By Nur Shkembi Reorient Magazine Exploring art as a subversive practice amongst contemporary MENA artists at the Guggenheim It was an uncomfortably hot and typical Brisbane afternoon as I made my way across the concrete courtyard from the Gallery of Modern Art to its big sister, the Queensland Art Gallery. There is something rather exciting … Continued
Press release: Arab American National Museum In an effort to document and preserve the stories of metro Detroit’s past and present for future generations, the Arab American National Museum (AANM) has launched two new oral history projects. Through Many Stories, One City: Dearborn Community History Series and Digital Detroit Stories, AANM and its partners are … Continued
Gavin Havery
The Northern Echo
ARTEFACTS never seen before in the UK, including ancient silver bowls, cooking pots and burial urns, have gone on show in the region.
Daily Life in Ancient Lebanon, an exhibition hosted by Durham University’s Oriental Museum, runs until September 25.
It is based on the work of Dr Mark Woolmer, of Durham University, who claims ancient Lebanon helped shape the modern world along with places like Greece, Rome Egypt, and Persia.
The exhibition transports visitors thousands of years back in time to Lebanon during the Bronze and Iron Ages.
It was a time when the country was home to great explorers, sailors and maritime traders, the Phoenicians.
Using the artefacts loaned from the British Museum and the National Museum of Beirut, Dr Woolmer, the university team and student volunteers paint a picture of how the ancient Phoenicians were responsible for remarkable trade voyages across Europe and creating revolutionary manufacturing processes.
Dr Woolmer said: “Contemporary politics and war, shown in our media, has led many westerners to form negative perceptions of Lebanon.
“In Daily Life in Ancient Lebanon we challenge that view, and show the country and its people are among the founders of modern civilisation.
“This is an exhibition of international importance, and to host it in Durham creates a unique opportunity for visitors to discover an unsung part of world history.”
Source: www.thenorthernecho.co.uk
By ELIYAHU KAMISHER
Jerusalem Post
Inside the bedroom, Palestinian artist explores sexual taboos
The artist explained that she is not trying to offend anyone by exploring sexuality so publicly, but rather looking to fracture social taboos on issues rarely discussed in Palestinian society.
The “Intimate Spaces” exhibition held at the Zawyeh Gallery in Ramallah is pushing the boundaries of Palestinian society by bringing intimate relations into the public sphere.
The exhibit begins with a black-and-white video of the artist’s daughter sitting on a concrete wall and playfully opening and closing her legs.
“She was wondering why her grandmother kept on telling her to close her legs,” explained Rana Samara, 30, a graduate of the Ramallah International Academy of Art. Samara’s first solo exhibition, discussing Palestinian sexuality, opened at the Zawyeh Gallery last week and runs until September 10.
“This was the most controversial piece,” stated Samara, “because it brought my daughter into the exhibit… but I remember having the same questions as my daughter. Why do we have to close our legs? Is something going to fall out if they are left open?” she asked.
Samara’s solo exhibition features depictions of spaces where intimacy takes place – bedrooms, balconies, even a taxi cab – are presented in large colorful acrylic portraits, combined with mixed media installations.
There are no people in the paintings and to the untrained eye the underlying context may not reveal itself. But upon closer inspection there are hints; an earring scattered on the floor, an ashtray lying on the bed, and an unfurled role of toilet paper betray the paintings’ innocence.
According to Samara, in Palestinian society talk of intimate relations, even between partners, rarely leaves the bedroom, and thus this exhibit has unsettled some viewers, not accustomed to a public airing of unspoken customs.
The concept for the project began when Samara took a stroll through the densely populated Al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah; she wondered how intimacy played out in such cramped spaces. “I started questioning, how did they sleep together?” she told The Jerusalem Post.
Samara spent a year visiting women in Al-Amari camp and in other villages throughout the West Bank. She was able to enter their bedrooms and in these “intimate spaces” Samara would ask the women about their sexual life. “Building trust was not easy,” stated Samara, as issues of intimacy are not usually discussed so openly.
It was through these discussions that Samara learned of special words used in Palestinian relationships. Like the Arabic word for Thursday, Khamees, which according to Samara holds a different meaning for married couples as Thursday is the day before the weekend and an established night for intimacy.
“It’s a bit of a shock to some,” Ziad Anani the owner and curator of the Zawyeh Gallery told the Post, “She depicts spaces that we don’t usually see.”
That is why Anani decided to feature Samara in her first solo exhibition. “It is a beautiful and strong concept,” said Anani.
According to Anani, a number of the works presented in the exhibition, which range from $6,000 to $12,000, have already been scooped up by eager Palestinian and international collectors.
Anani told the Post that Samara’s work differs from many other Palestinian artists because she not only delves into taboos but developed her work through research and dialogue with community members. “[She] has the courage to explore issues that are considered taboos in the Palestinian society,” he stated, “she bases her body of work on extensive research on the ground and makes sure to have the contribution of members of the community.”
For Samara, her art is tangential to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “It is related in an indirect way. Many of the women come from the refugee camps,” however, “women’s issues are a separate conflict, which is present everywhere in different ways,” she remarked.
Samara seeks to bring sexuality, and women’s role in intimate relationships to the forefront of her work. In one installation Samara deals with the tradition of “virginity handkerchiefs” that is still practiced by some Palestinians. According to the custom, a bloodstained handkerchief is given to the mother of the groom, which proves that the bride was a virgin.
Fifty such handkerchiefs are placed on the wall of the exhibit.
Samara gave them to 50 men and women and asked them to express their opinion and understanding of the practice by drawing on the white fabric.
Samara explained that she is not trying to offend anyone by exploring sexuality so publicly, but rather looking to fracture social taboos on central issues rarely discussed in Palestinian society. “I explain that this is the reality, this is the truth,” she said.
Source: www.jpost.com
RT-Russian Television
A Palestinian exhibition portraying life and destruction in Gaza was canceled by authorities in the German town of Heidelberg over “crossing a political red line.” The organizers have expressed fury about the move.
The exhibition, held under the guise of a pro-Palestinian group, “Palästina-/Nahost-Initiative” was canceled shortly before it was due to start on August 10, RNZ newspaper reports.
Entitled “Experiences, Fears and Dreams – Children in Palestine,” the event was supposed to host drawings from two rehabilitation centers in Gaza and Ramallah. Some of the pieces showed explosions, burning cities and soldiers with assault rifles.
On August 8 the organizers wanted to check the drawings place at the local citizen center, hosting the exhibit. “One of our activists placed the pictures in the Citizen Office Center on August 5, and wanted to check the things the following Monday. But everything was already taken down,” Agnes Bennhold from “Palästina-/Nahost-Initiative” told RNZ.
Bennhold said she was “outraged” by the move, given that the organization did not receive any written statement with the reasons for the cancellation. On request of the RNZ the Heidelberg’s authorities admitted that the cancellation was due to “political” concerns.
“The exhibition included statements regarding the Middle East conflict, which the city is not sharing. Since the city is committed to neutrality, staging an exhibition with such a highly political content in the city’s accommodations was not possible,” the city stated to the media outlet. Furthermore, the clarification for the cancellation was issued on August 12.
“A red line was crossed as one of the pictures contained the words in Arabic: Jihad, Freedom, Jerusalem, Arabic, Yes,” the city’s spokesperson said as quoted by RNZ. The official added that the words were also translated into German.
Although the word Jihad is often used in association with terrorist organizations, its exact translation reads as “striving for something.” For Muslims it is also viewed as a permanent way for an individual to improve oneself.
Defending their position Heidelberg authorities further claimed that they signed a contract with a private person and not with “Palästina-/Nahost-Initiative”, adding the person in question “was informed by phone”.
The organizers from a pro-Palestinian group insisted though the agreement for the exhibition was signed with them as an entity.
Officials also admitted they “should have checked the pictures” at an earlier stage before giving a green light to the exhibition.
The event however caused no such controversies while it was held in major German cities like Munich, Bonn and Stuttgart, before it was set to take place in
Source: www.rt.com
Liv McConnell
Being a hormone-ridden teenager is, in and of itself, punishment enough. You’re stuck in a terribly inadequate education system, susceptible to sneak attacks of acne, and constantly feeling the pressure to assimilate to fit your peers’ expectations. In a word, it sucks.
But how does the pubescent experience change when assimilating to American-teen norms means forsaking your culture in your parents’ eyes?
That’s one question playwright and slam poet Summer Awad explores in her new play, “Walls: A Play for Palestine.” Currently showing in New York City as a selection of The New York International Fringe Festival, “Walls” is equal parts personal and political, drawing on the writer’s own experiences as a second-generation Palestinian immigrant as well as exploring the impact of Israeli occupation on her ancestral homeland.
Awad was inspired to the write “Walls” after starring in a production of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” in college.
“I really liked the fact ‘The Vagina Monologues’ had these interviews with hundreds of women and then turned them into monologues,” Awad told Revelist. “This was the same time when I was trying to learn Arabic and trying to learn more about my Palestinian heritage, so I started thinking wouldn’t it be cool if I could do something like this for Palestinians? What if I did the ‘Palestinian Monologues’?”
Feeling invigorated by the prospect of activism through theater, Awad designed her own major around literary activism and got a research internship to conduct interviews at Palestinian refugee camps.
After her Middle Eastern travels, though, she realized the story she felt most compelled to share was, in fact, her own. Thus, Awad’s unique upbringing growing up in Tennessee with a conservative, West Bank-born Muslim father became the backbone of “Walls.”
“I really started exploring my own experience growing up Palestinian-American, my relationship with my very conservative Muslim dad who wouldn’t let me date or go to prom or talk to boys or anything like that,” she said. “While at the same time, we’re weaving Palestinian history and culture and historical facts throughout this narrative and trying to put the personal and political together.”
Stylized as monologues and slam poems, “Walls” is brought to life by three characters: A young American woman, her conservative Muslim father, and a female embodiment of their ancestral land, “Mother Palestine.” Though the play does carry a very specific political message (namely, that Palestine should be freed of Israeli occupation), Awad believes it’s overarching themes are relatable to all second-generation Americans.
“I’ve actually had a lot of people from different ethnic and racial backgrounds say they can relate to the show, and I think it’s especially true of immigrants,” Awad said. “I think some of it has to do with the fact that when your parents are assimilating, they want to keep a very clean reputation. They don’t want anything to go wrong for you. They’re trying to fit in with the immigrant community that they found, but also fit in with this new American community. So a lot of people have this experience of their parents being very strict.”
This strictness can apply to women, especially, as many parents are coming from cultures where gender roles are “a little more defined,” Awad said. For both she and her play’s protagonist, that manifested in being forbidden from partaking in certain American events and institutions.
“The (protagonist) is going behind her dad’s back and wearing a two-piece swimsuit, even though he told her not to. Or she’s trying to figure out a way to go to prom even though she’s staying with her dad on Saturday night and he doesn’t allow her to,” she said. “I think for a lot of immigrant parents, these seemingly small things are a much bigger deal because it’s your reputation not only among your community in your new country, but it could even reach your relatives back home if they hear what your Americanized child is doing.”
Through her work, Awad hopes to illuminate different aspects of the immigrant experience, as well as provide a platform for the underrepresented Palestinian voice in America.
“My main goal with this particular play is to tell the story of the Palestinians who don’t get a voice in the Western media,” Awad explained. “We get one narrative, which is coming from the Israeli side. A lot of people ask why I don’t include an Israeli perspective in the play, but you can get an Israeli perspective anywhere you look in the U.S. It’s really a tool of education, and that’s what my goal is in theater.”
“Walls” is playing at FringeNYC August 20, 23 and 25. Tickets can be purchased for $18 on the festival’s website.
Source: www.revelist.com
By Libbie Katsev
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When artist Thar Sayegh fled Iraq in 1999, he left his home, his possessions, his education and the promise of a bright career teaching art. But moving to Anaheim, Calif., after living as a refugee in Jordan for 14 years, brought a new kind of loss — He had to stop painting.
Mr. Sayegh, who moved to Pittsburgh last fall, lives in Greenfield with his family and works as a driver for Uber and Lyft while taking classes at the Community College of Allegheny County. But before moving to the U.S., he worked for more than a decade to build a successful career as an artist. Now, he’s painting in class and working toward following his calling to again be a full-time artist and art teacher.
“I feel that I have more energy or power when I can do something [with] deep meanings or with a message,” he said.
In his paintings, a man washes himself by a stream, women lean down to harvest wheat, and a whirl of faces surrounds a pair of lovers — their vivid expressions both realistic and blurred by the swirls of color. While working in the Middle East, Mr. Sayegh said, he liked to paint “anything related to humans, to people … to ignore everything else, like nationality, like religions, like traditions.”
Often, he painted simple scenes in daily life, trying to capture moments in the way photographers do.
“I want to show how people are suffering, respect others, sacrifice others,” he said. “How people have love for other people or … the place that [they] belong to, [where] they’re born and raised.”
Mr. Sayegh spent more than a decade developing his technique of using oil paints in such a way that the oil is “light and sensitive” like watercolors.
“I want to do something special in my art. I don’t want to follow the others,” he said. “And I swear, if I couldn’t get anything new I would never show people my art.”
Mr. Sayegh realized he was skilled at art as a young boy when his friends asked him to draw trees, cars and other pictures for them. At first he mostly drew to show off, he said, but it came to be the way he thought and expressed himself.
“Little by little, day by day, it start[ed] to be everything in my life,” he said.
He studied art at the University of Mosul, where he was at the top of his class. There, he met his wife, another talented art student. His teachers were waiting for him to graduate so he could join their ranks, but Iraq was becoming increasingly dangerous. In 1999, when Mr. Sayegh was just one year shy of getting his degree, his family had to flee to Jordan.
It was a “very dangerous and weird” journey, he said. It was illegal for people to leave the country except for short periods if they left money in the bank to ensure their return.
Mr. Sayegh’s family was counting on the fact that his father, a former politician, had a diplomatic passport. But when his father got his passport renewed, he found he no longer had diplomatic travel privileges: There was no guarantee he wouldn’t be recognized, stopped or even jailed. His father went anyway and made it into Jordan without incident.
“I don’t know how he got out,” Mr. Sayegh said. “Nobody knows.”
The rest of the family followed. It was a painful departure — especially for his wife, who cried, saying she couldn’t imagine never seeing her parents or siblings again. Claiming to be going on vacation, Mr. Sayegh took a taxi into Jordan. He never returned.
“We lost everything,” he said. “We lost our home. The government … took everything we own.”
In Jordan, the family went immediately to the U.N., where they received refugee status. That protected them from deportation, but because he was in Jordan illegally, he couldn’t own a home, travel or complete his studies. Despite those hurdles, he attained success as a professional artist after friends connected him with the management of the Orfali Art Gallery, a prestigious private gallery in Amman.
“When they saw my art they said, ‘Wow, that’s what we need. Even if you don’t have certificates, we don’t care,’ ” Mr. Sayegh said.
Orfali gave him a trial period as a teacher and then a full-time job and eventually put him in charge of designing the curriculum. He became known for his work in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and had his work shown in Manhattan with that of other Iraqi refugee artists. And his family grew: He and his wife had four children, who now range in age from 6 to 16.
Then, in 2013, the U.N. told them they were to move to California.
“We had just five days to wrap up everything that we had for 14 years,” Mr. Sayegh said.
In the U.S., Mr. Sayegh was finally legally able to complete his studies. But life in California was a “very tough situation,” he said. At first, he continued to exhibit his art, but he couldn’t find buyers. With a family to support, he had to look for other work.
“It was very hard to start seeking … any kind of job outside of [the] art field,” he said.
Driving required few skills and little English. At the time, he had just started taking English as a second language classes. Although Mr. Sayegh lived in Anaheim, he drove and worked in Los Angeles, 40 minutes away, coming home every three to five days to get some rest. Most of the time, he ate and slept in his car.
“I had to spend all my time and energy just for work. I couldn’t paint or study,” Mr. Sayegh said.
So, a little less than a year ago, he, his wife and children, mother and sister started over for the third time. The family of eight piled into three cars and drove across the country for nine days until they reached Pittsburgh. He chose Pittsburgh for its affordability and proximity to the New York art world, Europe and the Middle East. It’s still too dangerous for his family to visit Iraq, but he hopes to return someday.
“It’s not very easy to start from zero, but now we are happy that we are here and we have this opportunity, and I think I will be successful here,” Mr. Sayegh said.
He and his family like Pittsburgh’s slower pace and high-quality educational institutions. The lower cost of living enabled Mr. Sayegh to enroll at CCAC in the spring. Despite his experience in the field, he needs a degree to teach art. Every time he leaves for class, his wife — who hasn’t been able to paint in years — reminds him how lucky he is and tells him she’s happy for him.
“Through classes I came back to my brushes,” Mr. Sayegh said. “I missed my brushes a lot, been away from them for about 2½ years.”
Mr. Sayegh also finds the city’s natural beauty inspiring. For the time being, though, he’s sticking to class assignments.
“It’s refreshing my mind and my hand to come back to my skills,” he said. “But I’m looking forward to have more time and opportunity to paint.”
He hasn’t had time to make connections in the Pittsburgh art world or find sponsorship to allow him to paint independently.
“[Starting over three times] cost me a lot of time and effort, but I still have determination,” he said. “I’m 46, but I still have determination to continue my study and to obtain my degrees, and to do everything that I ever want to do.”
Source: www.post-gazette.com
Associated Press
The Arab American National Museum is updating permanent exhibits to boost representation of immigrants and refugees from a broader range of countries.
The museum based in Dearborn says it’s making the changes with a $45,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The facility aims to document recent migration from places such as North Africa that aren’t represented in exhibits and programming.
Museum officials say they want “to give recent arrivals a more proportionate voice in Arab American history.” The effort will start with research and planning, and then the museum will seek another grant to build and install the updated exhibits.
The museum’s grant is among nearly 300 projects and programs nationwide receiving a total of $79 million from the federal agency.
Source: www.freep.com
By Rebecca Kheel
The Hill
Art-market experts want the Defense Department to get more involved in preventing the destruction and looting of cultural artifacts in Iraq and Syria, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released Monday.
The recommendation was one of seven suggestions experts gave the GAO for ways the U.S. government can better protect artifacts from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other groups, including creating a comprehensive, governmentwide strategy on protecting cultural property.
“Art market experts suggested that an overarching strategy on cultural property protection would communicate and emphasize U.S. priorities on the issue of cultural property protection and that it should include diplomatic and law enforcement elements,” the report says.
ISIS’s destruction of art and other cultural artifacts in the territory it has seized has grabbed headlines as an example of its barbarism and has been called the worst cultural heritage crisis since World War II.
Additionally, ISIS has looted and trafficked artifacts as a source of revenue, though the GAO report notes, “There are no reliable and publicly available estimates of the revenue ISIS earns from trade in stolen cultural property overall.”
In addition to ISIS, other terrorist groups; Iraqi, Russian and Syrian airstrikes; Kurdish groups; Syrian opposition groups; and other individuals have damaged cultural sites and property, according to the report.
U.S. agencies and the Smithsonian Institution have worked in five areas to protect cultural property, according to the GAO. The agencies include the departments of State, Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury and Defense.
Their efforts include raising awareness, sharing information among agencies, bolstering law enforcement efforts, building capacity overseas and preventing destruction.
But 26 art-market experts who responded to a GAO questionnaire identified seven high-priority ways to improve efforts.
For one, they said, the Defense Department could assign a point person for protecting cultural heritage and take more of a leadership role in enforcing a 1954 Hague Convention on protecting cultural property.
“They believe that DoD efforts appeared to be disjointed among different combatant commands and suggested that the primary point of contact to coordinate all of DoD’s cultural property protection work could potentially be in the Office of the Secretary of Defense,” the report says. “One art market expert noted that DoD does not appear to have an approach to cultural property protection globally.”
In a response included in the GAO report, the Pentagon said the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy’s Office of Stability and Humanitarian Affairs is available as a point of contact for the issue, but that protecting cultural property can involve many different Pentagon offices.
“Thus, DoD officials concluded that they are not certain that a central point of contact through which all inquiries about cultural property must be routed is necessary or would result in greater efficiencies,” the report says.
Also, the Pentagon said in the report that it is a “misperception” for art-market experts to say it is not effectively implementing the Hague Convention or does not have an effective and coordinated approach to protecting cultural property.
The experts also recommended U.S. agencies further increase information sharing among themselves, collaborate more with foreign countries to share law enforcement information internationally, improve U.S. Customs and Border Protection guidelines on importing cultural property, increase law enforcement training, and work with private organizations and foreign governments to create a database of items in museums or storage sites.
U.S. officials generally agreed with those suggestions, according to the report, except for the need to collaborate more with foreign governments on law enforcement, with officials saying they are already able to obtain information from foreign governments.
The experts also suggested the United States create a governmentwide strategy on protecting cultural property.
“Many art market experts we spoke with commented that U.S. agencies currently do not appear to have clearly delineated roles, and these art market experts were unclear which agency would be responsible for addressing certain cultural property issues,” the report says.
U.S. officials had “mixed views” on that suggestion, the report says.
“Specifically, State officials noted that a strategy on cultural property protection could potentially increase coordination between different agencies,” the report says, “but could also be difficult to implement, potentially restrict agency flexibility in meeting new challenges, and might not achieve any new goals.”
Source: thehill.com
CBC News
The pictures tell the story. Pictures of tanks, guns and bombing fighter jets, all drawn by young Syrian teens.
They are the scenes etched in the memories of kids, aged 13-19, attending a summer camp for recent Syrian immigrants who landed in Windsor.
It’s helping them adjust to life here and at the same time helping them work through the lasting trauma they experienced overseas.
“Like one of the girls, she saw her sister dying … and her mother got paralysed … lost one of her eyes,” said camp organizer Hiba Hijazi.
The pictures will be sewn together to make a quilt they will take to their school, Westview Freedom Academy, next month.
The camp began on July 13 at the offices of Windsor Women Working with Immigrant Women in downtown Windsor.
The 26 teens are also working on what they call a living library. They will use pictures of loved ones they lost in the Syrian conflict to recount their experiences at a celebration later this month.
Mahmoud Al-Sheblak is sketching a picture of his brother from a picture he has of him.
He was shot by Syrian soldiers during a demonstration. He says the camp is teaching him a lot.
“Teamwork and working together,” said Al-Sheblak, who is also happy he has made new friends.
The camp also gives the kids a chance to hone their English skills, and a voice to express what they want us know about them.
“Islam is not terrorist. We are in Canada. Canada is country, is peaceful country,” said Yousef Arab.
“We learn how to respect each other and we enjoy [the] volunteer work we did,” said Omar Al-Haik.
The kids will present their stories and their quilt at a special celebration of the end of camp on Aug. 19 at the Rose City Islamic Centre.
They will also bring the shoes they immigrated to Canada with and put them in a pile and symbolically trash any prejudice they are facing in Canada by writing out the statements on paper and throwing them in a garbage can they are painting up.
Source: www.cbc.ca
LEYAL KHALIFE STEPFEED Founded in 1963, The Institute for Palestine Studies is a non-profit organization that has been devoted to providing the world with the information needed on the occupied country. Having been first established in Beirut, it is considered the oldest institute in the world whose work is exclusively dedicated to the documentation, research, analysis and … Continued
Press release: Arab American National Museum Two-phase research and implementation process to focus on recent immigration patterns and refugee communities DEARBORN, Mich. (Aug. 10, 2016) – The Arab American National Museum (AANM) has received a $45,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to fund research to update the Museum’s permanent exhibits. In … Continued
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