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Newsletter
April 2016
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Opportunities for Artists
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Open Call: Mophradat Grants for Artists
These grants support artists (individuals, collaborations, or collectives) to develop their practice. Among other activities, the grants can be used to pursue threads of research, stage an event, make new work, publish, travel, take part in a residency or workshop, or present an exhibition or performance. he grants can cover part or all of the proposed activity or project. Approximately ten grants are awarded each calendar year, with an average value of 5000 Euros.
Deadline: April 1, 2016
Apply
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Program: Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace
Launched by Ashkal Alwan in Beirut in 2011, the Home Workspace Program (HWP) is a 10-month program that enrolls 10-15 fellows per year. The program is open to artists and other practitioners from Lebanon and the world over, to develop their formal, technical and theoretical skills in a critical setting, and provides enrolled fellows with feedback and resources to facilitate and support their art practice. Each admitted fellow is granted a merit-based scholarship, access to studio space and HWP facilities. A public component is accessible to non-enrolled participants through lectures, seminars and workshops, which are free of charge.
Deadline: April 8, 2016
Apply
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Open Call: Performance "Into Magnificence"
Internationally renowned Austrian choreographer and artist Michael Kliën will adapt his last production for Cairo’s Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival 2016.Considered one of Europe’s notable thinkers in the field of dance today, he has developed the concept of “Social Choreography”, as an extended, socio-politically engaged choreography set to happen in museums, galleries and on stage. Michael Kliën is looking for people who reflect the whole of Egyptian society: all ages, all professions, all passions, and all physical aspects to perform in this production. People of all ages (18+ to 70+) and from all walks of life, including working and retired individuals, teachers, students, doctors, waiters, engineers, and foreigers living in Egypt are welcome to join the experience.
Deadline: April 12, 2016
Apply
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Open Call: ArteEast announces Residency in partnership with the MacDowell Colony
ArteEast is pleased to invite applications for a new residency to take place in the Fall of 2016 in partnership with MacDowell Colony. ArteEast Residencies are open to artists based in the Middle East and North Africa, including the Arab region and Turkey. In an effort to stay true to our mission of facilitating access to career development for artists from the MENA region, preference is given to worthy applicants who otherwise do not have ready international travel and residency access or opportunities.All ArteEast residencies provide for living space, round trip travel from the resident’s home country and a stipend. Residencies conclude with an ArteEast CONNECT extension in New York City, which will consist of a curated schedule of meetings with art professionals (curators, gallerists, programmers, etc.), as well as presentation and community engagement opportunities in concert
with ArteEast’s various partners throughout New York City.
Deadline: April 15, 2016
Apply
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Open Call: AFAC Visual Arts and Performing Arts
AFAC’s performing arts funding is open to classical and experimental theatre and dance performances across the Arab region. Notable actors, directors, performers and cultural critics from across the Arab region have been invited to be members of AFAC’s Performing Arts juror committees.
Deadline: May 1, 2016
Apply
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Open Call: Manifest Artist Residency Award
The program is open for application by any serious emerging or established artist, including recent graduates from college art programs. It will benefit Manifest's community by providing exposure to the often unseen working space and practices of artists, serving to eliminate some boundaries to contemporary artmaking which currently may divide the everyday public from the fine visual arts.The ideal candidate for the award of the program may be working in any media or genre, but would also make reasonable use of the available life-drawing sessions even if this is ancillary activity to their primary work.
Deadline: April 9, 2016
Apply
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Open Call: The 10th Annual MA/MFA Exhibit of Masterpieces
Every year Manifest offers an opportunity just for graduate students to exhibit at their gallery in Cincinnati. This tenth installment of the Master Pieces project will continue to reveal the intensity and professionalism of students working towards their terminal academic degree in the field of art or design. Often the most exceptional work comes out of these artists’ immersion in their culture of study and intellectual pursuit. Manifest’s goal, therefore, is to select works that in the truest sense of the word are contemporary masterpieces – in other words works that set the standard of quality that the artist is expected to maintain throughout his or her professional career and justify the degree of Master.
Deadline: May 6, 2016
Apply
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Opportunities for Organizations
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Job Opening: NAAS Executive Director
NAAS (Network of Arab Arthouse Screens) is a network of alternative film spaces in Arabic speaking countries united by the common goal of developing cinema culture across the region. The Network’s collective vision is to foster alternative cinema in the region by expanding public access to the best of local, regional and world cinema amongst its large combined audience.The applicant must have a minimum of 5 years experience in the film industry, with additional experience/knowledge in the field of arts and cultural management, as well as the ability to think strategically, and assess options and actions based on the external environment and the mission of the organization.
Deadline: April 30, 2016
Apply
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Highlights from Art Dubai 2016, "AsiaArtPacific"
"Among the tightly-packed programming at Art Dubai 2016, visitors will see projects by Art Dubai Commissioned Artists scattered throughout the fair’s venue at Madinat Jumeirah. Also not to be missed is the Abraaj Group Art Prize 2016 exhibition, “Syntax and Society,” guest-curated by Nav Haq, featuring artist-duo Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme. Their new 10-minute video Only the Beloved Keeps Our Secrets (2016), commissioned for the prize, incorporates footage from an Israeli military surveillance camera. The exhibition additionally includes works by the three other shortlisted artists: Dina Danish, Mahmoud Khaled and Basir Mahmood. Running throughout the course of the fair is the 10th edition of the Global Art Forum—a program of performances and live talks—which will have a slight sci-fi leaning, with speakers that include a space archaeologist, an economist and
artists discussing the future through the lens of the past in a series entitled “The Future Was.”"
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"Art Dubai Holds its Own against International Shows," The National
"It [Art Dubai] lures names including Glenn Lowry, director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Germano Celant, director of the Prada Foundation, and London’s Serpentine Galleries’ curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.They are not the only ones. Thanks to a partnership with the British Council, Art Dubai is also hosting a party of UK-based curators and museum professionals from organisations such as Tate Liverpool and the Ashmolean Museum, who want to be introduced to local institutions including Abu Dhabi’s Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation.“We see Dubai’s role as being a hub but also as a window to the rest of the UAE and we have a symbiotic relationship with local non-commercial institutions that is incredibly beneficial," Mrs. Carver says."
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"Interview with Artists of Art Dubai," AsiaArtPacific
"For 2016, independent curator and writer Yasmina Reggad, who was tapped to lead the projects and commissions, invited Doa Aly, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Massinissa Selmani, Lydia Ourahmane and Areej Kaoud, Moza Almatrooshi, and Jumairy, as well as the art collective Nile Sunset Annex. Reggad, whose research area is currently focused on the politics of futurity, has aptly titled the series of commissions Into the Unknown, meant as a catalyst to bring forth questions underlying the “mechanism[s] of the production of our fantasies, expectations and projections triggered by this young, 44-year-old federal state [of the United Arab Emirates]”."
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"Art Dubai Modern Turns the Tables on Gender Stereotyping in the Middle East," Artslant
"Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?” The Guerrilla Girls have famously been asking the same question since 1989, when the feminist group first pointed out that “Less than 5% of the modern art section [at the museum] are women.” That was in New York, but does the same hold true for the representation and visibility of modern women artists in non-western regions? While the West is quick to slap a “suppressed” sticker on Middle Eastern women as a group, fixating on veiling as a sure-fire indicator of backwardness and victimization, the reality is that when it comes to influential women in the visual arts, the Middle East is moving towards equality much more rapidly than the West."
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"Nadia Ayari at Taymoure Grahne," ARTNEWS
Marking the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, Ayari uses her practice to explore the intersection between primary forms: the fig, branch and blood. Employing images of submission and isolation, her paintings are stilled in (or out of) time— relating conceptual narratives of love and captivity. Taking on further abstract qualities in this body of work, Ayari finds clarity in her form making. Her saturated palette and contrasting hues suggest a deeper, more acute relationship to the formal qualities of each shape.
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"Saudi Arabia's Top Ten Artists," The Culture Trip
"To say Saudi Arabian art is burgeoning is an understatement. A decade ago, the country had almost no galleries; now, Jeddah throngs with them, each representing a coterie of artists. With an inaugural group pavilion at the Venice Biennale and international museums dedicated to the country’s art, the profile of Saudi art looks set to rise. Here are 10 of its most exciting and pioneering artists."
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"On Hassan Khan’s ‘Alexandria Marathon,’ translation and control, " Mada Masr
"The February 26 discussion on the “corrupt intellectual” raised questions I found myself returning to during the following days. The fact that the idea of the “corrupt intellectual” has developed across multiple essays, talks and translations is inescapable. One attendee even told Khan during the Q&A that for her the Arabic version of the 2014 essay “A Monster Was Born: Notes on the Rebirth of the ‘Corrupt Intellectual’,” published on October 2015 on Mada Masr, felt inaccessible because “it read like a text that has been translated.
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"Middle East Art Destination Alserkal Avenue Unveils Expansion During Art Dubai," Forbes
"When people think of Dubai, a few things comes up. There’s the Burj Al Arab, that famous sailboat-shaped tower that houses the Burj Al Arab Jumeirah hotel, or the Burj Khalifa, which is currently the world’s tallest building. Culture is one of the last things that the emirate is known for, but Abdelmonem bin Eisa Alserkal is trying to change that. For the last decade the real estate developer has been trying to transform an industrial area that once housed his family’s marble factory into a cultural hub filled with art galleries, design boutiques, a theater and hip concept shops. “My father’s art collection, books, seeing them, going through them as a child, traveling, studying in the States, getting exposed to art galleries, to seeing art, seeing all around the world, still traveling, being exposed to the scene. This is where it comes from,” said
Alserkal."
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"The Science of Form: An Interview with Samia Halaby," Jadaliyya
"At the 2016 edition of Art Dubai Modern, Samia Halaby will be featured in The Mechanics of Nature, an exhibition organized by Ayyam Gallery that explores historical developments in abstract art through the works of two pioneering Arab painters.Halaby is represented in the exhibition with examples that date from the 1960s to the 1980s, a formative stage of her development, when she arrived at the formal and conceptual bases of her celebrated aesthetic. Halaby began her academic career at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu after studying at art schools in the Midwest. In 1971 she was recruited by Yale University to implement a groundbreaking studio art program that she first established at the Kansas City Art Institute."
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"The 57th Cairo Salon: Existentialism as Hope," Mada Masr
"The salon did veer away from the trend of recycling the works of Egyptian modernists, yet it also fell victim to the usual insistence on painting as the true and proper medium of fine art. The overwhelming majority of displayed works were oil or acrylic on canvas. There were only about five installations in a total of six galleries and these mostly used sculpture extensively, such as Ayman al-Sami's bizarre team of wooden horses laminated in plastic with Arabic calligraphy printed all over them. Kamal al-Fiqy's sculptural installation stood out. Its kitschy, colored mini-sculptures of distorted human figures, led by a larger towering figure, were fun yet suggest the sinister side of the trappings of power and control."
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"Gaza Rockers and Rappers Struggle to Carve out a Space," News Republic
"Khamiss Abu Shaban's band would love to wow the kinds of crowds seen elsewhere, but in Hamas-run Gaza they struggle to find venues and instruments, let alone get permission to play.Even so, that hasn't dispelled the enthusiasm for popular music in the Palestinian territory, where 70 percent of the population is under 30 years old."Gazans are fans of music. They flock to every concert," Abu Shaban, a 22-year-old bass player in Watar Band, says on the small stage of a sold-out 200-seat theatre.It was only their third performance for the past year and a half.Musicians and other entertainers have found it hard to make a name and living for themselves in the hardscrabble Palestinian territory's few venues.That is the paradox of Gaza, a fact not lost on advertisers who seek to woo young breakdancers and devotees of parkour -- the urban sport combining running, acrobatics and gymnastics."
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"Middle East Solos: Out of Context, Creating a New One," American Theatre
According to Cairo-based artist and curator Adham Hafez, who partnered with NYLA director of programming Thomas Kriegsmann to program the festival, each solo piece raises issues that may not be expected of Arab female performers. There are no rallying cries against disempowerment, for instance, and no survival tales designed to engender empathy. This sets the evening apart, he said, from much of what is imported to U.S. venues from the region, which he characterized as “melodramatic work” that “just satisfies Orientalist expectations. I don’t find melodramatic work productive anymore. If ever.
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Performance: Adham Hafez Company "2065 BC," Live Arts
Part political summit, part multi-media opera, part protest Hafez’s 2065 BC is a displaced and revisited re-enactment of the infamous ‘Berlin Conference’ of 1884 presenting a complex set of questions around the ethics of occupation in a manner that is dark, comic and politically ignited. In the year 2065, a conference of African scientists, politicians and diplomats gather in Berlin to announce the new world order. “2065 BC” is the result of a two-year research process on politics and aesthetics, developed and directed by the Adham Hafez Company and the platform HaRaKa. The research took place in Cairo, Berlin and New York, and continues to unfold its many products in the form of a performance triptych and publications series.
Date: March 29- April 2, 2016
More Info
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Exhibition: "I N D E L I B L E," Gypsum
Randa Shaath is known for her lucid black and white photographs that document the daily life of Cairo residents, and the rapid transformations that the city has witnessed over the last decade or so. In her latest exhibition entitled “Indelible”, Shaath asks: when does one feel at home? Shaath explores this question through a suite of more than forty colour photographs that she has been working on for the last two years. She takes her camera inside the homes of family and friends and acknowledges ordinary and familiar objects, moments, and spaces that we often overlook, granting them a grace that evokes the people that breath life into them.
Date: February 21- April 5, 2016
More Info
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Talk: Adham Hafez, Andre Lepecki & Guests Dance & The New Politic, Live Arts
A conversation with performance and dance theorist Andre Lepecki on dance and the political transformations it reflects in the current sphere.
Date: April 1, 2016
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Performance: "~55," Live Arts
Fascinated by an artisan’s gestures in which movement is organized to serve production, Mriziga uses his body like a tool to play with perspective and audience expectations. What emerges is an ancient symbol bearing new meaning, questioning our fundamental attachment to symbols and their ability to transgress meanings over time. In the artist’s own words: “The starting point of 55 is: how can I be as functional as possible on stage? As a dancer you constantly ask yourself questions: Is it sufficient? Is this what I want to convey? Is this the right form? What exactly am I doing? What am I making? What do I express? I set out in search of functionality and the form functionality may adopt. It is an almost architectural approach. I question myself as a performer and as a creator.”
Date: March 31- April 2, 2016
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Talk: Walter D. Mignolo, Ashkal Alwan
Both “aestheTics” and “aestheSis” come from the Greek language. As Greek concepts, they were not Eurocentric for Europe did not exist at the time of the Greek wise men. For the Greeks of the classical age, Europe was just a vague geographical idea connected to mythology: Europa (Greek Ευρώπη Eurṓpē), from where later on the name of a sub-continent (the continent being Eurasia) was derived. AestheTics become Eurocentered in eighteenth-century Europe when it was taken as the key concept for a theory of sensibility, sentiment, sensations, and, briefly, emotions, in contrast with the obsession for the rational. Kant mutated it into a key concept to regulate sensing the beautiful and the sublime. Today, decolonial aestheSis is a confrontation with modern aestheTics, and its aftermath (postmodern and altermodern aestheTics) to decolonize the regulation of sensing all
the sensations to which our bodies respond, “from culture as well as from nature.”
Date: April 4, 2016
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Festival: Second International Yemeni Film and Arts Festival, Hagop Kevorkian
This exhibition features paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures by established and emerging Yemeni artists. At our opening reception on Friday evening you’ll have a chance to meet some of our featured artists, chat with YPP board members and special guests, and enjoy light refreshments.
Date: April 7- April 8, 2016
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Exhibition: "Debunking Orientalism," The Untitled Space
"The exhibition offers a window onto a landscape comprised of a multiplicity of approaches, styles and engagements by artists working simultaneously and engaging with various narratives within the art scene in Egypt. In recent years, the art of the region has been subject to a cultural clustering which effectively flattens the varied artistic production by viewing it as contingent upon geopolitical context. Egypt’s long history with Orientalism has subjected it to both internal and external visual paradigms that epistemologically cling to such Eurocentric notions."
Date: April 13- April 17, 2016
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Gallery Talk: Katarina Burin On Walid Raad, The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston
Artist Katarina Burin leads visitors in a discussion of the Walid Raad exhibition, looking at how artists construct fictional realities. Burin is a lecturer at Harvard University and a recipient of the ICA’s 2013 James and Audrey Foster Prize for her ambitious installation that explored the life of a fictitious Czechoslovakian architect.
Date: April 17, 2016
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Auction: 20th Century Art / Middle East, Sotheby's
In April 2016 Sotheby’s will relaunch its vibrant and exciting international platform for modern and contemporary arts from North Africa, Turkey, the Middle East and Iran in London with the 20th Century Art – Middle East sale. The auction will include a number of important and rare works by renowned artists, such as Mahmoud Mokthar, Mahmoud Said, Sohrab Sepehri, Fahrelnissa Zeid and Monir Farmanfarmaian.
Date: April 20, 2016
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Our Mission
ArteEast’s vision is of a thriving and sustainable arts sector in the Middle East and North Africa. Our mission is to deepen international arts engagement and to provide support to MENA-based artists and arts organizations in order to broaden the global audience for contemporary culture from the region.
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