Massarah Mikati Your Middle East Leila Khoury never forgot the stunning bathhouse she saw when she visited Aleppo at the age of 15 — the intricate patterns weaving in and out of one another; the deep, dull blue painted on select sections of the walls; the intricate details that lined the multi-colored floors and ceiling. … Continued
BY: Habeeb Salloum/Contributing Writer “How can a white man enslave my land? How can he enslave my yesterday and tomorrow? I am black and Africa is for me, not the intruding foreigner.” So wrote the poet, Muhammad Al-Fituri in his book, Aghani Ifriqiya (The Songs … Continued
By Abeer Salman CNN In a small garden next to his house in the West Bank town of Nablus, artist Ahmad Muhammad Yasin sits with his paints contemplating his next creation. But rather than the normal canvas you’d expect, he’s working on a large, and very old, cactus plant. And on these plants he depicts … Continued
UCLA: The Birthplace BY: Sami Asmar/Contributing Writer Although one of the largest universities in the world, and consistently one of the best in many fields, the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) does not feel crowded. Everybody loves the spacious grounds and unique architecture with Middle Eastern style arches found on many … Continued
Palestinian American fashion designer Rami Kashou smiles as a Paestinian woman chooses one of his designs, during a fitting session, at a pop-up shop in the West Bank city of Ramallah. PHOTO: AFP By: Samaa TV RAMALLAH, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Rami Kashou’s designs are worn by Hollywood stars and royalty but for the past few days, … Continued
Palestinian artist Rasha Abu Zayed gives children lessons on drawing techniques inside Atelier Center, in Gaza City, on July 30, 2016. (Xinhua/Wissam Nassar) by Osama Radi and Emad Darimli Xinhua GAZA, — In the war-torn Palestinian Gaza Strip, a private cultural center helps children alleviate stress and trauma to restart life through art. At the … Continued
By NADYA FAULX
KMUW RADIO
(PHOTO: “Untitled (Lime)” by Iraqi artist Waseem Ahmad is among the 80 pieces on display at four galleries in the “Building Bridges” exhibition)
A new art exhibition opens today in Wichita that will showcase the work of Middle Eastern artists displaced by war.
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The Building Bridges exhibit includes 80 paintings, most of them from Iraqi refugee artists. The work was brought here by the nonprofit Wichita Common Humanity, a collaboration of different religious and interfaith groups.
Coordinator Jan Swartzendruber says the goal of the project is to challenge stereotypes about the Muslim and Arab worlds and help the Wichita community better understand its Muslim neighbors.
“It’s really effective to look at a piece of artwork that comes from a person in another culture and the visual part of that, the beauty of it, speaks for itself,” she says. “You just see the art, you appreciate the humanity of the painter.”
Swartzendruber says many people aren’t familiar with Iraqi modern art, but that the openness of Wichita’s strong art community makes it a welcoming city for the exhibition.
“I think this is a ripe time to bring this kind of art to Wichita and it’s going to meet with a lot of enthusiasm,” she says.
The exhibition will also include a sale, with 80 percent of the profits going back to the artists. The show runs through Aug. 26 at The Looking Glass at Cadman Art Gallery at Wichita State University. It will be at various Wichita State and Bethel College galleries through Sept. 30.
Source: kmuw.org
BY LYNN TRIMBLE Phoenix New Times EXPAND Iraqi-born artist Bassim Al-Shaker recently moved into a new studio and gallery space in Roosevelt Row, and will present his first exhibition there on August 5, during Phoenix’s First Friday art walk. He’s calling it Babylon Gallery, which references his Iraqi roots. Until recently, the space located at 918 North … Continued
By Ross
Lichfield LIVE
Palestinian artists have visited the city to help create three new icons for Lichfield Cathedral.
The Bethlehem Icon School students will create the new pieces which will go on display in the Nave.
Ian Knowles, director of the school, has brought the three students to work on the icons – which will include the Archangel Gabriel and Mary – this summer.
Ian Knowles with the students from Palestine in Lichfield
Visitors to the cathedral can see the artists at work, as they write the Icons from 2pm to 4.30pm daily in their studios in the Old Stables in Cathedral Close.
The Very Revd Adrian Dorber, Dean of Lichfield, said: “This is a really exciting and creative project.
“The Bethlehem Icon School is training young Palestinian artists in a form of Christian art that first began in the Holy Land. Recently their training has been accredited by the Prince of Wales’ School of Traditional Arts and Skills.
“Our commission benefits the Bethlehem Centre by providing an important UK venue for its work but it links us in Lichfield with an unbroken form of Christian art that speaks engagingly and beautifully of the Christian Story.
“As a place of pilgrimage and worship, I believe these icons will help all our cathedral visitors to pray and get a glimpse of God’s generous love – his invitation to align our lives with his.
“We also hope that by having the staff and students in Lichfield for the whole summer, local people can get to hear of the struggles people in Bethlehem face but also learn much from the students’ faith and resilience.”
The cathedral will also be hosting talks which will allow visitors to gain a better understanding of iconography, and of Christian culture and identity in the Middle East.
Students from Palestine will return next year to complete a third Icon, encapsulating the Crucifixion and Transfiguration of Christ.
Source: lichfieldlive.co.uk
Synergy, storytelling and selection all have a part to play in creating a collection of character, Mazen and Loulia Soueid tell Ahmad Minkara. Artscoop Mazen Soueid with artworks by Ayman Baalbaki and Marwan Sahmarani Among the many things that brought Mazen Soueid and Loulia Berbir together back in 2007 was a shared passion for art. … Continued
Peter Beaumont
The Guardian
He is regarded as one of Palestinian literature’s most important figures, a poet whose work has been translated and read around the globe, including in Hebrew.
Now the work of Mahmoud Darwish, who died in 2008, has been denounced by Israel’s far-right defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman, as equivalent to Hitler’s Mein Kampf in the latest bitter row over freedom of expression in Israel.
The remarks came as Lieberman waded into the controversy over Israel Army Radio’s inclusion of one of Darwish’s poems, ID Card, in an educational segment, infuriating rightwingers.
Lieberman summoned the station’s head, Yaron Dekel, to reprimand him over last week’s broadcast of the poem on the station’s University on the Air programme.
Darwish is internationally renowned for his poetry, whose themes of identity, exile and belonging are expressed often through an evocation of landscape.
In Israel, Darwish’s most controversial poem has long been Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words, a rejection of occupation written in 1988. It has been cited by former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir as evidence the poet believed Jews should abandon Israel, a claim Darwish denied.
“Maybe it’s not so clear,’’ Darwish said at the time. “In a song it’s hard to say precise things. So I emphasise: only the territories captured during the six-day war, not the state of Israel.’’
ID Card was written in 1964, when Darwish was working as a literary assistant in Haifa on an Israeli communist party publication. Its most famous line – “Write it down! I’m an Arab” – was later borrowed for a documentary of his life. Like many of his poems, it balances complex emotions often within a single stanza: anger, pride in a sense of self, rejection of stereotyping and a warning of the consequences of oppression. It finishes: “Write down on the top of the first page: / I do not hate people / And I do not steal from anyone / But if I starve / I will eat my oppressor’s flesh / Beware, beware of my starving / And my rage.”
Avigdor Lieberman has reprimanded the head of Army Radio for broadcasting ID Card. Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
According to reports on Israel’s Channel 2, it was this line that provoked Lieberman’s rage, prompting him to say that Darwish, “who called in his poetry for the expulsion of the Jewish people from the state of Israel and who wrote that ‘the flesh of the occupier will be my sustenance’, cannot be part of the Israeli narrative programme that was aired.
“By that logic, the complete legacy of the Mufti al-Husseini or the literary merits of Mein Kampf could also have been included.”
Other reports quoted Lieberman as complaining that “someone who writes texts against Zionism, which are used to this very day as fuel for terror attacks against Israel, gets the honour of his creations being included by the station as part of texts that made it into Israel’s canon, alongside Jerusalem of Gold and The Silver Platter”.
“It is obvious that this represents a failure and cannot go unchallenged,” said Lieberman’s spokesperson.
The row was initially ignited by the culture minister, Miri Regev – who has sought to deny government funding to arts groups that refuse to perform in the occupied territories – in a Facebook post.
Calling on Lieberman to stop funding the station, Regev claimed it was “providing a platform to the Palestinian narrative that opposes the existence of Israel as a Jewish democratic state”.
While nominally in charge of Army Radio, Lieberman has no power to intervene in its output. For its part, the station defended the broadcast, saying: “On this platform we’ve hosted programmes on various topics, including the literary works of Rabbi Kook, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Theodor Herzl and Naomi Shemer, as well as the text of the declaration of independence. We believe that academic freedom obligates us to offer our listeners a wealth of ideas.”
Darwish has been widely translated into Hebrew and some poems were considered for inclusion in the Israeli school curriculum in 2000, before the idea was dropped after criticism by rightwingers.
The poet is in many respects a metaphor for the Palestinian exile experience. Born in al-Birwa, in what was then British Mandate Palestine, his family fled after the Israeli state was created in 1948, first to Lebanon, before returning to Acre. After studying in Moscow, he joined the Palestine Liberation Organisation in the early 1970s, living in exile in the Middle East before being allowed to settle in Ramallah in 1995.
Among those who were unsurprised by Lieberman’s comments was Ghassan Khatib, a professor at Bir Zeit University – a Palestinian university, he said, which teaches texts by key Zionist thinkers including Herzl and Jabotinsky.
“It is a demonstration that he is not serious about positive relations between the two sides,” he said. “In conflict there are two sides, each with its own narrative. When media outlets in Israel allow Israelis to look at the other side’s narrative, it should be respected.
“Mahmoud Darwish in particular is extremely sophisticated and humanitarian. I went back to revise his poems. I find it very difficult to find anything to justify Lieberman’s remarks.”
Khatib insists that Darwish’s poem needs to be read in the historical and political context in which it was written.
“It was written when the land of Palestinians was being taken every day. How can we forget that the land called Israel was the property of family and relatives that was taken in an illegal way?”
Source: www.theguardian.com
REUTERS
Among enthusiasts of handmade art, Hamid Abdulrazzaq Rwaiyd is a well-known name in Iraq.
The work of the Iraqi sculptor and engraver requires precision and time so it is unsurprising that his pieces are highly sought after by royal families from the Gulf and beyond.
His trademark is engraving rifles, pistols, and other such weaponry.
“I combined between engraving and sculpture, some pieces reached a point where the engraver -by himself- can’t master it because it needs sculpting, and the sculptor can’t master it because it need engraving, so I made a very beautiful pieces especially with Mesopotamian symbols, they demand a precise work where I can show my skill,” said Rwaiyd.
“I received 15 rifles of sheikh Zaiyd sons. I cherish these pieces because I excelled with them. I showed my skills in engraving, sculpting, and design. I used different patterns and designs. The rifle is divided into 3 parts: iron, wood and box, each one of these parts is an art piece in its own. These were very unique pieces,” he adds.
Some items can take days to complete, others months or even years.
One of his masterpieces is a revolver pistol that took him 6 years to finish – engraved both inside and out. Such intricacy has set a high bar for other engravers.
The engraver believes it is his duty to use his gifted talent to promote Iraq engraving tradition – running in his family for several generations.
“I’m interested in Iraq’s civilization and I feel that it’s my message to share and make people know about Iraq’s great civilization. I feel like I have a message to promote Iraq’s civilization not only in Iraq but also abroad when many of my art pieces travel abroad. I’m really proud of it,” he added.
Rwaiyd is an enthusiast of the Mesopotamian civilization, which is reflected in all of his art work, utilizing many Assyrian and Babylonian symbols as well as Islamic symbols and ancient Arabian poetry.
He hopes that by showing the younger generations what can be achieved with a little creativity, precision and concentration, the art of engraving will live on.
Source: www.nrttv.com
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