Save the date: ArteEast Benefit Auction November 30, 2012 at Lombard-Freid Gallery. To purchase tickets and bid on artwork click here.
ArteEast is pleased to announce the release of the Fall 2012 edition of ArteEast Quarterly, an online publication that offers readers a critical forum for contemporary artistic practices in the Middle East, North Africa and their diaspora. Consisting of 3 sections—ArteZine, Shahadat and Gallery—ArteEast Quarterly complements ArteEast live programs to serve its global audience.
Fall 2012 ArteZine
Title: ”ANEW: Retelling Stories of the Past and the Future”
Guest Editor: Ceren Erdem
Guest Curator Ceren Erdem looks carefully at how radical shifts in borders, social structures and modes of cultural production in Eastern Europe and the Middle East relate to art’s own negotiation of culture, identity and history.
Contributions include an artist project by Haig Aivazian, whose lecture-performance folds together multiple disparate narratives of sports and post-cold war politics, and a probing interview with Michael Rakowitz explores narratives of exceptionalism and failure, with particular attention to the intricacies of the Beatles’ 1969 breakup. A series of essays by Murtaza Vali, Özge Ersoy and Zdenka Badovinac address the impact that paradigm shifts have on sites of cultural production, moving from individual analysis of art works to systemic analysis and institutional critique. Charles Esche reflects on the geopolitical implications of moving a single work from the Netherlands to Ramallah in Khaled Hourani’s “Picasso in Palestine,” while Anthony Downey casts a broader inquiry into the interaction between politics and art, and their place in civic space.
For this issue of ArteZine and to learn more about the contributors click here.
Fall 2012 Gallery
Featured artist: Younes Baba Ali
Guest Curator: Alya Sebti
Guest-curated by Alya Sebti (Director, Marrakech Biennial), the fall issue marks the start of a six-quarter cycle of Gallery that spotlights artists from the Maghreb, and leads up to the 2013 edition of the Marrakech Biennial which asks the question, “Where are we now?” The first in the series features Younes Baba-Ali and his take on the every day as a platform of resistance. Each subsequent gallery will showcase artists who deal with the every day in their work to reveal the conceptual threads and regional connections that underlie the expanding North African art scene. Following Sebti’s focus on Morocco, Zineb Sedira and Yasmina Reggad (/A.R.I.A/) will tackle Algeria, while Wafa Gabsi will address Tunisia.
For this issue of Gallery see here.
Fall 2012 Shahadat
Artist: Mary Choueiter
Translator: Sophie Chammas
Editor: Barrak Alzaid
The Fall 2012 launch of Shahadat is part of ArtEast’s Exploring Literature in Translation series
This edition of Shahadat tackles story telling and history making via excerpts of Mary Choueiter’s artists’ book Contes féériques. The artist’s adaptation and re-reading of Lebanese history (including a cast of animal characters in allegorical roles) extends the trajectory spearheaded by leading Lebanese artists like Rabih Mroué who draw attention to the myriad conflicting stories that comprise the country’s history using performance and visual art. Through this work, the artist offers a new method for narrating Lebanese history and subverts her role as an authoritative voice by casting her story, much like Lebanon’s own history, as subjective and rife with inconsistencies.
To view the issue online click here.
Shahadat publication launch and reading: Contes féériques: Art Books and Histories
November 3, 7:30pm
Union Docs
322 Union Avenue
Brooklyn, New York
The launch event celebrates Choueiter’s digital publication with a reading in Arabic of Contes féériques alongside projected media. A conversation will follow featuring Choueiter and artist-curator Maddy Rosenberg.
For more information about ArteEast Quarterly contact Barrak Alzaid, Artistic Director, ArteEast.
To sign up for the ArteEast Mailing list email mailinglist [at] arteeast.org.
ArteEast Quarterly is generously supported by the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.