ARTAFRICAFollowing on from the December issue of ART
AFRICA, entitled ‘Whose South is it Anyway,’ this
edition shifts our focus North to explore the artistic
and cultural practices of North Africa, the Middle
East and the Mediterranean.
The themes and thinking around this issue were
stimulated by writer and documentary filmmaker
Jihan El-Tahri’s keynote speech at FORUM, 1:54’s
talk programme. In her Positioning Piece, ‘The Great
Divide,’ El-Tahri brings into question the reductive
use of terms such as the ‘Arab World,’ which denies
Africa a significant portion of its cultural history. “I
am Anglophone, Francophone and Arabophone. I am
Muslim and I am a total secular. I am both an Arab
and most certainly an African. Who says I have to
choose? Who says I can’t be both, since I am both?”
The term ‘Pan Afro-Arab’ has come up again and
again as a model for understanding and engaging
with artistic production in this region, especially
when looking ‘up’ from other parts of Africa. The
longstanding history of Pan Afro-Arabic cooperation
has been largely sidelined in recent decades. For this
reason, the March issue of ART AFRICA aims to
shed light on this significant relationship.
The compounding of identities under a single banner,
that of the ‘Arab,’ is a point that curator Nadira
Laggoune touches on in her Positioning Piece, ‘Arab
Territories:’ “This amalgam [between the term ‘Arab’
and ‘Muslim’]... often refers to a homogenous block
that is unchanging and prey to fanatical passions... the
‘Arab’ world is composed of multiple communities and
it would be reductive to approach it as a monolithic
assembly overwhelmed by Islamic fundamentalism.”
Taking its cue from these two Positioning Pieces,
this issue allows room for the multiplicity of
perspective inherent in art. From the Carthage Film
Festival in Tunis to the Biennale of Photography
in the Contemporary Arab World, Beauté Congo and
COP21 in Paris, the scope of this issue attempts to
engage a variety of perspectives that are contextually
specific yet fundamentally aligned. In this light, we
felt it necessary to include artistic reactions to recent
events through the prism of art as resistance – in a
feature by international journalist, Layli Foroudi.ART AFRICA is also excited to introduce our newly
appointed Middle East editor-at-large, Dr. Zoltan
Somhegyi. In his insightful piece ‘Hub in the Making,’
Somhegyi elaborates on key developments in Dubai
and Abu Dhabi, where the new Guggenheim and
Louvre museums will make their home. In our
reviews section we look at galleries and artists from
this region, including Khaled Hafez’s ‘A Temple for
Extended Days’ (Ayyam Gallery), Cheikhou Ba and
Serwan Baran’s ‘A Game of Mirrors’ (The Mojo
Gallery), and an interview with independent Kenyan
filmmaker Amirah Tajdin.Other pioneering art events featured include the Off
Biennale Cairo, which includes an interview with
Simon Njami, as well as an interview with Reem
Fadda, the Marrakech Biennale curator. We are also
pleased to feature multiple participants of the second
edition of THAT ART FAIR 2016.The March edition of ART AFRICA is a first in
many ways. This issue includes the addition of French
translations for three of our pieces; Jihan El-Tahri’s
Positioning Piece, Layli Foroudi’s article about art
as resistance and a review of ‘Beauté Congo’ at the
Fondation Cartier in Paris. Publishing content in
French is a logical progression if we are to expand
ART AFRICA’s reach into Francophonic Africa.
The creation of this issue has been an interesting
process, drawing on existing networks and reaching
out to new ones to ‘join the conversation.’ We look
forward to the responses generated from this issue
and to including more voices as we continue ‘looking
further North.’EDITORIAL
- Brendon and Suzette Bell-Roberts, founders and editors-in-chief