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The Arab Spring comes to London

A new festival in London reveals the changing realities of life in the Middle East and challenges lazy assumptions about Arab art

by Munira Mirza / July 5, 2011 / Leave a comment
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Published in July 2011 issue of Prospect Magazine

An image from Hala Elkoussy’s work ‘Myths and Legends Room: The Mural,’ on display at the Chamber Exhibition Space in Camberwell


Few, if any, political analysts predicted the Arab Spring. The raw energy of millions of protestors in the streets of Tunis and Cairo came as a surprise to many who believed that Arabs were essentially reconciled to their governments and non-democratic rule. Yet the signs had been there for some time—in the contemporary Arab art emerging from the region. A new generation of artists, film-makers, musicians, designers, playwrights and poets had been making work for years that expressed the yearning manifest in the uprisings.

Currently on show at the Delfina Foundation in London, Wael Shawky’s ‘The Larvae Channel” (2008) is a prescient video piece that explores the tensions bubbling beneath the surface of Egyptian society. Ordinary individuals are invited to speak into the camera on whichever subject they choose. Without exception, they complain about the government and the sense of tragic despair that accompanies tyranny. One young man becomes so worked up about the state of the nation that he insists that the interviewer go tell the government, religious leaders, or anyone who will listen. He is so enraged that he even gives his address, unafraid of the repercussions. Such desperation, beautifully filmed, reveals in hindsight the promise of change.

Shawky is just one of a number of artists who have benefited from the expansion of the global art market in the last decade and the increasingly international outlook of major cultural institutions. Many organisations like the Tate, British Museum, and V&A have looked to build their Middle East collections, whilst large venues such as the Young Vic, Barbican, Southbank and Sadlers Wells have brought over Arab musicians, theatre companies and writers.

Now these artists are in the spotlight, with a London festival running from 4-24th July called “Shubbak…

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Comments

  1. artsit-e
    July 7, 2011 at 13:40
    The problem is that these artists are not representatives of the Arab Spring. They are for the most part, long time official artists of the regimes that the Spring is seeking to overthrow. Or, and often simultaneously, they are sponsored by European-international foundations (not run by Arabs) whose interests lie in influencing the Arab world to a Western-friendly perspective. There are Arabic speaking artists [some of them in exile who have been working away, in critical discourses away from the "approved" discourses and unsponsored by the State and these neocolonialist organisations; this show does not feature them

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About this author

Munira Mirza
Munira Mirza is the adviser to the mayor of London for arts and culture
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