#palestinian-algerian-french artist

[belleandre-belle]

ZEINA - Nasty Remix ft. Saint Levant

[jimmorrisonfants]

PALESTINIAN ARTIST 🇵🇸

Saint Levant feat. Playyard - I guess

(x) Saint Levant is a Palestinian/French/Algerian artist born in Jerusalem and based in Los Angeles. Raised in Gaza and then Amman, his name symbolises a reculamation of the orientalist fantasies that the Levant has historically been a victim of.

[pathofelation]

not sure if my mutuals know this but macklemore is donating all revenue he gets from the streams of his song, HIND'S HALL, to UNRWA. here's some links on common streaming services:

MACKLEMORE - HIND'S HALL (youtube, audio only)

MACKLEMORE - HIND'S HALL (youtube, music video)

MACKLEMORE - HIND'S HALL (spotify)

MACKLEMORE - HIND'S HALL (apple music)

you can also check out UNRWA's website here for more information on them. their donation page is here.

while you're here, i would also like to encourage you to listen to palestinian artists. here are two i personally love the music of:

Bashar Murad is a palestinian singer-songwriter. his youtube, his twitter, and his instagram are linked right here.

Saint Levant is a palestinian/french/algerian artist. here is his tiktok, his instagram, and his youtube.

i encourage you to find more that you love! keep their work alive and show your love and support for their awesome music. support other palestinian creatives. from the river to the sea. do your daily click. love you guys.

[filipeanut]

Admission to many museums in the UK are free, so once and a while we drop in to get to see local art. Here are some photos of art with themes of colonization, injustice, and issues of our time at Tate Liverpool.

This photo is of a Palestinian woman in what’s left of her home during the Sabra Camp massacre in 1982. It is by Don McCullin, a British photographer who covered the Lebanese Civil War during his visits in 1976 and 1982. Palestinian refugees fled to Lebanon after the establishment of Israel in 1948 in what was once a part of Palestine. The war in Lebanon led to massacres of Muslim neighborhoods including Palestinians in the Sabra refugee camp.

The late Zarina Hashmi was an Indian-American artist born in India, whose family was displaced by the 1947 partition of India after British colonial rule. While her sister Rani moved to Pakistan, Zarina eventually traveled the world, staying in touch with her sister everywhere she went. “Letters from Home” use these letters from Rani as a basis for the art, as they are written in Urdu and printed along with depictions of blue prints and maps of the places Zarina had lived through the years.

Kader Attia was born in France to Algerian parents, and later grew up in Algeria. Believe it or not, this artwork is made out of food. Specifically, couscous, a staple in Algeria as well as the rest of North Africa. Near the exhibit is a photo of Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, who applied modernist architecture during the French colonial period in Algeria near the mid 1900s. In this artwork Attia seems to shape buildings in the modernist style, depicting the ancient hilltop city of Ghardaia in Algeria. The buildings are molded in couscous, and cracks and crumbling areas in the buildings could be seen as weathering from both the city’s old age and French colonization.

Torkwase Dyson handcrafted these huge, black structures and placed them in a large dark space on the first floor of Tate Liverpool. Dyson’s abstract works “grapple with the ways in which space is perceived, imagined and negotiated particularly by black and brown bodies.” This installation, “Liquid a Place,” definitely displays this, with these huge statues of what seam like heavy slabs of the darkest marble. They definitely convey the weight of colonization for me, and the artist description of them echoing “the curve of a ship’s hull” got me the most. Tate Liverpool sits in what was once one of Europe’s busiest ports serving the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Lubaina Himid was one of the pioneers of the UK’s Black Art movement in the 1980s. “Carrot Piece” shows a white figure hovering a carrot over a Black woman carrying her own plentiful batch of food and items. The white figure is on a unicycle and wears light make up, conveying ridiculousness or crude entertainment, as if a clown. These are cut-out wooden paintings that are life-sized and was made for, as Himid wrote in her description, “…the moment when you slowly realise that you have learned something quite useful about yourself which proves to be a whole lot better than anything ever offered to you for free.”

Kerry James Marshall is known for his colorful paintings depicting Black people in dark shades. He counters “Western pictorial tradition” and brings forward Black figures in it. This work shows a Black figure wearing a British royal guard uniform, holding a sandwich board advertising a fish and chips restaurant named after a freedman, prominent writer, and British slavery abolitionist Olaudah Equiano. The irony of this art, is that it does not show a place in England. It is a scene in Arizona, where a “London Bridge” was made to attract American tourism.

[apollos-olives]

lemme make a list of some non western songs. Not all of them will be Arabic, there’s some African singers here too.

Habibi - KAYAM (Tanzanian/Kenyan/British/Indian - Canadian born)

Naïf - GIMS (also known as Maître Gims, Congolese French) (VOCALSSSSS) (I could make a whole list of him and the next artist I’m about to put down)

L’enfer - Stromae (Rwandan-Belgian) (extremely popular, you might have heard Papaoutai or Alors on Danae. Papaoutai is about his father who died in the Rwandan genocide ☹️ you should listen to it, it’s very sad)

Sante - Stromae

Mets moi bien - GIMS (change of pace lol)

Born without a Heart - Faouzia (Moroccan-Canadian)

Puppet - Faouzia

Ghazaleh- Dana Saleh (Jordanian/Palestinian/American)

Call Me - MANAL (Moroccan)

Jayeb Khbari - RYM (Moroccan)

Very Few Friends - Saint Levant (Palestinian/Serbian/Algerian/French)

FaceTime - Saint Levant

Sability - Ayra Starr (Nigerian - Beninese)

I think that’s enough for now lolllll sorry

thank you so much!!!! i'll listen to them as soon as i have a chance 🫶🫶

[biglisbonnews]

Saint Levant Signs His Political Message 'From Gaza, With Love' Marwan Abdelhamid, the 22-year-old trilingual singer who records as Saint Levant (French for “holy rising”), released his debut EP From Gaza, With Love earlier this month. You may know the young artist from a viral snippet on TikTok that caught the attention of nearly 14 million viewers. The sultry rap clip features his 2022 single “Very Few Friends” and its seductive, baritone hook: "I wanna take you to Paris and spoil you," transforming Saint Levant's muscle-tank-and-mustached brand into one that relied heavily on sex symbols, both visually and sonically. Saint Levant, a child of the Palestinian diaspora, set out to prove that his artistic identity encompasses more than the flesh and blood carnality of his fans' favorite TikToks. "From Gaza, With Love is an ode to the place where I spent the first seven years of my life, a beautiful city by the sea filled with love, memories and unfortunately great pain, suffering and oppression," Abdelhamid tells PAPER.As the son of a French-Algerian mother and a Palestinian-Serbian father, the Gen-Z heartthrob spent his early childhood in Gaza before fleeing to Jordan with his family. He explains: "We are much more than the dehumanizing images you see in Western media. This song is a message to the world, and I sign it with love."Drawing on early-2000s R&B, Arabic trap music and Franco-Arabic rap, Saint Levant's title track "From Gaza, With Love" is a heartfelt homage to his culture with danceable, Middle Eastern flair that infuses the hook and song's thesis — “I came from Gaza with love/ (But I’d feel like a tourist if I ever went back)" — with multicultural soul. The project uses the chameleonic powers of his trilingual upbringing — having spoken English at school, French at home and Arabic in a Palestinian refugee camp — to invite global listeners to embrace the sensuous riches of his Middle Eastern culture.While advocating for Israeli-Palestinian peace has situated him at times within the sticky, no-win arena of public controversy, Abdelhamid invariably handles his politics with love and empathy. Abdelhamid doesn't shy away from imbuing his art with a political message. Check out the PAPER premiere of the "From Gaza, With Love" music video below, where Saint Levant serenades his viewers against a backdrop reminiscent of 1980s public access television. Photos courtesy of Saint Levant https://www.papermag.com/saint-levant-gaza-with-love-2659651735.html

[msniw]

Corona and the Myth that’s Called ‘Goodwill’

Most people are so determined to keep cheerful during these terrible times that many have invoked the mythical spirit of public goodwill displayed by British citizens during World War 2.

Give me a break!

As French Algerian novelist, Albert Camus suggests in ‘The Plague’, an escalating crisis like the Coronavirus pandemic produces the best and worst in us all.

Personally, I find notorious villains far more engaging than milk-and-water saints and such a man was Jewish Londoner Harry Dobkin, a delinquent who murdered, then dismembered his estranged wife and buried her remains on a bomb site in a vain attempt to make her look like a war casualty. According to both Murderpedia and Steemit, when the charred, mummified remains of the former Miss Rachel Dubinski were almost coincidentally unearthed at the height of the London ‘Blitz’ in July 1942 they had been lying below the ruins of the Vauxhall Baptist Chapel for between 12 - 15 months.

I will leave you to read the full details at the links provided above as here I prefer to examine the clever, if now old-fashioned forensic techniques employed to identify the corpse and trace the murderer.

It was a superb piece of team sleuthing, led first by pathologist Dr Keith Simpson who discovered the deceased had died by strangulation; then the police, whose records showed she had been reported missing by her sister, Polly who in turn led them to Rachel’s dentist, Barnett Hopkin.

Finally, writes the author of the account on Murderpedia, “Miss Mary Newman, the head of the Photography Department at Guy's, superimposed a photograph of the skull on to a photograph of Rachel Dobkin, a technique first used six years earlier in the Buck Ruxton case. The fit was uncanny. The bones found in the crypt were the mortal remains of Mrs Rachel Dobkin”.

Most improbably, the Dobkins’ awful story became the stuff of a fictionalised short crime film, ‘The Drayton Case’, whose stars included John Le Mesurier, now best remembered for his role in the BBC TV situation comedy ‘Dad's Army’ and which in a roundabout way brings me back to base.

------

Blood Libels, Then and Now

The feeling that succeeding generations fiercely sanctify and protect their forebears’ memory has been reinforced this week by social media chat about the early 20th century Beilis Affair.

The real story and character of Menachem Mendel Beilis and the ordeal he suffered at the hands of the Czarist Russian authorities on false accusations of ritual murder were used as the basis for the multi prizewinning novel ‘The Fixer’ by Bernard Malamud which in turn became a film. This was directed by John Frankenheimer and the screenplay was written by Dalton Trumbo, among the ‘Hollywood Ten’ imprisoned and then blacklisted for putative Communist sympathies.

I am sure that this was no coincidence as Beilis’s story will have resonated hugely with Trumbo for many reasons. Some years ago, the screenwriter’s life story was enshrined on film. It needs figures like his son, Christopher, also a film maker to explain to others like the descendants of Mendel Beilis why and how a factual documentary is quite different from a fictive piece of art. Certainly they won’t listen to me!

------------- The debate takes me to the monstrous artistic scandal of the week, the unveiling of the so-called ‘nouveau baroque’ painting, ‘The Martyrdom of Saint Simonino of Trento, for Jewish Ritual Murder’.

Whatever Italian artist, Giovanni Gasparro and his legion fans may say, the real power of the work is neither in its fine draughtsmanship and exquisite colouration, nor its astute pre-Easter and pre-Passover timing: It lies firmly in the evident glee with which he has depicted the anti-Jewish stereotypical characters in the false, hate-filled story.

The Italian episode was vastly worse than the Beilis Affair, involving Jews being forced to make false confessions to murder and then being burnt at the stake.

Gasparro, according to his online biography, enjoys the official patronage of UNESCO, the Italian state and many churches. Further, he boasts a huge social media following: At the last count, more than 2,000 people had reacted to the controversial work on his Facebook page, while it produced 6.2K comments and 1.4K shares.

I do hope that someone persuades Gasparro that if he wishes to honour his faith in paint, there are a million other ways to do so.

The current pandemic has also produced ‘mini’ libels: While a ‘New York Times’ op-ed compared the Corona quarantine to an IDF military curfew on Palestinians in 2002 without mentioning suicide bombings, the Palestinian Authority initially equated Israel with the virus and only after a long silence, did it admit to cooperating with Israel during the emergency. By then, of course, more damage had been done.

Corona as the Theatre of the Absurd

Try as I may, I cannot find any well-known recent commentators who have referred to Camus’s novel, ‘The Plague’. This is especially surprising in Israel where the great master of absurdist philosophy and art is said to be universally revered.

Professor David Ohana remarks in his work, ‘Israel and Its Mediterranean Identity’ that Camus experienced the Vichy regime’s treatment of its Jews “close at hand through the family of his wife Francine, his schoolmates, neighbors, and fellow intellectuals … Most of Camus’s friends at that period in Algeria were Jews”.

André Cohen, his family doctor became “a victim of the fascist plague that was spreading in Algeria: only two percent of the Jewish doctors were permitted to work in their profession, and there was a similar quota in governmental positions. When the decrees were imposed in Oran, Dr Cohen had to stop working as a doctor”.

Ohana muses “… was Dr Cohen, the enlightened Jewish doctor, Camus’s model for Dr Rieux, the fighting doctor in ‘La Peste (The Plague)’, the outlines of which he began to commit to writing at that time? …

“Camus, who was influenced by ‘Moby Dick’, needed a symbol that would embody the subject he wished to describe in his allegorical novel. The plague of typhus that was raging in the town of Tlemcen gave him his inspiration. In 1941, at the time of the plague, he wrote in the newspaper ’Paris- Soir’, for which he worked, a short story that sketched out the main outlines of the plot of ‘The Plague’, which were fully developed about six years later”.

The past three-four months have  indeed seen our global and virtual village turn into a huge stage depicting a strange, absurdist universe that no-one can yet fully interpret or explain. It now remains to be seen if any leading Jewish writers, be they in Israel or the Diaspora, will return Camus’s compliment and write something worthy of his enduring legacy – and the plague that’s irrevocably changed modern times.

© Natalie Wood (01 April 2020)  

[ebenpink]

World News Briefs -- March 26, 2019 (Evening Edition) https://ift.tt/2FCnQ0L

Reuters: Israel-Hamas cross-border fighting renews after lull GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinian militants fired rockets from Gaza into Israel on Tuesday, drawing retaliatory air strikes and breaking a day-long lull in cross-border fighting between Israel and Hamas that could impact an Israeli election two weeks away. The biggest Israeli-Palestinian escalation in months, which began on Monday with the longest-range Palestinian rocket attack to cause casualties in Israel in five years, had eased after Egyptian mediation. But even if the crisis subsides, it could shadow the impending Israeli election on April 9 in which right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has campaigned on a tough security platform. Read more ....

MIDDLE EAST

Yemenis rally in Sanaa to support Houthis on conflict anniversary. Syrians protest as Hezbollah urges resistance over US Golan move. Gulf Arabs, Europeans, Iran reject U.S. recognition of Golan Heights as Israeli. Israel on alert after airstrikes on Gaza. Back in Israel, PM consults with military on Gaza violence. UN warns Gaza violence could turn catastrophic. 'It's not about the Benjamins,' Netanyahu says of U.S. support for Israel. US hits Iran Guard finance network with sanctions. Turkey court opens espionage trial of US consulate staffer. Death toll ticks up to 25 in widespread Iran flooding.

ASIA

Thailand parties manoeuvre for position amid election confusion. Thailand election: Evidence of ‘irregularities’ says ex-PM Thaksin. Russia, China sent home more than half of North Korean workers in 2018 - U.N. reports. Xi says cooperation is mainstream in China-Europe ties. Top Chinese leader backs crackdown on Uighurs. Pakistan orders custody for Hindu girls at center of quarrel with India. Australia threatens social media execs with jail over terror images.

AFRICA

Algeria army chief demands Bouteflika be declared unfit to rule. Algerian army chief wants president declared unfit to lead. Southern Africa leaders back Western Sahara at 'historic' talks. UN sends team to probe Mali massacre. UN to probe 'horrific' Mali attacks as death toll jumps to 160. Comoros awaits results of divisive poll. Nigeria voters 'threatened' in delayed poll. ‘Second disaster’ warned in Mozambique as cholera a concern. Kenya plans to close world's biggest refugee camp Dadaab: document.

EUROPE

Russia defends troops in Venezuela. Xi, Merkel, Macron and Juncker meet in Paris. EU leaders hold out olive branch to Chinese ‘rival’ by saying they want active role in Belt and Road Initiative. UK government defiant as Parliament takes control of Brexit. Tory rebels asked by No 10 if they would back Brexit deal if May quit. EU ignores US calls to ban Huawei in 5G cyber blueprint. Spain: FBI was offered stolen data from NKorea embassy raid. EU strengthens copyright laws for news publishers, content creators. Germany bomb threats: Officials evacuate buildings in at least 6 cities. EU Parliament votes to end daylight savings. Lithuania's 'trial of the century' implicates Soviet leader Gorbachev.

AMERICAS

House Dems fail to override Trump veto in fight over border emergency declaration. Barr plans to issue Mueller report details within weeks. Donald Trump and allies ready to turn tables on opponents and media after delivery of Mueller report. Mexico's 'El Chapo' seeks new trial, citing jury misconduct. Neighboring nations grapple with diplomatic fallout from Venezuela power struggle. Mexico demands apology from Spain and the Vatican over conquest. 'There is no life here': Venezuelans grapple with another massive blackout. As new blackout hits, Venezuelans brace for more hardship. Venezuela: call for calm amid blackouts and anti-Maduro protests. Stun-gun kidnapping of Chinese student alarms Canada. Canada grants asylum to family who sheltered Edward Snowden.

TERRORISM/THE LONG WAR

IS jihadists kill 7 US-backed fighters in Syria. Islamic State group: Syria's Kurds call for international tribunal. U.S. Supreme Court backs Sudan in USS Cole bombing lawsuit.

ECONOMY/FINANCE/BUSINESS

Wall Street climbs as financials snap five days of losses. Airbus secures multi-billion dollar jet order from China. Southwest Boeing 737 Max makes emergency landing in Orlando; FAA cites engine issue unrelated to recent crashes. Google condemns new EU copyright laws which force tech giants such as YouTube and Facebook to compensate artists and musicians - and warns it will hurt Europe. Apple unveils TV streaming service, credit card and Apple News+. French Muslims sue Facebook, YouTube over Christchurch footage. Supply concerns drive oil prices up after four days of losses. from War News Updates https://ift.tt/2Wsz8ud via IFTTT

[khalilhumam]

‘African art has nourished all civilizations': A Conversation with Algerian artist Rachid Koraichi

Register at https://mignation.com The Only Social Network for Migrants. #Immigration, #Migration, #Mignation ---

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/african-art-has-nourished-all-civilizations-a-conversation-with-algerian-artist-rachid-koraichi/

‘African art has nourished all civilizations': A Conversation with Algerian artist Rachid Koraichi

Rachid Koraichi solo exhibition, 2016. Credit: Aicon Gallery

Paris-based Algerian artist Rachid Koraichi, 73, is known around the world for his use of numbers, letters, mystical symbols and signs in his artworks. He is also an outspoken critic of the challenges people regularly face in the Middle East and North Africa, from racism to immigration to poverty.  “We cannot sit still and work in a bubble without thinking about our environment and what surrounds us,” said Koraichi in an interview with Global Voices. “There is still enormous suffering in many countries.” In 2019, in response to devastating waves of migrants losing their lives in search of a better life, he created a cemetery in Tunisia called “Jardin d’Afrique” (“Garden of Africa”), to serve “as a burial site and memorial for migrants who have died in the Mediterranean Sea.” Dozens of drowning victims have already been buried in the cemetery.  Koraichi’s worldview is heavily influenced by Sufism, poetry, philosophy and Quranic verses, and his works have been exhibited throughout the world for decades, from solo exhibitions in New York to art fairs such as Frieze and the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair.

Rachid Koraichi, from the series A Nation In Exile.

A painter, sculptor and calligrapher, Koraichi's work incorporates poems and quotes from Sufi mystics such as Rumi and Al-Arabi and Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and creates a mysterious and moving universe that offers the audience the chance to enjoy its beauty, regardless of the riddle the words may, for many, pose. I express my appreciation to Dheeya Somaiya of Aicon Art for making this interview possible. Excerpts from the interview follow:  Omid Memarian: What is your strongest inspiration, something that has driven you to create art for decades, whether sculptures, paintings, or ceramics?   Rachid Koraichi: I have realized the dream of my own mother. My mother drew a lot, even as a young girl. She received France's grand prize for drawing (at that time Algeria was a French colony). I have evolved in this direction, often under her gaze. When I was working, she would stand behind me and see where I was at, how things were going, how the canvas was developing and so on. For me, it was this sense of my mother looking over my shoulder that was very important. It was really a continuation of what she would have liked to do in her youth and perhaps in her adult life, something she could not achieve for many reasons. She had to stop her studies after she got married. She had a lot of children, which actually meant she was not able to do what she wanted to do. When I picture my mother, I always see her cooking for the whole family, then she moves and stands behind me, looking at a painting I have been working on for a few days, all without saying a word. She leaves and, from time to time, she comes back again. I still feel her eyes on my back, without realizing it; the tenderness, the affection and the desire for her son to make art.

Rachid Koraichi, Madrid, 2018. Credit: Aicon Gallery.

OM: Mahmoud Darwish, the renowned Palestinian poet, has a very strong presence in your oeuvre, including your exhibition, “Path of Roses/Beirut’s Poem/A Nation in Exile.” What's your connection to him and his poems? And how he has persistently been a part of your visual vocabulary? RK: The bond and connection with Mahmoud Darwish goes back several decades. Certainly, Mahmoud Darwish is a significant poet of the Palestinian cause, which has also proved to be a great cause for people across the Arab world, the Islamic world, and people in all countries who seek peace and true decolonization, because today the history of Palestine poses questions for all of us about its past, its present and certainly its future.  When Mahmoud Darwish died, a three-day period of national mourning was announced—which is rare in a state that barely exists as a defined territory, especially for a poet. This speaks to his profound importance. Mahmoud left Beirut and settled in Tunisia where he was allocated a house in Sidi Bou Said. That's where I had a workshop. This house belonged to my friend, the painter Ali Belaada. He was an artist and a great man. We were neighbors. Mahmoud liked to cook but I did not, so that was the beginning of what became a strong bond. We saw each other every day, we spent the afternoons and evenings together, and then one day I said to him: “Listen Mahmoud, as long as you're here, as long as I'm here, let’s create as much as we can together, take things forward, reflect on them.” What interests me in Mahmoud Darwish is his writing: the moment, the story, the pulse that triggered the writing of the poetic text. It was not about illustration—I'm not an illustrator, I'm a visual artist.  I also connected with Mahmoud Darwish over Jalaluddin Rumi who was the spiritual father of Dariush. There was work around his spirituality related to dance and music, and this in particular countered the Islamists who forbade radio, television, music, dance and the arts. Rumi is a great Islamic mystic, who anchored his philosophy and thought. Dance as an element is a fundamental axis of his philosophy and mysticism. 

Rachid Koraïchi, Three Banners Installation. Credit: Aicon Gallery

OM: What is the role of artists, particularly those who have access to global platforms in both shaping and shifting narratives to confront major issues of our time, such as immigration, racism and intolerance/injustice?  RK: We cannot sit still and work in a bubble without thinking about our environment and what surrounds us. There is still enormous suffering in many countries. Look at the experience of independence: unfortunately almost all countries that revolted against Western colonization found themselves under the dictator's boot in their own country.  It is serious. Before, we had a clear cause for which we struggled. Many were even willing to die for it. But today, we see our leaders plunder their countries and their people. We cannot sit idly by and accept this. Look at Algeria: after seven years of horrific wars, we wanted a level of existence that they did not give us. Our leaders continued to behave almost like dictators, torturers, occupiers. Maybe things will change; the world has changed and we hope things will be different.  Today we see clearly the acts of racism that are still happening in North America, we see very well acts of racism from one tribe to another in Africa, and how one tribal leader raises his population against their neighbors. Today, in many countries, we live as if we had learned nothing from the history of our continent.  We artists are questioned, we are obliged by our conscience, to take a stand, it is impossible to remain inactive and do nothing.

Rachid Koraichi onstallation. Credit: Aicon Gallery.

OM: Words, numbers, symbols and signs are some of the major elements that you draw and visualize in an aesthetically beautiful and sophisticated harmonic way. What’s your connection to the numbers and words in your works?  RK: I think that numbers chart the paths of our existence. From conception to birth, to life, to the beginning of life: this is a journey that is peculiar to us. The Arabs have invented quite a few things, including the famous Arabic numerals with which we work, the talismans and the elements found in the architecture of texts or talismans have always been the basis of pattern structure of drawings and paintings. It is this form of magic that is not black magic or simply magic, it is really an algebraic, mathematical, philosophical and also mystical reflection that comes from the mystery, the mystery of writing, the mystery of the figure.   I have always been interested in the writing of letters, the writing of words, in composition that becomes almost minimalist. It may be a form of cannibalism: of all that the eye sees, the things on which the gaze arises. After all, there is the evolution and reflection that the brain makes and that also our sensitivity and our way of digesting and seeing what all that can give and how to pass it to the other.   African art has nourished all civilizations, all cultures. Artists like Picasso, Matisse and many others drew heavily and deeply into African art. Because this land is generous, it is fertile, it is truly great. Really we owe a vote of thanks to this wonderful continent that allows us not only to exist but also to give lessons, even if some people want to push us into the corner as we are sitting at the back of the class. We are not sitting in the last row of the class. We are the first in the class, except we saw our cultures looted, and we fade from time to time. Unfortunately, in our continent we let others really loot us quietly and at all levels.  

Rachid Koraichi. From the series Salome. Credit: Aicon Gallery.

OM: As cultural/religious symbols and also calligraphy are dominant in your artworks, how, in your opinion, is your work communicated to an audience who might have a different cultural and historical background? RK: I think that all humans can decode aesthetic and beautiful things. When I see myself in the exhibitions on the Mayans and the Incas, the Egyptians, African art and others, the audiences are mixed. An object has a value and life, it’s loaded and it’s not just a matter of aesthetic beauty.   People all come with their life stories, with their formations, their cultures, their backgrounds, and try to apprehend things. Maybe we do not all apprehend them in the same way, but I believe that every human has a certain sensitivity and uses it.  I think about the history of art in passing time, that makes a work continue to exist or disappear on its own. It goes back to the time of Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci or others who came before them and even the people of prehistory, when they drew on the cave walls, they did not think for a moment that it would last centuries or millennia.  People did things for the sake of beauty, but it was also a time when they were in a desert or were in a cave, and they wanted a playful way of painting on the walls. Even today, you will see children pick up pens and draw on the wall or table of the house. 

Written by Omid Memarian · comments (0) Donate · Share this: twitter facebook reddit

[jennaschererwrites]

Theater Review: The Strangest | Time Out New York

European fiction is full of stunning displays of white privilege, perhaps few more icy than in Albert Camus's The Stranger. The renowned existentialist novel centers on the cold-blooded murder committed by the French protagonist, Meursault, of a nameless man simply known as "The Arab." And while we delve deep into Meursault's psyche and his reasons (or lack thereof) for the random act of violence, we never find out anything about the unnamed Algerian. A noble, if misguided attempt to rectify that narrative injustice is the subject of The Strangest, Palestinian-American playwright Betty Shamieh's story of the man behind the epithet. Her play makes the murder the endpoint of an entirely different story, about an Algerian family suffering underneath the yolk of French colonialist oppression. The concept is a potent one. The execution? Not so much. Shamieh uses it as a jumping-off point of a tale-within-a-tale that has a lot of big ideas but a sloppy way of getting them across.

Director May Adrales's semi-immersive production is set inside an Algerian coffee shop complete with pillows, cushy rugs and actual coffee for the audience to sip. A storytelling competition is underway, and Umm (Jacqueline Antaramian) is telling the tale of her three sons, her wayward niece and the Frenchman's bullet that will inevitably tear the family asunder. Unfortunately, Shamieh’s characters are presented as types, a quality badly accentuated by most of the performances. That may be the show's conceit—this is a fable with broad universal reverberations. But that doesn't make it any more enjoyable to watch the thief brother leer and flick his switchblade, or the artist brother fall melodramatically to his knees, or the noble-minded father give an inspirational speech backed by too-cinematic music. And a French villain, whose hat is a giant gun, literally only speaks using the word "Bang." Hardest to stomach is the niece, whose every action and motive is filtered through the archetype of a 1950s femme fatale. The framing story of The Strangest has an overtly feminist message—women not permitted to tell their own stories—yet here is a character who is little more than a collection of misogynist tropes. There's plenty to recommend The Strangest in spirit: examining the erasure of Arab-world stories by white colonists, and the erasure of women's stories by male raconteurs. But in practice, Shamieh’s tall tale never quite connects. 4th Street Theatre. By Betty Shamieh. Directed by May Adrales. With ensemble cast. Running time: 1hr 30mins. No intermission. Through Apr 1.