Spring 2008
Omar Zelig
By Omar Zelig Spring 2008 | ArteZine Available here in French (PDF). One sure way of sounding like an old fart to younger generations of Algerians, is to keep reminiscing about the good old days when you could still go to the movies in Algiers, before the wide spread of video and satellite television in the…
Nigol Bezjian
By Nigol Bezjian Spring 2008 | ArteZine A long time ago the Syrian Baathist government nationalized cultural institutions, swiftly placing the iron noose around their necks. I must have been 14 years old when I woke up one morning to found the Cinema Orient (Cinema Al-Sharq) moniker covered with a white canvas that read, in red…
Winter 2007
Maymanah Farhat, Athir Shayota
By Athir Shayota and Maymanah Farhat Winter 2007 | ArteZine Q: How do you see the state of contemporary international art? How does art function in today’s global society? A: The state of contemporary international art exists in at least two forms: the first is the market driven product that challenges no authority and reflects on benign notions,…
Mustafa Ali, Maymanah Farhat
By Mustafa Ali and Maymanah Farhat Winter 2007 | ArteZine Q: How do you see the state of contemporary international art? How does art function in today’s global society? A: Fragmentation, aimlessness and uselessness are the big events that have affected art activity. The harshness of the experience appeared in the big movement. Reflected in all art activities…
Maymanah Farhat, Khaled Hafez
By Khaled Hafez and Maymanah Farhat Winter 2007 | ArteZine Q: How do you see the state of contemporary international art? How does art function in today’s global society? A: I can easily say that I am lucky to be 43 years old!!! Let me explain, when 23 years ago I, with some of my artist peers, was…
Maymanah Farhat, Samia Halaby
By Samia Halaby and Maymanah Farhat Winter 2007 | ArteZine Q: How do you see the state of contemporary international art? How does art function in today’s global society? A: I think the word “art” is difficult because it covers so much. I prefer to discuss my own area of expertise, pictures. Pictures in numerous media serve mankind…
Jonathan Holt Shannon
By Jonathan Holt Shannon Winter 2007 | ArteZine With my research proposal in one hand and oud in the other, I felt that I was prepared for fieldwork in Syria. What I was not prepared for was a common response to my stated research interests in Arab music: Is there even such a thing as “Arab…
Hamdi Attia
By ArteEast Winter 2007 | Gallery ArteEast is pleased to kick off 2007 with an exhibition of recent digital media works by Hamdi Attia. The works featured here explore different aspects of the relationship between translation and political, social, and economic power. In video essays dealing with aspects of American culture ranging from movies and personal…
Abdellah Karroum, Hamdi Attia
By Abdellah Karroum Winter 2007 | Gallery The artist’s desire to understand his world and to represent it, to offer it as a living place, a place that is at once nowhere and completely unique, is a fundamental part of the artist’s project, of his way of being in the world. Hamdi Attia is a careful…
Hamdi Attia, Waiel Waiel Ashry
By Waiel Waiel Ashry Winter 2007 | Gallery Hamdi Attia’s latest work can be read as a detailed study of the social and political implications inherent in the act of translation. In four of his latest works, Attia inscribes his presence – as artist, as commentator– on already existing texts and discourses. This presence takes the…
