Global Art Uprising

Inspired by a Year of Revolutionary Protests, Artists Across the World Seek to Occupy the Public Imagination

(Photo Credit: Gigi Ibrahim/Flickr - “Tantawi is Mubarak” reads this street portrait from Cairo)

Art For Syria

Sama Wareh, a Syrian artist together with fellow Syrian artists in the U.S are putting together an art exhibition to raise money for Syria.

In February, I will be launching an art campaign to raise funds for the refugees of the Syrian Genocide. The UN has declared over 5,000 Syrian Refugees in Lebanon alone and an estimated total of 17,000 refugees crossing the border of Syria to escape the violence, most of these numbers being women and children.

Algerian artist paints his generation’s despair

The self-taught artist shows off a series of his portraits of friends, members of a disaffected generation who walk the streets of Algiers without training, degrees, jobs or much hope for the future.

Anger and disillusionment are rife among Algeria’s young. Those aged under 35 now make up two thirds of the unemployed among the 36 million people of the oil-rich but impoverished north African country.

Samuel Aranda for The New York Times Wins the Top World Press Photo prize 2011

Samuel Aranda’s photograph of a woman holding a wounded relative in her arms was a poignant image of the Arab Awakening. The photograph was taken in Yemen, inside a mosque, which was being used as a field hospital by demonstrators. Aidan Sullivan who was the chair of the judging panel said:

We might never know who this woman is, cradling an injured relative, but together they become a living image of the courage of ordinary people that helped create an important chapter in the history of the Middle East.

(Photo Credit: Samuel Aranda)

Taraneh Hemami’s Theory of Survival: Fabrications

Theory of Survival: Fabrications makes visible the otherwise absent histories of dissent in Iran through the production and presentation of collected historical archives, hand-crafted reproductions, print and web-based materials. This work will culminate in multidisciplinary installations that include a retail shop, a library and a story booth. Since 2007, the Theory of Survival project has amassed historical archives from local communities and the web through residencies and collective efforts. This material includes decades of otherwise banned and censored printed matter belonging to the Iranian Students Association of Northern California which was active from 1964–84 and reflects the political sensibilities of its time.

Revolution vs Revolution

The Beirut Art Center hosts an exhibition about revolutions over the last 50 years in light of the Arab Awakening. 

The choice not to include any works dealing with the actual situation in the Arab world was deliberate, as the narrative is still in progress in our region. 
The aim of the exhibition is not to be an exhaustive survey of historical events, but to reflect on radical movements and transformations, the context in which they have taken place, as well as their legacy, and more specifically, their resonance in our region today…The title of the exhibition, Revolution vs Revolution, suggests the idea that revolution often leads to other revolutions, either in confrontation with previously established systems, or by inspiring similar changes across time and across borders.

(Photo: Tacita Dean - From the series Czech Photos)

Syrian artists to commemorate Hama massacre

The massacre in Homs proceeded on the anniversary of the Hama massacre 30 years ago. The regime has created a new paradigm in tyranny - psychotic symbolism. The Congregation of Syrian Artists for Freedom are organising a campaign to commemorate the Hama massacre:

We aim to commemorate the massacre committed 30 years ago by the Syrian regime and which resulted in the death, detention, and deportation of more than 40,000 Syrian civilians.

Calligraffiti

The combination of Arabic calligraphy and street art is creating a powerful medium for Arab artists. The Arab Awakening has unleashed a wave of creative energy, which is growing stronger and deeper. eL Seed, a Tunisian artist is one of a number of emerging artists who are making their mark in this growing art medium.

(Photo Credit: eL Seed - Wall Graffiti)

Set in the aftermath of Iran’s fraudulent elections of 2009, Zahra’s Paradise is the fictional story of the search for Mehdi, a young protestor who has disappeared in the Islamic Republic’s gulags. Mehdi has vanished in an extrajudicial twilight zone where habeas corpus is suspended. What stops his memory from being obliterated is not the law. It is the grit and guts of a mother who refuses to surrender her son to fate and the tenacity of a brother—a blogger—who fuses culture and technology to explore and explode absence: the void in which Mehdi has vanished.

Zahra’s Paradise weaves together a composite of real people and events. As the world witnessed what could no longer be kept from view, through YouTube videos, on Twitter and in blogs, so this story came to be and had to be told.

Revolution Paintings: Graffiti and Arab Public Places

An exhibition at the Casa Árabe in Madrid shows work by graffiti artists and anonymous citizens expressing their revolutionary spirit in painting, banners and murals. Work is shown from cities in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia.

Noticeably, no work from Syria appears in the exhibition. To reflect the inability of Casa Árabe’s sources to document graffiti in a country sliding closer toward what many fear will be a civil war, one wall remains blank, with “Space reserved for graffiti from Syria” written in black.

EDGE OF ARABIA JEDDAH: We Need to Talk

This exhibition features work ranging from video to sculpture to installation, the exhibition will feature over 40 new works by Saudi’s emerging contemporary artists, including: Abdulnasser Gharem, Adwa AlMubarak, Ahaad Alamoudi, Ahmed Angawi, Ahmed Mater, Ayman Yossri Daydban, Effat Fadaag, Eyad Maghazel, Hala Ali, Hamza Serafi, Ibrahim Abumsmar, Jowhara AlSaud, Maha Malluh, Manal Al-Dowayan, Mohammed Al Ghamdi, Nasser Al-Salem, Noha Al-Sharif, Saddek Wasil, Saeed Salem, Sami Al-Turki, Sara Al-Abdali and Sarah Abu Abdullah.

A TRIBUTE TO ADONIS

A major tribute to the great Syrian poet Adonis, including an exhibition of his stunning drawings and a series of literary events.

Adonis is today considered one of the most important figures in the Arabic literary history of the last fifty years, and the Arab world’s greatest living poet. His work has spanned poetry, literary criticism and history, Sufism, politics and contemporary cultural affairs. His drawings are inspired by and include sections of poetry, handwritten in Arabic calligraphy and collaged with layers of found objects. These pieces, like his literary work, combine traditional and contemporary influences.

Exiled to France after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he worked to bring to Arabic poetry the international recognition it deserved.

The Mosaic Rooms A.M. Qattan Foundation Tower House, 226 Cromwell Road London SW5 0SW