arabious

Zouk Mikael festival brings music to the Lebanese countryside

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:11:42 -0400

Zouk Mikael festival brings music to the Lebanese countryside: High on a hill, slung between Byblos...

FAIRUZ | Sa’alouni El Nass I’ve been reading about...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:24:00 -0400

FAIRUZ | Sa’alouni El Nass

I’ve been reading about Ziad Rahbani in the past couple of days (he’ll be at the Zouk Mikael International Festival this July), and apparently this was the first song he ever wrote for his mom. It’s been stuck in my head for the past 24 hours (at least) so I think it’s only fair I pass it on to you.

All hail the queen.

Khaled Takreti

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 11:22:00 -0400

Khaled Takreti

Khaled Takreti

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 11:22:00 -0400

Khaled Takreti

minusmanhattan: Check out Matthias Heiderich’s awesome series...

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 18:23:06 -0400

minusmanhattan:

Check out Matthias Heiderich’s awesome series UAE, shot in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

More here.

Lahbieb Embarek Ahmed, 47, camel worker, in the desert near the...

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 15:51:02 -0400

Lahbieb Embarek Ahmed, 47, camel worker, in the desert near the Saharawi refugee camps, Algeria. ‘I have lived with camels and they have lived with me and that’s all I know. The peace process is a good thing. My land is very beautiful but I am like the others; what will happen to them will happen to me. I am with the majority, if they chose war I am with them.’
Azmah Laulad, 18, in Auserd refugee camp, Algeria, with the lights of Tindouf in the background. ‘I’ve grown up in Auserd but I don’t like it. I’m making bricks and soon me and my brother will build a shop. We will sell mobile phones because there are not enough phone shops here. It’s a tragedy here, people need to go back [to Western Sahara].’
Ali Salem Salma, 41, statistician for the Saharawi government, watching TV at home with his wife, Nabba, and four year old son, Khadda, in Smara refugee camp, Algeria. ‘In 1975 Morocco invaded our cities and the soldiers told us to leave our house. We spent six months traveling to Algeria to the refugee camps and we are still here.’
Chrifa Mohammed Salem, 6, pictured outside her home in Auserd refugee camp, Algeria. ‘I go to school and then I come back and play with my sister. It is very hot, I want it to be cold. I want to be a teacher when I grow up. There is no water here.’

From Jadaliyya’s electronic roundtable on the Western Sahara. Photos by Andrew McConnell.

contemporaryarabart: Laila Shawa, Hands of Fatima, 1989 Oil on...

Thu, 30 May 2013 10:58:40 -0400

contemporaryarabart:

Laila Shawa, Hands of Fatima, 1989

Oil on canvas

Revolutionary Poster Art Iranian poster art is remarkable not...

Wed, 29 May 2013 11:23:34 -0400

Revolutionary Poster Art

Iranian poster art is remarkable not only for drawing upon symbols of resistance and sacrifice from third-worldist liberation movements, but also for incorporating themes deeply situated within traditional Iranian visual culture.

5centsapound: Najaf Shokri: Daughters of Iran In the autumn of...

Mon, 27 May 2013 22:10:50 -0400

5centsapound:

Najaf Shokri: Daughters of Iran

In the autumn of 2005, Najaf Shokri was on his way to work when he made an intriguing discovery in a rubbish bin near his house in downtown Tehran. The bin, outside a branch of the National Civil Registrations Organisation, was filled with old national identification documents, all issued in 1942 and long expired.

Shokri decided to create an art project out of his find, a collection of ID photographs that documents a generation. Shokri called the project Irandokht - “daughter of Iran” - after he noticed so many women by that name among the documents. It used to be a common first name in Iran.

Before their replacement with more modern ID cards, Iranian identification documents consisted of four-page birth certificates issued without photographs. A holder was required to add a photograph to the document before using it for various legal purposes such as marriage, the national university entrance examination (known as the concours), or voting. Though the documents Shokri found were issued in 1942, the images in Irandokht are largely drawn from the period between the late 1950s and the late 1970s, when most of the women pictured added their photographs to their IDs.

Between 1950 and 1978, women’s roles in Iranian society transformed dramatically. The middle class rapidly expanded, and women from different backgrounds found their way into schools and the job market. Basic primary education, once the preserve of the economic elite, spread to much of the populace. Young women in Iran’s cities either removed their hijab or never wore it in the first place.

“One can see the history of the era in these faces,” Shokri says. “Many of these women had mothers who were born to rural or small-town families but were married to men who came from the cities. The urban population was expanding and life was changing. It seems despite the fact that many of these families came from more traditional backgrounds they were in the process of adapting to the more westernised life of the big cities.”

A popular term from the early 1920s through the early 1940s, during the country’s preceding surge of modernisation, Irandokht is now out of fashion both as concept and name. But that’s in part exactly why Shokri chose it for his project.

“I wanted to transform expired private documents into public heritage,” he says. Irandokhts, the daughters of Iran, remind us of a past - in fact not so distant - when the Middle East had a different face. via theguardian

“People realized the public space is theirs, they took it...

Mon, 27 May 2013 21:53:00 -0400

“People realized the public space is theirs, they took it back, they’re demonstrating, they’re expressing themselves. But we also need to go back to public space as a place of enjoyment, as an artistic space, as a space where people can meet and sit and enjoy being there.”

Ahmed El Attar, Director of the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival in Cairo.

For more on the changing state of Egyptian art & the reclamation of public space: 1 and 2, from the Arabist’s Ursula Lindsey.

Sketches by Taysir Batniji.

Mon, 27 May 2013 21:14:00 -0400

Sketches by Taysir Batniji.

Today, on “This Exists” (and I’m really glad...

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:01:00 -0400

Today, on “This Exists” (and I’m really glad it does), an Egyptian version of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” Performed by Ahmad A. El Haggar & Layla Mostafa, via Juan Cole.

Watch "Resistance Recipes" in full

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:23:12 -0400

Watch "Resistance Recipes" in full: “The struggle with the occupier will be long; this is why...

From the series Knot, by Jalal Sepehr (Yazd, 2011)

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:03:00 -0400

From the series Knot, by Jalal Sepehr (Yazd, 2011)

isqineeha: Out of Line (2010) - Saudi Artist Jowhara...

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:46:15 -0400

isqineeha:

Out of Line (2010) - Saudi Artist Jowhara AlSaud

This body of work began as an exploration of censorship in Saudi Arabia and it’s effects on visual communication. While there is a lack of consistency from region to region, overall, images are highly scrutinized and controlled. Some superficial examples of this would be skirts lengthened and sleeves crudely added with black markers in magazines or blurred out faces on billboards.

I tried to apply the language of the censors to my personal photographs. I began making line drawings, omitting faces and skin. Keeping only the essentials preserved the anonymity of my subjects. This allowed me to circumvent, and comment on, some of the cultural taboos associated with photography. Namely the stigma attached to bringing the “personal portrait”, commonly reserved for the private domestic space, into a public sphere.

It became a game of how much can you tell with how little. When reduced to sketches, the images achieved enough distance from the original photographs that neither subjects nor censors could find them objectionable. For me, they became autonomous, relatable, pared down narratives.

I’ve always been interested in how photography functions, and I try to undermine any documentary authority it may possess as a medium. I’ve always felt that a photograph functions more like a memory, in that it’s a singular perspective of a split second in time, entirely subjective and hence impressionable. By etching these drawings back into film and printing them in a traditional darkroom, I’m trying to point out how malleable it is as a medium, even before digital manipulation became so advanced and accessible. With these interventions emerges a highly coded and self-reflexive language. What also interests me is that the information omitted (faces, skin and emulsion) creates an image of its own, as do the censors to our cultural landscape. - Jowhara Alsaud

"A report covering the state of Syrian youth, released by UNICEF in March 2013, notes that due to the..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:10:49 -0400

“A report covering the state of Syrian youth, released by UNICEF in March 2013, notes that due...

isqineeha: Arabesque - Iraqi Artist Leila Kubba Kawash

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:03:26 -0400

isqineeha:

Arabesque - Iraqi Artist Leila Kubba Kawash

More on Lebanese Rocket Society: The adventure of the Lebanese...

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:34:29 -0400

Beginning in the 1960s (and lasting only until the end of the...

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:27:00 -0400

Beginning in the 1960s (and lasting only until the end of the decade), Lebanon was the first country in the Middle East to run its own space program. Lebanese Rocket Society, a documentary by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, resurrects those faded memories.

From REORIENT:

The Lebanese Civil War left the country in a state of collective amnesia, washing away all traces of the ‘Space Race’ of the 60s from public memory. As a result, Hadjithomas and Joreige were forced to put together and artistically re-interpret hints and leftover ‘clues’ to reconstruct the story of a real, experienced memory, which had all but sunk into oblivion. Serving as an almost hallucinatory tale for the ears of the Lebanese public, Lebanese Rocket Society is not only an investigation into the history of the Lebanese space program, but also a reflection on the notions of ambition, destruction, and reconstruction. Beginning with a focus on the small team of motivated and determined Armenian students of Beirut’s Haigazian University and their ‘coach’, professor Manoug Manougian, the artists highlight the widespread support of the Rocket Society, as well as its peaceful, scientific aims. With little resources at hand, Manougian and his team created fuel from raw material, and successfully launched several rockets, each of which attained new heights as their experiments progressed. Gradually, the project expanded to include researchers from other universities in Lebanon and the surrounding region, turning into a countrywide initiative of national importance. After the launch of several larger experimental rockets – one of which almost landed in nearby Cyprus – that caused international concern, the Lebanese army also stepped in, in the hope of advancing its artillery. However, due to increasing international pressure, especially from France and Israel (according to Manougian) the dream – for whatever reasons – came to an abrupt end in the late 60s, in an era of national and regional conflicts, and during the zenith of the pan-Arab dream, spearheaded by Gamal Abdel Nasser.

"If we take a quick look at the Kuwait of the ‘60s and ‘70s, Kuwait was a home for Arabs, in the true..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:16:02 -0400

“If we take a quick look at the Kuwait of the ‘60s and ‘70s, Kuwait was a home for Arabs, in...