Contemporary Art in the Middle East

“Orientalism” is not the issue—we have art all of our own

By Ali Khadra | From issue 206, October 2009
Published online 27 Sep 09 (Opinion)

While reading Anna Somers Cocks’s article “Are we colonialising Middle Eastern art?” (The Art Newspaper, July-August, p26), I was piqued by her observation that “no one needs western-style ‘fine art’ with some orientalist flourishes” parading as contemporary art in the Middle East.

There is no denying that western tastes have lent towards “orientalism” and that there is a plethora of artists in the Middle East willing to satisfy these tastes, but there is more to the story than that. Scanning some of the modern and contemporary Middle Eastern artists, where are the “orientalist flourishes” in the work of, say, Mona Hatoum, Dia al-Azzawi, Adel Abdessemed, Walid Raad or Emily Jacir? Those “flourishes” are not in the up-and-coming works of Rokni Haerizadeh, Youssef Nabil, Ahmed Alsoudani or Ghada Amer either.

The thing about “flourishes” is that they are, as this innuendo suggests, just a little touch here or there. In contemporary Middle Eastern art, I am hard-pressed to find a solid example of western-style influences or colonialisation. Besides, what is wrong with “orientalist flourishes”? If one considers art’s most basic, indispensable message—that of self-expression—perhaps we ought to stop and consider that “orientalist flourishes” are just another form of self-articulation.

This brings me to my next point, which I feel was not addressed by Somers Cocks. Let us look at how Middle Eastern contemporary art “got hot”.

Read on at the artnewspaper.com