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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2020
As a response to several questionnaires, manifestos, interviews, and letters that were included in the book Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, this article carries out a new questionnaire with seven artists form various backgrounds and geographies, in an attempt to update and re-question some of the issues that were highlighted in the collected essays. The questionnaire includes three questions, each focusing on a different issue. The first issue considers the validity of the term “Arab Art,” the second tries to identify the main dynamics of contemporary artistic production, and the last one questions the relation of contemporary production of arts to geography and history. The following interviews have been edited for consistency and clarity.
We would like to thank Hanane Hajj Ali, a theatre-maker, “artivist,” cultural manager, writer, and researcher, for her immense and valuable help in bringing the questionnaire in contact with valuable contributors. Şebnem Yücel would also like to thank Kerim Kürkçü, an architect and gallery owner, in his attempt to bring the questionnaire in contact with Syrian artists residing in Turkey. Şebnem Yücel's research questions the representation of places, buildings and histories, and concentrates on the modernization in non-Western contexts. She received her B.Arch (1993) from Middle East Technical University, Turkey, MSc. Arch (1998) from University of Cincinnati, and Ph.D. (2003) from Arizona State University. Some of her publications include “Minority Heterotopias: The Cortijos of Izmir” (2016) in ARQ: Architectural Research Quarterly; “Regional/Modern and the Rest” (2015) in Architecture, Culture, Interpretation; and “Identity Calling: Turkish Architecture and the West” (2007) in Architecture, Ethics and the Personhood of Place. She is currently Chair of the Architecture Department at MEF University, Turkey. Associate Professor Dr. Serhan Ada is Chair of Art and Cultural Management Department, and Director of Cultural Policy and Management Research Center at Istanbul Bilgi University. He is also the Head of UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Cultural Diplomacy at the same university. Ada has been a visiting professor in various universities in Paris, Barcelona, Lyon, Beirut, Turin, Hildesheim, Venice, and New Jersey. Ada is the editor of the book Turkish Cultural Policy: A Civil Perspective (2011), focusing on the civil society’s perspective on cultural policy of Turkey as an alternative to the National Report. He also writes poetry and essays.
2 Lenssen, Anneka, Rogers, Sarah, and Shabout, Nada, eds., Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (Museum of Modern Art Primary Documents Series, Brazil: Duke University Press, 2018), 145Google Scholar.
3 Sennett, Richard, The Craftsman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.
4 Sadek, Walid, “Not, Not Arab,” Third Text 26:4 (2012): 377CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Triki, Patricia and Bruckbauer, Christine, Un Avenir en Rose: Art Actuel en Tunisie, ifa- Galerie Berlin, (Berlin: Kerber, 2012), 37Google Scholar.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Lenssen, Modern Art in the Arab World, 167.
9 Sadek, Walid, “In Health but Mostly in Sickness: The Autobiography of Moustafa Farroukh,” in Out of Beirut, ed. Cotter, Suzanne (Oxford: Modern Art Oxford Series, 2006), 66-71Google Scholar.
10 In the National Center of Live Art, Politiques, catalogue, (Tunisian Ministry of Culture, 2013), 11.
11 Patricia Boyer de Latou, “Monde Arabe, les Artistes Font le Printemps” Le Figaro, January 29, 2012, https://madame.lefigaro.fr/art-de-vivre/monde-arabe-artistes-font-printemps-290112-212715. Accessed February 11, 2020.
12 Modern Art in the Arab World, 363.
13 Ibid., 366-67.
14 Patricia Boyer de Latou, “Monde Arabe, les Artistes Font le Printemps.”
15 The National Center for Living Art is a cultural space that belongs to the Tunisian Ministry of Culture. It is a cultural space that provides the public with an exhibition gallery, a media library, as well as a space for the experimentation of contemporary artists.
16 Ahl al-Kahf (Friends of the Cave) is an arts collective, active on public space, which emerged during the revolution in Tunisia.
17 https://www.facebook.com/notes/أهل-الكهف-ahl-alkahf/ahl-al-kahf-manifeste-fondateur-transition-fr/387506547996340. Accessed January 13, 2020.
18 From a personal correspondence of one of the potential participants with the authors, describing the situation they were in at their home country in the Eastern Mediterranean.
19 This is why we decided not to mention any countries right next to the names of our participants.