Episode 126
Al-Harf as a site of Negotiating Modernism and Unity
The articulation of the Arabic letter in modern art in the Arab world has
been a popular topic of discussion. The letter served 20th century artists on multiple levels and
allowed for contradictory arguments. The letter became part of a more complex
discourse of signs that drew on a collective and historical memory of
difference, rupture and continuity. It disrupted and subverted the rhetoric of
regional separation and promoted unity; its prominence in this imaginative and
constructed discourse alluded to an emphasis on cultural overlaps,
intersections, connections, and continuity between the Mashriq and the Maghreb.
Equally, it gave artists comfort and confidence that came from the immediate
perception of a marked cultural (and at times political) identity for the work.
Manipulating the Arabic letter in art, thus, served as a mediator between
national identity, heritage and modern art.
Nada Shabout is a Regent
Professor of Art History and the Coordinator of the Contemporary Arab and
Muslim Cultural Studies Initiative (CAMCSI) at the University of North Texas. She is
the founding president of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art from
the Arab World, Iran and Turkey (AMCA). She is the author of Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab
Aesthetics, University of Florida Press, 2007; co-editor with S. Mikdadi, New Vision: Arab Art in the 21st Century,
Thames & Hudson, 2009; and co-editor with S. Rogers and A. Lenssen, Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary
Documents, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2018. She is also founding
director of Modern Art Iraq Archive. Notable among exhibitions she has curated:
Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art,
2010; traveling exhibition, Dafatir:
Contemporary Iraqi Book Art, 2005-2009; and co-curator, Modernism and Iraq, 2009. In 2017, she
received The Crow Collection of Asian Art’s Achievement in Asian Arts and
Culture Award, and in 2018, the UNT Presidential Excellency Award. Shabout was
the Project Advisor for the Saudi National Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2019.
Shabout is on the Board of Directors, Visual Art Commission, Ministry of
Culture, Saudi Arabia (2020-2023), the Board of The Academic Research Institute
in Iraq (TARII), and the College Art Association (CAA) Board of Directors
(2020-2024). Her current projects include, leading an AMCA team, as part of the
Getty Foundation Connecting Art Histories initiative, in support of “Mapping
Art Histories from the Arab World, Iran and Turkey,” coediting with Sarah
Rogers and Suheyla Takesh, Modern Art in
the Arabian Peninsula, and working on a new book project, Demarcating Modernism in Iraqi Art: The
Dialectics of the Decorative, 1951-1979, both under contract with the
American University in Cairo Press.
This episode is part of the Modern Art in the Maghrib series, and was recorded on April 9, 2021,
via zoom. This is part of a larger
Council of American Overseas
Research Centers
program organized by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) and financed by the Andrew Mellon Foundation
that seeks to collaborate with local institutions for a greater awareness of
art historical research in north Africa.
Posté par: Hayet Lansari, Bibliothécaire / Chargée de la diffusion des activités scientifiques (CEMA).
