natural world. Perhaps inevitably, these influences also include Azzawi’s personal experiences and reflections on war, memory and injustice, especially as an artist in exile from his homeland, Iraq.
When Images Speak, What do they Say?
“What do pictures want?,” is a question on which W.J.T. Mitchell reflected in his 2005 book of the same title. Fundamentally, the question asserts the notion that pictures have agencies that extend beyond their makers’ and receivers’ intentions. Mitchell states that, “The question to ask of pictures from the standpoint of a poetics is not just what they mean or do but what they want – what claim they make upon us, and how we are to respond. Obviously, this question also requires us to ask what it is that we want from pictures.” The claim thus is for a mutual relationship between pictures and people, both with their agencies and desires. In many ways, images tell us about the world we inhabit.