Mideast Art

Minister of Culture Wages Campaign Against Egyptian Artists

Do you remember the very first time you went to the movies? Do you remember that feeling of excitement mixed with awe, when you would hand the ticket to the cinema worker, who would lead you to your seat? Little by little you would leave the world you came from to enter a magical world unraveling on the screen before your eyes.

Reza Aramesh on Bringing His Images of Violence to NYC Nightclubs

In his first U.S. exhibition, the Iranian-born, London-based artist Reza Aramesh has brought his highly political works into what would initially seem, to those unfamiliar with his work, to be unlikely venues. In co-organization with his local representative Leila Heller Gallery, Aramesh created site-specific installations of his works at five NYC nightclubs: ranging from Bobby Rossi’s members-only celebrity gastropub No. 8 in Chelsea to the edgy, hole-in-the-wall Bossa Nova Civic Club in Bushwick. On view since May 10, “12 Midnight” closes tomorrow.

READ MORE AT Blouin ArtInfo

Vote4Zahra: A Virtual Candidate for Iran’s Elections (Part Two)

This is part two of our interview with Zahra’s Paradise author and co-creator Amir Soltani. Click here to read part one.

Aslan Media contributing writer Roxanne Rashedi recently had a chance to chat with Zahra writer and co-creator Amir Soltani about Zahra’s Paradise, her virtual presidential campaign and the issues and dialogues he hopes her character inspires:

The Use Of The Written Word In The Art Of Shirin Neshat & Lalla Essaydi

While often perceived as a purely aural element, the word is as important a visual tool in politically-motivated art. Shirin Neshat and Lalla Essaydi, two artists known for their use of calligraphy, add linguistic layers of coding to their photographs. Words, marking faces and tracing new cartographies, have featured prominently in their works, sparking a fierce contemporary debate about the role of the Middle East and North Africa in the production of images, while at the crux of both these artists’ oeuvres is a concerted interest in relaying histories of unjust representation. The uniting force between their bodies of work is the mutual recognition – via the use of literature in art – of the ways in which colonialism and 19^th Century Euro-American hegemony have shaped traditional understandings of what it means to be Middle Eastern / North African, or to belong to the respective diasporas. The result is an art that speaks back to historic pressures in an attempt at emancipation.

Vote4Zahra: A Virtual Candidate In Iran’s Upcoming Elections (Part One)

An Iranian writer, an Arab artist and a Jewish editor walk into a bar ...

No, this is not the beginning of a bad joke. Iranian writer Amir Soltani, Arab artist “Khalil” and their anonymous Jewish editor (for political reasons) are the trio behind the internationally acclaimed online, serial webcomic Zahra’s Paradise (named after Tehran’s main cemetery). Translated in English, Farsi, Arabic, French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch, Zahra’s Paradise is a political graphic art story set in the aftermath of the 2009 Iranian elections. Inspired by a composite of real people and events, Zahra rewrites a history that should not to be forgotten.