Coming Soon, ‘Tajdeed: Contemporary Arabic Stories in Translation’

ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY

This Spring, The Common will be making a major contribution to Arabic literature in English translation:

The Amherst-based magazine, edited by Jennifer Acker, will soon be publishing a special issue “Tajdeed: Contemporary Arabic Stories in Translation.”

A launch event — coupled with The Common’s annual fundraiser — is scheduled for May 19 at NYU; you can sign up now online.

The event will feature “a night of drinks, canapés, and performed readings from The Common‘s special issue,” which will bring out excellent new translations of new work 25 authors from 15 countries across the Middle East.”

The issue was co-edited by Acker and Jordanian short-story writer Hisham Bustani, with an eye not just to bringing new Arabic literature into translation, but into joyous, sharp translation — with work by some of the best emerging Arabic-English translators. This collection is not for Arabists, but for English-language fictionophiles.

The “Tajdeed” (Renewal)…

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Salahi’s Garden & What’s Inevitable.

middle east revised

/photo: Behind the Mask 1 by El-Salahi © Haupt & Binder/

Ibrahim El-Salahi is a Sudanese artist, an important figure in African and Arab modernism. El-Salahi is considered a pioneer in Sudanese art and was a member of the Khartoum School that was founded by Osman Waqialla.

Hassan Musa writes about El-Salahi (he first heard stories about him when he was a teenage boy): “I was fascinated by the idea that an ordinary Muslim man could live as an artist, because in my imagination they were unreal creatures who came out of European literature”.

El-Salahi’s international success soon turned him into a national hero, so much so that in 1970 the Department of Tourism distributed a poster in which El-Salahi posed in his studio, with the caption “Sudanese artist at work”.

/photo © Ibrahim El-Salahi, via Tate/

El-Salahi developed his own style and was one of the first artists to elaborate the Arabic calligraphy…

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Nasreen Mohamedi – Exhibition Review from The MET

One of the most significant artists to emerge in post-Independence India, Nasreen Mohamedi (1937–1990) created a body of work that demonstrates a singular and sustained engagement with abstraction. Her minimalist practice not only adds a rich layer to the history of South Asian art but also necessitates an expansion of the narratives of international modernism. The Met Breuer exhibition, the first museum retrospective of the artist’s work in the United States, is an important part of the Met’s initiative to explore and present the global scope of modern and contemporary art.

Video: http://bcove.me/38dqz44o

More: http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2016/nasreen-mohamedi?utm_source=MetNews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MetNewsMar182016#

Iranian Artist Mehdi Ghadyanloo Hits Shoreditch

London Calling Blog

Iranian artist Mehdi Ghadyanloo was in Shoreditch over the weekend painting a piece on Saturday in Redchurch Street and a second one on Monday in Holywell Lane. I was fortunate enough to stumble across this artist, of whom I had not heard of, but was instantly impressed by what I saw. Born in Iran in 1981, Ghadyanloo worked as a farmer, before moving to Tehran and gaining a degree in Fine Art as well as an MA in Animation. Combining these two disciplines with his own approach to street art Ghadyanloo has gone on to become one of the most famous street artists in Iran.

For the past eight years Ghadyanloo has been involved with the Municipality of Tehran’s Beautification Scheme, promoting mural art in the city. For Ghadyanloo street art is the perfect means to beautify his grey and polluted city. He achieves this through the use of bright colours on a…

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Rolls-Royce Art Programme announces a new commission by Emirati artist Mohammed Kazem

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has announced the selection of renowned Emirati artist Mohammed Kazem to create a commissioned sculpture for the Rolls-Royce Ar

Source: Rolls-Royce Art Programme announces a new commission by Emirati artist Mohammed Kazem

Asia Week New York opens with 45 extraordinary museum-quality exhibitions, Art Daily

NEW YORK, NY.- March 10th kicks off Asia Week New York, the extraordinary ten-day extravaganza that animates New York with a glorious array of prized Asian works of art.

Originating from every corner of the Asian continent, the artworks will be shown throughout Manhattan by international Asian art specialists starting March 10 through March 19. In the museum-quality presentations by 45 galleries, art lovers can take in the rarest and finest examples of painting, sculpture, bronzes, ceramics, jewelry, jade, textiles, prints and photographs from all over Asia.

“Each year at this time, just as the flavor of spring arrives in the air, another phenomenon electrifies the atmosphere of New York: Asia Week!” exclaims Lark Mason, Chairman of Asia Week New York 2016 and owner and founder of iGavel Auctions. “And each year, in-the-know aficionados look forward to this 10-day event with great expectation. And why shouldn’t they? Asia Week, now celebrating its seventh anniversary, is more exciting than ever.”

Organized by category and region, here is a roundup of the not-to-be-missed exhibitions by the participating galleries:

ANCIENT/AND OR CONTEMPORARY INDIAN, HIMALAYAN AND SOUTHEAST ASIAN ART

http://artdaily.com/news/85685/Asia-Week-New-York-opens-with-45-extraordinary-museum-quality-exhibitions-#.VuFmwpOLSRs

From Mathaf to Madrid

Arab Hyphen

Manal Al Dowayan, Suspended Together

The exhibition Looking at the World Around You: Contemporary Works from Qatar Museums is being held from 9 February to 19 June 2016 at the Santander Art Gallery in Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, the “first major loan exhibition in Europe of works from Mathaf, the Arab Museum of Contemporary Art in Doha.”

This selection, more than 160 works in total, represents the history of contemporary Arab art as seen through the eyes of 34 artists, most of whom are natives of Arab nations like Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait and, of course, Qatar. However, the exhibition also includes works by foreign-born creators whose art is related to the Arab world, such as Yan Pen Ming and Cai Guo-Qiang from China and the Belgian master René Magritte.

Take a “virtual visit” of the exhibition here.

Featured artists include:

Lebanon

Etel Adnan
Saloua…

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Exhibition “In Search of Lost Time” at SOAS

Arab Hyphen

The exhibition In Search of Lost Time (not the Proust novel), which runs at the Brunei Gallery, in the School of Oriental & African Studies until the 19th of March, “presents work by 13 artists who seek to reframe conventional interpretations of time in the Gulf.” The  Arabic title of the exhibition, Urgent Memory is apt, as the exhibition

“explores the complex relationship between image, speed and time in the Gulf, questioning the chronological and territorial notion of the region and the paradigms of its underlying identity.”

In part, the exhibition examines  the tensions between nostalgia and notions of tradition and authenticity and narratives of utopia, prosperity and the construction of a Gulf modernity.

Sophia Al Maria, coined the term “Gulf futurism,” which

has since been used as a byword for the way that a generation, forced indoors thanks to the intense heat, developed a view of the future informed almost exclusively…

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Loud Art and Nuqat: ‘Executing Culture Shock’

Arab Hyphen

LOUD art

Saudi initiative LOUD Art has partenered with Nuqat, a platform for connecting artists in the the Middle East, to put on an exhibition with the title ‘Executing Culture Shock’.  Apparently the initiative is “aimed at challenging and examining the experience of cultural change and its effect on artists and designers.” The exhibition will be on until June 7 in Khobar.

Arabnews reports that the project featured a total of 37 collaborating artists. In the past, LOUD art exhibitions have featured artists such as:

• Yusef Al-Ahmed
• Ali Chaaban
• Khalid Zahid
• Tagreed Bagshi
• Mona Kishta
• Mohammad Sharaf
• Amina Al Abbasi
• Yousif AlShafei
• Aymen Zedani
• Zahar AlSayed

The artists showcased work which “reflected their ideas of the concept of culture shock in a wittingly, humorous, satirical, and positive attitude.”  I haven’t been able to find a complete list of the artists in this exhibition but apparently some…

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Al Hangar and the New Generation of Saudi Artists

Arab Hyphen

Myrna Award writes about  Al Hangar (The Warehouse) an initiative by young Saudi artists, who describe it as a cultural movement which aims to “ignite a sense of community.”

Artists are individually invited to show work at Al Hangar, similarly to a biennial. And so far, they’ve been inundated with requests to participate, an indication of both the buzz around the alternative space, and the growing energy around Saudi’s art scene.

The initiative is led by Ramy Alquthamy and Nasser Al Salem who hope to provide this sense of community for emerging Saudi artists, the “generation in waiting” as they were referred to in Edge of Arabia’s exhibition from a couple of years ago, Rhizoma, which aimed:

to provide a clear vision of the radical transformation in Saudi art, which is now more affiliated with its roots, to the real culture represented by the awareness of the different living conditions in…

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