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Egyptian singer Maryam Saleh is bringing some raw power to the Cairo underground Egyptian singer Maryam Saleh is a fiery figure in Cairo's underground music scene. Blending Egypt's musical heritage with sounds of the present, Saleh takes inspiration from two enigmatic figures of the city's past: Sheikh Iman and Ahmed Fouad Negm. Composer and oudist Sheikh Imam was born to a poor family in Giza. He led the life of a dervish, singing muwashshah songs and surrounding himself with Egyptian folk music. After swapping his spiritual lifestyle for the resistance, Sheikh Imam turned to the words of popular poet Ahmed Fouad Negm and began to popularise them through his music. The pair met and formed a duo in 1962 and swiftly became underground folk icons across the Arab world. Their revolutionary songs spoke out against corruption, gave voice to the poor and mocked authority figures of the time, such as American President Richard Nixon. Almost half a century may have passed but for many, the poetry of Negm and the songs of Sheikh Imam still retain their pertinence today. Sheikh Imam's fame soon stretched beyond Cairo. He toured France, the UK, Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya during the 1980s before passing away in 1995. However his legacy has, to some degree, faded away in Egypt. His songs were banned from TV and radio in the 1970s and 1980s, while both him and Negm spent an eventful career in and out of prison. Popular with the people, their lyrics proved too much for the local authority who feared the mobilising effect of their music. Saleh grew up with Sheikh Imam’s songs. ‘He was my first connection to Arabic music,’ she says. But her relationship with the composer was more personal than most – Sheikh Imam was a family friend who would play music at gatherings for her birthday. Saleh's longstanding affinity for his music inspired her to revive it. 'I felt he didn't have an audience,' Saleh says. 'He was underestimated and didn't get the recognition he deserved because his music was forbidden.' His music remained relatively unknown to the Egyptian masses, maintaining its cult status only among the region's communist parties and leftist families. Unsatisfied with the commercial music her school friends were listening to, Saleh wanted to share her own passion. 'I decided to spread his music and help him reach the biggest crowd possible,' the singer says. Saleh's childhood was one immersed in culture. Her father was the director and playwright Saleh Saad and she would perform across Egypt in his street theatre group. 'I'd always take the role of the clown,' she laughs. She went on to study theatre, but has since moved her focus to music, admitting that 'the sort of theatre I like is kind of going downhill.' There's certainly something dramatic about Saleh's musical performances today – she stands with a confident stride on stage, emitting an intensity as she enigmatically bellows out her lyrics. She carries the same boldness whether on the stage of the grand Library of Alexandria or in Walimat Warde, a small, faded venue in Beirut. Sheikh Imam's music left a firm imprint on Saleh's early musical identity. She formed the band Gawaz Safar (passport) at 15, who would play tributes to his songs with a simple oud and tabla accompaniment, and later went on to fuse her differing musical tastes as part of the oriental rock ensemble Baraka Band. 'The songs of Sheikh Imam taught me how to understand the big problems of my country and how to achieve reconciliation within society,' she says. 'His songs, along with the sarcastic political lyrics of Negm, were so simple that they could be accessible to a large number of ordinary people, that's why the regime was so scared.' Saleh's reinterpretation of Imam's songs such as Nixon Baba (about President Nixon's visit to Cairo in 1974), Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (insulting the former French president) and El-Bahr Byidhak Leh (Why Does the Sea Laugh?) have introduced his music to an entirely new audience formerly unfamiliar with his songs. Released in May 2012, Ana Mesh Baghani (I Don't Sing) is Saleh's debut album, which eloquently fuses together traditional melodies with psychedelic rock, funk and trip-hop, from the soaring piano scales and simple percussion of Hasr Masr, to the dramatic melancholy of W Leh Tenrebet (Why Do You Want to Commit?) and the hip-hop-esque spoken word of the album's title track. Her rich, dominating vocals pull the melting pot of genres together, channeling the voice of the past as she warbles with overpowering emotion. Tamer Abu Ghazaleh, musician and founder of eka3 – a regional organisation dedicated to the growth of modern Arabic music – saw Saleh's potential and contributed his touch to her album. 'He directed my music and generated a different combination of songs,' Saleh says. 'It was a beautiful collaboration, I started to see a different soul in my music.' Saleh has also begun a recent collaboration with Zeid Hamdan, the Lebanese musician and producer largely credited with laying the groundwork for the alternative music scene in Beirut with the band Soapkills in the 1990s. 'It's like cooking. We come from two different cultures and musical backgrounds, he adds his own musical perspective to my recordings,' Saleh says. It's the perfect pairing – Hamdan provides Saleh's vocals with an underbelly of electronic trip-hop, creating a contemporary alt-pop version of Sheikh Imam covers and Saleh's own compositions. Their version of Nixon Baba is one of the most memorable – a sunny pop song with gutsy vocals, sarcastic lyrics and almost tropical-sounding instrumentals. Egypt boasts a rich musical heritage. The music of singers and composers such as Oum Kalthoum, Asmahan and Mohammed Abdel Wahab is still played across the Arab world. During the country's golden era, singers from the Arab world flocked to Cairo. However, that musical heritage has, in some sense, been forgotten in recent years – replaced by bubblegum pop and big budget music videos. Saleh is one of the leading voices of Egypt’s alternative music scene, bringing some much-needed nutrition to the musical landscape. 'I was bored with the musical options that were available. People were not choosing anything, not even the kind of art they wanted to listen to,’ says Saleh, explaining how Cairo’s underground music scene is now starting to grow again. ‘Now people are free to choose. It's a big chance for the underground scene to be discovered on a bigger scale and for it to develop a larger fan base.' With a number of new projects in the making – a monodrama that Saleh is writing and directing, a musical collaboration with Tamer Abu Ghazaleh and experimental electronic musician Maurice Louca and an album with Zeid Hamdan planned for release this May – the singer is helping to push the Egyptian music scene forward, while not forgetting what came before. Photographer: Marwa Morgan

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Now entering its third year, Mathaf is sending out a message to the rest of the world that fits with Qatar's dynamic new role On a flat dusty outback of Qatar that will soon be part of Doha’s rapidly sprawling suburbs stands Mathaf, one of a network of museums the Gulf state is fielding in and around its capital. Translating to museum in English, the eggshell white structure houses perhaps the region’s best display of contemporary Arab art. The 5,500 square metre complex includes over 6,000 pieces from Sheikh Hassan Al Thani’s private collection of regional artwork that charts 170 years of modern art history in the Middle East, including work from artist Dia Azzawi. Tea with Nefertiti is the museum’s current exhibition, a display that offers visitors the chance to explore a mix of ancient relics, modernist and contemporary works. The subject, the amassing of thousands of ancient art pieces and artefacts from Egypt in European museums from the 19th century onwards, carries obvious overtones, perhaps a reflection of the growing curatorial confidence of Mathaf and Qatar’s ambitions as an increasingly powerful resource-rich nation. Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, the curators of the exhibition and the co-founders of Art Reoriented, are back at Mathaf for the second time with this exhibition, and explain the 3,300-year-old Nefertiti bust’s role in the exhibition. ‘The choice of Nefertiti became a matter of giving concrete form to a rather theoretical notion. 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the bust. 2013 marks the centenary of its arrival to Berlin.’ Bardaouil adds, ‘[The exhibition] is, first and foremost, occupied with the inquiry into the appropriation, decontextualisation and re-semanticisation of an artwork. The bust of Nefertiti is a striking example of that.’ While the bust itself remains in Berlin and does not physically appear in Tea with Nefertiti, one of the main notions of the exhibition seems to be of appropriation (whether of art, resources or antiques), as does the celebratory statement of a region finding its feet, again. Fittingly, this is the first exhibition curated in the Middle East to be exported internationally, with a tour of Valencia, Paris and Brussels due this year. The exhibition also serves as an educational lesson about being aware of how exhibitions are structured. As Fellrath explains, ‘It is important to understand how certain mechanisms of visual display and literary representation end up framing artists in contested narratives of “cultural otherness.” Key to such awareness is the interrogation of curatorial approaches and how they too can lead to the construction of certain rhetoric or perception vis-à-vis notions of centre versus periphery, the writing of art-historical narrative, the establishing of a canon and the intermarriage of art and market or politics.’ Michelle Dezember, acting director of Mathaf, explains the impetus for Mathaf, which began more than twenty years ago when Mathaf’s patron and founder Sheikh Hassan Al Thani developed the idea of a modern museum to record the narratives of Arab art and encourage the future development of regional artists. ‘He started to build a collection that could serve artists and the public as a rich and representative treasure house of modern Arab art,’ Dezember explains. ‘He saw this collection as a starting point to create more opportunities for artists and for art lovers in Doha and around the world.’ The group say their main mission at Mathaf is to educate the people of Qatar and the region on contemporary Middle Eastern art. ‘Our goal is to connect art, artists and art enthusiasts by contributing to the cultural landscape and infrastructure of Doha,’ she says. Other countries in the Gulf have already embarked on ambitious, often grandiloquent art and cultural projects, inviting some of the art world’s biggest names to add to their portfolio of attractions. Mathaf, on the other hand, works as a repository and platform for some of the region’s most valuable contemporary art pieces, while encouraging educational initiatives to develop the essential skills and theoretical knowledge of budding local artists. Dezember says that the multinational makeup of the museum’s content and staff is a vital component for making Mathaf a regional meeting place, where visitors can engage and explore the diversity of the region through art. Qatar, she believes, is a fitting location for such dialogue. ‘Qatar is a place that is committed to developing its human capital by investing in education and endeavours that will connect people,’ she explains. Working as a progressive museum, Mathaf is seeking to develop ‘cross-cultural sharing’ in the Middle East through its collections, exhibitions and programmes. This will partly be achieved by creating a pool of skilled curators and specialists based in Qatar, Dezember explains. ‘We draw on local talent to make sure that there is a rooted tone of voice and decision making process relevant to the place where we are. We also actively train and develop Qatari nationals through staff development programmes and internships such as the Mathaf Voices programme,’ she says. The training programme offers local university students a year long internship at the museum. Eventually, they will lead tours of Mathaf that will be shaped around their own interpretations and perspectives of the artwork on display. Still, despite these visionary plans for the future, the team recognise that as the museum is still in its teething stages (Mathaf opened at the end of 2010), these programmes are at a development stage. ‘Like any new institution, we are in the process of laying our foundations and establishing a rhythm of how our operations can work best,’ the acting director says. This has given the museum scope for experimentation and as such they have opted for guest curators rather than a static on-site curation team. ‘Because we don’t have any in-house curators, we choose to work with guest curators while we search for the right fit, so that we can keep active and engage in a variety of perspectives.’ Artists from across the world are already exporting their skills to the region, with Mathaf organising workshops for up-and-coming local artists to learn from their peers. ‘The workshops encourage an intimate interaction between artists and participants,’ Dezember says. This investment in the arts should transcend borders, yet Dezember says the aim is to connect artists and art enthusiasts with Doha and contribute to the cultural landscape and infrastructure of Qatar. This should help to cement the aesthetics for Qatar’s new experience in urbanity and of curation. ‘This is a remarkable time for cultural initiatives across the region. Mathaf’s growing collection represents a priceless resource to help connect our rich cultural heritages to the promise of contemporary art movements.’ Photography: Tim Winter

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Artist Ali Lamu uses recycled dhow sails as a community-boosting canvas for his Kenyan hometown An Omani protectorate during the 19th and 20th century, vestiges of Lamu’s golden age can still be seen throughout the Kenyan island today. The warren of narrow alleyways are lined with monumental Islamic houses and beautifully crafted dhow ships, the sound of the droning Adhan and Arabic-tinged Kiswahili language permeates the air, and Lamu’s signature seafood dishes are laced with fragrant Middle Eastern spices, which have been traded for twelve centuries along the East African coast. Like so many of the people who have lived in the Lamu Archipelago since it was sieged by Oman in 1813, Ali Lamu is a fisherman. He fishes using small nets on locally-crafted dhow ships, in keeping with this age-old Indian Ocean tradition. The dhows are no match for the modern fishing trawlers that carve deep into the ocean floor, however, which have made it increasingly difficult for the fishermen to make ends meet. In 2008, when the fishermen’s situation had become desperate, Lamu met Daniela Bateleur, a self-styled Swiss photographer who had recently moved to the island to shoot a ‘reportage’ on the fishermen. ‘Many of the families could no longer afford to send their children to school,’ Lamu explains. Even though the ‘madrasa’ (school) is free, they needed money to purchase uniforms and shoes. So remote, and long neglected by the Kenyan government, the island depends almost exclusively on tourism for its income – a fickle source that barely trickles down to the many poor residents who only manage to scrape by. Lamu turned to Bateleur for guidance. Broke herself, the free-spirited traveller explains how she racked her brain for ways to help the fishermen make more money for their families. One day while they were out fishing, she asked the fishermen to bring her a used tanga, or dhow sail. Lamu returned with a beautiful old sail weathered by years of use. Torn and stained in places, the heavy canvas fabric had an enormous, cavernous hole in its centre. She didn’t know what she planned to do with it – until an idea came to her in a flash. Lamu painted a giant red heart around the tanga’s hole, with the same paint he used to decorate his dhow, and Bateleur added the words ‘love again forever whatever.’ This joint creation became the genesis of a longstanding partnership that has since inspired thousands of people across the globe and lifted hundreds more out of abject poverty. So enamoured with their recycled work of art, the pair decided to have it framed at one of the many small art galleries on the island that stocks arts and crafts from the region. ‘Not even one hour later a couple of Americans came in and said, “Oh my god, this is so beautiful. How much is it?”’ Bateleur recalls. Lamu, an introverted, gentle person who speaks so quietly it’s hard to hear him even with a microphone, never imagined that they would make money out of their impromptu canvas. The couple accepted Bateleur’s offer of 28,000 Kenyan shillings (332 dollars) for the piece. This was the first sale of an Ali Lamu tanga canvas. Today, one meal of chapatti and sukuma or kale with a cup of chai costs roughly 130 Kenyan shillings; an indicator of how enormous a sum of 28,000 is for the fishermen – even more so five years ago. Lamu had stumbled upon a simple way through which to make money for his community. But even then they couldn’t have imagined how successful they would become. With nothing else to do, the pair decided to continue making similar designs with broken or flying hearts combined with lines from English or Swahili poetry. There is something so compelling about the stitched patches of fabric, childish handwriting, primary colours and whimsical sketches of people, hearts and sea creatures. As each new canvas was quickly snatched up and revenue started to pour in, the Ali Lamu team added a bag to their repertoire. The simple bag shape was painted in combinations of blue, red or yellow – the only colours they had at the time – and became so successful they soon established a permanent store. Without a single lick of marketing, the Ali Lamu brand has since grown from a tiny seed of an idea into an international phenomenon. The brand’s products can now be found in Spain, Germany, Holland, Italy and throughout Africa, and will soon be distributed in America as well. The team is also in the process of purchasing a new property so they can expand their workshop further. As one might imagine, this rapid success has not only completely changed Lamu’s life, but that of the many fishermen he continues to draw into his operation. He remains enormously humble. ‘At the time, fishing was really tough. We were losing so much to the safari fishermen, even before the pirates,’ Lamu explains. ‘People were really suffering and we wanted to help them, so we started painting the tangas the same way that I painted the boat and the people really loved it.’ Now Lamu has 16 full-time employees that stitch and paint tangas at a workshop outside a traditional Swahili house that he built himself, and more than 100 men and women have been empowered to paint their own bags and sell them. Lamu’s brother travels up and down the coast of East Africa to source genuine old tangas, since the weathered look isn’t something that can be faked, and they often take on large commissions for the island’s wealthier residents. We visited three upscale homes and hotels throughout the archipelago and each one of them had several Ali Lamu pieces adorning their walls. Lamu and Bateleur are now married, though they don’t like to emphasise this part of the story. But there is no question that they make the perfect team. ‘I am the dreamer and Ali organises the workforce,’ Bateleur shares. ‘We complement each other perfectly.’ Photography: Tafline Laylin

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Faig Ahmed's psychedelic carpets are shifting the stereotypes of Azerbaijan In his studio on the outskirts of the Old City of Baku, Faig Ahmed is hard at work deconstructing an Azerbaijani carpet, as he explodes the traditional two-dimensional pattern into a three-dimensional artwork. While most carpet weavers in his native Azerbaijan stick to the status quo, for the last eight years Ahmed has dedicated his artistic career to challenging traditional carpet-weaving methods. This rebellious streak has punctuated the artist’s work since his university days. In 2004, Ahmed was reprimanded by the dean of the Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Arts for a sculpture that depicts two women in an intimate embrace. The model, created as part of a university project, was ordered to be destroyed. Ahmed dropped out of university, a daring move in a post-Soviet state where few choose to deviate from the accepted path of formal education. ‘I wasn’t satisfied with the system of education and I wanted to do new things. I wanted to think, but at the academy we weren’t allowed to think for ourselves. They didn’t support liberal and contemporary ideas,’ says the artist. In search of an alternative platform for his ideas, the 29-year-old artist joined a local independent art collective, known as Wings of Time, where he was given free reign to develop his own distinctive, boundary-pushing style. ‘There was no rigid system here, so there were no obstacles for ideas and materials. My hunger for materials grew as I started to take an interest in tubes, cables and fabrics,’ he recalls. ‘Young artists would gather together and work on the projects they wanted to do. This was the kind of fulfilment I was looking for.’ Passionate about carpets, the artist is best known for his ability to transform traditional Azerbaijani rug designs into multiple dimensions, from pixelated patterns to mind-bending sculptures. One of his most recent works, titled the Thread Installation, is a deconstruction of the intricate details of a traditional Azerbaijani carpet. In this piece, Ahmed weaves a wall using metre-long tubes of pastel coloured threads in a series of geometric shapes. Designed to give the illusion of a carpet being woven, the static installation invites viewers to experience the methods of rug making from a completely new perspective. Ahmed explains that his affinity for carpets came about by chance, while he was researching Rune letters dating back to the eighth and ninth century. Describing it as his passion, he explains how ancient Rune alphabets were used before the introduction of Latin letters. ‘I was looking at a carpet once and I noticed the similarities between the symbols on a carpet and the Runic letters. That’s how I became interested in the details of a carpet. If you look closely, you'll notice that these carpets have many symbols and each symbol has a different meaning. Carpets have their own language.’ By reinterpreting the typical motifs found in Azerbaijani carpets with a profoundly contemporary touch, Ahmed’s artworks are not only playful but act as a social commentary on the rapid cultural shift his country is facing, particularly the role of women. ‘I want to present the change in Azeri culture, especially the emancipation of girls,’ he says, explaining how young girls no longer spend their free time practising the art of weaving. ‘Azeri girls have now developed other interests – they’re more interested in computers and social networks. A girl from Azerbaijan is no different to one from New York. They listen to Beyoncé, drink Coke and eat burgers from McDonald’s,’ says Ahmed. Ahmed is part of a new wave of contemporary artists in Azerbaijan. The scene has developed since his university days, he says happily, explaining how emerging artists now have access to more and more opportunities. In order to bring Azeri artists to a wider audience, YARAT!, a non-profit arts foundation, was launched in 2011. Based in Baku, the foundation is an alternative to the main Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Arts and aims to encourage artistic dialogue locally and internationally through exhibitions, lectures and workshops. Last year YARAT! organised the first edition of the Baku Public Arts Festival, featuring work by Ahmed, Rashad Alakbarov and Farid Rasulov. Ahmed has been provided a three-storey studio by YARAT!, giving the artist buckets of space to work on his large-scale projects. But he still prefers to spend time in his own workshop in Baku’s Old City. ‘This one is much smaller and it’s located in an area that I personally love.’ However the Azeri arts scene is not ‘at its peak’ yet, according to the artist. ‘It will take five years. It’s not very clear but I know that it won’t be the same as the art we see in Turkey, the Middle East and Persia. We will be different.’ In a country like Azerbaijan where the contemporary arts scene is finding its feet, it’s interesting to observe how Azeris respond to Ahmed’s rebellious carpet-making techniques. ‘Some people accept it as a joke. Some get offended because they are not ready to see a traditional carpet being changed – but thankfully this group is a minority,’ he shares. He enjoys any kind of response he gets, whether positive or negative. ‘Any kind of art should make an impact because if it doesn’t, then it’s not art.’ Away from home, an international buzz surrounds Ahmed’s work. In the summer, he will be heading to the 55th edition of the Venice Biennale for the second time since 2007, for an exhibition of modern art titled Love Me, Love Not, which will gather artists from Azerbaijan and neighbouring countries in Central Asia and Turkey. ‘I was much younger when I participated for the first time. Now I'm more professional and my ideas have developed and have deeper meaning.’ Most recently he was nominated for the Jameel Prize, a prestigious global contemporary art award. Conceived in 2009 and hosted by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the biannual award selects 10 artists from around the globe who produce work inspired by Islamic tradition. Ahmed was selected for two of his carpet designs, Hollow and Pixelate Tradition, in which woollen carpets are given a psychedelic makeover. The winner of the award will be announced in December and is set to win a cash prize of 25,000 British pounds. When asked what he would do if he won, Ahmed, who is always searching for something bigger and better, says with a smile, ‘I would disappear for a month to be on my own and get over the feeling that I have achieved something huge. Then I would start working on something bigger.’ Photography: Fakhriyya Mammadova

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On the outskirts of Marrakech, a collective farm offers its residents a simple respite from city life Thirty kilometres south of Marrakech, the road that leads from the red city to the foothills of the Atlas Mountains passes through Tahanaout, a picturesque village set against the majestic backdrop of the High Atlas. For decades, it has been one of the many small and isolated countryside villages whose incomes rely mostly on agriculture and cattle farms. Nowadays, surrounded by olive groves and orange trees, Tahanaout enthralls foreign visitors with its handmade rugs, landscape and architecture: typical red clay constructions built according to traditional Berber techniques. In 2003, three of the most famous painters in Morocco, including Mahi Binebine, decided to create Al Maqam residency to live and work together in the village. Since then, Al Haouz province's capital and its 7,000 inhabitants have become the centre of a rich cultural life, a place where both artists and architects are experimenting with new forms of expression. No doubt ‘Co-habitation’ is one of the most exciting projects in Tahanaout's modern history. Designed by the Casablanca and Paris-based Kilo Architectures, founded by the architect couple Linna Choi and Tarik Oualalou, Co-habitation consists of five experimental houses within a collective farm, a 2,000 square metre complex that proposes alternative modes of domesticity and co-habitation, both within the home and between homes. The project started in 2008 with one single intention: to build a place where friends and their children would be able to grow up together. ‘At that time, we were working a lot on the schéma directeur of Marrakech, but we pulled out, it was very complicated,’ says Oualalou. ‘There is a typical attraction to Marrakech, which is a very international city. We decided to find a good place on the outskirts and bought a vacant piece of land in Tahanaout, with five families that all have ties in Morocco but live in different places like Paris or Hong Kong.’ ‘It is a very particular project, we had never done community houses like this. That’s why Co-habitation excited us. It was not about the land, it was about creating an artificial family,’ adds Choi. So far three houses have been completed and two more are planned. With between five and six bedrooms, each house has its guest bedrooms in separate pavilions which function as independent units and as part of the greater whole of the project. What strikes the visitor when looking at the site is the linearity of the project. Facing the mountains, surrounded by orchards and a vegetable garden, two houses are sited along a 160 metre line and each house disappears from the visual sight line of the other. ‘To have equal access to the mountain view without seeing the other houses, we create a sense of privacy not through enclosure but through a lack of visual proximity,’ says Oualalou. The two extremities of the line house private spaces for reflection - an architectural studio for one building and a yoga studio for the other. As one moves towards the middle, the spaces become increasingly more public and social, with the centre occupied by the guest quarters for the two houses (thus allowing one family to ‘colonise’ the guest quarters of the other house if needed). In each house, all the spaces benefit from a double orientation to the two different orchards. While interior and exterior spaces flow into each other, the occupants move around the houses and the garden according to the time of day, as if the houses functioned as a sundial. ‘We love the fluidity between the indoor and outdoor spaces in all the houses,’ says Choi. ‘From facing the stunning mountain view in the morning sun for an early coffee, to reading in one of the shaded courtyards during midday, or having a sunset drink with friends with the distant lights of Marrakech in the background, everyone develops a unique circuit around the houses.’ Even if the houses are made of concrete and have a very contemporary style, equal attention was paid to traditional materials and local colours. The Marrakech region is famous for its ‘red’ earth, and Choi and Oualalou used an adobe finish for the façade made of earth from the site. This is what gives the houses their unique colour. ‘The walls of all of the houses are extremely thick for thermal mass, thereby keeping the houses cool during the day and warm at night. The houses are sunny but sheltered, sheltered but open to the sky, shaded but breezy, responding to the climactic conditions of this near-desert locale as well as to the changing whims of its occupants,’ says Oualalou. In Co-habitation everything is collective. The budget is communal and the vegetables grown in the farm are shared by all the residents. The project is also involved in the local community. The farm not only employs six men from Tahanaout, but also provides food for the animals. ‘Once a week, the women from the village come to the farm and take the weeds as food for donkeys and mules,’ says Choi. ‘We have a symbiotic relationship with the land and the people. Before, there was silence, no animals, now there are birds and a real ecosystem.’ Since the completion of the three houses in 2011, the occupants have tried to make it back to the farm once every one or two months and during school holidays. ‘The kids are the biggest fans of the houses. They love being able to run around the farm, picking fruits and vegetables and splashing in the pools, as well as the impromptu barbecues over open fires, and the general “slowness” of rural living,’ says Oualalou. For the last few months, Choi, Oualalou and the other residents have also been engaged in a new activity: making organic olive oil from the trees of the farm. ‘So far, it’s been an artisanal production given to friends and family as gifts,’ says Choi. ‘But we hope to market the oil soon!’ Photography: Jean Denis Joubert

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Darat al Funun is celebrating this year. It’s 25 years since the art centre, a 4000 square metre hive of buildings dedicated to the visual arts, began its patronage in Amman, and 20 years since it made its home in a hamlet of historic 1920s buildings and rustically restored 6th century Byzantine church. Backed by the Khalid Shoman Foundation, Darat al Funun has won its place as a dynamic, thoughtful and public-friendly centre over the past two decades; it’s hosted countless exhibitions, nurtured artists such as Mona Hatoum and Wael Shawky through its residency programme, and most of all, is a blueprint for how to breathe life into a not-for-profit institution, as it cultivates a lively mix of open studios and workshops, summer festivals, outreach programs and a sunlit arts library. A contemporary curator from the Netherlands, Eline Van Der Vlist joined Darat al Funun as artistic director in 2012, and first visited the space last May. ‘It was also my first time to Jordan,’ she remembers. ‘The day I arrived, Darat al Funun hosted an open air concert by Egyptian group Eskenderella, in the archaeological site. It was quite an amazing first impression. Over the course of the summer I spent more and more time there and found it to be a unique place, incredibly rich in history in many ways – architecturally, archaeologically, and artistically – full of inspiration and also challenges for the future. It didn’t take me long to say yes to come live in Jordan and to start working there, particularly as we are celebrating 25 years of arts patronage this year.’ Steered by founder and chair Suha Shoman, who Van Der Vlist describes as possessing an ‘unwavering commitment and spirit and knowledge about art, something I learn from every day,’ the Darat al Funun staff is relatively small: eight team members and a few support staff give the space a varied and savvy personality. ‘Each of us has their own strengths, and the great thing is that most people have active interests outside of Darat al Funun, from which we benefit as an institution,’ Van der Vlist says. The centre has no official visitor statistics, and while it’s established itself as a serious presence as far as the art establishment is concerned, its relationship with the local community, they admit, still leaves a lot to be desired. ‘I think one of our main challenges is to sustain a local audience as well as an audience from outside. We offer a very varied programme of events next to our exhibitions that include talks, music and film screenings,’ says Van Der Vlist, giving Darat al Funun’s collaboration with Tate Britain on a strand of a programme for young people, titled Nahnou-Together, as an example. ‘We work with teachers, we have a print studio that can be used by artists, we have a substantial library that is open to all and we stimulate research through our fellowship programme.’ While Darat al Funun still faces an uphill struggle to create a reciprocal relationship with the city's neighbourhoods, its 2013 programme offers plenty of tempting bait, from film screenings to an anniversary exhibition by Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa. This March, Darat al Funun will host a solo exhibition by Syrian-Armenian photographer Hrair Sarkissian. Winner of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize in 2012, Sarkissian’s images, often long-term and research-led work taking root in displaced spaces and identities, have previously been exhibited worldwide at galleries such as Tate Modern and SALT but, somewhat surprisingly, this will be the artist’s first solo exhibition to be held in the Middle East. The exhibition pulls together three of Sarkissian’s projects: Execution Squares, a haunting set of public execution squares in Aleppo, Lattakia and Damascus captured in early morning light; Unexposed, in which the artist investigates an ‘invisible’ Armenian community who have reconverted to Christianity; and Transparencies, a 12-image series of unfinished and abandoned building sites. This will be Transparencies' first exposure to the public. Sarkissian originally began work on the series in Damascus in 2009, and later ‘took it to another level in Amman’ as part of his ten-week residency at Darat al Funun last year. Although split between two cities, Sarkissian doesn’t feel that relocating the project disrupted the series’ visual consistency. ‘Frankly, all the buildings were the same. The difference is in the construction, not the appearance,’ he says, explaining how he has chosen to present the x-ray like images of the building’s skeletons on small-scale light boxes. ‘The most interesting and intriguing thing for me is these places don’t have a history or a past. That’s why I called them transparencies. When you look at the images they look like old glass negatives and give the sensation you get while looking at x-ray images. You can only see skeletons and the construction of the building.’ Sarkissian is enthusiastic about his time spent at Darat al Funun. ‘It’s very supportive. It’s like a five-star residency,’ he says. ‘The space is amazing. It’s one of the first art centres in the region and now it’s expanding more and more. Now there are residency apartments for artists to come and stay here, which are extremely well-prepared. There’s a very big art library and a lab where visiting artists or people from the neighbourhood can come and make activities and workshops.’ During his stay in Amman, Sarkissian also led a four-day photography workshop at Darat al Funun with a group of local children aged eight to 16 – another first for the photographer. ‘This was my first workshop. I wouldn’t call it teaching, it was a joint exchanging experience,’ he laughs, confessing that, although rewarding, he found working with local children in an art environment a challenge. ‘Here at school they don’t teach anything that’s related to art or imagination. They had a problem when it came to using their imagination. I think at the beginning they thought we were still in school or something.’ One of the first cross-platform spaces in the Middle East, as Darat al Funun hits the grand old age of 25, it is also one of the region’s most consistent. And the team’s aims for the anniversary year remain the same. ‘Darat al Funun has been at the forefront of supporting art and artists from the Arab world way before it became fashionable in the so-called global scene to collect or showcase artists from the region,’ Van Der Vlist sums up. Diverse, supportive and collaborative, Darat al Funun has earnt its reputation as an archetypal platform for contemporary Arab art. Photography: Ghassan Aqel

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In collaboration with Edge of Arabia, Brownbook presents a series of interviews with the artists participating in RHIZOMA, an exhibition curated by Edge of Arabia at this year's La Biennale di Venezia - the 55th International Art Exhibition. In the first part of this series, we speak to London-based critic and the show's curator, Sara Raza. What are the advantages and drawbacks of working as an independent curator within the art world? Well, of course there are advantages and disadvantages to being an independent curator. Thankfully the advantages outweigh the drawbacks for me. I started my career as an institutional curator. I’ve worked with a number of public institutions, from South London Gallery and Tate Modern in the UK to Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Germany and Asia Society in New York. Since 2008 I’ve been actively independent, working between Asia and London on various curatorial projects mainly in the Gulf, while maintaining my academic research here in the UK. Being independent allows me to be selective with the projects that I choose and the artists I work with to develop these projects. Given your interest in topics like post-Soviet contemporary art from Central Asia, what drove you to curate an event focused on emerging Saudi Arabian artists? My academic research and writing is focused on post-Soviet contemporary art from Central Asia and the Caucasus. However, I’m interested more expansively in the concept of the Silk Road and in ideas of multiplicity. For the last few years I’ve been working on several projects in the Gulf. I’m the current associate curator of Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah and have also served as the head of curatorial programmes for Riyadh’s first curated art space Alāan Artspace. In terms of my interests in Saudi Arabian contemporary art and artists this exceeds the notion of geography. I’m more interested in the myriad ways in which artists negotiate and re-negotiate their own terms in a post-oil country that is experiencing fast track globalisation. It is interesting for me as a curator to focus beyond the borders of the EU. Can you describe RHIZOMA’s curatorial concept and the inspiration behind it? RHIZOMA is a curatorial project that is intentionally non-linear, and by this I mean that it doesn’t have a set beginning, middle or ending – the project is open-ended. An actual rhizoma/rhizome is comparable with a series of subterranean networks that entwine, but can also exist alone if cut away from their original source. Again, this is about multiplicity and non-hierarchal identity. For me it was really a metaphor for the way in which the Saudi contemporary art scene has evolved in recent years; it is not following a linear identity. What was it like collaborating with your co-curator, Saudi-based poet, curator and artist Ashraf Fayadh? I was introduced to Ashraf by Stephen Stapleton, the director of Edge of Arabia, half way through the project. Interestingly, this introduction was apt to the curatorial theme that I had already defined. Ashraf came in literally at the middle and this is what this project is ironically about! Ashraf is an artist and is acquainted with a number of artists who are concerned with the practice of making art over sensation, and this is interesting and provided some non-hierarchy to the project and a sense of balance. What do you hope to achieve by bringing together the artists you selected for the exhibition? By bringing such a wide cohort of artists together, ranging from traditional craft artists to designers, film and video art makers and bloggers, I hope that the project will serve as a generational survey. RHIZOMA is characteristic of a younger generation that is bold, experimental and making artwork on its own terms. What kinds of artworks are being created specifically for the exhibition, and what sorts of themes will they engage with? There are a variety of artworks that were made specifically for the exhibition that explore a number of themes. One example is the subversion of geometry in new site-specific installations produced by artists and designers Sarah Al Abdali and Basmah Felemban. Also of note are works that explore informal architectures and social gentrification, such as film and video artist Sami Al-Turki and Ahmad Angawi’s visual commentary investigating the impact of post-oil industry and gentrification in major cities inside Saudi Arabia, from Jeddah to the holy city of Mecca. Why is this the time to be paying attention to the Saudi Arabian art scene? Saudi Arabia has an increasingly young population often dubbed the ‘YouTube generation’, and holds an important place within the Gulf region that is rapidly changing. Its artists are a product of this fast evolving environment. The language of contemporary art and visual culture has provided them with a new vocabulary to comment on their variable conditions. Photography: Supplied

Noureddine Amir - Feauture

In collaboration with Cadillac, we travel to Marrakech to speak with Noureddine Amir, a visual artist and avant-garde designer who owns couture house, Villa Amir.

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Doris Duke’s Shangri La mansion is where the exoticism of Islamic architecture meets the serenity of the Hawaiian landscape Nestled on a 4.9 acre oceanfront lot near Diamond Head, just outside of Honolulu, lies one of the most historically interesting and beautiful private homes in the world: Doris Duke’s Shangri La. Originally built in 1937, and named after the fictitious locale in James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon, the beautiful residence has as colourful a history as the woman who built and resided in it for the most part of her life. Tobacco heiress Doris Duke was dubbed the ‘million dollar baby’ after inheriting a fifty million dollar fortune from her father, James Buchanan Duke, at the young age of twelve, and grew to become a philanthropist, world traveller and avid art collector. The extremely independent and adventurous Duke married at the age of twenty-three and enjoyed a long honeymoon visiting Palestine, Cairo, Petra and the northern part of the Indian subcontinent with her husband James Cromwell. It was this honeymoon that piqued Duke’s interest in Islamic art. She first began purchasing items ranging from jade objects to carpets and metalwork in India and was inspired immensely by the Taj Mahal’s floral designs and beautiful marble tiling. The honeymoon culminated in Hawaii, where Duke and her husband not only extended their stay, but decided to build a home. Designed by American architect Marion Sims Wyeth, the famed Shangri La incorporated artwork and pieces from all of Duke’s honeymoon and post-honeymoon travels, while the architecture was inspired purely by Islamic elements that Duke came across during her travels to Morocco, Syria and Iran between 1937 and 1938. During these trips, she not only purchased antiques but also commissioned architectural elements for the Islamic-styled mansion she would later build. Ranging from ceilings and doors to ceramic tiles, Duke worked alongside the era’s chief advisors and dealers to bring her vision to life, such as Ayoub Rabenou and Mary Crane, Hagop Kevorkian, Georges Asfar and Jean Sarkis (of the firm Asfar & Sarkis), René Martin and Hassan Khan Monif. The property, which took two years to complete, is spread over three buildings, with the main house situated around a central courtyard with a fountain. The walls are adorned with ceramic tile panels from early 20th century Iran while the roofline is supported by mirrored columns from 17th century Isfahan. ‘The clean, low-slung profile of the concrete buildings provides the neutral palette for the Islamic architectural elements and applied ornament that Duke wished to showcase,’ explains Deborah Pope, executive director at Shangri La. ‘Shangri La was a seasonal residence for Duke throughout her life. She continued to acquire and install collections at Shangri La and to renovate various rooms for nearly 60 years – up until the time of her death in 1993.’ The main foyer and living room are defined by beautifully carved and painted ceilings commissioned in Morocco while a collection of mashrabiya (latticework screens) allow rooms to be transformed from closed to open air. Painted wood interiors from 18th and 19th century Damascus evoke the look and feel of reception rooms in the late Ottoman-ruled Damascus. Duke’s collection of ceramic tiles is currently among the largest in any American museum with the mihrab (prayer niche) from Imamzadeh Yahya in Varamin, Iran, nearly 12 feet in height, being one of the most standout pieces in the collection. ‘Duke was so engaged with renovations to each space over the years – installing new artwork, replanting the courtyard, tenting the dining room ceiling, installing the two Damascene rooms. However, the marble bedroom and bathroom suite commissioned in India on her honeymoon were probably her favourite,’ says Pope. ‘With the inspiration of her youth, it’s the most private and intimate space in the house and certainly one of the most beautiful. We are now restoring this space to open to the public in mid-2015 and it’s an enchanting space to those of us who are lucky enough to be working on this project.’ Although she owned many estates, Shangri La was by far her favourite residence, a place she viewed as a relaxing safe haven away from the limelight. It was fitting, then, that in her will, written thirty years before her death, Duke would create the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Arts (DDFIA) to own and manage Shangri La. Duke had amassed such an extensive and impressive collection of art and antiques over the years (approximately 2,500 objects) and wanted the residence to one day be open to the public and scholars so that they could enjoy what she had worked so hard to create. ‘Shangri La first opened to the public in 2002. We had our first scholar in residence arrive in 2004, and our first artists in residence in 2005,’ says Pope. ‘In general, it has been an evolution.’ Prior to 2008, the foundation’s mission was to promote ‘the study and understanding of Islamic art and culture,’ and since then has adopted a more ambitious strategy – to establish Shangri La as a centre for Islamic arts and cultures itself. Much more than just a tourist attraction, Shangri La currently plays a pivotal role in promoting Islamic art in the States, helping to shift any misconceptions the American public may have of the Muslim world, through its art. ‘At its heart, Shangri La really is about cultural encounter through the arts – one woman’s engagement with the Islamic world at an early age and her lifelong work to build a home and collections, and ultimately dedicating them to improving cultural understanding of Islamic arts and culture.’ Photography: Lindon Morris

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Alia_feature

In collaboration with Cadillac, we travel to London to speak with Alia Al-Senussi, a member of Libya's royal family, who is helping to integrate her country into the art and culture boom that the Middle East has experienced.

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Ali Bakhtiari has turned a passion for Persian pop into a new book, dedicated to the soundtracks of Iran's recent past One of the greatest allures of today’s Iran is the collective perception of it – a country that lacks colour, a land of stark contrasts best viewed in black and white – which is smashed to pieces upon entry into this ancient and soulful land. Perhaps the greatest contributing factor to these decades-long assumptions about Iran is just how different it was only 35 years ago. It was a country modernising at a never before seen rate and the reaction to this unnatural progress still reverberates today. Iran: RPM Vol. 1 is a nostalgic but unsentimental look back at this era. It is a collection of Iranian vinyl soundtrack covers in book form, by Magic of Persia and sponsored by the Salsali Private Museum and Anvantgarde Global, launched by the multi-talented Ali Bakhtiari in Dubai late last year. Bakhtiari is a difficult man to categorise. When asked what he considers himself to be, his response seems simple enough: ‘I see myself as a curator.’ Too accomplished and savvy to be classified as simply a jack of all trades, Bakhtiari is a renaissance man in a city in desperate need of more of them. Equal parts businessman, researcher, collector and impresario, he is helping to reshape the contemporary Iranian art scene by looking back at Iran’s not so distant past. ‘Our country went through a revolution that was very radical, which tried to destroy our contemporary past. A part of this destruction was cultural,’ says Bakhtiari, explaining the inspiration for Iran: RPM. ‘A part of our artistic and cultural history has been unwritten and is in danger of being extinguished.’ Vinyl records, he adds, are a particularly endangered species, as besides the 1979 revolution, the 1974 introduction of the audiocassette ushered in a rapid decline in the production of vinyl. His home office in a quiet section of Tehran’s Farmanieh neighbourhood provides a glimpse into the subtlety that makes Bakhtiari – besides being a knowledgeable professional in his field – an enjoyable conversationalist to be around. Asked about the value of the many works of art that cover much of his understated apartment, he responds, ‘Well, the art is worth more than the apartment itself.’ Looking around, it is easy to see why. At only 28 it may be surprising just how much Bakhtiari has been able to accomplish so early in life, but one must consider that he began on an accelerated course, which was fuelled by his own sense of curiosity and a deep desire to learn. Recognised for his aptitude from the time he was a toddler, already reading by age 4, Bakhtiari’s parents enrolled him in a school for gifted children. ‘My family really gave me the opportunity to learn,’ says Bakhtiari, who was obsessed with books from a young age. ‘I had great access to world and Persian literature,’ he shares, recounting reading some of the classics in his early teen years. Understanding at the time that the scenes they described were beyond his tender scope, he calls them a ‘premonition of life.’ Another early passion was film. At 14 he joined the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art’s cinematek, becoming its youngest member. According to Bakhtiari, experiencing this detailed and specialised study of film was the ‘ignition for me beginning my career in art.’ And then he got practical. In high school he studied mathematics and later earned a university degree in bio-medical engineering. Finishing his education, he says, was an obligation of respect to his parents, but he knew that science was not his destiny. In 2008 he opened the short-lived Gallery 66 in Tehran, which he considers a seminal experience in his growth. ‘Before the gallery I was part of the audience of Tehran’s art scene, not a member of it,’ Bakhtiari shares. He believes the experience of interacting with a broad cross section of Iranian society prepared him to more fully integrate into the city’s artistic community. Gallery 66 was a success for Bakhtiari, putting on shows for young local artists that sold well. He understood, though, that he would not be able to flourish tethered to one location. Bakhtiari next planned an ambitious project to document vinyl recordings of pre-revolutionary Iranian pop music. He began collecting in 1999, scouring flea markets, bookstores and second-hand shops for years, to the point where he is now locally regarded as an authority on vinyl records and is sought out by potential buyers and sellers. After some time he realised that movie soundtracks had begun to dominate his collection, and the niche soon became an intention. For most, a collection is little more than a hobby. For Bakhtiari though, like other aspects of his life, he sees collecting as an opportunity. ‘The added value of any collection is education,’ he says. Among his favourites from the collection are a complete series by the original Iranian diva, Googoosh, along with soundtracks to the films Be Gharar and Gheysar, the covers of which was designed by Iranian filmmaking legend Abbas Kiarostami when he was still unknown. Through his study of cinema, Bakhtiari has come to understand that soundtracks were once an essential part of the economy of any Iranian film production. While not everyone went to see the films in the cinema, the songs were all given massive airplay to promote them. Combining his two early loves, books and cinema, Bakhtiari has compiled a beautifully arranged and researched volume. By cataloguing the soundtracks of films from the 1960s and 1970s, Iran: RPM Vol. I helps tell the tale of Iranian society's fast transition, which was dramatically halted by the 1979 revolution. It’s a detailed look at a side of Iran that existed not too long ago, yet is unfamiliar to millions of young Iranians – Bakhtiari included – born after 1979. Looking at the still frames from the films, their posters and the soundtrack covers, one can see an easy acceptance of flesh from the filmmaking community that was not shared by the country’s vast population. Regarding the eroticism in the films’ materials, Bakhtiari says empathetically, ‘it was just too much for a religious society.’ Perhaps most gratifying to Bakhtiari is the reception his book has received from the academic community. Several university libraries, including the University of California’s Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses, as well as the American Library of Congress and the British Museum, have all included Iran: RPM as part of their Iranology collections. Already nearly done with the the second volume of Iran: RPM Vol. I, and with plans for a third, Ali Bakhtiari’s early and ongoing success can be summed up by his simple motto, that ‘whatever you believe in and pour your love and effort into will work.’ Photography: Maryam Rahmanian

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In collaboration with Edge of Arabia, Brownbook presents a series of interviews with the artists participating at this year's 55th Biennale di Venezia in an exhibition entitled RHIZOMA. In the third part of this series, we speak to Saudi artist Nauf Alhimiary. You have a love for vintage media and antique cameras. How do you incorporate this bygone aesthetic into your contemporary artistic practice? Vintage media and antique cameras do not cancel out with the progression of time as they are a means of conveying an idea or a visual message that can hold contemporary and modern ideals within them. What aspects of women’s lives in Saudi Arabia do you try to highlight through your work? I guess my main focus is onto portraying the life I’m actually living as a young Saudi woman through my photography. Feminism is a recurring theme in my work. In what ways does your study of English Literature inform your artistic practice? It doesn’t necessarily inform my artistic practice. However, since I’m exposed to a great deal of feminist criticism and works, it seems that I get to see how similar women’s issues are globally. Can you describe the project you are preparing for RHIZOMA at the Venice Biennale? What She Wore is a series of pictures. It's a spinoff of the popular concept Outfit of The Day. Seeing as how women globally post pictures of their different outfits that to match different and various occasions (something even Saudi women participate in when out of the country), I was inspired to make a Saudi version of it. So here you have it, many portraits of many different women on different dates and in various locations wearing what they normally would which is always an abaya, rendering it the unchangeable outfit of the day. Now these women are photographed in places that also differ in importance, from a supermarket or a fast food chain to an office or university. Something that many noted during the opening was how all these women from afar looked like the same person, which could make you wonder why we're prohibited from showcasing our sense of individuality. What do you find exciting about art and cultural production in Saudi Arabia right now? How true it is to the culture, yet how it manages to be modern simultaneously. The art scene is very raw in a way. Photography: Supplied

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Some come for the light, some for the views, some for old-fashioned decadence: the seaside city of Tangier has a magnetism that's entirely its own Clinging to the northwest corner of Africa, Tangier has a different feel to the rest of Morocco. Buffeted by the wind and rain that come in off the Strait of Gibraltar it occupies a space between two worlds – Europe and Africa, Atlantic and Mediterranean, raffish 20th century port and shiny city of the future. Many of Tangier's visitors come down from Spain via the ferry from Tarifa. Heading up in the other direction is a stream of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. They end up in Tangier, gazing forlornly across the the Strait as they await the visa (or lorry) that will take them to a new life in Europe. From its earliest days Tangier has been a meeting point, a place of passers-through. Between 1932 and 1956 the city was an international zone under the control of the French, Spanish and English. Lax laws and a hedonistic lifestyle were the order of the day. You could get anything you wanted, the saying went, in the Petit Socco of Tangier. Even after Morocco gained its independence the city retained a loucheness that attracted western artists, writers and musicians like Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams and the Rolling Stones. This easy-going charm is in danger of being swept away by a wave of modernisation. The port has shifted 40 kilometres to the east. In its place is springing up a marina complex with apartments, a luxury shopping mall and a business district. Photography: Zara Samiry

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In the suburbs of Los Angeles, Egyptian artist Sherin Guirguis feels her paintings have found a home in the margins What better artist to describe the diasporic experience than Sherin Guirguis? The great granddaughter of Attaya Gaddis, one of Egypt's first documentary photographers, she was born in Luxor. She received her BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara and her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. If the culture shock of moving from cosmopolitan Egypt to bucolic Santa Barbara and then to capital-of-second-chances Las Vegas wasn’t enough, she now lives in suburban Los Angeles where personal, social and artistic space are (unlike the traffic) fluid. Married and with a new child, she thrives here, with regular local exhibitions as well as numerous showings elsewhere in the States and abroad. Though she finds similarities between the art worlds of Cairo and Los Angeles – both are in a transformational stage and centered around exceptional non-profit spaces – she says, ‘the main difference between the two is that Cairo’s art world is much more international in its reach, probably due to its geography.’ This explains the contribution that diaspora artists like Guirguis make to places like Los Angeles. Her work is influenced by her exposure to a new culture (Los Angeles) and the city is enhanced by the (Egyptian) culture she brought from home. She's conscious of her diaspora label. Acclimated as she may be, finally, with the culture and geography of Los Angeles, she does acknowledge her tenuous existential circumstances. ‘Of course, being a part of a diaspora does mean I'm living on the margins to some degree and I have to say I'm now more comfortable in that position than ever before. My work stems from that place, it deals directly with the attempt to find a language that describes that state of otherness that follows you wherever you are. I'm always home and I'm never home.’ It's in these margins where her paintings and sculptures reside. As might be expected from a diaspora artist, her work not only combines documentation and abstraction, but memory. ‘I have many romantic memories of Egypt. What I miss most is the jubilant and proud culture that all Egyptians carry. The richness of the history that is alive every day on the streets. From towering piles of multicoloured plastic bowls on wooden carts in the street market and the endless columns of the Karnak, to the symphony of bodies navigating the street traffic in Cairo.’ Through her work she attempts to identify what she calls 'the complex language of diaspora and the politics inherent within it.’ Like the street life of both Cairo and Los Angeles, her paintings are precious and kinetic, timeless and fleeting. Though the inspiration for her paintings came from a live shot on Egyptian state TV of a crowd in Tahrir Square, her message resonates with all popular uprisings (think of the recent Occupy events). There's a revolutionary spirit implicit in her practice: ‘It doesn't address it directly, but it acknowledges the legacy of activism that has changed the social, political and cultural paradigms for women.’ She continues, ‘I like to uncover the politics hidden in elements that are regularly disregarded and purely ornamental or decorative. It is a way for me to locate myself in a politically and culturally shifting paradigm and to develop a language to describe it.’ It shows in her paintings. Created from ink, watercolour, acrylic, some dry pigment and various gold and silver leafing, they are lush and frenetic, with counterpoised eddies of surge and repose, powerful and, at same time, on the verge of tottering. Cinematically, they recall the too-big-to-imagine crowd scenes in The Birth of a Nation, Battleship Potemkin and Ben-Hur. Their forms resemble continents whose malleable and shifting tectonic plates suggest upheaval, both geological and social. Their glowing centres suggest magma – a spontaneous life energy beneath the crust of the surface of pedestrian events and daily life – poised to erupt. Her sculptures are no less ambiguous than her paintings, both of which describe a revolutionary breaking down of traditional social barriers. They represent acts of defiance; the transformation of jewellery and screens into statement making, three-dimensional, larger than life-sized works of art. She orients them as politicised ornamentation (seductive Bedouin earrings) and architecture (a reference to book two of Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy as well as the Egyptian architectural element, the mashrabiya). Minimal constructions of wood, aluminum, and lead, these pieces are mobile-like, susceptible to ambient air currents and prods from their viewers. As might be expected from an artist whose experience straddles two diverse, distinct cultures, Guirguis draws artistic inspiration from a combination of rich and complex sources. She cites a couple of movements – the West Coast’s Light and Space and Color Field movements – and a slew of artists – from Helen Frankenthaler, Agnes Martin and Mona Hatoum to Jean-Léon Gérôme and Sandro Botticelli. She admires Louise Bourgeois for ‘her tough, unapologetic approach to dealing with themes that have been marginalised or dismissed as “feminine” through a variety of mediums, many of which were considered very masculine.’ Synthesising elements that are defiant, cheeky and sumptuous, Guirguis’s work harmonises an otherwise dissonant clash of oppositions: Western minimalism vs Eastern decoration, historical vs contemporary, feminine vs masculine and public vs private. Her paintings literally burst at the edges (and dissolve in the centre) while her sculptures function as a Trojan Horse, bold in message and expression, even if their construction is fragile. Photographer: Monica Nouwens

Shaweesh - feature

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Writer Shumon Basar knows how to keep busy, from working on a never-ending novel to curating roaming exhibitions For Shumon Basar, home smells like distance. ‘I moved to the UK with my mother in 1976 to join my father, who’d been living there already,' he explains. 'Very early on I knew and loved ABBA. My parents had their album, Arrival. It came out in 1976. It’s the same age as I have been “English.”’ He cringes as he shares memories of how seriously he used to take himself, indignant towards anyone who didn’t take the world as seriously as he or Franz Kafka did. He describes his younger self as ambitious, pretentious and lucky to have had any friends. Before the interview, Basar warned me about Googling him, ‘because the web is made up of outmoded information about people, but presents it as though it’s all in the current moment. Google is reliable about things that are no longer true.’ But still, I couldn’t resist. Within this search engine e-world he is or is not a curator/editor/novelist based or not based in London/Dubai/Istanbul. So why has he now chosen to settle on the term ‘writer’? ‘In my 20s, I spent too much time over the anxiety of self-labelling. Total waste of energy. Getting older allows you to relax over labels. I describe what I feel closest to: writing. Everything else derives from that, is a version of that.’ Basar knows how to keep busy. He is Editor-at-Large of Tank Magazine, a forward-thinking London-based publication that focuses on 'informed, articulate and original style, photography, art and writing', as well as a contributing editor to Bidoun. He recently co-curated an audio-based show on literature titled Translated By – an exhibition without visuals. It made its way from London to Kitakyushu and then to Istanbul, where Basar spent September carrying out a writing residency, working on a novel set in Dubai that refuses to end. Basar has ‘technically’ been working on this text for four years. ‘In reality, probably ever since I landed in Dubai in December 2005. I didn’t know I was going to write a novel set there, but the ideas that are informing it date back to that arrival.’ Titled World!World!World!, it takes place at the beginning of the (most recent) global financial crisis. It follows a man in search of a woman who disappears from him at the start of the 21st century. He stumbles upon a disrupted future and is presented with the opportunity to envision an alternate tomorrow, one in which he can find this woman. Among other things, the supposed ‘zero quality’ of Dubai is explored in the novel. What Dubai and other newly-built cities have in common, Basar explains, is the ‘from scratch’ language that accompanies their urban and infrastructural development projects. References are made to a lack of history, which is deceiving. ‘Nowhere is nothing. Everywhere has histories.’ Certain traditions however, like Bedouin culture, do not have as much of a tangible legacy, enabling the discourse of ‘zeroness’ to be developed for ideological and commercial purposes, he elaborates, allowing for historical narratives to be hijacked. ‘See how we accelerate from nothing to this? From pre-industrial to post-industrial? See how modern we have suddenly become?’ Dubai, Basar explains, is often approached and problematised within one of two frameworks: human rights and (bad) taste. ‘Very few people have made the effort to use the periscope needed to look over these limiting clichés.’ Most recently, Basar commissioned the seventh iteration of Art Dubai’s Global Art Forum, entitled It Means This. The forum, directed by Istanbul-based writer and editor HG Masters, explored the notion of ‘definitionism’. Invited speakers critically engaged with the terms and concepts we use to make sense of the world and to articulate our understanding of it. ‘I’m kind of with Wittgenstein when he wrote at the start of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that “the world is all that is the case.” Which is to say: we know what we know through the language we invent and use to describe the world and our knowledge of it. Contemporary reality is often ahead of our ability to describe it, because we are still left behind in the terminology of the previous era or moment. Such a schism leads to blindness about what is actually happening to us, around us. This is why we need language to evolve, extend and spew up neologisms – which is one of the terms we will be redefining in the Forum.’ I ask him about working within the undefined borders of the vaguely titled ‘art world’ – an imagined space that can be simultaneously inclusive and exclusive, engaging and obstructive, inspiring and frustrating. Basar calls the particular art contexts in which he operates satisfyingly open in terms of the possible subjects that can be explored within them, and the forms that an engagement with these subjects can take. He does, however, sigh at the, ‘“International Standards of Taste" that turn everywhere into somewhere less interesting.’ You don’t have to be boring to be intelligent, he points out. As for his thoughts on the attempt to turn places like Dubai and Doha into ‘art cities’, he thinks such efforts are flawed. A great city will be able to facilitate interesting work, he explains, because good art is nurtured by the energy of riveting places. The presence of intriguing art doesn't necessarily make a city that houses it an interesting place. As for the term ‘art cities’ itself? ‘I’d fire the marketing team that invented it.’ When I finally ask Basar when he envisions finishing his Dubai novel, he replies, ‘That specific question causes me to curl up into a nerve-wrecking blubbering ball.’ After a pensive pause, he adds: ‘I hope I finish it while I’m alive.’ Photography: Mustafa Dedeoglu & Begüm Göktas

feature

A new mobile app is the world's first virtual library for Arabic typography and calligraphy The world's first user-generated mobile museum of Arabic typography and calligraphy was launched earlier this year. Known as NUQTA, which loosely translates to 'dot', the mobile application invites users to instantly post images of Arabic from anywhere in the world, whether it be graffiti on the streets or a work of art in a museum. The application's founder, Soraya Syed, began developing the idea last October. Syed felt there was an apt need for an application solely dedicated to collecting, mapping and sharing examples of calligraphy and typography from across the globe. 'NUQTA came about after many years of investigating how these two design elements vary across the world. This is something I've always been fascinated by. I did a search for an app on Arabic calligraphy and I was surprised to find out that there was nothing similar out there,' explains Syed, who is also a professional calligrapher. The creative director of the project is Mukhtar Sanders, who works alongside Syed to develop the technology for the London-based project. So how does it work? Sanders explains: 'It's simple! All you need to do is take a photo of a piece of Arabic writing or calligraphy, give it a name and description, drop a pin or nuqta on the map indicating where you're located and share your image with the world.' Syed says that mapping is an essential aspect of NUQTA because 'the idea is that you're able to map calligraphy from anywhere in the world, as soon as a user takes a picture.' The worldwide mapping tool, which is available free of charge for iPhone users, can also be accessed through the NUQTA website. It features an online photo library, user profiles and the ability to browse the collection by location, style and user. Syed also explains that the website has a 'knowledge bank' where users can access articles by leading experts in the field. 'Our motto is "learn, share and educate." You can learn from what's on the website, share it and then educate others through what you post. We all benefit.' Syed, whose client portfolio ranges from the British Museum to the Saudi royal family, has ambitious plans for NUQTA. Her long-term vision is for the application to become multilingual, to enable even more users from across the globe, and for it to be searchable by design genre. 'It's taken three years to get to that point. Keeping it simple for now is important because we can adapt it to what users want. We are open to feedback. Eventually, we would love for it to be the Wikipedia of Arabic calligraphy and typography.' Photography: Supplied

eating in ramallah- feature

How is slow food making an impact in the West Bank? A local NGO has taken the food revolution to the underground If you visit the Majhoul Seasonal Restaurant in Ramallah, don’t expect to eat at the same place twice. Aside from the varying locations and its very limited hours of operation (the word ‘seasonal’ clues you in as to just how limited), the menu is subject to change as well. Winter tables might be decorated indoors with lentil soup, seasonal jarjir salad and cauliflower and potato gratin; then, in the spring, under the stars, green fava beans, maklooba, rabbit and freekeh. This is about as far from fast food as one can get. This is Shakara’s intention. The non-profit organisation, founded in 2009, is bridging the gap between the Palestinian community and its farmers, educating the people on the benefits of seasonal crops and making a political statement in the process. ‘Food sovereignty’ is the rallying cry, and a phrase Shakara’s co-founders Aisha Mansour and Carine Abu Hmeid use often. In 2005, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Palestine surfaced to gain leverage against Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories. More and more, Palestinians headed to urban areas for jobs, further from the land, which seemed to be constantly disappearing. Four years later, as a result, Mansour and Hmeid began to initiate programs based around food, which to this day have been instrumental to the region’s BDS movement and the Slow Food movement alike. ‘Basically Sharaka was started as an effort to ensure that consumers could get locally produced heirloom Palestinian products, and small scale producers could get their products to the consumers,’ explains Mansour. ‘Palestine is currently infiltrated with Israeli products and cheap stuff from around the world.’ Their role in the Palestinian Slow Food movement earned the organisation a spot at the Terre Madre and Slow Food Congress in Turin, Italy last year in October. Terre Madre, a network of like-minded communities throughout the world, is a global initiative celebrating culinary diversity and supporting local, organic and seasonal farming. In the Middle East, Terre Madre chapters, or ‘conviviums’ as they’re called, exist in Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Iran and most recently the UAE. But it’s the Ramallah chapter which has much more at stake than just healthy eating. ‘You have less opportunities to hike and wander on our mountains and hills picking wild food,’ Hmeid says. Yet, they are working with what they have: planting gardens at local schools; watering trees on Tawil Mountain in Al-Bireh; hosting trips to better understand the techniques used by dairy farms and apple and citrus orchards, an educational project they call ‘Farm to Table’. And when they’re not taking the people to the farm, they're bringing the farm to the people. Another grassroots agenda by Shakara is the Truck Farm, symbolised and carried out by a Volkswagen pickup truck housing a garden in its truck. The Truck Farm is a sort of mobile nursery for novice or would-be gardeners, delivering green-thumb knowledge as well as the seeds to put it into practice. The entire operation relies mainly on the organisation’s five volunteers and the profits generated by the Majhoul restaurant. In a recent guest blog post, Mansour wrote about how ‘donor interventions’ to Palestinian farmers were transforming ‘Palestinian agriculture into a cog in the overall global economy.’ This intervention, she wrote, has led Palestinian farmers to grow for a global market with profit in mind, using non-traditional methods such as pesticides and foreign seeds, as opposed to organically and locally grown produce for sustainability. Just as she is wary of outside resources for the farmers, she is also wary of outside contributions to the organisation. The Shakara mindset is stubbornly local, a Slow Movement cornerstone, untainted or compromised by the areas outside the checkpoints. ‘A return to the land is critical for us in Palestine. Food production and our agricultural heritage is the backbone of our society and identity and necessary for us to rebuild our social networks and develop our community.’ Illustration: Joan Baz

Trankat Street

An art space and residency programme is shedding light on an overlooked city An art space in the heart of Tétouan's old medina in northern Morocco was launched recently in an effort to highlight the city's artistic heritage. Situated in a 19th century house, Trankat Street acts as an exhibition space, a residency for artists and a resource centre for art students. The idea for the space was conceived two years ago when Moroccan Younès Rahmoun and French Bérénice Saliou discovered that the city of Tétouan was not being used to its full artistic potential. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Tétouan is often overshadowed by the attractions of Marrakech and Tangier, according to the founders. 'To give the area the attention it deserves, we decided to make it a base for our project. The medina has remained completely authentic and while wandering through its narrow lanes, we can genuinely feel the history of the city. Being part of such an environment gives artists a chance to get new perspectives and sources of inspiration,' says Saliou, the artistic director of Trankat Street. Currently, the space is hosting an artists' residency, which the founders say is the first of its kind in the city. The initiative offers three international artists a place to stay for three months in order to immerse themselves in the city's culture and to work with local craftsmen. 'This allows them to engage with the local community and create contemporary artworks that are inspired by Moroccan traditions,' explains the French artistic director. The current artist-in-residence is French-born artist Fouad Bouchoucha. Entitled Master of Slaves, his installation is inspired by the Moroccan zellige and explores the boundaries between industrial and artisanal production. The end result will be showcased as part of an exhibition at the Marrakech Biennale in 2014. Additionally, Trankat Street has plans to organise two exhibitions annually, focused on the artworks produced during the residency as well as those by Moroccan artists. The education programme, which is in collaboration with Morocco's National Institute of Fine Art, National School of Architecture and Dar Sanaa, allows students to mingle with international artists through workshops and seminars. According to Saliou, 'The education programme is also a way to engage with the local context, to discover the situation of artistic education in Morocco and to engage in depth with the local population and aspiring artists.' Photography: Brahim Benkirane

Rebel Girl

A Regional Resurgence

Island Art

Under the Carpet

Facing The Mountains

Twenty-five years on

RHIZOMA: Sara Raza

Urban Series | Noureddine Amir

Aloha Arabia

RHIZOMA: Telfaz11

Urban Series | Alia Al-Senussi

Vinyl Destination

RHIZOMA | Nauf Alhimiary

Out on its Own

At Home in Suburbia

RHIZOMA: Shaweesh

Keeping His Word

Virtual Calligraphy

Eating in Ramallah

Trankat Street