BY: Habeeb Salloum/Contributing writer “The Damascene swords are not made any more. We have long lost the secret of how they were produced. There are only a few left, mostly in museums and rare antique shops. But look! I have one here! If you can afford it, its only $10,000.” The Damascene merchant was dramatic … Continued
By Nora Parr The Electronic Intifada “The Loud Silence II,” Ibrahim Al Mozain, acrylic on canvas, 40x55cm, 2012. The vibrant and complex works of Gaza-born artist Ibrahim Al Mozain were on exhibit at his first solo Ramallah show in the West Bank city’s Zawyeh Gallery this month. Al Mozain was born in Rafah refugee camp in 1961 … Continued
Through comic dialogues and elegant illustrations in his handwritten newspaper Abou Naddara, the late-nineteenth-century satirist James Sanua galvanized Egyptians against the political ills of their day. By Anna Della Subin and Hussein Omar The New Yorker This past February, in a speech laying out his plans to repay Egypt’s titanic debt, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi … Continued
By Pamela Falk
Observer.com
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. (Photo: Luiz Rampelotto/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Visitors from around the world flock to the Met to view art history’s great masterpieces and attend fashionable galas, but to negotiate international relations is surely a first. New York’s premier museum recently became the unlikely venue for a high-security, invite-only meeting organized by Samantha Power, President Barack Obama’s envoy to the United Nations. Mixing business with pleasure, the U.S. ambassador invited key international diplomats to tour the museum’s newest exhibition of Islamic art.
Joining Power to see “Court & Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs,” an exhibition of artifacts from a short-lived Turkic dynasty, were diplomats from 15 countries, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, Senegal and Palestine. Power’s hope: the historic artworks would provide the edification needed to soften the tone of regional discord. Just a day before the museum tour, Syria’s besieged city of Aleppo was plunged into chaos.
Ambassador Power was once a trusted campaign policy advisor to President Obama, and served as a member of the National Security Council before heading to the U.N. in 2013. With only six months left on at her current post, the ambassador is looking to create legacy results.
“She does a lot of events outside of Turtle Bay,” said Rae Lynn Wargo, an aide to Power.
The ambassador has found taking discussions away from the occasionally numbing rhetoric of the U.N. has proved effective for diplomacy. In the past, Power has sparred on Twitter with outspoken Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin regarding her meeting with the punk band Pussy Riot, played basketball with Arab and Israeli youth, and sung karaoke at the South Korean ambassador’s residence. She frequently brings her work home with her to the Waldorf Tower penthouse she shares with her Harvard professor husband Cass Sunstein.
As it turns out, Power’s tour is not the first time the museum has hosted VIP politicians. When the U.N. General Assembly is on, small groups of government representatives have been known to swing through. Notable visitors included Secretary of State John Kerry and Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan, according to the museum’s vice president of communications Elyse Topalian.
The exhibition at the Met includes exquisite relics from an ancient culture that once occupied the now war-torn region spanning Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria from the 11th through 13th centuries. In the show’s catalogue and in an earlier book, historian A.C.S. Peacock wrote that the Sunni nomadic group, who briefly captured Mosul, Iraq, suffered from divisions during its short dynasty, which is best known for its literacy, innovation and religious tolerance.
“In the Middle Ages, many Muslim societies placed great emphasis on learning and had large libraries and great respect for our shared history,” Met Museum president Daniel Weiss said.
Diplomats spent two hours in the galleries, sharing perspectives on the Seljuqs and, it seemed to this reporter (the only member of the media invited), they managed to find some common ground.
Sheila Canby, curator of Islamic art, directed the visiting diplomats to view a 13th century basin from Jazira. “The relationship,” she said of the ancient Muslims and crusaders, “was complicated,” with some conquest and some cooperation.
“It is important to show that Islamic history is not about fanatics waving flags,” said Weiss. “Most people get it that Muslim world history and culture is not about ISIS.”
Amr Al-Azm, an anthropology professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio who specializes in the region, joined the tour. “I am like a kid in a candy shop, these are treasures of Islam,” said Al-Azm, an anthropology professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio. “A people without their history are lost.”
Al-Azm told the group that Aleppo’s ISIS brigades, such as the Zangids, take their names from ancient civilizations.
“Those who choose those brigade names, are they on the extremist side? On the al-Nusra side or ISIL?” Power asked, intrigued.
“More on the al-Nusra side,” Al-Azm answered.
“This is not the Security Council,” Jordan’s ambassador Dina Kawar chimed in, eliciting laughter. Evoking candor was the point of Power’s tour.
“The exposition shows a period of our history where cultural influences were able to produce the epitome of beautiful artistic pieces,” said Kawar. “When you see the exposition and you watch D’aesh [ISIS] destroying our cultural heritage, claiming it as unreligious, you realize the urgent need to unite against such a dark force…Cultural diplomacy is certainly the most effective and the most necessary at this stage”
Power pushes hard but artfully, and she may be on the right track. Some of the biggest breakthroughs in diplomatic relations since World War II have occurred outside the hallowed halls of government: in the bucolic estate of Bretton Woods, Camp David, the Wye Plantation, and Potsdam. There has been Henry Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy” and Richard Nixon’s “ping-pong” diplomacy. Whether Power’s “museum diplomacy” will help mend Middle East fences is hard to predict, but she succeeded at focusing diplomats on history and art. Not a bad place to get the conversation started before she exits the corridors of the U.N.
Source: observer.com
BY YEGANEH TORBATI
REUTERS
Accustomed to generating controversy in their native Middle East with lyrics tackling love, sex and political apathy, members of Lebanese alt-rock band Mashrou’ Leila thought a summer U.S. tour would bring them a welcome respite.
Instead, as news spread on Sunday that an American man claiming allegiance to Islamic State had killed 49 people in a packed gay nightclub in Florida, the band found itself at the crossroads of tensions between the gay and Muslim communities, spilling out on social media and in online commentary.
Mashrou’ Leila has broken ground in the Arab world with an openly gay lead singer and stances espousing gender equality and sexual freedom. In doing so, the band embodies the two communities most shaken by Sunday’s shooting – lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people targeted by the Orlando gunman, and Muslims who feel unfairly blamed for the violence perpetrated in the name of their religion.
“We come from a part of the world where I’ve always felt not accepted because of my sexuality,” Hamed Sinno, Mashrou’ Leila’s lead singer, said in an interview on Monday.
Seeking out information in the hours after the attack, Sinno said he came across comments on social media that he felt sought to pit Muslims and gays against each other.
“By the time they even started getting the names of the victims out, the media had already spun it as this whole LGBT community versus Muslim community” phenomenon, he said. “So many of us are at the intersection of these two communities. Suddenly I felt excluded, I felt I wasn’t allowed to mourn.”
Sinno said the band had already experienced several brushes with anti-Muslim bias in its two weeks in the United States. An airport security guard told them that if Donald Trump won the presidency, “all of this is gonna change,” apparently referring to the Republican presidential candidate’s pledge to ban Muslims from entering the country if he is elected.
The band’s danceable tunes have earned them an avid global following but also condemnations from Arab leaders who say their lyrics go against the region’s traditional values. In April, Jordanian authorities banned the group from the country, band members said, though they later relented after an international outcry.
One song, “Shim el-Yasmine,” describes Sinno’s desire to introduce his male lover to his parents, while “Lil Watan” skewers political apathy in the Middle East.
It is wrong-headed to blame Sunday’s attack on Islam, said Sinno, a U.S. citizen. The FBI said the Orlando gunman, Omar Mateen, called during the massacre to pledge allegiance to Islamic State, the jihadist group that later claimed responsibility for the attack.
But the depth of Mateen’s commitment to Islamic State was unclear. His father said the attack was not motivated by religion and suggested it was rather his son’s anti-gay sentiments.
“The issue is not Islam more than any other religion,” Sinno said. “Most of the attacks that happen against the queer community in the U.S. are not by Muslims, they’re by Christian fanatics.”
In front of a sold-out crowd on Monday night at the Hamilton venue in downtown Washington, D.C., the band briefly addressed the tragedy, the worst mass shooting in modern American history. Staff at the Hamilton said they decided to up security measures following Sunday’s attack, and patrons and their bags were carefully screened before entering the concert.
“There are a bunch of us who are queer, who feel assaulted by that attack who can’t mourn because we’re also from Muslim families, and we exist,” Sinno said to cheers from the crowd, before the band launched into the next song.
Source: www.reuters.com
By NAZANIN LANKARANI
THE NEW YORK TIMES
The designer Karen Chekerdjian is known in her native Lebanon for modernist objects made with traditional materials and techniques. Now, two exhibitions in Paris — at the Institut du Monde Arabe and at the private Dutko Gallery — offer a close look at an artist who addresses the divide between art and function, and the wider gap between Western and Arab cultures.
The show at the Institut du Monde Arabe, “Respiration,” opened on May 30 and runs until Aug. 28. The exhibition at the Dutko with the same title closed on Sunday, with pieces offered for sale through August.
“The idea was to show the positive elements of the Arab world,” said Philippe Castro, the chief adviser to Jack Lang, the president of the institute and a former French culture minister. “Today, that can only be shown through Arab art. There is real creativity coming out of the Arab world, especially Lebanon. Given the geopolitical context, we felt it was important to give a voice to this narrative.”
Ms. Chekerdjian, 45, who is of Armenian descent, was raised in Lebanon, the region’s most diverse society, a land unsettled by decades of conflict and turmoil, most recently by fallout from the Syrian war. She began her artistic career in film, then moved on to graphic design before earning a master’s degree in industrial design from the Domus Academy in Milan, where, she said in an interview in Paris, she learned to “think rather than design.”
“My objects do not have a traditional ‘Arab’ feel, in that they are not folkloric or ornamental,” she said. “They have emotion, ambiguity and search for meaning beyond their function. Mine is not a structured, rigid approach to objects.”
“I guess this ambiguity is typically Lebanese,” Ms. Chekerdjian said. “Beirut is a place that is both fragile and violent. My objects represent Beirut.”
At the institute show, Ms. Chekerdjian’s pieces are interspersed among objects from the permanent collection, an effort to “confirm her place within Arab heritage,” said Mr. Castro, whose visit to her studio in Beirut three years ago led to an invitation to exhibit her work.
Her “Spaceship” stools and tables are organic shapes with geometric angles threatening to take flight; arched light fixtures bisect the space they occupy; and plates carved with Arabic calligraphy are displayed alongside pieces representing the birth of Arabic writing.
Her use of traditional materials, namely gold and copper, fabricated with local smithing techniques, places her work within its regional provenance.
“There is always a Lebanese element, but I push further,” she said. “I do not reinterpret.”
Scott Longfellow, the director of D’Days, an annual design festival in Paris, said, “What is interesting is Karen’s relationship to Lebanese savoir-faire.”
“Her pieces are exceptionally well-made,” he added, noting that her designs reference a wide range of eras, including midcentury Italian and 1960s Brazil.
Ms. Chekerdjian’s show at the Institut du Monde Arabe is the first solo exhibition for a designer there, Mr. Castro said. In a low-key way, he said, her work embodies a modern, progressive edge within Arab tradition.
“Despite her orientalism, Karen is a universal artist,” Mr. Castro said. “Arab artists like her are the fresh breath that will shape the future of the region.”
Source: www.nytimes.com
Ghassan al-Azzeh finishes off the portraits in a variety of ways, but his favourite seems to be rolling the tops and bottoms of a portrait with slender wooden poles and turning them into hanging scrolls [Sheren Khalel/Al Jazeera] A young Palestinian pays his way through university selling recycled art he learned to make while in … Continued
How one man and his tea house are trying to foster a sense of understanding and community in the US city of Cleveland. By Angelo Merendino Aljazeera Cleveland, US – Ayman Alkayali is no stranger to feeling like a foreigner. Ayman’s parents were born in Palestine: his mother in Jaffa and his father in Ramla. … Continued
BY: Kristina Perry/Contributing Writer Growing from the recent boom in subscription goods services, PalBox is a fair trade and 501(c)(3) organization that sends organic and cultural Palestinian goods in a quarterly box. Half of all proceeds from purchases of PalBox benefit the International Solidarity Movement, a nonviolent means of resisting Israeli occupation and oppression. Inside the … Continued
Standard
Lebanese-American poet and visual artist Etel Adnan, 91, has produced 20 new paintings now on display at the Serpentine Galleries in Kensington.
The Weight of the World exhibition showcases the canvasses produced this year, alongside a collection of her poetry, films and tapestries.
Etel Adnan was born in 1925 in Beirut, Lebanon, and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris before becoming a powerful voice in the poets’ movement against the Vietnam War.
The Serpentine Galleries’ exhibition is Adnan’s first ever solo exhibition in a UK public institution.
Curator Rebecca Lewin told London Live: “It was while she was living in California and studying philosophy that she started painting.
Some of Adnan’s artwork on display (London Live)
“She’s possibly better known, up until recent years, for her writing but really in the last 10 or 20 years her painting has become more discovered and this is the first UK public institution show of her work.
“She uses the painting and visual art very much as a celebration of nature and of beauty.
“The extraordinary thing about these works is not just the extraordinary vitality of the colour and the simplicity of the forms she used, but also how much they really sum up so many of the elements that go into all of the landscapes and abstract compositions she’s made throughout her career.”
Entry to the exhibition, which runs until September 11, is free.
Source: www.standard.co.uk
By: Yusra Al Shawwa/Contributing Writer Proverbs have played a meaningful role in Arabic literature, poetry, and everyday conversation. Here are some of the most timeless proverbs translated from Arabic to English.
By Anisa Mehdi Islamic Monthly “It’s important for mainstream Americans to hear Muslim voices,” says Omnia Hegazy, a singer-songwriter. Hegazy is not talking about political commentary, debunking Donald Trump or how some Muslims try to explain away the horrors of Daesh; she is talking about artist voices. With her acoustic guitar and bluesy lyrics backed up … Continued
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