Collaborative Praxis and Contemporary Art Experiments in the MENASA Region [1st ed.] 9783030479244, 9783030479251

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Collaborative Praxis and Contemporary Art Experiments in the MENASA Region Atteqa Ali

Collaborative Praxis and Contemporary Art Experiments in the MENASA Region

Atteqa Ali

Collaborative Praxis and Contemporary Art Experiments in the MENASA Region

Atteqa Ali Zayed University Dubai, United Arab Emirates

ISBN 978-3-030-47924-4    ISBN 978-3-030-47925-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47925-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover design: eStudioCalamar Cover image: Walls of Peace, I am Karachi. Organized by Vasl Artists’ Association and Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Involving artists, designers, students, and volunteers, Karachi, 2015. Photograph by the author, January 2016. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Always and forever to H + H

Acknowledgments

The research presented in this book began with funds from Zayed University Research Office to support my colleagues and me in a cluster grant. The group accomplished a lot individually and collectively from 2015 until 2020. An offshoot of the cluster grant was a separate incentive fund that provided critical support for me to travel to view projects and organizations around the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia region, and have discussions with the people developing innovative initiatives. I have received intellectual and moral support from the administration and faculty in the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises at Zayed University. All along the way, I have been encouraged and facilitated to do the necessary research and writing to complete this manuscript by my family, including my husband, who also inspired me with his artwork. My son, sister, nieces, nephews, parents, brothers, and in-laws helped me to pursue the research through accompanying me on trips or allowing me time to travel and write. Finally, I am indebted to the great folks at Palgrave Macmillan, especially to Lina Aboujieb for her encouragement from our discussions through to the proposal phase and into the submission.

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Contents

1 Introduction: A Brief Outline of Globalized Practices of Collaborative Art  1 2 Charting Sociopolitical Art in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia 29 3 Getting to Know You: “Relational Aesthetics” 61 4 Come Together: Institutional Frameworks, Communities, and the Rise of Collaborative Art Praxis in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia 91 5 What Is It Good For: War, Social Engagement, and Contemporary Art Experiments133 6 Collaborative Art Praxis and Globalization: Agency and Marginalized Communities Around the World171 7 Conclusion: Collaborative Art Praxis and Contemporary Art Experiments203 Index221

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2

Emily Jacir, Where We Come From, 2001–2003 detail (Jihad), American passport, 30 texts, 32 c-prints and 1 video. (Photo: John Sherman, © Emily Jacir, courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York) Word, Image, and Language, Participatory Performance, 2019. Mixed media installation (book binding cloth on wood, paper, ink, color pencil, scratch board, gold leaf, sound, and live projection equipment). Dimensions variable. Part one: Come Read Us Another Story | Instructions: Come, read us another story in your own language. Pick one from the available texts that you can read, or you can use your smart devices to read. Please keep one reading session from 3–7 minutes long. Part two: Fill in the Blanks Exercise | Instructions: Please use a pen or pencil to fill in the blanks. Please return the sheet after filling. (Courtesy of the artist) Word, Image, and Language, Participatory Performance, 2019. Mixed media installation (book binding cloth on wood, paper, ink, color pencil, scratch board, gold leaf, sound, and live projection equipment). Dimensions variable. Part one: Come Read Us Another Story | Instructions: Come, read us another story in your own language. Pick one from the available texts that you can read, or you can use your smart devices to read. Please keep one reading session from 3–7 minutes long. Part two: Fill in the Blanks Exercise | Instructions: Please use a pen or pencil to fill in the blanks. Please return the sheet after filling. (Courtesy of the artist)

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.3

Word, Image, and Language, Participatory Performance, 2019. Mixed media installation (book binding cloth on wood, paper, ink, color pencil, scratch board, gold leaf, sound, and live projection equipment). Dimensions variable. Part one: Come Read Us Another Story | Instructions: Come, read us another story in your own language. Pick one from the available texts that you can read, or you can use your smart devices to read. Please keep one reading session from 3–7 minutes long. Part two: Fill in the Blanks Exercise | Instructions: Please use a pen or pencil to fill in the blanks. Please return the sheet after filling. (Courtesy of the artist) 37 Fig. 2.4 Word, Image, and Language, Participatory Performance, 2019. Mixed media installation (book binding cloth on wood, paper, ink, color pencil, scratch board, gold leaf, sound, and live projection equipment). Dimensions variable. Part one: Come Read Us Another Story | Instructions: Come, read us another story in your own language. Pick one from the available texts that you can read, or you can use your smart devices to read. Please keep one reading session from 3–7 minutes long. Part two: Fill in the Blanks Exercise | Instructions: Please use a pen or pencil to fill in the blanks. Please return the sheet after filling. (Courtesy of the artist) 38 Fig. 2.5 Ali Cherri, The Digger (Al Haffar), 2015, 24 minutes Arabic and Pashto with English subtitles. (Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Imane Farès, Paris) 41 Fig. 2.6 Ali Cherri, Fragments, 2016, Archeological Artifacts, Taxidermy Bird, Light table. Variable dimensions. (Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Imane Farès, Paris) 42 Fig. 2.7 Ali Cherri, Petrified, 2016, Video installation, Single channel, 13 minutes, loop. Arabic with English subtitles. (Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Imane Farès, Paris) 42 Fig. 2.8 Susan Hefuna, Via Fenestra/Frankfurt (Oder), 2003, Singlechannel video, 60 minutes. (Courtesy of the artist) 44 Fig. 2.9 Susan Hefuna, Marxloh Crossroads, 2015, Single-channel video, 90 minutes. (Courtesy of the artist) 47 Fig. 2.10 Sharjah Cricket Stadium, 2014. (Photograph copyright Cricket365)49 Fig. 2.11 Naiza Khan, Homage (video still), 2010, Single-channel video, 13:10 min. (Photo credit: Mahmood Ali. Courtesy of the artist) 52 Fig. 2.12 Naiza Khan, Graveyard at 11.23 am, 2010, Screen print, watercolor, and graphite, 100 × 70 cm (39 × 27 1/2 in). (Courtesy of the artist) 55

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Fig. 2.13 Naiza Khan, Hundreds of Birds Killed, 2019, Soundscape with installation of brass objects. (Courtesy of the artist) 56 Fig. 2.14 Naiza Khan, Hundreds of Birds Killed, 2019, Soundscape with installation of brass objects. (Courtesy of the artist) 56 Fig. 2.15 Naiza Khan, Doorbeen, 2019, Video, steel telescope. (Photograph by the author) 57 Fig. 3.1 Huma Mulji, Conversations with Karamatullah. UV coated Archival Inkjet Prints on Hahnemühle Photorag, mounted on Dibond® Variable Ed.5, 2016. (Courtesy of the artist) 66 Fig. 3.2 Huma Mulji, Conversations with Karamatullah. UV coated Archival Inkjet Prints on Hahnemühle Photorag, mounted on Dibond® Variable Ed.5, 2016. (Courtesy of the artist) 67 Fig. 3.3 Huma Mulji, Conversations with Karamatullah. UV coated Archival Inkjet Prints on Hahnemühle Photorag, mounted on Dibond® Variable Ed.5, 2016. (Courtesy of the artist) 68 Fig. 3.4 Wael Shawky, Dictums 10:120, 2011–2013, Sound installation, 23 minutes, 40 seconds. (Photograph from Lisson Gallery website) 73 Fig. 3.5 Tarek Atoui, TACET workshop with students from Al Amal School for the Deaf, Sharjah, 2013. (Photograph from Council website)78 Fig. 3.6 Mirna Bamieh, Palestine Hosting Society, 2017–present. (Courtesy of the artist) 81 Fig. 3.7 Mirna Bamieh, Palestine Hosting Society, 2017–present. (Courtesy of the artist) 83 Fig. 3.8 Mirna Bamieh, Palestine Hosting Society, 2017–present. (Courtesy of the artist) 84 Fig. 4.1 Queens collective space, Marrakech Medina, 2017. (Photograph by the author) 95 Fig. 4.2 Queens collective space, Marrakech Medina, 2017. (Photograph by the author) 97 Fig. 4.3 Queens collective space, Marrakech Medina, 2017. (Photograph by the author) 98 Fig. 4.4 Library at Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, 2014. (Photograph by the author) 102 Fig. 4.5 Alley outside of Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, 2014. (Photograph by the author) 103 Fig. 4.6 Contemporary Image collective library, Cairo, 2017. (Photograph by the author) 104 Fig. 4.7 Ashkal Alwan space, Beirut, 2018. (Photograph by the author) 106 Fig. 4.8 Ashkal Alwan space, Beirut, 2018. (Photograph by the author) 107

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List of Figures

Fig. 4.9

Fig. 4.10 Fig. 4.11 Fig. 4.12 Fig. 4.13 Fig. 4.14 Fig. 4.15 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 5.5 Fig. 5.6 Fig. 5.7

Fig. 5.8

Chou Hayda, an audio guide project by Annabel Daou and the people of Beirut, with the voices of Julia Kassar and Georges Khabbaz. Commissioned by BeMA in collaboration with Temporary Art Platform, with the partnership of the Directorate General of Antiquities and the National Museum of Beirut. (Walking tour photograph by the author) 110 Outdoor space, Darat al Funun, Amman, May 2017. (Photograph by the author) 114 Library, Darat al Funun, Amman, May 2017. (Photograph by the author) 115 Café, Jadal for Knowledge and Culture, Amman, May 2017. (Photograph by the author) 118 Vasl Artists’ Association space, Karachi. (Photograph from Vasl Artists’ Association website) 120 Vasl Artists’ Association space, Karachi. (Photograph from Vasl Artists’ Association website) 121 T2F (The Second Floor), Karachi. (Photography from T2F’s website)123 Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh, Index of the Disappeared: After Effects, 2005. ((c) Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh. Courtesy of the artists) 141 Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh, Index of the Disappeared: Codes of Conduct, 2008. ((c) Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh. Courtesy of the artists. Photo: Meghan McInnis) 144 Black site cell. Diagram included in Index of the Disappeared146 Michael Rakowitz, Enemy Kitchen, 2003-ongoing, Cooking workshop. (Photograph from the artist’s website) 149 Michael Rakowitz, Enemy Kitchen, 2003-ongoing. (Photograph from the artist’s website) 151 Michael Rakowitz, Enemy Kitchen, 2003-ongoing, Cooking workshop. (Photograph from kickstarter campaign by artist and Museum of Contemporary Art) 152 Campus in Camps (Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti), The Garden: Making Place. Contributors: Aysar Al Saify, Qussay Abu Aker, Naba’ Al Ass, Murad Odah. (Photograph from the organization’s website) 156 Walls of Peace, I am Karachi. Organized by Vasl Artists’ Association and Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Involving artists, designers, students, and volunteers, Karachi, 2015. (Photograph by the author) 159

  List of Figures 

Walls of Peace, I am Karachi. Organized by Vasl Artists’ Association and Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Involving artists, designers, students, and volunteers, Karachi, 2015. (Photograph by the author) Fig. 5.10 Walls of Peace, I am Karachi. Organized by Vasl Artists’ Association and Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Involving artists, designers, students, and volunteers, Karachi, 2015. (Photograph by the author) Fig. 5.11 Walls of Peace, I am Karachi. Organized by Vasl Artists’ Association and Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Involving artists, designers, students, and volunteers, Karachi, 2015. (Photography by the author) Fig. 6.1 Johnson Publishing library, Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago, 2016. (Photograph by the author) Fig. 6.2 Slide collection, Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago, 2016. (Photograph by the author) Fig. 6.3 Dorchester Art and Housing Collaborative, Chicago, 2016. (Photograph by the author) Fig. 6.4 Project Row Houses, Third Ward, Houston, 2019. (Photograph by author) Fig. 6.5 Art + Practice, Leimart Park Village, Los Angeles, 2018. (Photograph by author) Fig. 6.6 eL Seed, Perception, Mural across fifty buildings, Manshiyat Naser district, 2016. (Photograph from the artist’s website) Fig. 6.7 eL Seed, Perception, Mural across fifty buildings, Manshiyat Naser district, 2016. (Photograph from the artist’s website) Fig. 6.8 Tentative Collective, Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema (My Karachi Mobile Cinema), 2012–2015. (Photography courtesy of Yaminay Nasir Chaudhri) Fig. 6.9 Tentative Collective, Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema (My Karachi Mobile Cinema), 2012–2015. (Photography courtesy of Yaminay Nasir Chaudhri) Fig. 6.10 Tentative Collective, Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema (My Karachi Mobile Cinema), 2012–2015. (Photography courtesy of Yaminay Nasir Chaudhri)

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Fig. 5.9

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: A Brief Outline of Globalized Practices of Collaborative Art

1.1   Introduction In February 2019, the organizing body for Documenta, the major international art event held every five years in Germany and, more recently, in another part of the world, announced that the artistic director for the 2022 edition would be ruangrupa, a collective of artists in Jakarta, Indonesia.1 In this unprecedented move, change was placed front and center since the artistic director of one of the art world’s most preeminent exhibitions has always been a professional curator, in addition to usually being a white European male. Selecting an association from the Global South, Documenta officials stated that they deliberately aimed to bypass the standard operating procedures to open the multifaceted undertaking to those outside of the Western mainstream.2 While some in the industry might believe that Documenta is a trendsetter, offering what will be the next influential development in global contemporary art, it is more likely that the austere institution has been on the back end of a critical tendency that artists have been leading for a significant amount of time. The appointment of ruangrupa might effectively symbolize how collaborative practices have been sweeping across various sectors of the complex web of artists and art institutions internationally and the appeal of “social engagement.”3 In this gesture, such practices have reached the very top establishment. Ruangrupa’s assumption of the lead in the premier event illustrates the shifting artistic and curatorial practices that define art today, and indicate © The Author(s) 2020 A. Ali, Collaborative Praxis and Contemporary Art Experiments in the MENASA Region, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47925-1_1

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that collaborative practices will become even more significant than they are already, if for no other reason than the spotlight that will be cast on them when the edition of Documenta opens in 2022. During the last two decades, collaborative art praxes, sometimes categorized as participatory art, relational art, dialogical art, social practice art, socially engaged art, community-based projects, community arts, and other related terms have become a staple of the global contemporary art world. Some might consider them the trending modus operandi in artistic practices today. As such, the Documenta establishment might have felt an urgency to address the universal adoption and interest in such communal activities. Other recent developments signal the turn to collaborative, socially engaged practices. In this case, it is related to activism in art. In late 2018, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York that stages a prestigious biennial exhibition of important artistic developments in the nation faced an internal challenge made public. In the backdrop of American politics in which questionable practices at the United States-Mexico border were exposed, the Whitney board member Warren B. Kanders came under fire.4 His company Safariland produced the tear gas that the American authorities were utilizing against children and women, as it was reported. This violation against humane treatment toward those seeking asylum in the United States ignited a groundswell in different groups across the country. For individuals and groups involved in the arts, it was unacceptable that the American government took such actions and a supporter of one of the most prominent museums facilitated the act. Many of the Whitney’s staff members wrote a letter in outrage of Kanders’ presence on the board.5 One of the artists invited to participate in the biennial, Michael Rakowitz decided that he could not participate in the event because of the institution’s association with the inhumane activity at the border. At the opening of the Whitney Biennial exhibition on May 17, 2019, the artist collective Decolonize This Place led a protest against the institution’s apparent lack of response to the Kanders affair.6 The organizer of the action, Amin Hussain read aloud the letter from the Whitney staff. Rakowitz, whose work is discussed in Chap. 4, was, at the time of the exhibition’s opening, the only artist who decided to remove his work from the Whitney Biennial. In addition, the artist collective Forensic Architecture created a work—a documentary film that musician and activist David Byrne narrated—specifically dealing with Warren Kanders’ involvement in

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the gassing of innocent civilians at the border of United States and Mexico as well as other areas of conflict including Palestine. The museum might have felt conflicted between its responsibilities toward the community of artists and its board of directors. It did not remove Kanders as vice chairman from its board and encouraged Rakowitz to remain in the biennial. At first Kanders remained steadfast in his decision to carry on with his duties as the vice chairman of the Whitney’s board of trustees. He believed that he had not acted in a malicious manner and needed to support the good work of the museum. His reasoning was that his company was for the betterment of the world at large and that the protest was misdirected.7 Apparently other board members feared that if the protesters got their demand to have Kanders removed the activists would come after them to resign because of the museum leadership’s clandestine involvement in oil companies and with defense contractors; essentially, companies that the advocates were targeting. Eventually Kanders did resign from the Whitney Museum following the announcement by eight artists that they intended to remove their works from the exhibition. This took place in July 2019, halfway through the four-month run of the biennial. Kanders wrote in his resignation letter, “the politicized and oftentimes toxic environment in which we find ourselves across all spheres of public discourse, including the art community, put the work of this Board in great jeopardy.”8 Whereas protesters had attempted to highlight the pain and suffering that the product that Kanders’ company produced had caused ordinary civilians, the Whitney Museum’s resigning vice chairman took the stance of the victim in this statement by insinuating that he had been pushed out illegitimately and that that kind of action would leave the institution in a precarious position. He seemed to suggest that the protesters did not understand all of the good that he and others like him had done for the museum and arts in general. And that there should be alarm bells ringing because his support as well as the money and resources provided by other board members was critical to the sustaining of such an organization. It appears that his was a warning against too much “political correctness,” a phrase that became popular in the 1990s to label an act or words as leaning toward politically liberal views. The sentiment was that the activist voice should not take over an art museum; the museum should not be politicized. The stance maintains a separation of everyday life and what goes on inside a museum. The associated statements with this development seem to suggest that politics should not “dirty the waters” of a higher calling. The response of the Whitney’s

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director Adam Weinberg to Kanders’ resignation appeared to echo this conviction. The New York Times provided insight into his apprehension at the mixing of art and political reality: “The Whitney Museum is one of the most progressive, the most diverse, the most engaged, open programs of any major institution in the country,” Mr. Weinberg added. “Every museum director is looking as us right now and saying, ‘Gee, if the Whitney is being targeted, what’s going to happen to us.’”9

Like its resigned vice chairman, the museum’s director appropriated a victim stance that aimed to limit investigations into museum fundraising sources, particularly corporate donations. Even as he spoke about the radical leaning of the institution’s programs, he cautioned the art world to maintain a comfortable distance from making demands about funding. Without stating it directly, he insinuated that activism should be curbed before it gets out of hand because money is crucial to run such cutting-­ edge programs. Weinberg did not offer any efforts to compromise or screen the funding sources coming into the institution. He did not suggest, for example, that the museum would make efforts to secure donations from individuals and organizations that attempt to not inflict pain and suffering in the world. Instead, he seized the opportunity to question, and perhaps vilify the motives of the activists because, as he sees it, art museums need the support of rich people, despite the questionable supply of profits for the companies with which they are associated, in order to put forth its great programming. The duplicitous stance goes against some of the more controversial, activist work directed at museums and their boards of trustees and corporate funding in the history of contemporary art. These undertakings are a hallmark of the subversive quality of some recent works; artists have been engaged and commenting about dubious activities that they noticed in the world around them. For example, Hans Haacke shed light on the monetary gifts provided by Philip Morris to arts organizations while it also supported a conservative US Senator Jesse Helms. In 1990, Haacke said, “I have a particular interest in corporations that give themselves a cultural aura and are in other areas suspect. Philip Morris presents itself in New York as a lover of culture while it turns out that if you look behind the scenes, it is also a prime funder of Jesse Helms, someone who is very hostile to the arts.”10 For museums and other cultural institutions, there is

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perhaps a blind eye turned to the source of funds. While museum sponsorship is an important and complicated topic that is not the subject of this manuscript, it is critical to consider because of the line in the sand that is often drawn in between art and activism. For political and social activists, it is crucial to be aware of the root of funding. Oftentimes, artists are politically and socially engaged in the current events of the society. And, as suggested by the topic of this book, artists have been seeking out ways to engage communities and audiences in platforms that go beyond normative topics that deal only with the production of art. The Whitney Museum has been at the center of this debate on many occasions during its existence. The instance connected with the 2019 Whitney Biennial provided the art world opportunities to consider if and how art and politics should intersect. In light of such developments, and perhaps prompted by some of them, a panel on art and activism was convened at the New School for Social Research in New York.11 Arts professionals and artists questioned the relation between art and activism, whether it mattered if it was art or activism, and the role of art and artists in political times. For the artists involved— Tania Bruguera and Nan Goldin—they did not hesitate in viewing art as activism or expressed no concern if it was categorized as art or activism. For them, the urgency of the current political climate meant that they needed to respond to it. However, for art historian Claire Bishop, Bruguera’s actions at the Tate Modern in London about global migration was a work of art, whereas Goldin’s participation in the activist group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) was activism. Bishop’s assessment was based on the need for a particular outcome: Bruguera’s interventions encouraged a questioning of contemporary politics; Goldin’s interventions sought a clearly defined result.

1.2   Global Collaborative Art Praxis No matter how it is defined, the weaving of art and activism is a critical aspect of contemporary art practices that are collective and entrenched in communal concerns. And, conversely, many practitioners across the world have found that collaborative art praxes are the most appropriate methods to develop art about sociopolitical concerns. This kind of production prompts artists to step outside of normative studio situations to formulate socially engaged projects connected to audiences typically beyond the microcosm of art. They offer situations that initiate investigations into

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complex topics through involving varied communities. For example, artists find modes to serve the interests of a particular group of people. As they have appropriated such an approach to making art, it has been noted by critics and writers that participatory or collaborative art has offered ways to reconsider how art is produced and presented. This was perhaps first explored in the text of curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud on “relational aesthetics.” His analysis suggests that the process of artmaking is one that is moved out of an individual, solitary situation to a more collective, public realm vis-à-vis an approach that forefronts “human interactions and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.”12 In leaving the studio, artists open up avenues to new relations with audiences; the connection to art becomes embedded within the viewer rather than positioned in front of him or her. Bourriaud’s significant study outlines how the shift in art methodologies has fostered innovative ways to interact with art. In this manner, the meaning and purpose of art shifts as well. Collaborative art adds another layer to the age-old debate that asks the question, “what is art?” The adoption of collaborative, socially engaged praxes is a global phenomenon. Nikos Papastergiadis writes that there have been significant strides in art, curating, and criticism that point not only to “a spontaneous shift in practice, but also the first truly global movement in art.”13 His essay supports the reading of this approach to making and curating art as one of the key features of art today. He classifies it as a movement that is happening around the world. In the last decade since collaborative art praxis has become entrenched in the art world, debates about what it is, and its validity have ensued. Mentioned earlier in the introduction, Claire Bishop finds parity between participatory artworks with “artistic resonance” that maintain a connection with “aesthetic” qualities and those that are limited to a “social function” that do not appear to prioritize artistic merit or worth. In her 2012 book-length study entitled Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, she challenges Bourriaud’s assessment of the relational as aesthetic, and instead draws a distinction between works that the artist pre-plans and forms along the lines of what practitioners typically do versus those that rely heavily on the input of the community and seemingly are little different from what museums and galleries do when they undertake community outreach programs. This debate had initiated earlier in 2006 on the pages of Artforum magazine between Bishop and another scholar, art historian Grant Kester, over the dynamics of

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collaborative art praxes. For Bishop, participatory art, the term she has preferred to utilize, had been misinterpreted in the writings of art critics and historians, causing a privileging of outcome-oriented service projects in the arts. In her assessment, the mark of “good” art is that there is a “disruption” to bring together the painful and pleasing and reality and artifice.14 For Kester, the social aspect of the work began to replace traditional materials. He advocated for different criteria to be formulated for dialogical, collaborative, participatory art because artists have assumed the role of facilitators rather than producers. These ongoing debates were later expanded in the full-length manuscripts that both authors produced.

1.3   Collaborative Art Praxis in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia The current manuscript with its regional focus analyzes and discusses the projects as legitimate artworks that are tied to the extended context of sociopolitical, economic, and historical concerns. This investigation is legitimized by the growth and development of collaborative and socially engaged works of art and the recent focus on such artistic praxes in significant events that have taken place in the region. For example, in 2016, for its annual March Meeting, a gathering of regional and international professionals in contemporary art, Sharjah Art Foundation made the topic: “Education, Engagement, and Participation.” Sharjah Art Foundation’s decision to investigate this theme indicates its importance in the region and globally, and the need to research it. Take as a prominent example of art in the region the work of artist Emily Jacir whose work has been internationally lauded. In the early 2000s, when the practice of collaborative, participatory, socially engaged, dialogical, and social practice art was not very common, at least not as much as it is today, Jacir’s use of this kind of approach to make art seemed to make perfect sense. She was always concerned about the Palestinian community. Several of her works over the years have drawn attention to their plight through components that engage the Palestinian public as well as audiences from around the world. Where we come from, 2001–2003 (Fig. 1.1) is a multi-layered work of art in which the artist performed acts requested by her fellow Palestinians. The work only became meaningful once ordinary members of the population got involved.

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Fig. 1.1  Emily Jacir, Where We Come From, 2001–2003 detail (Jihad), American passport, 30 texts, 32 c-prints and 1 video. (Photo: John Sherman, © Emily Jacir, courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York)

This project is noteworthy in contemporary art in general, as well as for the extended Middle East. It might be considered a pioneer work of collaborative art, both for the region and globally. In fact, she has contributed significantly to a growing definition of what could constitute art. Thus, she won the 2008 Hugo Boss award at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The museum described her work as follows: Combining the role of archivist, activist, and poet, Jacir creates poignant works of art that are at once intensely personal and deeply political. Her work often addresses the circumstances of the Palestinian community, but also highlights the general condition of exile and the negotiation of tenuous borders as she focuses on the mundane details of everyday life as well as momentous historical events.15

As a witness to the circumstances of the Palestinian community, the artist could not remain passive to the injustices she saw and experienced. Jacir possesses an American passport. This is a significant document to have in the complex politics that govern Palestinian-Israeli relations. It provides her with access to the “homeland” for Palestinian refugees—with an American passport she could enter Israel without the struggle that her fellow Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have to undergo. They have to provide significant documentation to justify their visits,

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oftentimes being rejected to make the trip. Jacir believed that she could provide a solution, even if it is not ideal. The artist proposed that she travel to the homeland with her American passport to perform the visits, rituals, and actions for Palestinians that have been refused to do so themselves. From simple tasks to complex ceremonies, the artist carried out all of the acts that she was requested to do with the seriousness that was required of them. Even the most mundane chore gained profoundness because of the tense situation in the region. Having a glass of water may seem like an ordinary act; but, if we consider that Jacir did this for a Syrian refugee who is not allowed to visit her parents’ village, then it gains more significance. It is an ephemeral link to the past that the wish maker was able to achieve from having a dream fulfilled. Similarly, a young man was able to realize his yearning obligation to visit his mother’s grave in Jerusalem on her birthday—something he was not consented to do every year due to unstable political circumstances that resulted in a denial for a permit. The artist enacted this ritual, and when she did, she noticed many mourners surrounding a nearby grave belonging to Oscar Schindler, a German industrialist that saved the lives of many Jews during the Nazi persecution. He provided Jews with hope during otherwise tragic times. Ironically, in a more recent period, Israeli authorities deny a son the chance to pray at his mother’s grave. The artist assumes a performative role in enacting such tasks. The outcome of the performances is experiential rather than tangible. She experiences the life of the individual for whom she is fulfilling a wish; the wish maker undergoes the execution of his/her request. Through this enactment, there is a deeper engagement with an understanding of the impact of everyday, microlevel incidents alongside the macrolevel political situation. This happens not only for the artist, but also for the viewer of the work. The complicated, longstanding struggle for the Palestinians becomes more relatable on a human level; it achieves intimacy, allowing one to empathize with the people. Instead of the conflict being about governmental institutions, it is made personal and about ordinary individuals. These singular stories form the complex web of a communal identity. Jacir’s willingness and desire to undertake requests to fulfill wishes is in line with the approach she has taken in other works of art that she has produced. As mentioned above, her entire practice aims to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians. Through art, Jacir raises awareness of their troubled history. In fact, she has been criticized for being too much of an activist rather than an artist.16 Perhaps Bishop, who, as mentioned above,

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finds distinctions between activist and artistic exercises would agree with this evaluation. Whether this concern is valid or not, it is clear that the main subject of Jacir’s art is about unearthing dimensions of Palestine and Palestinian social and political dilemmas. Oftentimes, the artist involves audiences in activating the work, as was the case with a well-known project Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages that were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948 from 2001. The artist opened her studio to audiences that were asked to embroider names of villages on a canvas tent. The physical act of pushing and pulling a needle through fabric is visceral, suggesting the violence of history and the need to say the name of the place to make it familiar instead of an anonymous and unknown location. In an early work entitled SEXY SEMITE of 2002, Jacir placed personal advertisements in New York City’s newspapers seeking a Jewish partner for a return to the homeland. These anonymous classifieds proposed that a beautiful relationship could ensue and the right of return could be fulfilled. Their tone was the same as personal ads’ found in the same newspapers in which individuals express their ideal qualities for a partner. In SEXY SEMITE, the qualification for a future husband or wife was simply the ability to enter the homeland. When the advertisements began to garner attention, there was suspicion of a terrorist plot. The wish to go back home was viewed as something threatening. In this reaction to a light-­ hearted personal ad (even as it explores a serious topic), Jacir highlighted the complexity of geopolitics and the struggle of a people. The three works described above could be said to be expressions of the artist’s political activism. The Hugo Boss award committee noted: “As a member of the Palestinian diaspora, she comments on issues of mobility (or the lack thereof), border crises, and historical amnesia through projects that unearth individual narratives and collective experiences.”17 Jacir is a good citizen without losing sight of her profession as an artist. She creates art that makes us see things through the eyes of Palestinians that we would not otherwise. She often enlists the public in her effort to unearth and uncover issues and concerns implicit in contemporary society. Her interest is particularly the Palestinian plight of permanent displacement. Through such actions as outlined above, she reaches out to the world beyond art. As quoted by Bishop in her seminal study on participatory art, artist Dan Graham explains, “All artists are alike. They dream of doing something that’s more social, more collaborative, and more real than art.”18 Propelled by a desire to go beyond the world of art and the notion of “art

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for art’s sake,” artists in developing countries might view these type of civic, collective projects as a way of creating something more meaningful and relevant in places where basic human needs still have to be met. At the core of many collaborative, socially engaged art projects is the question, “Can art make a difference in the lives of ordinary people?” When violence and poverty are destroying a society, what can art do to alleviate the situation? In the case of Emily Jacir’s activist projects, she connects with individuals and groups of people to delve into the trauma that the Palestinian community experienced. Her project Where We Come From shed light on the current circumstances in a palpable manner as she enacted the wishes of the Palestinian people. They were physically present in the homeland through her body that acted as a surrogate. Their dreams were fulfilled by the artist in a manner that they specified. Her actions were for the people. Jacir focuses on Palestine specifically, whereas other artists included in the book address further locations in the MENASA. Jacir’s work provides a point of entry into the study of collaborative art in the region since she pioneered work in the method. Her work is exemplary, yet also specific to this geographic area and highlights the inequities that the people face at the hands of an outside force. Such an injustice is not uncommon in the MENASA and the political history there. The disparity that pervades the area is partly an outcome of the complex machinations of European colonialism from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Today, as the effects of this damaging process continue to be felt, the West and the Global South assume binary positions with the former in the dominant status and the latter suffering at the hands of such an imbalance. After the colonizers left, power remained in their hands as newly independent nations struggled to survive politically and economically. As several theorists have analyzed, the havoc wreaked on nations in the MENASA forced a system of ongoing dependence on European nations.19 The colonizer continued to exist in postcolonial societies as a “silent referent,”20 but further than this, the act of transitioning into self-­ sufficient bodies meant that postcolonial nations had to learn and adopt foreign systems established in the West. Some argue that the kind of reliance that bound together the colonizer and the colonized during the time of colonialism and continues under the guise of globalization. In terms of art practices, there is an implicit requirement for artists in the MENASA (as well as elsewhere in the Global South) to understand Western art because it is often considered to be more developed and highly progressed. For so long, artistic production and presentation has been dictated by the

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West. Indeed, for recognition beyond the nation or region, artists have had to participate in exhibitions in Western institutions. Collaborative and socially engaged art is a vital practice that radically shifts global art dynamics since modern art has been considered the domain of the West (although more recent studies have challenged this conception). And, even while contemporary art is typically recognized as a global phenomenon, the West may still be presumed to be privileged in this regard. With collaborative art praxes, centers of art production in diverse parts of the world are brought to the fore in part because of the emphasis on community and living traditions, including oral histories that are central to many cultures around the world. Collaborative projects highlight the importance of the everyday, ordinary objects, and folklore. Run of the mill items and stories are given more prominence in defining our lives. Folklore, oral histories, and communal lifestyles—these are hallmarks of societies in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. By tapping into traditions, artists in the region develop meaningful interactions with audiences. This is dialogical art through which artists connect with the world around them. They create art while keeping the community in mind. Even further than this—they produce art with the community and for the community. Through these actions, each collaborative art project builds bridges with an extended community to open up conversations and encourage the telling of stories about shared experiences. The approach is particularly apt for the postcolonial age during which practitioners seek out ways to confront the shared social and historical context in the MENASA region (and elsewhere), including colonial legacy and how it continues to impact life for formerly colonized nations. For these artists, the participatory or collaborative mode of artistic practice introduces new potentials. The promising belief and intention are that utilizing collaborative processes in artistic production could help in uncovering and shedding light on concerns affecting these societies by engaging people there. The dynamic work that artists formulate is experiential in which deep-seated topics get explored in seemingly innocuous ways—that is, an art workshop, musical performance, or long walking journey. According to artist Liam Gillick and curator Maria Lind, two significant figures in the field today, there are “powerful new models of participatory practice” produced in the Middle East that assess colonial histories, production centers, and political realities.21 Considering such conditions, artists have taken to art a service oriented goal. No longer is it primarily a self-gratifying or expression tool (if it ever was); instead, it is a device to

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address societal and community concerns. Curator and scholar Salwa Mikdadi points out that these kinds of works are a hallmark of art in the Middle East and North Africa, and could theoretically be extended to South Asia. She writes about their potential: “In the case of the Arab world, they undoubtedly serve to bring young people together under the banner of art, in the process giving young artists a renewed sense of purpose.”22 The MENASA might seem too extensive. Some have argued that the varied art centers in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia (MENASA) region are unique and differ from each other.23 This is an extended swath of land that stretches thousands of miles and includes a variety of climates, geographies, and languages. The differences are significant. However, is there benefit to seeking out similarities among such diversity? It may seem counterintuitive to the arguments against viewing it homogenously because it appears to collapse or simplify the complexities involved in the structures of these art worlds. Indeed, each art center is complicated enough on its own. Still, in looking beyond a narrow focus, there is opportunity to build connections and forge a new analysis of what has transpired in multiple centers. The globalized nature of contemporary art might demand a larger linked network to be explored and investigated. Yet a somewhat focused study is useful because of the dynamics of the region. In more recent years in the MENASA, there has been a sustained effort to construct a web beyond the local in order to activate interchange and partnership and create a system of cross-promotion and funding. It is a linked region, particularly in terms of contemporary art. Individuals and institutions have reached out beyond national boundaries to support and gain the backing of those in the extended territory. For example, young Pakistani artists might find it more accessible to exhibit in places like Dubai, even preferring the city to London and New York since the Middle Eastern city attracts international curators and arts professionals and is closer to home. Although most area studies tend to focus on a tighter scope in terms of geography, preferring the Middle East, or the addition of North Africa as distinct swath of territory speaking the same language with overlapping cultural associations and shared political, social, and economic issues and concerns, the study will extend this regional focus to include parts of South Asia as well. The term MENASA has been used more recently; however, it could be argued that this region has been tied together for centuries. Islam spread across this territory within a hundred and fifty

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years of its establishment in the year 610 CE in present-day Saudi Arabia. Religious thought extended from Spain and Portugal to Iraq and Syria and further east to Afghanistan. Later, when Islam continued to blossom in much of the same region, it extended deep into India and beyond. Culture came along with the soldiers conquering such a vast expanse of land, as well as with the traders that crossed it after Islam filtered into the societies of the MENASA. The artistic and architectural production had a continuity from one part of the Islamic world to the other. For example, the horseshoe arch developed into a particular form in Syria under the Umayyad, the first dynasty of Islam, and could be found in Spain in a later iteration of the same dynasty, as well as across the Islamic world. Geometric patterns arranged according to the same principles and mathematics could be located on objects and structures in Morocco to the Indian subcontinent. In the two basic examples stated above, there is evidence of a shared culture reaching through the MENASA region for centuries. In more recent years, there is a deliberate effort to unite parts of the territory, as introduced previously. The contemporary development is seen through the networks of artists and organizations that have embraced collaborative, participatory art practices from Karachi to Marrakech. The study presented in this book is an expansive yet focused investigation. It provides a meaningful analysis of contemporary art in the MENASA through its concentration on projects that artists initiated to address the social needs of a particular community. This framework offers a rigorous insight into the contemporary art of the region, rather than a general look at recent artistic practices organized according to a national scope. The manuscript is arranged thematically rather than by country. For example, it shows the importance of the local societies on why collaborative art praxes have been popular in the MENASA. This allows for a more critical and analytical approach to understanding art. And finally, the book examines a number of different factors for the rise of collaborative art instead of focusing on a sole reason (i.e. the Arab Spring). It considers the impact of art institutions, war, politics, and globalization, among other forces at work. The second chapter will build a foundation for readers through a framework that has had a tremendous impact on the evolution of collaborative art praxes in the MENASA: art that investigates topical social and political issues. By noting the dynamic art from the very recent past in the region, the second chapter will set the stage for the study of socially engaged art that is steeped in these concerns. For example, Syrian artists have engaged

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audiences with critical historical frameworks as well as today’s relevant political topics, at times placing them side-by-side. Some of the art concerned with sociopolitical issues has investigated communities. It has brought forth research into the people and stories that exist in varied societies across the region. Manora Field Notes (2019), by Naiza Khan, is an iteration of an ongoing project that the artist has been carrying out on an island off of Karachi, Pakistan. She has been visiting the area and the few inhabitants on it since 2005, after which time she began to record and respond to the conditions there. A decimated community, Manora was to be the site of luxurious development for Karachi’s elite; however, for varied reasons, this never transpired. Khan’s resulting works have been direct responses to what has happened on Manora, as well as a parallel metaphor of inequities of the globalized world. Similarly, Lebanese artist Rayyane Tabet examined globalized politics on a regional, microlevel that might be applied on a macro stage. He produced an art installation for the Sharjah Biennial in 2011 entitled Home on Neutral Ground: a project in three parts. Commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation, this installation explored a story of connection between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates. These networks were addressed through the relationships that exist between sports, politics, and human nature. Developed over a period of two years, the artist produced the work in conversation with the Sharjah-based Afghani cricket team resulting in an installation that included three parts: an aerial photograph of land in Afghanistan installed on the pitch at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium for one night, projections of a full day of filming at the stadium, and a drawing of a cricket pitch.24 The works by Tabet, Khan, and others analyzed in the chapter skirt the line around the boundaries of collaborative art. Perhaps they could be understood within this framework, or perhaps they do not actually offer a collaborative production like the other works investigated in the book. Nonetheless, they do offer insight into the type of art being made in the region that impacts the development of collaborative, participatory art. The manuscript continues with the third chapter that examines relational aesthetics. As mentioned above, it is a term that curator and critic Nicolas Bourriaud formulated. He offers it as a way to understand how art functions today. Rather than a static view of the art object, he argues that contemporary art encourages encounters over time. Similarly, art historian Grant Kester writes about these works as “durational” as opposed to a momentary, object-based experience. It is about exchanges between

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people, rather than about an individual looking at an isolated material item. In fact, there might not be much to look at in such dynamic practices that are experiential and focused on “social relationships,” as Kester has outlined. Some writers feel that Bourriaud’s theory is limited in what it tries to investigate (Kester, Finkelpearl) because it does not open up definitions of art.25 Art historian Claire Bishop is opposed to his idea for other reasons, in particular because she believes that “good” works of participatory art utilize participation as a politically activated mode. She finds that many collaborative “artworks” that critics praise are simply what museums and galleries do in outreach programs, as already introduced earlier in the essay. For her, they lack the required elements of provocation and questioning that she believes is central to contemporary art practices. The debate on collaborative art practices will be investigated in the chapter through addressing four ventures in art in the MENASA that extended over an expanse of time, and three of which continue to exist in some form. The initiatives evolved with the sustained participation of various individuals and groups. The chapter will first turn to what might be deemed a form of art: bread making. Artist Huma Mulji lived in Lahore for many years during which time she conversed with the local bread seller. One outcome of this five-year conversation was an installation that implicates the viewer in the complexities of urban economies today. The artist offers vignettes in the life of Karamatullah who is not able to sustain his modest business, despite finding modes of resilience, due to the shifting socio-economic conditions in the urban environment. At the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates, Egyptian artist Wael Shawky engaged its technical staff in the act of creation in order to point to the relationship of art organizations and their communities. Over the course of two years, the artist had discussions with the mostly Pakistani group to create a musical performance in the tradition of qawwali, devotional music from South Asia. Press releases from the Sharjah Art Foundation, curatorial texts, and other unlikely documents were used to form the lyrics. Typically, a qawwali includes lyrics in which the worshipper sings about her or his love for God. The mundane texts of the Sharjah qawwali did not express such ultimate adoration, instead its appropriation offered subtle passages of institutional critique as the words talked of the importance of community engagement. A full qawwali group made up of men from the Sharjah Pakistani community performed at the end of the two-year project.

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Also initiated at the Sharjah Art Foundation (clearly this organization has impacted collaborative art praxes in the region), Lebanese artist Tarek Atoui has undertaken workshops with deaf children to produce sound art. The multi-year research and performance project has sought to create musical instruments for the hearing impaired. Originally proposed for Sharjah Biennial 11, Tacet is a research initiative composed of eight individuals to understand how the deaf perceive sound. Out of this Atoui formulated the sound artwork Within with school children in Sharjah (and, later, elsewhere) to challenge the preconceived notions of auditory vibration cognizance and music appreciation. The chapter will consider the Sharjah Art Foundation’s role in the development of this project and generally activating artists and fostering collaborative art. Despite its active involvement and support of innovative, thought-provoking art, it has come under criticism because of censorship concerns that pervade the institution and the nation as a whole. A reflection of its prominent position in the region on such artistic production and the implication of its funding that might come with strings attached will set up the following essay that highlights a range of organizations. The chapter culminates with a description and analysis of the most recent initiative discussed in the essay: Palestine Hosting Society started in 2017. Mirna Bamieh, a young Palestinian artist, realized that local recipes were scarce. Palestinian cuisine had been displaced in the same manner as the people when conflicts took place between them and Israel. To deal with such a loss, the artist formulated a way to save a cultural heritage and simultaneously confront contemporary political and social dilemmas in the territory. She collected recipes, ingredients, and knowledge of Palestinian foods that are in danger of disappearing altogether. Instead of simply recording this data, she collaborated with the community to stage dinners about her inquiries into the types of provisions that had sustained the Palestinian people in the past prior to the disruption, violence, and displacement they experienced in the twentieth century up until today. The varied works in Chap. 3 find parallels with the arguments and debates that have emerged in the critical texts examining collaborative, participatory, and dialogical art. Their projects are outcomes of relationships built with particular communities; they are relational, according to the standards that Bourriaud elucidated in the first years of the twenty-first century. The works are durational in how they are expressed, or they were developed over a period time; Kester sets these criteria as one that is typically found in the practice. Bishop, who has critiqued the writings of these

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two authors, believes that provocation or disruption is a critical trait for a work to be considered art; the four works in the chapter include elements of such a trait. Chapter 4 will inquire into a system that has created opportunities for such a methodology in art, as introduced in Chap. 3. In the chapter, art spaces in the region will be investigated for how they have initiated, produced, and promoted art that addresses communities and their wants and needs. I will highlight five arts centers—Marrakech, Cairo, Beirut, Amman, and Karachi. These centers were chosen because they are in varied parts of the region that could be considered very different from each other. There is clear diversity in this geographic zone, yet there are points of relevant intersection that support the broad framing of this analysis. The chapter will elucidate on the network of ties that span the region historically to reveal more extensive webs in today’s art world, including those among organizations dedicated to collaborative art praxes. In Cairo, Townhouse Gallery initiated a workshop to address the concerns of refugees in the city. Beginning as a small project, it quickly grew to attract thousands of participants. Ashkal Alwan in Beirut has offered a space for artists to be able to investigate a variety of approaches to making art. It developed Home Works in 2002 as a forum for dialogue and exchange of art and ideas in the region. Townhouse and Ashkal Alwan are two organizations that have achieved a globally recognized status with support from international sources; yet, both remain tied to the local community. What are the implications of such a trajectory that might move an institution from local to global and also from the periphery to the center? The chapter will attempt to address such a vital question and the ensuing debates in terms of collaborative art praxes. Meanwhile, the chapter will also consider collectives and grassroots art organizations that have maintained a primarily local outlook. In Amman, Darat al Funun is the oldest organization discussed in the chapter. Established in 1988, it has been supporting artists through varied programming that is socially engaging with the community. Makan Art Space is no longer in physical existence, but it remains active in the cultural life of the city. During its tenure, the Makan organizers created projects that pushed the limits of artistic practice in the public sphere. It also helped to spawn, both directly and indirectly, the development of similar spaces in the area, including the Spring Sessions and others that provide forums for interchange and discourse. Karachi’s Vasl Artists’ Association has organized workshops and residencies for local and international artists; T2F

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(The Second Floor) is an activist organization welcoming all kinds of people in its coffeehouse/cultural space. Located in the winding alleys of Marrakech’s medina, Le 18 is a multifunctional art space intrinsically tied to its location that has initiated various ventures, including an artistic study of water and its social, economic, historical, and political dimensions. Also in Marrakech, the Queen’s Collective undertakes multifaceted projects, including “Medina kids workshops” and donation collections for the youngest residents of the neighborhood in which the collective is ensconced; however, its ongoing presence is more significant than any one initiative. What motivates such endeavors in the MENASA? Collective concerns and open dialogue are at the heart of these activities. These qualities also align with important aspects of the societies in the region, namely communal lifestyles and storytelling. Institutions offer platforms for projects that facilitate the distribution of narrative accounts and investigate the coexistence and co-dependence of entities and individuals. It is important to lay out the significance their growth, particularly in terms of the cafés, discussion spaces, and libraries existing within the physical structures. The small institutions in various parts of the region have ensured a space for research, dialogue, discursiveness, and exchange. Open to all, the café, lounge, or library becomes a place to plot collaborations and have open dialogues. Rather than seeing any of organizations introduced above, particularly the latter ones, as places that arrange distinct projects with a beginning and ending, they could be considered overarching bridges connecting local and international artists and various sectors of the general public in a series of moments. As such, they might be equated to processes rather than typical institutions, making them more related to how works of art are produced. Some critics would question such an assessment, as noted above; however, it will be important to explore the possibility in this chapter alongside those criticisms. After reviewing institutions across the MENASA that are often enmeshed in the concerns of the societies in which they are located, the study will turn to investigate what happens in those locations. The final two essays address the issues of violence, strife, and blight. First, Chap. 5 offers a discussion about the existence of collaborative art projects in and about war-torn and conflict ridden or unstable states and communities and considers both the impact of battles on the rise of these projects and how they have affected life in these areas and for members of the diaspora.

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Beginning with the diaspora, the essay will analyze the global dimensions of collaborative art praxes that are intertwined with developments in the MENASA. Index of the Disappeared is a collaborative project that artists Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh began in 2004 in response to the detaining of Muslim immigrants in the United States—primarily of Arab and South Asian descent—on immigration violations immediately following the events of 9/11. However, these individuals were more likely suspected of playing a role in the attacks or planning a future terrorist strike. Based in New York, the ongoing project is a means to collect data and provides a mobile forum for public dialogue on a multitude of issues concerning immigration in the United States and the impact of the events of 9/11 on the lives of Muslims around the world. Although 9/11 involved attacks on the United States by extremist organizations claiming to be Islamic, its ongoing result has changed the lives of ordinary adherents of the religion. There have been several studies analyzing this situation, including Stephen Sheehi’s Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims that attempted to offer this as a longstanding process that happened over years in the United States. He was motivated in part by the author’s upbringing as an Arab American in the 1970s and 1980s who could sense early on that there was a shift in the perception of Muslims in the United States, even though he comes from an Arab Christian family. In another project steeped in the politics of 9/11, Enemy Kitchen provides insight into how war has shifted perceptions of immigrant communities in the United States. Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz conceptualized a food truck as art. He worked with the Iraqi community in Chicago and US veterans of the war in Iraq to create a functioning business that was a poetic comment on war and identity. After the initiation of the American-led battle in Iraq, Iraqi immigrants in the United States felt anxious and uncertain about their position in the North American country. Enemy Kitchen is a dynamic project that crosses the line between art and business to highlight a critical point of debate. The two other projects offered for consideration in the chapter are squarely based in the region. One is Campus in Camps that artists Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti founded in 2012 in Palestine. Palestinians are born into an environment of struggle and refugee status. In a state of permanent temporariness, what are the options for how life is enacted? This kind of situation has resulted from the ongoing conflict with Israel. For so many years, this has been their living reality. Education in this milieu requires a different approach from traditional ones including the building

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of a vocabulary for life in the camp. Campus in Camps provides an alternative educational platform that empowers the participants to be active learners in an egalitarian setting. Inaugurated in 2015, Walls of Peace involves a collective of artists, teachers, and students in Karachi that have made an effort to reclaim the city’s public spaces away from hate messages, dirt, and illegal advertising and transform the urban walls into works of art. Walls of Peace has covered hundreds of public surfaces in the metropolis with positive images and phrases. It is part of the multidisciplinary movement entitled I Am Karachi. Started by concerned citizens, the movement was created in service of the public in Pakistan’s largest city by taking it back from forces that are a threat to its security, development, and culture. Its aim has been to instill hope and pride into Karachi residents and positivity into the urban landscape. In the next and final chapter, the manuscript reaches out even further than the region, a questionable act in an already broad study. However, collaborative art praxis has been emerging in varied parts of the world. As already mentioned, it is a global phenomenon, and so the manuscript returns to the topic of the globalized art today. More specifically, the chapter charts some of the most engaging works of collaborative, socially engaged art. Three have germinated in the inner cities of the United States—that is, Houston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. As globalization is addressed, there might be parallels to be drawn between these urban areas in the United States and cities in the developing world. This aspect will be investigated fully in Chap. 6, “Collaborative Art Praxis and Globalization: Agency and Marginalized Communities Around the World.” In such parts of societies, artists have deployed much-lauded works of collaborative praxis to provide services in the community, such as the work of Theaster Gates who has transformed portions of the south side of Chicago into art-­ filled areas. Artist Rick Lowe was active even earlier in the city of Houston where he developed low-income housing with other artists and designers and helped transform the city’s Third Ward district. Even as it might seem to overly expand a study that is already broadly defined, it is critical to initiate a discussion about what happens when groups are marginalized and disenfranchised. What are the issues that coincide in the inner cities in the United States and fringe locations in large cities in the developing world? Living on the margins of the world and the periphery of the society, overlapping conditions of existence emerge in the distant sites. Pakistan-born, British artist Rasheed Araeen

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has posited on the intersection of experiences for immigrants from postcolonial nations and black British people in England, including his performance Paki Bastard: Portrait of the Artist as a Black Person (1977). The work was an outcome of the artist becoming radicalized after joining the Black Panther movement. The performative approach allowed him to be activist in the work through which he expressed his oppression. This experience might apply to those who remain in postcolonial nations. His work is now relevant both globally and in Pakistan as well. Younger artists living and working in Pakistan might look to Araeen’s work as revolutionary. They include three practitioners from Karachi that comprised the group Tentative Collective: Yamini Nasir Chaudhri, Fazal Rizvi, and Hajra Haider. The impetus for forming the ensemble was to foster a collaborative and interdisciplinary working ethos in the making of art through which to develop connections with the larger world. Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema (My Karachi Mobile Cinema) offered a voice to city dwellers by developing a collaborative mobile cinema that enabled people in marginalized areas of the city to represent themselves. With film screenings presented through a rickshaw-powered projector on to walls and other public surfaces in the same neighborhood/area in which they were made, participants had the opportunities to see themselves and others they know on the big screen. One film taking place in a Karachi neighborhood where poor migrant workers involved in the export fishing industry reside exposes the gritty environment of the area. At the same time, the young guide introducing the various people in the community adds a dynamic and spectacular element to the filth. Even as they are disenfranchised, they explore a transitory moment of life in which they express themselves in ways that might resonate anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, in a Cairo neighborhood that the city’s garbage collectors occupy, the artist eL Seed staged an intervention in the form of a large-­ scale mural to draw notice to a marginalized people and location typically viewed as unseemly and filthy. The Tunisian-French artist is renowned for his calligraphy that transforms the classical art into a present-day expression. He produced an eloquent message as he stretched the words of a Coptic bishop across more than fifty buildings in the Manshiyat Naser district that can only be viewed completely from a nearby hilltop. The bishop had declared, “If one wants to see the light of the sun, he must wipe his eyes.”26 The words offer a point of entry to reconsidering one’s biases and points of view.

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In both of the regional projects addressed in the chapter, the involved communities are located on the edges of their respective societies. Therefore, the essay opens up a debate about the marginalization of people within developing nations that are already on the periphery of the world. A similar standing might be applied to the African American communities in urban ghettos. Despite being in the developed world, these locales are perhaps equally positioned on the fringes of those nations. In conclusion, the manuscript will attempt to weave together the analysis from the preceding chapters by offering collaborative art praxis as a contemporary art experiment. The modes addressed in the book include both artist-led initiatives as well as grassroots organizations. Although the latter might lean toward the institutional realm of the art world, the two ventures explored in the following chapters are interconnected. Oftentimes artists are the ones that develop the organizations to promote art. And, even if this is not always the case, the artist-led initiatives often function as institutions of sorts. Inclusive of multiple levels of requirements, from event planning to construction of spaces to equipment distribution, artists formulating collaborative projects have to have many different skillsets in order to produce a work of art. These are experiments in contemporary art that collapse differences between the role of the artist and organization. As both artist-led initiatives and groups collaborate with others, they push together art and everyday life. In doing so, the age-old debate about what constitutes art is raised again to consider artists as experiential service providers that address the sociopolitical context of their surroundings, something that is especially relevant in the complex historical conditions present in the MENASA region.

Notes 1. Andrew Russeth, “Ruangrupa Artist Collective Picked to Curate Documenta 15,” Artnews, February 22, 2019. https://www.artnews. com/art-news/market/ruangrupa-picked-as-artistic-director-ofdocumenta-15-11953/. 2. “ARTIST COLLECTIVE RUANGRUPA TO CURATE DOCUMENTA 15,” Artforum News, February 22, 2019. https://www.artforum.com/ news/artist-collective-ruangrupa-to-curate-documenta-15-78758. 3. Hili Perlson, “Who Are ruangrupa? A Closer Look at Documenta 15’s Artistic Directors,” Frieze, February 25, 2019. https://frieze.com/article/who-are-ruangrupa-closer-look-documenta-15s-artistic-directors.

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4. Jasmine Weber, “A Whitney Museum Vice Chairman Owns a Manufacturer Supplying Tear Gas at the Border,” Hyperallergic, November 27, 2018. https://hyperallergic.com/472964/a-whitney-museum-vicechairman-owns-a-manufacturer-supplying-tear-gas-at-the-border/. 5. Jillian Steinhauer, “The Whitney Biennial: 75 Artists Are In, and One Dissenter Steps Out,” The New York Times, February 25, 2019. https:// www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/arts/design/2019-whitney-biennial. html?searchResultPosition=11. 6. Colin Moynihan, “Protests at the Whitney Over a Board Member Whose Company Sells Tear Gas.” The New York Times, May 18, 2019. https:// www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/arts/whitney-protests.html?searchResu ltPosition=1. 7. “Warren Kanders Quits Whitney Board After Teargas Protests,” The New York Times, July 25, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/ arts/whitney-warren-kanders-resigns.html. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Roberta Smith, “A Giant Artistic Gibe at Jesse Helms,” The New  York Times, April 20, 1990. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/20/arts/agiant-artistic-gibe-at-jesse-helms.html. 11. Claire Selvin, “‘Not Just Shaming Filthy Rich Bastards’: Panel Talk in New  York Tackles Power and Politics in Art,” Artnews, May 31, 2019, http://www.artnews.com/2019/05/31/new-school-vera-list-artactivism-panel/. 12. Nicholas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods (Dijon, les presses du reel, 2002), 113. 13. Nikos Papastergiadis, “Collaboration in Art and Society: A Global Pursuit of Democratic Dialogue,” in Jonathan Harris, ed., Globalization and Contemporary Art (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 276. 14. Claire Bishop, “Social Turn,” Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London and New York: Verso, 2012), 39. 15. Joan Young, “The Hugo Boss Prize 2008: Emily Jacir,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, accessed March 14, 2016, https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/the-hugo-boss-prize-2008-emily-jacir. 16. Rachel Cooke, “Emily Jacir: Europa review – this is art as a cause,” The Guardian, October 4, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/oct/04/emily-jacir-europa-whitechapel-gallery-reviewone-sided-message. 17. “Emily Jacir Named Winner of Seventh Biennial Hugo Boss Prize,” Art Daily, accessed March 14, 2016, https://artdaily.cc/news/27249/ Emily-Jacir-Named-Winner-of-Seventh-Biennial-Hugo-Boss-Prize#. XmyC5S2B0Wp.

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18. Claire Bishop, “Introduction,” in op. cit., 1. 19. Edward Said wrote about this phenomenon in Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1977). 20. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?,” Representations, Special Issue: Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories, 37, Winter 1992: 2. 21. Liam Gillick and Maria Lind, “Participation,” in Alexander Dumbadze and Suzanne Hudson, eds., Contemporary Art: 1989 to the Present (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 208. 22. Salwa Mikdadi, “Art and the Arab Citizen: Raising Public Consciousness through the Arts,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, accessed May 25, 2016, https://www.guggenheim.org/blogs/map/art-and-the-arabcitizen-raising-public-consciousness-through-the-arts. 23. Glen Lowry, “Conversations with Contemporary Artists: Art and the Changing Middle East: Negar Azimi and William Wells,” recorded 2011 at Museum of Modern Art, New  York, http://www.moma.org/explore/ multimedia/audios/292/3286. 24. Sharjah Art Foundation, “Home on a Neutral Ground,” 2011, http:// sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/projects/home-on-neutralground, retrieved April 25, 2016. 25. Tom Finkelpearl, What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013), 114–131. 26. eL Seed, “A Project of Peace Painted Across 50 Buildings,” filmed June 2016 at TED Summit, Banff, Canada, https://www.ted.com/talks/el_ seed_a_project_of_peace_painted_across_50_buildings?language=en.

References “Artist Collective Runagrupa to Curate DOCUMENTA 15,” Artforum News, February 22, 2019, https://www.artforum.com/news/artist-collectiveruangrupa-to-curate-documenta-15-78758. Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London and New York: Verso, 2012. Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods. Dijon: les presses du reel, 2002. Burton, Johanna, Shannon Jackson and Dominic Willsdon. Public Servants: Art and the Crisis of the Common Good. Cambridge, MA: MIT press, 2016. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?” in Representations, Special Issue: Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories, no. 37 (Winter 1992): 1–26.

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Cooke, Rachel. “Emily Jacir: Europa review – this is art as a cause,” The Guardian, October 4, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/ oct/04/emily-jacir-europa-whitechapel-gallery-review-one-sided-message. eL Seed, “A Project of Peace Painted Across 50 Buildings,” Filmed June 2016 at TED Summit, Banff, Canada. Video, 11:26. https://www.ted.com/talks/el_ seed_a_project_of_peace_painted_across_50_buildings?language=en, retrieved November 15, 2019. “Emily Jacir Named Winner of Seventh Biennial Hugo Boss Prize,” Art Daily, n.d., https://artdaily.cc/news/27249/Emily-Jacir-Named-Winner-ofSeventh-Biennial-Hugo-Boss-Prize#.XmyC5S2B0Wp. Finkelpearl, Tom. What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013. Gillick, Liam and Maria Lind, “Participation” in A. Dumbadze and S. Hudson, Eds., Contemporary Art: 1989 to the Present. Malden, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, 204–213. Sharjah Art Foundation. “Home on a Neutral Ground.” Accessed April, 25, 2016, http://sharjahar t.org/sharjah-ar t-foundation/projects/home-onneutral-ground. Kaprow, Allan. Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. University of California Press, 2003. Kester, Grant. The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context. Duke University Press, 2011. Kester, Grant. Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004. Kravagna, Christian, et  al. Emily Jacir: Belongings. Linz: O.K Centrum für Gegenwartskunst, 2004. Lowry, Glen. “Conversations with Contemporary Artists: Art and the Changing Middle East: Negar Azimi and William Wells,” Recorded 2011 at Museum of Modern Art, New  York. Audio, 1:46:34. http://www.moma.org/explore/ multimedia/audios/292/3286. Mikdadi, Salwa. “Art and the Arab Citizen: Raising Public Consciousness through the Arts.” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Accessed June 2015. https:// www.guggenheim.org/blogs/map/art-and-the-arab-citizen-raising-publicconsciousness-through-the-arts. Moynihan, Colin. “Protests at the Whitney Over a Board Member Whose Company Sells Tear Gas,” The New York Times, May 18, 2019, https://www. nytimes.com/2019/05/18/arts/whitney-protests.html?searchResul tPosition=1. Papastergiadis, Nikos. “Collaboration in Art and Society: A Global Pursuit of Democratic Dialogue,” in Jonathan Harris, Ed, Globalization and Contemporary Art. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

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Perlson, Hili. “Who Are ruangrupa? A Closer Look at Documenta 15’s Artistic Directors,” Frieze, February 25, 2019, https://frieze.com/article/who-areruangrupa-closer-look-documenta-15s-artistic-directors, retrieved February 25, 2019. Pogrebin, Robin and Elizabeth A. Harris. “Warren Kanders Quits Whitney Board After Teargas Protests,” The New  York Times, July 25, 2019, https://www. nytimes.com/2019/07/25/arts/whitney-warren-kanders-resigns.html, retrieved July 25, 2019. Russeth, Andrew. “Ruangrupa Artist Collective Picked to Curate Documenta 15,” Artnews, February 22, 2019, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/market/ ruangrupa-picked-as-artistic-director-of-documenta-15-11953/, retrieved February 22, 2019. Selvin, Claire. “‘Not Just Shaming Filthy Rich Bastards’: Panel Talk in New York Tackles Power and Politics in Art,” Artnews, May 31, 2019, http://www.artnews.com/2019/05/31/new-school-vera-list-art-activism-panel/. Steinhauer, Jillian. “The Whitney Biennial: 75 Artists Are In, and One Dissenter Steps Out,” The New York Times, February 25, 2019, https://www.nytimes. com/2019/02/25/arts/design/2019-whitney-biennial.html?searchResult Position=11. Weber, Jasmine. “A Whitney Museum Vice Chairman Owns a Manufacturer Supplying Tear Gas at the Border,” Hyperallergic, November 27, 2018, https://hyperallergic.com/472964/a-whitney-museum-vice-chairman-ownsa-manufacturer-supplying-tear-gas-at-the-border/. Young, Joan, “The Hugo Boss Prize 2008: Emily Jacir.” Guggenheim Museum, 2008, https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/the-hugo-boss-prize-2008emily-jacir.

CHAPTER 2

Charting Sociopolitical Art in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia

2.1   Introduction Although the geographic territory of the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia is extensive and there are vast differences that shape life, politics, and economies in different parts of the region, some points of intersection might be identified to draw connections across such a large expanse of land. It is helpful to consider the history of the area to initiate a discussion of some overlapping conditions that have an impact on day-to-day existence. Artists in the MENASA region address the enduring presence of the past, including the impact of colonialism on society today. History is not something that is simply from long ago, safely tucked away like a box of old things in a storage room. It does not remain hidden until we decide to look through those objects and pictures containing so many memories. Instead it is all around us, cluttering our daily existence. By acknowledging the past, artists offer images that straddle a bygone era and contemporary times in order to shed light on current events. The main purpose of the chapter is to situate collaborative art praxes within a context of sociopolitical art in the MENASA. Since the 1990s, many artists have been engaged with the social, economic, political, and historical conditions existing in their societies. This approach to making art has provided a solid foundation from which artists could initiate collaborative art projects and contemporary art experiments. The rich © The Author(s) 2020 A. Ali, Collaborative Praxis and Contemporary Art Experiments in the MENASA Region, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47925-1_2

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contemporary history of art offers many examples of artists developing innovative modes and conceptually strong works that connect not only with issues related to making art, but also an extended network of ideas beyond such concerns. The works introduced here are more recent projects; however, they reflect the maturity of artistic expression in the region. Also, they have elements that are collaborative or socially engaged and tied to the historical framework that shapes the region. The chapter considers artworks that address and investigate the shared history of European colonialism and its ongoing consequence upon the character of societies in the MENASA. When Europeans initiated a period of conquering and ruling different parts of the global south from South America to Southeast Asia, beginning in the fourteenth century, there was a competitive spirit that fueled the race to own most of the world.1 They arrived at fully functioning societies; however, they justified their invasion by advocating the progress and development found in European cities. This provided them with a rationale to conquer areas outside of their domains. Europeans took control of many parts of the global south in the firm belief that it was up to them to save these places and provide a path to a modern society.2 So, while it may have appeared to be a system to bring “civilization” to places beyond Europe, “the white man’s burden,” it was, in fact, quite the opposite.3 After the region attained self-rule, the situation did not change entirely. Conflicts between the previous colonizers and colonized continue to shape global interactions. Many struggles taking place around the world are direct or indirect outcomes of the system of oppression and dominance propagated during the colonial times. Some might consider postcolonialism to be the defining condition of geopolitical life today, including the battles that have taken place recently in which Western forces arrive in Eastern locations. For example, the ambiguous US-led “war on terror” that resulted in attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, respectively. Landing with the belief in saving democracy as they know it, the encounter often leaves the site damaged profusely and the people living there displaced. In many parts of the MENASA today, the colonial type of relationship remains intact in different ways. The players may have changed, but the game carries forth as neocolonialism. On a political level, many of these governments rely on funds from the United States, and, as such, is compliant in the American-led war on terror. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom is a “silent referent” in a number of practices in Pakistan, for example, from

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how the government is organized to the names of neighborhoods in cities.4 This longstanding process that lasted hundreds of years was finally put to an end in the 1960s when the last of the European rulers left the area. Over the course of such an extensive occupation, the changes that took place in the MENASA were tremendous. From shifts in language development to infrastructural manifestations, the sustained encounter with European ways, modes, materials, and thought would leave cultures decimated and burgeoning nations to define an identity while determining how to maintain their day-to-day existence. The newly independent nations were new iterations of the land from before the time of colonialism. They might have had ancient histories, but the moment after the end of colonialism saw nascent societies struggling to be able to find their feet with “sea legs.” These were places that for all intents and purposes did not exist previously, at least not in the form that they now possessed in the postcolonial period. Emerging on to the world stage as independent entities, postcolonial nations had much to prove about their rightful place on an equal position to their former rulers. In effect “declaring” that they could survive and realize achievements just as well as the colonizers, they ended up conducting business and carrying on with the same methods and ways as the previous regime that had ruled for centuries in the case of many of these places. Writer Ngũgı ̃ wa Thiong’o has pointed out the problematic nature of such an approach when, from the languages used to the systems employed, the colonizers’ way had seeped into the foundations of the postcolonial societies. This corrosive element, according to wa Thiong’o, continued to regulate the places that had been set free because the colonizer’s way had become part of the fabric of society in the former colonies turned emergent nations. Instead, he advocated for a denial of European languages and structures and the adoption and embracing of African dialects, cultures, and customs (he talked specifically about Africa, but his ideas have been and can be applied to postcolonial nations around the world). As wa Thiong’o saw, European control permeated the postcolonial world. This has continued to be the fate of developing economies globally, and the system of dependence established during the colonial period is maintained on economic terms, but also in cultural matters. It is in ways of seeing and conceptualizing the “other” postcolonial being; of how the postcolonial sees its own self and justification. European colonialism has

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shifted into what some term to be neocolonialism that defines the globalized world and the hierarchies in the new phase. These are the conditions that societies in the MENASA have faced in the past and continue to struggle with in the present. Colonialism, globalization, migration are among the processes that have been critical to deconstruct and analyze in the region. This chapter will consider the artists that investigate these major global processes and history. The artworks included in the chapter draw viewers’ attention to such complicated issues and concerns. The works they create are socially engaged; some directly involve communities of people that are impacted by this past. Other works only reference those groups. All of them step outside the normative space of the studio for artistic production; in some of the case studies addressed in the chapter, there is an ongoing engagement with members of the community that they highlight. In sum, the works investigated in the chapter consider the recent sociopolitical issues in the region and consider how the past impacts current events, in particular the chapter addresses how colonialism continues to shape the contemporary societies across the MENASA. The works do not necessarily prioritize collaborative art praxes; however, the artists do connect with the important sociopolitical processes that are significant in varied parts of the region. These works serve as a foundation of contemporary art practices that are increasingly prevalent across the MENASA.

2.2   Contemporary Art, History, and Sociopolitical Issues in the MENASA Today The artist Hasnat Mehmood attempts to open up possibilities for thinking about art and how to engage audiences in the concepts he explores, particularly questions and concerns related to European colonialism. He has specifically considered the colonial history of Pakistan and its lasting impression in the nation today; however, his works could apply to the postcolonial condition in general or to the hierarchy that is implicitly and explicitly applied between developing and developed economies around the world. The 2019 participatory installation Word, Image, and Language examines how language has been a way to enslave and manipulate colonial beings during the time of colonialism and long after it as well. The multidimensional work includes varied aspects to investigate this concern. It is an installation that includes drawings, text-based images, quotations,

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instructions, a podium, microphone, speaker, projector, camera, sheets with fill-in-the-blanks quotations, and a selection of books. All of these elements are available for visitor interaction and engagement. Part one of the work is entitled Come Read Us Another Story and the artist provides the following instructions: “Come, read us another story in your own language. Pick one from the available texts that you can read, or you can use your smart devices to read. Please keep one reading session from 3–7  minutes long.”5 Part two of the work is entitled Fill in the Blanks Exercise and the artist has provided the following instructions: “Please use a pen or pencil to fill in the blanks. Please return the sheet after filling.”6 By doing this, the artist achieved a mode that could potentially draw viewers in to be a part of the work, rather than just looking at the work. Audiences relate to the concepts being investigated by sharing their personal stories or tales that connect with their experiences of being oppressed or side-lined. This method is in line with the declarations of postcolonial writers that have advocated for the postcolonial body to find ways to be unchained from the grips of oppressive rulers, both past and present. One writer already introduced is Ngũgı ̃ wa Thiong’o. His 1987 thesis entitled Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of African Literature is a reflection of the deep-seated impact of European rule on Africa (and beyond) on ways of thinking. He refers to the education system and all of the tools that it utilizes. In the preface, he acknowledges that most African writers emerge out of Western-style universities. This is problematic because the basis of the university—the education system—is European rather than African. The university is in the language of Europe. In the introduction to Decolonising the Mind, Africans that follow the imperial tradition are accused of “apemanship and parrotry.”7 The resistance embraces the native culture, according to the author. Indeed, the most significant damage that happens in the postcolonial period is what he calls the “cultural bomb” that can “annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environments, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves.”8 The writer is referring to all oppressed peoples, not just Africans. Mehmood utilized wa Thiong’o’s text to develop his work that aims to excavate postcolonial conditions mimicking what transpired under European rule of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. His conceptual framework focused on the prevalence of English, its dominance around the world, and the compulsion in those from other linguistic traditions to

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adopt English as the language of choice in both written documents and spoken contexts. If someone does not know English, he or she is made to feel lesser—either by those beyond themselves or from within their minds and self-deprecatory thoughts. Feelings of inferiority are internalized. This type of impression was confirmed by visitors that engaged with the project: a Korean security guard in the exhibition space informed that his parents did not attempt to have him learn the language of his family’s heritage. Another visitor reported that her family actively discouraged utilizing any other language except for English. To counter such a result, the artist formulated a platform from which to share stories in other languages. In Word, Image, and Language, the audience first encounters a stage from which to tell stories in any language (Fig. 2.1). This work has to be activated by the visitor who becomes a participant in the work’s development. If the participant chooses to share a tale with others interacting in the installation, s/he will be positioned in front of a large-scale, drawn geometrical pattern located behind the microphone that transforms the ordinary individual into a holy being surrounded by a “halo” (Fig. 2.2). This elevated status is a way to give credit to the sophisticated texts that can be found in a multiplicity of languages and promote them. Audience members can bring their stories, as the title beckons, or they can select something to read from a display of books in various dialects. As the audience member conveys the tales and anecdotes, s/he is projected on to a wall behind them (Fig. 2.3). The person is made larger than life. The other components demand an active participant as well. In Fill in the Blanks Exercise, there are sheets of paper that include texts of varying degrees of difficulty—mostly they are full of jargon. Knowledge of these key words/phrases and concepts is a kind of initiation into the academic life. Young scholars and students often feel compelled to use these words to project themselves as belonging in this community. Those that cannot appropriate the words into their speech or written form might experience self-doubt and feelings of inferiority because the phrases and concepts have been assigned as critical to frame an aura of the learned. The artist left blank spaces for the audience to fill in with phrases that they believe are applicable or perhaps, in a subversive act, challenging to the ideas in the text. The feat of inserting themselves into the institutionalized expression allowed them to have their voices projected. In this small deed, agency is assumed because they sabotaged the intentions of the establishment, and instead, placed their beliefs and statements front and center. The gesture

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Fig. 2.1  Word, Image, and Language, Participatory Performance, 2019. Mixed media installation (book binding cloth on wood, paper, ink, color pencil, scratch board, gold leaf, sound, and live projection equipment). Dimensions variable. Part one: Come Read Us Another Story | Instructions: Come, read us another story in your own language. Pick one from the available texts that you can read, or you can use your smart devices to read. Please keep one reading session from 3–7 minutes long. Part two: Fill in the Blanks Exercise | Instructions: Please use a pen or pencil to fill in the blanks. Please return the sheet after filling. (Courtesy of the artist)

suggests an irreverence for rules an authority that has been a powerful method to defy power structures in the past and present. The installation also included drawings of historical figures like the Queen of England, a direct and ongoing symbol of the kind of authority that has challenged the status quo in the past.9 The queen reifies imperialism and its control and domination. The king of England also appears in a drawing of a postage stamp from India that was utilized in Bahrain when the English ruled in South Asia and served as “protectors” of the Arabian Gulf. The protectorate’s name is marked over (in a temporary fashion) where it states India postage. In this small material evidence is the sign of British power and authority. During their rule in India, the British mark was noticeable on all levels of the colonized region, from the structure

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Fig. 2.2  Word, Image, and Language, Participatory Performance, 2019. Mixed media installation (book binding cloth on wood, paper, ink, color pencil, scratch board, gold leaf, sound, and live projection equipment). Dimensions variable. Part one: Come Read Us Another Story | Instructions: Come, read us another story in your own language. Pick one from the available texts that you can read, or you can use your smart devices to read. Please keep one reading session from 3–7 minutes long. Part two: Fill in the Blanks Exercise | Instructions: Please use a pen or pencil to fill in the blanks. Please return the sheet after filling. (Courtesy of the artist)

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Fig. 2.3  Word, Image, and Language, Participatory Performance, 2019. Mixed media installation (book binding cloth on wood, paper, ink, color pencil, scratch board, gold leaf, sound, and live projection equipment). Dimensions variable. Part one: Come Read Us Another Story | Instructions: Come, read us another story in your own language. Pick one from the available texts that you can read, or you can use your smart devices to read. Please keep one reading session from 3–7 minutes long. Part two: Fill in the Blanks Exercise | Instructions: Please use a pen or pencil to fill in the blanks. Please return the sheet after filling. (Courtesy of the artist)

imposed for the government to names of streets. A critical shift took place as English seeped into local dialects. It was the language of the rulers, and thus became revered and adopted throughout the territory. This was a strategic aspect of the “cultural bomb” that wa Thiong’o had analyzed as one of the incendiary aspects of colonialism. It was dropped on to India, as well as in many places around the world. The colonizer’s way of life infiltrated Indian society, and continues to be in evidence decades after the end of colonial rule. The text-based images in the Mehmood’s installation explore difficult English words that the artist gleaned from academic texts. He arranged the letters of each term in a manner to confuse the audience. Viewers may not be able to recognize the words initially because of how the letters that

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comprise them appear in the work. For example, half of the word may appear on one line, and the other half on the next, and other similar ruptures in language (Fig. 2.4). The visual forms remind us of the slipperiness and difficulty of language, especially when it is offered outside of a familiar zone, be it when it is shown in a strange way or forced upon us when it is alien to a culture or society or knowledge base. The colonized had to adapt to the ways of the colonizer, even after the colonizer left the area. In Mehmood’s installation, there are pieces of important texts that highlight the difficult situation that the formerly colonized face. Even as European colonialism came to an end decades earlier, its impact has not left Africa, Asia, and other areas that came under oppressive rule. Ngũgı ̃

Fig. 2.4  Word, Image, and Language, Participatory Performance, 2019. Mixed media installation (book binding cloth on wood, paper, ink, color pencil, scratch board, gold leaf, sound, and live projection equipment). Dimensions variable. Part one: Come Read Us Another Story | Instructions: Come, read us another story in your own language. Pick one from the available texts that you can read, or you can use your smart devices to read. Please keep one reading session from 3–7 minutes long. Part two: Fill in the Blanks Exercise | Instructions: Please use a pen or pencil to fill in the blanks. Please return the sheet after filling. (Courtesy of the artist)

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wa Thiong’o’s text is prominent in the installation. The artist printed and installed two paragraphs from his book Decolonising the Mind. Thus in the engaging aspects of the work, viewers participate through reading texts out loud and in their minds. Through enacting such rituals, the audience is introduced to the complex dynamics and histories of those in postcolonial nations and their diasporas and colonialism’s lasting impressions, specifically in how language can be utilized to dominate the oppressed and incite feelings of inferiority in the postcolonial being. Lebanese artist Ali Cherri examines the colonial past through how institutions and governments continue to use ideals from this time period to continually apply to contemporary methods and practices. He investigates museums and their collections to highlight existing concerns, such as the globalized economy and ongoing dependency on the West. Cherri’s projects tackle these complicated issues by addressing archaeology, a field born in the colonial context when history was dug up and offered as a symbol of the greatness of the place; this served the colonizer’s purpose by indicating that they were taking over a great culture that had a long and prominent history. But more significantly, the rulers justified the need to take over the territory because they were the ones who were going to properly document and preserve the ancient culture. Colonizers brought progress, development, and proper methods to the conquered lands, as they were keen to point out. The British declared that they had the astuteness and alacrity to notice the significant history that lay beneath the feet of the colonized. Meanwhile, the locals were supposedly not capable of taking care of the requirements to appreciate, record, and categorize the past in the manner that Europeans had deemed as appropriate. The Cartesian worldview was central to European methods of analysis and documentation, as well as a justification for colonialism. The British-imposed form of history-keeping could be traced to the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment in Europe when there was an insistence in various disciplines and fields to keep detailed accountings of ideas and subjects. Such zealousness and compulsiveness have had a lasting impact on how knowledge is maintained and distributed. The method has an underlying stronghold on academic beliefs today throughout the world. In fact, Enlightenment thought appears in the efforts of nations in the Arabian Gulf that have quickly developed from ancient fishing villages to global metropolises within decades. There has been much written about the growth of the city of Dubai, for example, from small mud homes to glass and steel skyscrapers, and its economy from pearl diving to oil

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reserves to a diversified portfolio of multinational businesses in the time span of forty years. The city rapidly became a major hub in the region after the United Arab Emirates was established in 1971. The booming societies around the Gulf, including Dubai, could suddenly claim an equal standing to the developed countries of the world. But what of their past? Now that their present had achieved an illustrious standing, the next step determined to be a necessity was to define an equivalently formidable past. Ali Cherri considers this phenomenon through films and videos that offer an insight into the situation in which nations have been racing to build their historical foundations as impressive societies that have evolved into powerful contemporary developments, in much the same manner that the colonizers endeavored to identify eminent civilizations of the past in the territories that they conquered. There has been an expectation in the Gulf that recent excavations will provide the ancient base for these seemingly new nations. As Cherri informs, “That’s what modernity tells us we should do: preserve the ruins in their state of ruin—something that looks enough like a ruin to be interesting for tourists and all the industry that happens to be around archaeology.”10 In much the same manner as the newest constructions in cities like Dubai, the digging up of the past offers a spectacle alluding to greatness both then and now. Archaeology is perhaps an effort to substantiate the illusion. In his film, The Digger, Cherri documents the life of a Pakistani caretaker in the desert of Sharjah (Fig. 2.5). Cherri’s aim is to highlight the significance given to the past instead of the present conditions of marginalized communities that have arrived in Gulf nations to provide the necessary support for development. Sultan Zeib Khan guards a Neolithic necropolis from which fragments are rescued to be displayed at a museum. The expansive loneliness of his life is contrasted with the clinical scenes of bones being organized for exhibition. His gruesome day-to-day existence is compared with the savior of history to be well-maintained after its transfer to an important institution for its audience. Perhaps the guard’s commitment to his job and his bleak existence are considered to be crucial or a necessary evil in the preservation of the past. As noted above, this foundation of the past is vital for the newly developed societies of the Gulf; therefore, the suffering of one individual is acceptable in the attempt to shape a history, a past, a sustained culture that has metamorphosed into the contemporary rapid development taking place around the region. The past is offered as a palimpsest by placing it as a kind of track record to the most recent ventures of global worth. The weighty significance of history

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Fig. 2.5  Ali Cherri, The Digger (Al Haffar), 2015, 24 minutes Arabic and Pashto with English subtitles. (Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Imane Farès, Paris)

has become critical in the face of rapid expansion in technologically advanced manners. The glorification of the past serves to legitimize the current positions of Gulf nations. It provides a national narrative for a continuous culture from ancient to contemporary times. The intended outcome of promoting such a tale serves to say that once great civilizations have advanced into the future. Cherri’s installation Fragments (2016) and video Petrified (2016) further examine this situation. These projects and the previous film skirt the line between collaborative and individual production. In Fragments, a lightbox table holds what appear to be archaeological artefacts that are actually of dubious origin (Fig.  2.6). The artist acquired most of these from auction houses. The film that is usually shown near this installation depicts a still environment punctuated by the movement of flying birds and the sound of running water (Fig.  2.7). Other animals inhabit the space, but do not take a step—their taxidermized bodies remain frozen in the simulated interior. Soon the fluorescent lights are visible in the indoor space that mimics a landscape out in nature. Exposing the staged landscape, the film asks visitors to notice the strangeness of the set up. Similar to heritage villages that seem to freeze time and history, the installation shown in the film is located inside a museum in Sharjah. The surreal scene serves as a counterpart to the objects on display in the nearby installation.

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Fig. 2.6  Ali Cherri, Fragments, 2016, Archeological Artifacts, Taxidermy Bird, Light table. Variable dimensions. (Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Imane Farès, Paris)

Fig. 2.7  Ali Cherri, Petrified, 2016, Video installation, Single channel, 13 minutes, loop. Arabic with English subtitles. (Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Imane Farès, Paris)

Both are equally manipulated to put forth a message. Together these artworks showcase the efforts of the state to preserve history in the manner that suits its requirements. As already detailed above, new nations in the Gulf have made efforts to seek, analyze, and present an illustrious past. According to the artist,

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There are high-profile archaeological digs in all the Gulf countries now. I started looking into this archaeological project, trying to understand why they’re digging. Of course they all have museums they need to fill. They’re young nations writing their histories. They need these archaeological objects as proof that, “Hey, we’ve been here since a very long time. We have a long history.”11

The establishment of the museum in Sharjah points to this mindset. It is the subject of Petrified. Further to this, Sharjah’s ruler has made efforts to construct places to instill the history of the area into the minds of the general public. The trajectory of such a scheme happened soon after the discovery of an ancient inscriptions pointing to the longer history of the emirate. The ruler announced that an archaeological site would become the home of a major venture, including luxury accommodations and leisure activities.12 Surely this kind of structuring is meant to draw tourists beyond scholars to the location of the society’s primal source. In the desire to create such a situation, the enduring influence of former European rulers is revealed. The West continues to be the de facto authority for emergent societies in matters of governance, education, and a seeking of history, along with other such matters. The legacy of European colonialism is the persistence of this world order in which the West dominates those in previous colonies. This is the case for communities that have arrived on European shores seeking a better life in the lands of their erstwhile providers. Susan Hefuna’s films uncover the truth of the matter: their struggles continue after they migrate, in part because of the indelible mindset of European superiority. Her real-­ time videos capture everyday existence in selected locations. She does not edit or manipulate the scenes that she films. The “editing” process happens beforehand when she selects a location based on its history that is dubious at times. For example, Via Fenestra/Frankfurt (Oder) was filmed in the German city with a high concentration of right-wing extremists. Some years ago, a Jordanian visitor received a brutal beating when he accidentally deboarded a train at the wrong stop. In the video, Hefuna sits frozen in front of a centuries-old church for the entire duration. Attracting a lot of attention, by-passers demonstrate their discomfort about her presence. Meanwhile, Marxloh Crossroads was filmed in a Turkish neighborhood in Germany; on that day a German news team arrived by chance to elicit the residents’ opinions and thoughts about the refugee crisis. The uncertainty about “the other” is captured in this poignant, yet unplanned moment.

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Hefuna’s videos could be considered works of participatory art. Although she does not work with a particular community over the course of a period of time, her videos seem to require the activation or engagement of the public. If they did not become actively involved with the development of the work, then its potency would potentially decrease. For example, in Via Fenestra/Frankurt (Oder) of 2003, the filming of Hefuna’s “performance” occurs through a window several floors above where the artist sits motionless in front of a church (Fig. 2.8). From this bird’s eye perspective, we as viewers can oversee the reactions of the public without being noticed. Hefuna has said that people talked to her as she sat motionless because she was alien in this context.13 The passers-by act as if no one is watching them. Upon seeing the seated artist, there is a palpable agitation. Clearly some of the people seem disturbed, confused, and curious.

Fig. 2.8  Susan Hefuna, Via Fenestra/Frankfurt (Oder), 2003, Single-channel video, 60 minutes. (Courtesy of the artist)

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Even from such a distance, their concern is noticeable. It demonstrates the kinds of concern that Hefuna might have wanted to expose through the video. In Via Fenestra it is the body of the foreign artist that is passive yet active and cause for concern. Her very public presence in front of the religious center of the city is perhaps too much for them to handle, even though she is literally doing nothing. A group that may have been passing by the area stops and surrounds the artist, in a kind of confrontation against someone who wishes to do harm. Although they do not stay around her for an extended time, their mere act of encircling clearly sends a message, as if to threaten. The group slowly moves aside; however, it continues to look back. Evidently the artist’s action, or lack thereof, had an impact on those seeing her, and who she is, and perhaps what she is daring to do. Through this involuntary participation, the public in the urban center of Frankfurt (Oder) conveys the history of the location in general and perhaps specifically the incident involving a Jordanian tourist. Hefuna is interested in human interaction. This intrigue began when she had an exhibition at the National Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. Inspired by the diversity of the community, she decided to develop a participatory installation to which she invited the public to contribute. The ensuing contributions enlivened the museum space, not just with objects, but also dance and food. As the artist describes it, the installation became a shrine. Perhaps it symbolized the historical moment, or perhaps it celebrated the differences of cultures in this location, or perhaps both. In any case, it brought people together. The film mentioned above does not direct anyone to do anything; however, it does get at the heart of human interaction. The connection might not be a celebration, but the contact between the artist and the public tells us about this particular location and historical moment. The artist shines a light on this situation. Another video by Hefuna considers human interactions. Hefuna has said that “people are walking like the nervous system of the city.”14 Marxloah Crossroads shows another German city. Like Via Fenestra, Hefuna places a camera at a location from which it is not noticed by the people on the street, thus passers-by carry on with their movements and manners as usual. Without knowledge of being filmed, individuals do not act in a self-conscious way as they go about their quotidian affairs. Even as the eventual work of art is not edited after the video has been captured, the artist seems to plan the outcome beforehand. On one level the video simply depicts what happened in this particular location during a select two hours of a day. People walk from here to there; they interact

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physically; they speak to each other. However, the reason why viewers consider this space and time is because the artist deliberately decided to film and present it. Marxloh Crossroads uncovers a specific area that has a lot of significance for the artist personally as well as for a larger shared history of migration in Germany. This contentious topic has been and continues to remain a flashpoint of debate in the nation, and indeed, around the world. Prior to selecting the very spot where she filmed the “movement of the people,”15 the artist scrutinized the site in the manner that practitioners typically take to produce a work of art by observing an object. Beginning with an examination that lasts for an extended period of time, Hefuna “edits” her video through this kind of location scouting and analysis. After she conducts her research of humans and how they relate to each other in a physical manner that seems to reflect other levels of connection, the artist sets up her camera and then apparently ceases to control the situational context of the video. The attendant work is a stream of any and everything that took place during a period of time in the designated and selected site for filming. She appears to take this approach to making art in other media, including drawing in which she might start with a dot and then continue with a line, enacting this process in a forward manner rather than going back and “editing” what she created. The particular series of videos entitled Crossroads began in her family’s hometown in Egypt where she set up a hidden camera to face a view familiar to the artist. The title of “crossroads” is a suggestive one that might indicate the location as being between two worlds or potentially existing at the cusp of significant activity. In the case of Marxloh Crossroads, Hefuna points her camera toward an intersection in the business/shopping district. Like “crossroads,” the term ‘intersection’ is a compelling metaphor for the location and the people who move around it. They are shaped by different cultures and characteristics that are brought together to create a new designation, a new point of view. These are visible in Hefuna’s video in a subtle way. Quietly she talks about how we influence each other without even knowing it at times. In the case of Marxloah Crossroads, she selected a location famous for its crime rate and being predominantly an immigrant community. The passers-by in Hefuna’s video wear veils, indicating that they are Muslims (Fig. 2.9). Many refugees have found a home in this city. Although the metropolitan area is notorious for being too dangerous, Hefuna’s video appears to present an innocuous site where residents go about their activities like shopping, spending time with children, and running errands, and

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Fig. 2.9  Susan Hefuna, Marxloh Crossroads, 2015, Single-channel video, 90 minutes. (Courtesy of the artist)

so on. A range of people move past the video’s frame, from children to young adults to middle-aged people to the elderly. It all seems very typical of any urban area, seemingly deflating the bad reputation assigned to the city. More likely, the stereotypes of the city have been designated because of its low economic standing and particularly its “foreign” population. Coincidentally on the day Hefuna’s streaming video was captured, a news team arrived in Marxloh to ask residents about the “refugee crisis” that Germany was facing. At least it was perceived as a crisis when migrants from Syria and other areas of the world made their way from their destroyed and violence-ridden homes to seek refuge in foreign lands. The German government opened its door to these weary people, despite protest from some sectors of the nation’s populous. Even as there is a spectacular turn of events that occurs without planning, Hefuna’s video does not offer a dramatic storyline. Instead it is the ordinary that represents such extraordinary circumstances about human stories that interact in both small and profound ways. The globalized world joins us all together, like the lines that connect the dots in Hefuna’s drawings. And, as such, the artist examines these intersections in a variety of formats and manners. Her layered representations express the complexity of systems and their impact on social situations. She often incorporates ordinary individuals in the

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production of her works of art—that is, she produced installations with objects collected from communities that she works with over a period of time. Through community engagement, Hefuna offers new perspectives on historical processes including colonialism. Lebanese artist Rayanne Tabet looks into situations that might have been impacted by the colonial past, but his works do not reference this history directly. He produced Home on Neutral Ground: a project in three parts for the 2011 edition of the Sharjah Biennial at the Sharjah Art Foundation.16 This project appropriates a communal, collaborative process that filters into and defines the resulting installation in a critical manner. In order to formulate the work, he scoped the city to develop something site-specific. During a drive, he encountered the Sharjah cricket stadium. The story behind the work illuminates the important role that the Sharjah Art Foundation plays in promoting art that engages the community. This installation explored a story of connection between the people of Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates. These networks were addressed through the relationships that exist between sports, politics, and human nature. In Home on Neutral Ground, the narrative revolved around the game of cricket however its implications go beyond the game itself. In 2010, the Afghani cricket team was traveling to participate in the International Cricket Council’s Twenty20 International tournament in the West Indies. The flight was delayed due to the environmental effects caused by a volcanic eruption in Europe, which impacted significant tracts of airspace in Europe. The result of this was that the airplane carrying the Afghani national cricket team was delayed in Sharjah. The aftermath of this bizarre natural occurrence offers a tale about the relationship among the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, and Pakistan on personal and political levels. The Afghani team, in its search for a place to practice during this time found a stadium owned by an Emirati entrepreneur who had studied in Pakistan. The entrepreneur while living in the South Asian nation had formed friendships and a love for the game of cricket. When he discovered that the team needed a place to practice he enthusiastically allowed them to utilize his disused stadium. Before the Afghani team encountered the arena, it had been the site of major competitions since 1981. However it had later fallen into disuse due to its connection to corruption scandals. As a result of this chance encounter the Sharjah Cricket Stadium (Fig. 2.10) is active again and is now home to the Afghani cricket team.

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Fig. 2.10  Sharjah Cricket Stadium, 2014. (Photograph copyright Cricket365)

This move is significant as it reflects the political dynamics of Afghanistan and the region. International sporting events cannot take place in Afghanistan due to the nation’s political instability. Sharjah provides a space for Afghani professional cricket, which is close to home, yet safer than home. It is not just the Afghanis that profit, but Emiratis as well. They do so not only in economic terms but also through increasing the nation’s profile internationally. What is important to note is the role that an institution serves for the development of a particular field, and how that organization promotes itself. In this case, it was for a game and the reputation of a stadium and its owner. For Tabet, this did mean actual objects in an exhibition space. The installation included three parts: an aerial photograph of land in Afghanistan installed on the pitch at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium for one night, projections of a full day of filming at the stadium, and a drawing of a cricket pitch.17 However, the critical element of the work, and the purpose of the

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materiality of the project is to elucidate the artist’s discussions with the team about its story and experience with the structure. In fact, the main element of the multifaceted artwork was a tour of the cricket stadium during which the artist weaved together various narratives about cricket, the Afghani national team, and the Emirati entrepreneur. After the storytelling, the audience could explore the stadium that included the aerial photograph of the Ghazi Amanullah Khan International Stadium in Afghanistan. Thus, the Sharjah structure became “Afghanistan” momentarily through this installation; it fully appropriated the status of “home” of the national team. However, being “home” on a “neutral ground” meant that the team was not actually at home. It is in limbo, in the same manner in which it found itself after initially being stranded in Sharjah, similar to being in an airport transit lounge. Perhaps this is the plight of migrants traversing geography to come from Afghanistan and other parts of the region looking for an opportunity to improve their lives in the economically strong United Arab Emirates, but nonetheless separated from their homes. The commentary provided in this work is suggestive of a longstanding debate about labor in the United Arab Emirates; however, this political expression is not present directly. Rather it is weaved into the narrative that is built as a result of many different discussions that happened to produce the work, from the initial conversations he had with the stadium’s caretakers to the talks with the cricket team to his storytelling at the opening event. Indeed, dialogue is at the heart of collaborative, socially engaged works of art. Artist Naiza Khan has been discussing contemporary and historical events with the residents of the island of Manora, now a peninsula. Over the course of fifteen years, Khan has delved into their lives through exploring this piece of land that is located off of the coast of Karachi, Pakistan’s megalopolis. The extensive population of the city arrives from various part of the country and region to take opportunity of the work prospects that are available there. Home to 24 million people, Karachi, like all global cities, has residents whose living conditions range from severe poverty to those that possess extreme monetary and material wealth. The heady mix of population in the city also includes migrants from around South Asia and Southeast Asia. As is the case with many migrant groups, they bring with them their languages, customs, religions, and cultures. Amidst this diversity and polarizing economy, the historical journal of the former island, current peninsula of Manora finds a mirror. Upon the island, there are several significant structures pointing to the multifaith society that

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existed in the past. A Sufi shrine, Sikh gurdurwara, and Hindu temple in addition to a Christian church and Islamic mosque—the same religions practiced in varied parts of South Asia—found a home on the small island. The ancient structures are still extant after centuries; however, the newer constructions are in a state of disarray. The story of Manora also mirrors the growth and development of the globalized world and economies and the impact of such processes on marginalized communities. Naiza Khan’s ongoing endeavor is a micro examination of a macro predicament. Through such a case study, the artist unpacks the multi-layered impact of globalization through the lens of the complexity of Karachi’s history and contemporary society. In doing so, the work assesses the circulation of global capital and the fate of those that are thrown by the constant spinning. Manora Island was planned as a luxury development to provide a leisure destination for the residents of Karachi and other parts of Pakistan. This intention was initiated but never realized, leaving half-completed constructions strewn around the island. The current state of Manora might be compared to the shattered societies in the wake of the colonizer’s departure. In the case of Manora, the “colonizer” of wealthy Karachiites never truly arrived. The community of residents was most certainly displaced when new structures began to be constructed, only to be abandoned. Buildings rose up in questionable ways and have partially collapsed, sadly in one incident upon children. The oppression of the people is palpable and direct, and Khan harnesses these qualities to produce work in a variety of mediums to act with the community rather than speak for it. Through engaging with the island and residents over many years, the artist researched about their past and present, and formed ties there as she continued to show up to interact with the space and the people. In the video work Homage (2010), we hear a resident express that he did not expect her to return; that he believed she was “just visiting” and not committed to coming back (Fig. 2.11). This small acknowledgment suggests the lack of attention paid by those not on the island about what is going on there. However, Naiza Khan’s ongoing visits helped her to produce a substantial body of work that is the result of meaningful and sustained interaction with the community. In the video, the resident mentioned above helps Khan to paint a pile of discarded school furniture the color blue. The selected color is the same hue found in a nearby graveyard that includes the bodies of children killed in the collapse of a wall at their school. As she applied the paint, she converses

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Fig. 2.11  Naiza Khan, Homage (video still), 2010, Single-channel video, 13:10 min. (Photo credit: Mahmood Ali. Courtesy of the artist)

sporadically with the resident. Mostly the act is enacted in quiet and calm manner, a kind of moment of silence to memorialize the dead youngsters and contemplate what happened to them. The artist paints randomly, but seems to apply the pigment methodically, sanding and cleaning the damaged furniture as she proceeds to apply the distinctive shade of blue. There is almost a maternal approach to this laborious act, like a mother washing her child in the bath. It is both clinical and task-oriented, as well as nurturing and caring. Indeed, sometimes we do things in order to seem useful when we do not have the means to do the critical act that would truly help in a given situation. In the tragic case of the death of children, there is nothing that could be enacted to bring them back to life. The artist persists on painting the school furniture in a determined fashion without speaking much about an atrocity that actually cannot be verbalized—it is, in fact, too horrible of an event. In the absence of words, Khan’s actions vocalize the necessary reflection of the children’s

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deaths. Her homage is this simple application of color to furniture laying in ruins. As she carries on with painting, the audience can meditate over the circumstances that lead to the untimely demise of the youth; their lives stripped from them needlessly. The audience might extend beyond this one place, and these particular victims, to consider a more extensive and systematic oppression and destruction of individuals and communities. The subaltern, whose voice has been silenced, is a victim to the larger processes that have been deemed to be “progressive,” civilized, and developed in comparison to the state of their lives prior to the point when Europeans showed up on their doorsteps. Bringing with their occupation of the land something that they termed as “benevolence,” their contributions were meant to make lives better, or so they said. In actuality, their presence cracked the strong foundation of a longstanding culture, making the colonized dependent on Europeans to help repair the past, which they did according to European terms and standards. And when it was time for them to leave their acquired territories, the colonizer had sewn tremendous strife into the society in which different religious and ethnic groups had grown mistrustful of the other, resulting in fierce violence and discord. The death and destruction that the colonizer inflicted is metaphorically captured in Khan’s video The Observatory (2012) that was also filmed on Manora Island. In it, the eponymously named structure is videotaped. Viewers witness the impact of the devastation leashed upon the building that continues to stand, but in a state of ruin. A colonial era construction, the observatory might have helped in the charting of storms recorded in a British chronicle of powerful weather events from the year 1939 when the colonizer was still present in the region. A female voiceover recounts the impact of weather on birds, telling the number of deaths after a storm. The document being recited is a listing of dates, cities, type of weather activity, and fatalities. As the camera scans the colonial era site, the voice continues to recount the information in a matter-of-fact, journalistic manner. Like Homage, The Observatory moves beyond the microlevel of weather patterns and the succumbing of animals to such events. The video work extends to a macrolevel context of colonial occupation and the oppression of the colonized. Through the onslaught of colonial activity, whether it was an outright invasion or a subtle encroachment over time, the devastation was nonetheless palpable. In the aftermath of such powerful activities, the oppressed succumbed to the weight of colonial dominance. And even after their departure, the colonizers continued to dominate and shape the contemporary society in

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Pakistan and beyond. Manora Island in its current state of decay is an outcome of this history and more recent transactions. And, as such, the video returns to the local, contemporary level. The suffering of the birds seems to be a metaphorical expression of the injustices brought upon the people of Manora Island. And, once again, the work talks about issues related to the global economy and labor. In other areas of the ongoing project, viewers can see this relationship of development and the economy of the globalized world. Within such a framework, development in new and old cities like Dubai depend on the availability of labor that is often exploited to provide cheap production costs. In a series of works on paper, the artist combined printed silhouettes of the Dubai skyline with outlines of dilapidated residential blocks on Manora Island. These images rest above areas where the artist has added elements in watercolor and graphite. In one work from the series, there is a splash of color that lies next to the same blue tone she had used to paint the old school furniture piled in one area of the island (Fig. 2.12). The work is titled Graveyard at 11:23 am; several graves appear behind the splash of blue. The same furniture pile is offered in a print as a silhouette; its repeated presence serving as a potent symbol of the horrific situation found in this locale. Other works on paper that the artist made about the island include a ship, a reference to the international shipping trade that initially brought the British to South Asia and beyond. As her research, visits, and observations have continued over the years, Khan has developed a sustained connection with the residents of Manora. A culmination of this inquiry resulted in an installation for the first ever Pakistan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the oldest platform for global exhibitions of contemporary art. Executed in 2019, the installation brought together the breadth of research and various mediums that the artist had used to express her engagement with the community of residents and the physical and conceptual spaces upon Manora Island. Although a new iteration, the project clearly relied on the significant process that has endured the past twelve years and has involved many individuals and groups along the way. The presentation included three separate, but interconnected spaces. In the first, dark blue surroundings contrasted with golden maps and objects (Fig. 2.13). The maps refer to the cities mentioned in the chronicle of storms throughout South Asia that had been incorporated into the work mentioned above The Observatory. From it, the artist selected eleven urban areas to depict according to their current configurations found on Google maps. The

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Fig. 2.12  Naiza Khan, Graveyard at 11.23 am, 2010, Screen print, watercolor, and graphite, 100 × 70 cm (39 × 27 1/2 in). (Courtesy of the artist)

objects are miniature toys that have been coated with brass (Fig. 2.14). Along with the physical work, there was a sound piece in which a female voice reads from the British document. Beyond this space was the courtyard that included a telescope made by artisans in Karachi. The device aims to provide a view of the distance, like that found on Manora Island’s beach; however, the scene is actually a video of that very beach (Fig. 2.15). In it, residents and visitors from Karachi (primarily the working class) enjoy the publicly available space of the beach. The third and final area of

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Fig. 2.13  Naiza Khan, Hundreds of Birds Killed, 2019, Soundscape with installation of brass objects. (Courtesy of the artist)

Fig. 2.14  Naiza Khan, Hundreds of Birds Killed, 2019, Soundscape with installation of brass objects. (Courtesy of the artist)

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Fig. 2.15  Naiza Khan, Doorbeen, 2019, Video, steel telescope. (Photograph by the author)

the project’s installation comprised of a four-part video screening that charted the artist’s work with a community of artisans in Karachi, including the maker of the telescope mentioned above. From the initial phases of this ongoing, process-oriented project, the artist has sought to involve others, instead of it only being an expression of the artist. To do this, Khan has had to go well beyond the studio space in order to connect to others in the exercise of mediating for the community rather than speaking for it.

2.3   Conclusion The works of the five artists discussed in the chapter have collaborative, socially engaged qualities like the works that are presented in the remainder of the manuscript. They introduce elements of participation, storytelling, community activation, duration, and dialecticism. And, perhaps most

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significantly, the works unearth sociopolitical issues that define the conditions on the ground throughout the region, many of which exist today because of the long history of colonialism. The disparate works addressed in the essay find several points of overlap; however, one critical aspect is the investigation of this process and its eventual impact on contemporary societies in the MENASA. Each of the projects touches upon the kind of marginalization that began during the time of colonialism and the detrimental outcomes of such a procedure. Hasnat Mehmood considers the shunned languages of the subaltern, while Ali Cherri investigates how the poor labor class is welcomed to wealthier nations when necessary to the latter. Susan Hefuna tracks the movements of migrant communities on the fringes of German society. Rayyane Tabet converses with an exiled sports team, while Naiza Khan collaborates with displaced people that are ignored by the rest of the society. In these projects, artists facilitate groups and individuals that are on the periphery to find ways to speak for themselves.

Notes 1. Some of the description of colonialism and its impact has appeared in Atteqa Ali, “Back to the Future: Colonialism and its Discontents in Contemporary Pakistani Art,” South Asian Ways of Seeing: Contemporary Visual Cultures (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2020). 2. Writers in C.  A. Bayly, ed., The Raj: India and the British, 1600–1947. London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 1990, express this attitude. 3. These views are expressed by a number of authors, including Chatterjee; Indira Chowdhury, The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998); Bernard Cohn, “The Transformation of Objects into Artifact, Antiques, and Art in Nineteenth Century India,” in Barbara Stoler Miller, ed., The Powers of Art: Patronage in Indian Culture (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), 301–329; Guha-Thakurta; and Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 4. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for “Indian” Pasts?,” Representations, 37, Special Issue: Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories (Winter, 1992): 1–26. 5. Hasnat Mehmood, Work description, 2019. 6. Ibid.

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7. Ngũgı̃ wa Thiong’o, “Introduction: Towards the Universal Language of Struggle,” Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of African Literature (London; James Currey, 1987), 2. 8. Ibid., 3. 9. A notable example is the punk culture that developed in England in the 1970s and undermined authoritative systems in the society, most notably the centuries-old monarchy that exists in the nation. The punk rock band Sex Pistols utilized an official image of the queen to create the appearance of a ransom note for the cover of an album. 10. Jim Quilty, “The art of ruins falling into ruin,” The Daily Star, August 22, 2015, https://www.dailystar.com.lb/Arts-and-Ent/Culture/2015/ Aug-22/312187-the-art-of-ruins-falling-into-ruin.ashx. 11. Ibid. 12. Kevin Jones, “A Taxonomy of Fallacies: the Life of Dead Objects: Ali Cherri,” Art Asia Pacific, September/October 2016, http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/100/AliCherri. 13. This view is conveyed in “Artist Profile: Susan Hefuna in Cities, Movement, and ‘Crossroads’,” filmed February 2017 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim, video, 4:29. 14. Valerie Hillings, Sara Bin Safwan, and Sarah Divider, “Forward Motion: A Conversation with Artist Susan Hefuna,” Solomon R.  Guggenheim Museum of Art, July 7, 2017, https://www.guggenheim.org/blogs/ checklist/forward-motion-a-conversation-with-artist-susan-hefuna. 15. Ibid. 16. Some of the description of Tabet’s work has appeared in Atteqa Ali, “The Rise of Art Institutions in the United Arab Emirates and its Impact on Contemporary Art in the Extended MENASA Region” in Karen Exell and Sarina Wakefield, eds., Museums in Arabia: Transnational Practices and Regional Processes (London: Routledge, 2016). 17. Sharjah Art Foundation, “Home on a Neutral Ground,” 2011, http:// sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/projects/home-on-neutralground.

References Ali, Atteqa. “The Rise of Art Institutions in the United Arab Emirates and its Impact on Contemporary Art in the Extended MENASA Region.” In Museums in Arabia: Transnational Practices and Regional Processes, edited by Karen Exell and Sarina Wakefield. London: Routledge, 2016.

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Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art. “Artist Profile: Susan Hefuna in Cities, Movement, and ‘Crossroads’.” Accessed December 19, 2019. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=IiY_0sFXtzY. Hillings, Valerie, Sara Bin Safwan, and Sarah Divider. “Forward Motion: A Conversation with Artist Susan Hefuna.” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, July 7, 2017, https://www.guggenheim.org/blogs/checklist/ forward-motion-a-conversation-with-artist-susan-hefuna. Sharjah Art Foundation. “Home on a Neutral Ground,” 2011, http://sharjahart. org/sharjah-art-foundation/projects/home-on-neutral-ground. Jones, Kevin. “A Taxonomy of Fallacies: the Life of Dead Objects: Ali Cherri.” Art Asia Pacific, September/October 2016. http://artasiapacific.com/ Magazine/100/AliCherri. Ngũgı ̃ wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of African Literature. London: James Currey, 1987. Quilty, Jim. “The art of ruins falling into ruin.” The Daily Star, August 22, 2015. https://www.dailystar.com.lb/Arts-and-Ent/Culture/2015/Aug-22/312187the-art-of-ruins-falling-into-ruin.ashx, retrieved November 15, 2019.

CHAPTER 3

Getting to Know You: “Relational Aesthetics”

3.1   Introduction In 2006, a debate ensued on the pages of Artforum magazine between art historians Claire Bishop and Grant Kester over the dynamics of collaborative art praxes. Such an exchange and critical debate were not alien to the publication, as it has served as a platform to analyze and assess developments in global contemporary art and exhibition practices in the past. It famously was the site of a deliberation between the Museum of Modern Art Curators Kirk Varnedoe and William Rubin and art critic and historian Thomas McEvilley over the institution’s presentation of African and other “non-Western” art in the 1984 exhibition “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. The discussion had lasting impact on curatorial practices and museum studies, and the future shaping of global contemporary art and its presentation in exhibitions, especially at the Museum of Modern Art. Artforum provided the space for this vital discussion. More recently, the issue being examined was the framing of “social practice art,” socially engaged art, participatory art, collaborative art—generally an approach to making art that is framed by a whole host of terms as already indicated in the introduction to this study. These considerations were later expanded in the full-length manuscripts that the authors produced. For Bishop, participatory art, the term she has preferred to utilize, had been misinterpreted in the writings of art critics and historians, causing a privileging of outcome-oriented service projects in the arts. For © The Author(s) 2020 A. Ali, Collaborative Praxis and Contemporary Art Experiments in the MENASA Region, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47925-1_3

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her, these kinds of works, like a project that the Turkish Oda Projesi collective undertook in Istanbul in which the group of artists provided workshops for the Galata neighborhood residents that “ultimately [left] little to separate their work from arts and museum educators worldwide.”1 Oda Projesi saw their roles as facilitators, rather than authoritarian artists speaking for the people. They were careful to not impose their plans on to the community; rather, the artists wanted to respond to the requirements and desires of the people. In effect, giving power to ordinary individuals; indeed, Oda Projesi was initiated for them. The work that this collective of three artists has seen various manifestations from art workshops to architectural competitions; however, it has always operated from the standpoint of collaboration and equity with people in the neighborhood. By privileging projects like the Oda Projesi workshops, Bishop believes that critics, curators, and historians have perpetuated the requirement of having feasible outcomes, in a manner related to the terms and clauses that are often set by a government funding agency upon projects that it funds. These critics and curators have promoted artists as do-gooders. This has formed a mindset that participatory art should aim to create a better citizenship, as many national agencies attempt to do. Instead for her, the outcomes should not be so quantifiable, but rather experiential in a manner “that is not reducible to logic, reason, or morality.”2 Bishop argues that critics have emphasized the opposite. Instead of analyzing participatory art as art, they have analyzed projects for being “ethical … the degree to which artists supply good or bad models of collaboration.”3 Essentially, the critics have supported these projects because they have had recognizable results to which fingers could be pointed in order to assign a value to the art produced. The more associations with activist achievements, the better these critics found the projects, according to Bishop’s assessments of their writings. Bishop might have wanted to expose the critics as too “politically correct” and unconcerned with how the works stand up as art. For her, the mark of “good” art can be recognized, perhaps through astute analysis. It is that there is a tension, provocation, and perhaps most importantly, “disruption.” Bishop offers Jeremy Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave (2001) as an exemplary singular piece of participatory art full of disruption that could not be replicated. It recreated a violent confrontation between protestors and the police during the 1984–1985 UK miners’ strike. Instead of it being a healing exercise to overcome this difficult unresolved history, it got people to remember it. Any repeat performance, according to the author, would not play out in the same manner.

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The unravelling of the types of works and the accompanying writing led her to determine that a good work of participatory art could not easily be limited to a social function, otherwise it should be understood as an outreach program. Thus, the logic suggests that if artists are enacting the same approach as an organization, then what’s the difference? For her, the critical requirements of considering an initiative to be art were absent in much of the projects that art critics of collaborative art praxes championed. Not only did she assess that for a work to be “artistic,” it had to embody provocation and disruption, but the provocation and disruption could not simply be that the artist challenged artistic activities as usual. It was to be pain and pleasure combined to encourage an unsettled situation, rather than fulfilling a perceived social obligation. The work should utilize participation in a politicized manner. Grant Kester, on the other hand, did not impose similar categorizations. For him, the social aspect of the work replaced the traditional materiality of art. Artists assumed the role of facilitators rather than producers. Although they had a heated public argument, Kester and Bishop find parallels in thought. According to the former in the 2013 preface to the reprint of his 2004 book, “The projects that Conversation Pieces discusses can, in various ways, operate at the points of tension between community-­ based and avant-garde artistic practices.”4 This statement comes years after the Artforum debate, and could be interpreted as a correction to his previous study in light of Bishop’s criticism; however, in the original introduction, there is much that aligns his thoughts with Bishop’s. For example, as he explains collaborative or “dialogical” art, some of Bishop’s arguments come to mind like “provocation,” in particular in how the works challenge the false divide between art and the sociopolitical context of contemporary society. They also take on the normative values assigned to art. Instead of the typical aesthetic associations of beauty, he postulates aesthetic experience as producing over time. Here is where there is an indication of difference with Bishop’s philosophy. Kester tells that the art is not meant to be instantaneously shocking, rather this challenge transpires over time. In this manner, for the art historian, it is necessary to develop alternative ways to analyze and categorize dialogical art because they are performative and process-oriented, unfolding durationally. But still, he does not claim anything that stands against Bishop’s claims that the critics and curators associated with the form of art do not judge it as art. Instead, Kester advocates for different criteria to be formulated that is specific to dialogical, collaborative, participatory art.

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The art that will be presented in the chapter might be acceptable to both of the critics in that there are provocative elements that address a larger community beyond arts professionals, and so on. They develop relationships with an extended public and operate the studio beyond its standard location in the manner explicated by curator Nicolas Bourriaud. He finds artists attempting to get to know people over time and space. One of the artists that he targets is Rirkrit Tiravanija, a New York-based conceptual artist who cooked and offered Thai food in a gallery. This approach to making art came to the fore in the 1990s, as Bourriaud outlines. The art of this decade is about participation and what he calls “transivity,” a dynamic extending of an artwork beyond itself, or its form, and making it relational. Bourriaud explains that art in the 1990s remained around the edge of definition or beyond being categorized. It was not purely sculpture, installation, or performance.5 And a convivial air surrounded it as artists set up bars, relaxation areas, and food stalls. This method of making art has shifted the conventions of aesthetics. As such, artists have prioritized connections with people, as opposed to maintaining a distance from the world around them. Clearly this is not the first time that such an approach has been attempted by artists. Arguably, it has always been the case that artists do not work in isolation and are linked to the environment that surrounds them and impacted by multiple networks of influence beyond the studio. However, a more clearly defined practice that heightened the nexus of artists and the world outside the studio is found in the 1960s when performative events known as “happenings” attempted to challenge the barriers between art and life.6 Many other pivotal examples could be cited here, and these serve as a critical foundation for the manifestation of artistic practices in the 1990s. Since this decade, many artists actively have reached out to humanity and developed works of art that are not about viewers walking past but living through them. The “forms” that they create are dialogues.

3.2   Conversations with Karamatullah: Poetic Dialogues on Marginality Such an approach could be found in a work developed through conversations with a bread maker over five years, from 2010 to 2015, and as the artist Huma Mulji points out, in perpetual progress. Mulji visited a bread shop when she lived in the Pakistani city of Lahore. The shop was located

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in a wealthy part of town, where the nation’s military elite are gifted large, grand houses. Here, a baker named Karamatullah and his family lived and provided daily nourishment to customers coming to the commercial enterprise operating out of one of the homes in the neighborhood. Karamatullah’s father had given him the house; however, he did not possess any official documents about its ownership. The artist started visiting the shop that was positioned near her residence in 2008 when Karamatullah’s father was the main proprietor. He died the following year, and the son took over exactly from where the father left off. In 2013, Mulji began to document her visits to the shop, photographing the baker in the same exact position every time she went to pick up a loaf of bread. During the visits, conversation ensued between the shop owner and customer, ranging from polite musings about life and ordinary activities to more complicated discussions about money, business, and government activities. She spent time with his family, exchanging meals. The artist took photographs of them and the paraphernalia related to making bread (Fig. 3.1). On one level, the artist and shop owner became quite close and familiar; however, as Mulji recounts, she did not really know the details of the complex conditions surrounding the baker’s life. Eventually one day, a padlock appeared on the door of the establishment, one that belonged to the district government. Mulji never discovered what happened to the baker and his family. The artist had been recording the conversations and taking photographs over the course of two years without any specific plan about what to do with such a collection. At times, it seems, she questioned what her role is, as she ventured into an anthropological or journalistic dimension through “data” collection. Her job as an artist, as she believed, was to observe and listen. And, in the end, she could not maintain an anthropologist’s position of objectivity. Mulji writes, “The work that I want to make aspires to keep an open narrative, adjusting the ‘truth’, as experienced by each of us, rather than form opinions to conclude a story.”7 As such, the artist wanted to provoke the interpretation of the baker’s situation through her installations that are experiential and fluid, even as there are particular points of view implicating visitors in the circumstances of the nation’s economically disadvantaged groups. An installation at the Lahore Biennale in 2018 included actual forms: photographs, brick dust, sculpture, texts, and a textile print (Fig. 3.2). However, they are merely devices to illustrate the actual work. More significant are the stories that were

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Fig. 3.1  Huma Mulji, Conversations with Karamatullah. UV coated Archival Inkjet Prints on Hahnemühle Photorag, mounted on Dibond® Variable Ed.5, 2016. (Courtesy of the artist)

shared, the simple conversations that were exchanged. From one aspect, the work is simply about storytelling(Fig. 3.3). The bread maker and seller Karamatullah would eventually go out of business; along the way, Mulji heard about his struggles to survive. These difficulties paralleled vulnerabilities pervasive in the society; yet, they also expressed the resilience of the people to cope with the constraints that they might face suddenly or on an ongoing basis. On such a level, the work achieves the status of a poetic a tale of survival despite the frameworks that bind us, including ones beyond our control. In particular, Mulji expresses a story of the destitute within a given society, yet it is simultaneously universal. The kind of inequality that exists in developing nations like Pakistan, where this work evolved, is profound. Extreme levels of wealth and poverty coexist. Mulji implicates those who are able to sustain their lifestyles, particularly the ones that are the typical audiences at an art exhibition. She does this by forcing visitors to walk on brick dust that clings to the bottom of their shoes—a trace that indicates we are all

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Fig. 3.2  Huma Mulji, Conversations with Karamatullah. UV coated Archival Inkjet Prints on Hahnemühle Photorag, mounted on Dibond® Variable Ed.5, 2016. (Courtesy of the artist)

complicit in the inequities of society and that it is up to concerned citizens to enact change. Mulji’s work walks a fine line between the boundaries that might exist between art and activism, between community outreach and an aesthetic process, as the artist herself indicates. The work shifts the practice of creating art to situations and spaces located outside of the studio. Although the artist does not lay out a plan to provide a public service, she effectively engages members of her community and does attempt to do social work albeit in a non-traditional manner. This does not mean that she found solutions to the dilemmas of those individuals that she encountered through doing quantifiable acts, or even that she claims she was intending to do so. Without a particular agenda, the artist connected with people in the community and then, at a certain point in the trajectory, she decided to document what was otherwise an unforced relationship budding between the shop owner and the customer.

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Fig. 3.3  Huma Mulji, Conversations with Karamatullah. UV coated Archival Inkjet Prints on Hahnemühle Photorag, mounted on Dibond® Variable Ed.5, 2016. (Courtesy of the artist)

In an unorthodox manner, Mulji expanded the field of the artwork to include conversations, everyday events, and, in general, relational dynamics enacted on a human level. This is what Bourriaud indicates has been a significant development in contemporary art practices since the 1990s. Aesthetics are not measured according to visual criteria, but rather social ones. In the case of this artwork, it is founded on a relationship built between individuals around a shared concern, echoing the principles that Bourriaud outlines in his study. Furthermore, the work of other scholars writing on collaborative art could be applied in analyzing Mulji’s project. It is most certainly durational in the manner elucidated by Kester. Taking place over the course of years, the artistic process shifts and develops with time. Indeed, the work is a documentation of time passing. Intervals of days, weeks, months transpire in an innocuous manner: the artwork does not have a shock factor that is exposed all at once; instead, the challenge is revealed over time. Still, it could be argued that Bishop’s postulation of

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the attendant provocative aspects of contemporary art is an element present in the work of Mulji. The writer contends that provocation is a central characteristic in artistic practices today, as they have been for more than a century. Indeed, Mulji seeks to provoke audiences through her art. As mentioned above, the artist struggled with the anthropological/journalistic references in the process that she had taken and sought to undermine this quality with incendiary elements to invite multiple readings of the scenario. She did not want it to be a documentary account and, as such, introduced slippages into the narrative that destabilize the barrier between truth and falsity. The indeterminate stance of the artwork, and by extension the artist as well, is ready to shift in order to incite reactions. In such a framework, it might be possible to locate an art that challenges according to the standards offered in Bishop’s text. There is a tension that is introduced to a seemingly journalistic output to cause the “disruption” that Bishop advocates. The three other works addressed in the chapter offer “disruption” as well in varied forms, from ones that appear to be close to the look of contemporary art praxes to ones that seem to be community outreach programs. Still, the element of provocation or disruption does not seem to be the critical aspect of these works. Instead, multiple factors are crucial in the process-oriented endeavors. Oftentimes there is no apparent climax in the narrative. The activism and the art exist side-by-­ side in manner like the ebb and flow of tides: continuous and never exactly the same each time around. Along with Mulji’s project that is deeply connected to sustenance, there is an initiative described at the end of the chapter that addresses the significance of food and the sharing of meals. The Palestine Hosting Society engages people through revisiting, reviving, and celebrating recipes from the past for a community that is divided and disconnected from this history. In fact, daily fare and more elaborate provisions might be the backbone of collaborative art praxes globally. Several of the renowned artists associated with this approach to making art have delved into cooking specialty dishes and orchestrating dinner parties. As mentioned above, Rirkrit Tiravanija had taken the unprecedented action of removing “art” from the gallery and replacing it with a temporary kitchen to serve up Thai meals. Artist Theaster Gates staged a series of soul food dinners in the residential neighborhood where he was reviving dilapidated structures, including one that became the foundation of his extensive art practice. The sharing of a meal is central to human desires and needs; offering a repast is generous, while at the same time, it can be political in works of art, as it is in everyday

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life. The duality of such conviviality is discussed in Bourriaud’s text in which he outlines works that include relaxation areas, the setting up of bars, in addition to the provision of food. These kinds of initiatives assume a “friendship culture.” However, he readily describes works that are more “aggressive” in the building of relations, and perhaps not so nice.8 Even in a work that appears to be so giving like Gates’ soul food celebrations, there are duplicitous intentions to such an invitation. He congregates art world insiders to discuss issues related to racial inequality in the United States. The work that Gates has produced is discussed in Chap. 6 because of the potential of discovering overlapping conditions and strategies among the projects initiated in the MENASA and within economically deprived urban settings in the United States. Michael Rakowitz, whose work is also examined later in the book, has utilized food to provoke discussions on contemporary politics, in particular the Gulf wars between the United States and Iraq. Described above, Mulji’s inquiry into the life and practice of a baker has a level of conviviality, as she shares meals and light-­ hearted stories with him. Simultaneously, it expresses the economic struggles of someone providing basic sustenance to the populace. And in the final pages of the chapter, the work of artist and cook Mirna Bamieh will offer similar dynamics. Palestine Hosting Society’s multifaceted productions are joyous while they delve deeply into history in order to reflect upon the dangers of contemporary politics in the region.

3.3   Sharjah Art Foundation and Collaborative Art Praxes The two food-related works bookend musical composition projects by Wael Shawky and Tarek Atoui; once again, the works use a mode that attracts audiences to a live performance only to challenge standard thoughts and beliefs. The Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates commissioned both; the artworks are just two of several examples that could be included from the Sharjah institution, signaling the critical significance of the organization in the support and development of collaborative art praxes. The two undertakings evolved in Sharjah with particular communities in the city and were then presented in the same edition of the Sharjah Biennial. The production of the works extended over a two-year period.

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Since the Sharjah Art Foundation has played a major role in encouraging a platform for collaborative art, it is important to look into the organization and the ways in which it has supported such practices in the MENASA. The Sharjah Art Foundation has commissioned a number of publicly engaged works of art. It is a key mission for the organization. The most visible event for the foundation is the Biennial and in recent years, it has included projects that have connected with its community and been activated by them as well.9 The current director Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, daughter of Sharjah’s ruler, attended art school in London and received a graduate degree in contemporary curatorial practice. She has brought an innovative vision to what is the establishment’s institute; one that is well-­ funded. Sharjah Art Foundation encourages experimental approaches to making art, specifically ones that involve the community. The Sharjah Art Foundation organizes the March Meeting every year to convene the scholars, artists, curators, and other professionals invested in art and ideas in the region. This was the March Meeting stated purpose when it initiated, and it continues to be focused on the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia; however, its organizers have expanded to include participants from around the world. Still, most of the attendees are living in and/or working on art and culture in the region. And the event maintains a highlight on regional concerns and interests.10 In 2017, the March Meeting theme was “education, engagement, and participation.”11 In the introduction, the director initiates participants into the framework of the meeting and posits the implications and responsibilities of the institution in its desire to engage the extended community: The topic also addresses issues that we are grappling with as an organization that has grown from beginnings as a small, regional biennial event into a year-round institution with permanent infrastructure and increasingly specialized departments and programs. These developments have allowed Sharjah Art Foundation to become more responsive to the needs of our communities and audiences, but at the same time have forced us to question and challenge the fundamental assumptions of our work.12

Even as the Sharjah Art Foundation has been introspective of its role as an arts foundation, as suggested in the above quotation, there is an apparent tension on the position of the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates versus its place in the global contemporary art world. As it states above, the institution is accountable to the community and its

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audiences; however, because the source of its funding is the government, the institution needs to answer to the authority for what is appropriate to present. Under the pressure of a conservative society in the nation and authoritarian rule of law, restrictions exist, both stated and implicit, about what can be presented there. On the other hand, as the organization (as a representative of the nation) desires to achieve international notoriety, its practices come under scrutiny by important individuals and groups around the world. In particular, questions have been surrounding censorship of the art that it displays and the human rights abuses of the federal and provincial government, the latter of which supports the foundation. A petition was created to challenge the actions of the Sharjah Art Foundation and ruler as alarming and even deplorable when it dismissed its director and removed an artwork deemed to be inappropriate culturally.13 While questionable funding sources are present in institutions worldwide, as already pointed out in the introductory chapter, the Sharjah Art Foundation has faced ongoing difficulties about such an issue. This is addressed in the next chapter that discusses the impact of grassroots organizations on the development of collaborative art praxis in the region. While Sharjah Art Foundation has been a tremendous benefactor of projects that engage communities, as indicated by the two projects discussed in this essay, and its significance is acknowledged, the study also endeavors to consider what are the implications of its funding.

3.4   Dictums 10: 120: A Contemporary Art Experiment on Institutional Gestures Egyptian artist Wael Shawky actually took the funding that Sharjah Art Foundation provided him for a commissioned work that investigated and implicated the organization and its engagement of audiences, as well as its desires to connect with the extended community in the city and beyond. For Shawky, his participation in the Sharjah Biennial afforded him a chance to address this very relationship of arts institutions and their publics. The institution commissioned Shawky in 2011 for the Sharjah Biennial that would take place in 2013.14 In the intervening period, the artist worked with a Pakistani community at the foundation and its environs to create a musical performance in the tradition of qawwali, devotional music from South Asia. Press releases from the Sharjah Art Foundation, curatorial texts, and other unlikely documents were used to form the lyrics. A full

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qawwali group made up of men from the Sharjah Pakistani community performed at the end of the two-year project entitled Dictums 10:120 (Fig. 3.4).15 With this production, Shawky created a work in which storytelling is a theme; he had already been incorporating it in his works when he was commissioned for a new piece of art. The Sharjah Art Foundation fully supported Shawky’s interaction with the narrative of the institution and its audiences, interaction with its staff, and the performance of the outcome. The role of facilitator is often the one that arts institutions assume in the commissioning and presentation of collaborative art. The institution is no longer simply an empty shell of a space to fill with objects like paintings and sculptures. Instead, it provides freedom for artists to utilize it in the form that is needed for the art. Over the course of a two-year project, the artist took the particular circumstances in Sharjah to shape its outcome. Shawky noticed disconnect between people visiting the foundation and those living near it. Surrounding the exhibition spaces of the Sharjah Art Foundation are the

Fig. 3.4  Wael Shawky, Dictums 10:120, 2011–2013, Sound installation, 23 minutes, 40 seconds. (Photograph from Lisson Gallery website)

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residences of laborers working in the region. What is their interest/disinterest in art? This is something he was exploring at his own studio turned into a semi-institution in Alexandria, Egypt. MASS Alexandria was envisioned as a space that would draw neighbors in to learn about art.16 It was a way to engage with the local community. Begun in 2010, the organization seems to have organically developed into an artist residency program with ad-hoc workshops, classes, and lectures arranged to complement the existing arts education in the city, or perhaps serve as an alternative. The aim is to encourage a more conceptual approach to making art, one that might not be offered at the established art schools in the city where conventional methods of making art are taught.17 Theoretical questions and debates are at the core of Shawky’s entire practice, including the work produced at the Sharjah Art Foundation. Dictums 10:120 has a complex conceptual underpinning that examines the role of an arts institution in the society in which it exists. Art can often be viewed as an elitist activity, something only for the wealthy and educated to partake. What do others have to gain by exposing themselves to art? What are the power dynamics involved between an art institution and its public? What is the responsibility of those organizations in attracting unlikely communities to its spaces? This longstanding debate might be one of the most crucial issues for artists and arts professionals in developing nations. It is particularly significant in the United Arab Emirates that draws and relies upon labor from those nations, but especially the ones in South Asia. This potentially exploitative relationship has been the subject of much discussion, and Shawky’s project touches upon that nerve. The inequality that exists among the levels of society in the region is palpable in the area surrounding the art foundation where workers live. There is dichotomy found in the intervening site between the educated elite visiting the foundation and the laborers who are there to support it. Shawky attempted to bridge the gap, and, in a way, flip it; however, this, as a direct intention, was never pointed out. Its conceptual framework might not be obvious through the apparent simplicity of Dictums 10:120. Shawky does not provide an extensive statement about his work. Instead, he encourages audience interaction and interpretation. In taking this stance, the artist creates a platform in which the viewer can formulate his or her thoughts through the experience of viewing and interacting with the work of art. It is a dialogic experience that takes away ultimate authority from the artist. He becomes a facilitator and collaborator rather than the lone producer or author. This is a typical

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feature of participatory, collaborative, and socially engaged art, as already made clear in the book. This approach is evident in Dictums because it was created over a long period of time and involved the community from its initial stages. Without the community, the artwork would lack any meaning and, even further, it would not have been possible. The artist asked members of the foundation’s technical staff, many coming from Pakistan, to help develop the artwork.18 They collaborated to take apart and translate the foundation’s curatorial talks from Sharjah Biennial 11 that express the desire to connect with the community. In this act alone, the subversive and literally deconstructive approach is a challenge to the institution. It questions the words that the organization, in this case the Sharjah Art Foundation but in truth can apply to others, utilizes to put forth a patina of involvement with the extended community. So, for the artist to use the institution’s own words in a project that questions such intentions is a kind of Foucauldian exercise because it analyzes power structures and does so through its basic arrangements. It is a discursive method to highlight how language functions. Language is certainly powerful. By translating the text, both into Urdu and a culturally familiar form, it effectively becomes the voice of the community rather than the establishment. The qawwali developed with the community became an act of resistance. Typically, a qawwali includes lyrics in which the worshipper sings about her or his love for God. The mundane text of the Sharjah qawwali did not express such ultimate adoration, instead it offered subtle passages of institutional critique. Even an institution with a stated mission of opening channels to the local community cannot do this so easily; and when they attempt such an outreach, what does it mean? Given the intention of the institution and the nation as well to serve as a global platform for the display and presentation of art from the extended region, including Pakistan, then questions do need to be addressed about how it might exploit or ignore, whether intentionally or not, the community that lives next door and is not one that typically patronizes or visit art exhibitions. How is that South Asian community being treated as South Asian artists are celebrated and supported at the foundation? At the end of the two-year project, there was a recital at the opening of the Sharjah Biennial. The performers lined up in an alleyway within the district of the Sharjah Art Spaces. Lead by the two professional qawwals, the group of Pakistani men sang with the devotional intensity required for a qawwali. Reverberating sounds of a harmonious sacred song attracted

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laborers living near the foundation. In a turn of events, they were the ones that could understand the artwork at the art space; they were well informed of the intentions of the curator through the translated press release turned into song. They knew the language of the Urdu hymn, whereas the attendant arts professionals became less privileged in this regard.19 In the hands of the foundation’s staff and the artist, the standard curatorial texts and press releases turned out to be poetic—not a reflection of divine love, but a nuanced review of socio-economic dynamics. The project and its staging provoked the organization to look back at itself to question its intentions and effects. As described officially, the work turned a centuries-old tradition into a contemporary art experiment.20 It was not simply a community outreach program or work of contemporary art, but an investigation of how art institutions relate to their publics from its start until its finish. Through the initiative, Shawky created a platform for dialogue with the community where stories could be shared, and a network of connections could be formed. Such initiatives forefront social interactions. The “relational aesthetics” in the project offers opportunities to address political and social concerns through the arts in radical ways. Participants and audiences are exposed to the dynamics of colonialism that continue to impact lives in the postcolonial age; they might even experience it for a brief while when they encounter a work like Dictums 10:120 exploring such a subject. Current geopolitics of war, migrant labor, and the plight of refugees reflect this history—from the ongoing power struggles between the “first” and “third” worlds that feed the center and periphery divide to the tangible economic disadvantages in postcolonial nations stripped of their resources by former rulers. In oil-rich countries today, labor arrives from nearby developing countries struggling to support their citizens. The work indirectly addresses such current events and concerns through an experiential art that is opened to those beyond the realm of the art world. By unhooking the gates of art’s microcosm, the populace outside of this sphere could find meaningful ways to enter the secluded space and gain an understanding of their situations based on historical conditions and the relationships with others. Furthermore, the continually growing and shifting boundaries of art get challenged again. Dictums 10:120 offers ways of stepping outside, quite literally, of normative artistic qualities, and opening art to those on the fringes in order to tackle today’s socio-­political climate.

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This kind of practice proposes an extended frame for potential artistic production; one that opens up and supports the studio, instead of destroying it altogether. Collaborative, participatory projects continue the line of inquiry that perhaps started with Marcel Duchamp and carried forth in conceptual art practices. It seems that many artists associated with socially engaged art do function in-between both realms. They seek liminal expressions that provide services to the community in an “aesthetic” manner. In the case of these projects, the aesthetic might be compelling and dynamic elements that render “attractive” works of art—the attraction being the experiences they generate that help us to open up our understandings and view the world in altered manners. And, in fact, Bishop might agree with this analysis as outlined in her text: “the undecidability of aesthetic experience implies a questioning of how the world is organized, and therefore the possibility of changing or redistributing that same world.”21 In analyzing these projects as artworks, the art world is expanded to accommodate happenings, moments, interchanges, experiences, activities, events, and occurrences in a given community as aesthetic models. Through such an understanding, artistic activity is indeed an active form of “labor” that activates both the artist and others. They are “enacted” in “attractive” manners, meaning that they are compelling for audiences and capture their attention. The resulting experience is a push and pull between art (aesthetics) and life (communities) in the production of engaging works. Music is a powerful mode to draw in people with a joyous expression of all that is wrong with the world, or at least of a serious message. As mentioned earlier, Bishop writes about the significance of provocation in contemporary art that should be present in participatory practice. Grant Kester also regards incitement as an integral element that is diffused through the durational aspect of dialogical art. He writes, “While the projects … encourage their participants to question fixed identities, stereotypical images, and so on, they do so through a cumulative process of exchange and dialogue rather than a single, instantaneous shock of insight precipitated by an image or object.”22 The challenging aspects of these works are latent within the outward appearance of conviviality. They draw audiences in and then introduce discomfort or uncertainty into the situation that is infused into the work via a sustained interchange with a given community.

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3.5   Tacet/Within: Challenging Normative Practices and Preconceived Beliefs The 2013 iteration of the Sharjah Biennial also included a musical work by Tarek Atoui, a sound artist from Lebanon based in Paris. Like Shawky’s process in creating Dictums 10:120, Atoui’s method to developing compositions that were presented in the Biennial were equally multifaceted and took place over a period of time. Beginning in 2011, Atoui worked with a deaf school in Sharjah: Al Amal School for the Deaf. Conducting workshops at the school, the sound artist wanted to consider deaf people and how they perceive music. With students in the school and an artist/curator group Council that was examining the implications of deafness and the relationship to sound, he developed music to respond to the collaborative inquiry under the research project of Tacet. Originally proposed for Sharjah Biennial 11, Tacet is a research initiative composed of eight individuals to understand how the deaf experience sound. Out of this Atoui formulated Within with school children in Sharjah (and, later, elsewhere) to challenge the a priori notions of sound cognizance and music appreciation (Fig. 3.5).

Fig. 3.5  Tarek Atoui, TACET workshop with students from Al Amal School for the Deaf, Sharjah, 2013. (Photograph from Council website)

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In fact, the research expanded the inquiry to be more generally about how humans hear, and what could be the potential for musical expansion out of this knowledge. As Council explains, “This inquiry engages with a community not bounded by the hearing/non-hearing binary, bringing together perspectives which do not generally meet.”23 The performance at the Biennial was a composition in four interconnected parts that rise up and reply to each other. However, there were many more complex events and elements that went into the development of the production. In fact, Atoui continues to investigate and expand the multifaceted project that has involved and still links together many different people, groups, and organizations. More recently, he has been creating specialized instruments for the deaf to use. This analysis and production found its early development in the workshops at the deaf school in Sharjah. The students from Al Amal not only contributed to the process of creating the compositions, they also performed at the opening event. This happened in the fourth part of the performance entitled “Emic” that pieced together inspirations from the research, deaf culture, Qin music, and another composition in the sound work.24 The collaboration had begun with an inquiry into sound perception, and eventually lead to the provocative idea that hearing is relative, rather than existing on a fixed spectrum. Such a notion puts hearing and deafness side-by-side, rather than as polar opposites. It is no longer a yes or no question. Instead, the inquiry allows for the expanded potential of music, its audiences, and opportunities for the deaf to find a “voice” through specialized instruments. Thus, the engagement with the community facilitated understandings and possible actions to take on a number of different levels. The production and presentation of a musical composition was just one aspect of the project. As “Within” continues to develop, it is no longer connected to the region; however, it maintains its link with the deaf community. The artist has also formed new collaborations with individuals and groups, including engineers and schools. In 2019, as part of the Venice Biennale, the artist presented The Spin that includes elements examining how we listen as well as collaborative performances. Critical support from the Sharjah Art Foundation sparked the inquiry that has resulted in global recognition for the artist in recent years. There are several organizations around the MENASA that have facilitated the production and presentation of collaborative projects. Several of these

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bodies are highlighted in the following chapter, including Ashkal Alwan that organized the Home Works forum attended by Mirna Bamieh in 2013–2014. The artist/cook initiated Palestine Hosting Society in 2017, working on her own at first and later, engaging audiences in her art of shared meals. While the time at Ashkal Alwan might not have directly translated into the project, it likely shaped her development as an artist. Local institutional support is crucial for the progress and growth of artistic practices in the region.

3.6   Palestine Hosting Society: The Politics of Hosting Palestine Hosting Society began as an effort to preserve a cultural history of Palestinians in order to share it with members of the society. While studying at a university in Ramallah, Bamieh noticed that restaurants in the city serving Palestinian food offered limited selections of dishes. As she inquired further into this apparent gap in the variety of fare, she came to understand that there is a lot of missing information about the staple cuisine and the kinds of ingredients utilized in its preparation. Palestinians, along with the rest of the world, do not actually realize the diversity of the fare and that the origin of apparently Israeli dishes is, in fact, from Palestinian recipes. Israeli cuisine absorbed the spices, flavors, and dishes of Palestinian traditions. Yet, these histories and customs were severed from Palestinian knowledge in the rupture that took place when the homeland was divided into separate parts. The splitting of the people and the land caused not only a separation of families and the guarantee of conflict for years to come but also a disconnect with a shared heritage. As memories fade, those in one part of a divided territory are losing the knowledge and understanding of the types of food and techniques that were a part of Palestinian culture. This outcome is not just about losing access to a recipe, it is a loss of a cultural identity. Food is so significant in our understanding of who we are and from where we come. It is a critical aspect of defining a culture. Through her efforts, Bamieh hopes to reclaim a significant part of Palestinian identity.25 She does so in a convivial manner like other contemporary artists that utilize collaborative, engaging platforms. As mentioned above, Nicolas Bourriaud pinpoints this trait as evident in the work of several artists in the 1990s. Conviviality promotes a welcoming, generous environment

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Fig. 3.6  Mirna Bamieh, Palestine Hosting Society, 2017–present. (Courtesy of the artist)

(Fig. 3.6). Indeed, a second key principle of the Palestine Hosting Society is hospitality. It is an intrinsic part of Arab culture: welcoming a guest, whether it is someone familiar or a stranger, might be considered second nature to the people. Bamieh’s practice is a labor of love, as she prepares a meal for participants, in a manner like a mother might cook for her family. Bamieh’s meals, however, have an urgent agenda. Her act of kindness is fueled by a desire to save a culture from extinction. She is reviving a lost heritage that might be considered critical for the Palestinian people to survive. Her generosity in sharing meals of forgotten dishes stems from the realization of their potential demise. Through this platform, the artist quite literally preserves a memory. She has created an archive of recipes; however, it is not for the purpose of sealing it away in a safe place. Instead, the artist seeks to revive tradition in order to give it new life. Even as hospitality might be an integral aspect of Arab culture, being a host is foreign to the Palestinian frame of thinking. In perpetual refugee status, the people are typically the ones who are being hosted. They had sought the generosity of others as they lost everything in war. Bamieh

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turns the tables by serving as the caretaker. Inviting others to her table, she destabilizes the crutch of dependency and offers her support to the participants in her gatherings by providing a crucial link to the past. She offers Palestinians and others much needed information on a rich culture in order to understand the plight of the situation in contemporary society. The artist assumes a role of cultural ambassador by serving as a guide to Palestinian heritage: an active role of survival, rather than the one of victim. Her efforts are not simply about the past and preserving traditions. They signal the need for understanding in the region today. The impact of the conflict does not simply affect governments in public ways, it touches families and friends on intimate levels. In order to ensure a meaningful undertaking, Palestine Hosting Society conducts research in various ways (Fig.  3.7). Each iteration of a shared meal includes a high level of inquiry into the types of food and techniques to be utilized. It begins with a period of discovery in a particular location. For example, “The Edible Wild Plants Table” commenced during a research trip to the mountainous region of Palestine. There, the artist encountered blossoming plants during the season for it. The task at hand was to protect her grandparents’ recipes. As the artist explains: “The research focused on wild edible plants and their traditional recipes in our Palestinian Kitchen, with a focus on those that are almost forgotten yet safe guarded in the memories of our grandparents.”26 To do this, she collected the flora in order to identify them and offer data in an almost scientific manner. She recorded where they were found, the forms in which they appeared, and where they could be located as of the present moment. The investigation of these plants culminated in a “participatory research table” at the Palestine Museum. Approximately sixty participants feasted on a meal grounded on the research and understanding of traditional foods of Palestine. Some of the delicacies were based on recipes conveyed to the artist by older generations such as mutabbaq, a pan cooked bread/ pancake. Her version served during the shared meal included a favored Arab herb: za’atar. Other dishes were conceived as new recipes of ancient plants found in the area. Bamieh created a pesto out of nettle, a greenery used traditionally to make soup. And, some of the offerings spoke of the current political climate in Palestine. Gundelia, a cactus-like plant, is being highly regulated by the Israelis.27 Whereas it was always a wild plant available for all to collect, it is now protected in Israel’s laws for reasons that do not seem clear, possibly for environmental protection of a plant that has

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Fig. 3.7  Mirna Bamieh, Palestine Hosting Society, 2017–present. (Courtesy of the artist)

been labeled as endangered by Israelis. Known as akkoub in Arabic, access to this ancient vegetable is being controlled in much the same way as access to parts of the Palestinian homeland. Alongside the knowledge and information passed around the table, Bamieh also creates an “aesthetic” experience of all of the senses from visual to aural to gastronomic (Fig. 3.8). The table settings are arranged

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Fig. 3.8  Mirna Bamieh, Palestine Hosting Society, 2017–present. (Courtesy of the artist)

to be welcoming and attractive. Certain breads include patterns that have a long history connected to them. Through offering information and access to such a powerful history in such diverse and engaging ways, Palestine Hosting Society has organized several research tables around the area and, more recently, the world. The approach to addressing such complex and difficult issues and history is inviting and maybe even comforting. Yet, at the same time, the serious concerns are not brushed under the table. They are front and center in the discussions that take place across it.

3.7   Conclusion The four diverse works discussed here are linked by the notion of engagement. On one level, they attract and engage audiences into a welcoming environment where food and music serve the senses. They also engage communities in the production of a work of art: they get to know a group that might need assistance in finding a voice. Analyzing the dynamics of a

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particular community is a critical framework for the projects, and thus could be deemed as one of the work’s mediums. This is the relational aesthetics expounded by Bourriaud as the momentary experiences expressed in art. Such a practice has perhaps arisen due to the loss of relational space in contemporary society when increased technologies have created barriers among people. Relational art is based on human interactions.28 An early piece of writing on collaborative, participatory art is by art historian Lars Bang Larsen who investigated what he termed “social aesthetics.” He wrote that in such works, “social and aesthetic understanding are integrated into each other.”29 Bishop’s take on the “social function” of art is that the work cannot simply be about serving society; there needs to be a tension that “pushes art towards ‘life’ and that (on the other) separates aesthetic sensoriality from other forms of sensible experience.”30 The works analyzed in the chapter by Huma Mulji, Wael Shawky, Tarek Atoui, and Mirna Bamieh potentially pass the “tension” test that signals the works to still be considered “art,” according to Bishop. Mulji had recognized and reacted to her foray into journalism; Shawky carefully orchestrated the production of a collaborative performance; Atoui shaped the compositions according to what worked well musically; and Bamieh organized and presented meals in a meticulous manner. All of the artists strive to connect with life outside of the studio or art object, yet an “artistic” quality is nonetheless present. The projects engage communities in multifaceted ways, as described above. However, at critical moments in their processes, the artists shaped the works according to their concepts of an aesthetic experience. Even as they involve the participation and collaboration of many, in the end the works position the artist as the head of the project. Or, in cases when the artist might not have wanted to control the outcome, there is an integrity in the “product” as reflective of the values and concepts typically found in the practice of the artist. This is how Bishop defines a good work of participatory, collaborative art; she believes that other critics find this to be the mark of an inept work within this practice or that they simply ignore this aspect of the work in preference of the elements that focus on the improvement of lives or the betterment of a place, and so on. However, as pointed out in several parts of the chapter, these critics relate the seemingly paradoxical aspects of the social/communal with aesthetic/artistic qualities in their writings to state how they function together in the works of artists practicing collaborative, participatory, dialogical art, or any other term that is applied by various art

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historians, curators, and writers. For Kester, the works that he cites are presumably exemplary works of dialogical art. As quoted earlier, he writes that they “operate at the points of tension between community-based and avant-garde artistic practices.”31 Pointed out earlier in the essay, perhaps Kester’s framing of dialogical art shifted after the debate that occurred on the pages of Artforum. Nonetheless, at some point, there appears to be an acceptance of the necessity of “artistic” qualities for a work to be defined as art. The difficulty arises in the following chapters in which several of projects would potentially not qualify for such a status. The works are often run by collectives and organizations and the artist is simply one piece of the whole undertaking. In such initiatives, the line is blurred between art and activism, community outreach and a work of art, and social and aesthetic. In fact, as Larsen points out, the dichotomy of art versus reality is exploded. Meanwhile, Bishop holds on to the belief that art always maintains some level of separation from other “experiences.” Kester might find room for such initiatives. In this criterion, art produces moments of interaction and dialogue. Bourriaud had offered such a theory in Relational Aesthetics in which he posits relational art as a theory of form in which art sheds its material skin and assumes a form as dialogue. Rather than a one-way event, experiencing art is an “arena of exchange.”32 Bourriaud opens up the limitations placed on art that Bishop would later redefine. He writes about the implications of such an analysis: The possibility of a relational art (an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space), points to a radical upheaval of the aesthetic.33

This assessment allows for the framing of the work by artist collectives and organizations as art based on human relations, rather than a specific product. Getting to know to each other becomes an artistic output. The four works in the chapter build relationships through gaining knowledge and understanding of particular communities and their interests and concerns.

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Notes 1. Claire Bishop, “Introduction,” Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London and New York: Verso, 2012), 21. 2. Ibid., 18. 3. Ibid., 19. 4. Grant Kester, The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context (Duke University Press, 2011), xvii. 5. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods (Dijon: les presses du reel, 2002), 12. 6. For a more thorough review of happenings, please look at Allan Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, University of California Press, 1993 and 2003. 7. Huma Mulji, artist statement on the work, not published, 2019. 8. Bourriaud, op.cit., 32–33. 9. Sharjah Art Foundation, “Mission and History,” accessed February 2015, http://sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/about/ mission-and-history. 10. For a longer discussion on this event see Atteqa Ali, “The Rise of Art Institutions in the United Arab Emirates and its Impact on Contemporary Art in the Extended MENASA Region” in Karen Exell and Sarina Wakefield, eds., Museums in Arabia: Transnational Practices and Regional Processes. London: Routledge, 2016. 11. Hoor Al Qasimi, “Introduction,” March Meeting 2016: Education, Engagement, and Participation, accessed April 12, 2019, http://sharjahart.org/march-meeting-2016. 12. Ibid. 13. “An unwarranted dismissal in Sharjah,” April 11, 2011, https://www.eflux.com/announcements/35699/an-unwarranted-dismissal-in-sharjah/. 14. Sharjah Art Foundation, “Dictums 10:120, Wael Shawky,” 2013, http:// sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/projects/dictums-10120. 15. Ibid. 16. Kevin Jones, “Wael Shawky,” Brownbook, accessed June 10, 2016, http:// brownbook.me/waelshawky/#unique-identifier. 17. Ibid. 18. Sharjah Art Foundation, op. cit. 19. Jones, op. cit. 20. Sharjah Art Foundation, op. cit. 21. Claire Bishop, op. cit., 27. 22. Kester, op. cit., 12 23. Council, “Tacet (2013),” accessed June 15, 2016, http://www.council. art/inquiries/30/infinite-ear/1186/tacet-2013.

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24. Sharjah Art Foundation, “Within,” accessed June 15, 2015, http://sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/projects/within. 25. Jonah Kay, “Revitalizing the Culture of Palestinian Food,” Hyperallergic, April 23, 2019, https://hyperallergic.com/495332/revitalizing-theculture-of-palestinian-food/. 26. Palestine Hosting Society, “The Wild Edible Plants Table,” April 2019, https://palestinehostingsociety.com/The-Edible-Wild-Plants-Table. 27. See Eliyahu Kamisher, “The Fight for a Flower,” Roads & Kingdoms, April 23, 2018, https://roadsandkingdoms.com/2018/the-fight-fora-flower/. 28. Bourriaud, op. cit., 14. 29. Lars Bang Larsen, “Social Aesthetics,” in Participation, ed. Claire Bishop (Cambridge and London: MIT Press and Whitechapel Art Gallery, 2006), 172. 30. Bishop, op. cit., 29–30. 31. Kester, op. cit., XVII. 32. Bourriaud, op. cit., 18. 33. Ibid., 14.

References Al Qasimi, Hoor. “Introduction,” March Meeting 2016: Education, Engagement, and Participation, n.d., Sharjah Art Foundation, http://sharjahart.org/ march-meeting-2016. Ali, Atteqa. “The Rise of Art Institutions in the United Arab Emirates and its Impact on Contemporary Art in the Extended MENASA Region.” In Museums in Arabia: Transnational Practices and Regional Processes, edited by Karen Exell and Sarina Wakefield. London: Routledge, 2016. Bishop, Claire. “Introduction.” Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London and New York: Verso, 2012. Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods. Dijon: les presses du reel, 2002. Sharjah Art Foundation. “Dictums 10:120, Wael Shawky.” 2013, http://sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/projects/dictums-10120. Kaprow, Allan. Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. University of California Press, 2003. Kester, Grant. The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context. Duke University Press, 2011. Kester, Grant. Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004.

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Papastergiadis, Nikos. “Collaboration in Art and Society: A Global Pursuit of Democratic Dialogue.” In Globalization and Contemporary Art, edited by Jonathan Harris. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Sharjah Art Foundation. “Mission and History.” Accessed February 2015, http:// sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/about/mission-and-history.

CHAPTER 4

Come Together: Institutional Frameworks, Communities, and the Rise of Collaborative Art Praxis in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia 4.1   Introduction How do institutions impact the practices of artists? What does their presence allow that otherwise would not have been possible? And, conversely, are there limitations they set for artistic output? Depending on the size and notoriety of the organization, institutions have been both supportive and nurturing as well as controlling and authoritative forces, and this can happen simultaneously. One can think of the now famous resistance to the art academy that the Impressionists embraced to usher in their style of art. Much lesser known is the effect of community-based groups on the growth of artistic practice in the MENASA. Without the presence of such spaces, some artists might not have the necessary assistance and tools to be able to make and present their art. On the other hand, have these organizations forced a particular “alternative” discourse as some of them have achieved international renown. This chapter will discuss the significance of grassroots institutions in the region in initiating, espousing, promoting, and perhaps compelling the production of participatory or collaborative art projects. I will highlight five arts centers in the region—Marrakech, Cairo, Beirut, Amman, and Karachi. These cities are in different parts of the geographic territory and are significant places for the development of recent artistic practices in the respective nations as well as across the entire area.

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Marrakech is the site of a biennial exhibition of regional and global contemporary art. Queens Collective, an arts space and group of artists that are engaged with the local community in the medina (the center of the old city) of Marrakech, has partnered with the biennial organization. It runs “Medina kids’ workshops” and collects donations for the youngest residents of the neighborhood in which the collective is ensconced; however, its ongoing presence is more significant than any specific undertaking. In Cairo, Townhouse Gallery initiated as a grassroots organization and developed a workshop to address the concerns of refugees in the city. Beginning as a small project, it quickly grew to attract thousands of participants. In Amman, Darat al Funun has been instrumental in shaping a culture for contemporary art in the city since 1988. Meanwhile newer organizations have been active in contributing to the same ethos of support for artists working today. During its tenure, the Makan organizers created projects that pushed the limits of artistic practice in the public sphere. No longer in existence, the Spring Sessions has taken over Makan’s physical and philosophical space. Other smaller initiatives feed the spirit of artistic practices in Amman, including Jadal for Knowledge and Culture that provide forums for interchange and debate. In Karachi, practitioners working with the organization Vasl Artists’ Association have produced art in the public sphere in which ordinary citizens have been engaged to address local civic concerns. It is an organization that is at the center of artistic output in Pakistan. According to its mission, “Vasl Artists’ Association functions as a space and a platform for nurturing creativity and encouraging freedom to create experimental work.”1 A critical space for open dialogue and sometimes radical thought is The Second Floor in Karachi that is known better as T2F. It is a younger organization; however, it has provided artists and others in the city with a crucial outlet that allows them to find like-minded individuals and partake in activities and resources to generate new and innovative ideas. Ashkal Alwan in Beirut is renowned for its programs including Home Works that has offered a platform for artists and arts professionals, both local and international, to gather together and discuss critical issues of the field in the Arab region and globally. This organization and many others in the MENASA have offered a space for the display, study, and dissemination of work by artists in their milieus, thereby raising awareness of art from the region. They provide a service to their audiences, namely artists and arts professionals by creating opportunities for exchange and dialogue and feeding into a culture of innovation and experimentation. A much smaller project in Beirut,

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spearheaded by curator Amanda Abi Khalil is Temporary Art Platform. She has been focusing her curatorial projects on socially engaged practices, public spaces and the contextual ways of making art and curating in Lebanon. Concerned with a sociological reading of the art scene in Beirut and interested in cultural policy, she has been particularly devoted to commissioning local artists to explore the possibilities of engaging social, aesthetical or political dialogues in different contexts that are on the margin of the art world. Institutions in the region offer platforms that facilitate the sharing of narrative accounts and investigate the coexistence and co-dependence of entities and individuals. Such a tactic could help in uncovering and shedding light on concerns affecting these societies, including the ongoing impact of colonialism and the effects of a globalized world. The artworks and activities at the organizations discussed in the essay introduce innovative methods that attempt to address these and other social and political issues. Although the groups and the artists associated with them investigate serious topics, they do so in light-hearted ways that do not foreground the complicated concerns on the table. Instead, the modes of production are sociable and, perhaps, more effective in targeting participants. Rather than alienating outsiders, they are invited to partake in the activity. The weight of history is shed in a convivial situation. Through these actions, each organization builds bridges with its extended community to open up conversations and encourage the telling of stories about shared experiences. Many of them initiated as small, grassroots organizations functioning on the ground according to what communities of artists and others needed out of them. Some of them have gained increasing notoriety in global contemporary art as artists from the MENASA have been exhibiting in major institutions around the world. And, in fact, it is likely because of these organizations that artists from the region have been getting recognition internationally. As curators want to know more about artistic practices in the area, they often turn to such spaces for guidance with the hope of connecting with more experimental and innovative artists. The apparent belief is that these organizations are aligned with the narrative of contemporary art that is promulgated globally as more subversive and cutting-edge.2 Whether this is true or not, it does seem apparent that some of the organizations shifted from a marginal existence to one that occupies a more prominent presence in the local contemporary art world as well the global one. With such a move, the authority or influential reach

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of such organizations grows. Their impact is analyzed to outline what might happen as the fringe shifts to the mainstream.

4.2   Queens Collective and Le18, Marrakech In Marrakech, Queens Collective is a multi-function community arts organization founded by women and primarily functions because of women. Although it is not the most prominent organization in the city, it is important to consider it because of its philosophy that sees artistry as activism.3 At the bohemian “start-up,” they live and work together to create opportunities and projects for artists from the region and around the world, as well as for the public in the neighborhood and beyond to engage in the arts on multiple levels (Fig. 4.1). Like the medina of Marrakech, the organization has grown organically, shaping into a form that has seemed instinctual and spontaneousf. In fact, one of its aims is to embrace constant flux, as it develops according to what is relevant and possible. It is deeply committed to the local context, and actively connected to a larger framework of the global community. This has been true since its founding when two individuals from art and sociology backgrounds decided to create a platform to connect the arts, the city and its population, and the interested artists and arts professionals within and beyond Marrakech. Hana Tefrati trained as a dancer and continues to work in the field, as well as in installation and performance art. Siham Taflayout studied to be a social worker and remains one, while she also experiments in various art forms and cares for a guesthouse that supplies some of the funding for the running of the collective. There are several projects and initiatives that the collective organizes that seem to have developed out of the commitments of its principals. It has a free-spirit sensibility in its communal approach to living and art that blurs boundaries between personal and shared. The collective has programs for children in the neighborhood, as mentioned above. It runs various residency programs for artists from Marrakech and beyond. The guesthouse offers sliding scale rates to provide cultural travelers benefit from its open home lifestyle intertwined with the arts and local community. Rather than seeing it is as an organization that arranges distinct projects with a beginning or ending, Queens Collective could be considered an overarching bridge connecting local and international artists, children, women, and the general public in a series of moments responding organically to whatever is needed or desired. Yet it could also be viewed as

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Fig. 4.1  Queens collective space, Marrakech Medina, 2017. (Photograph by the author)

an entity instigating projects that are often ephemeral and are more about social connections than physical manifestations. The initiative functions in the intervals of art and life; the public and private. Queens Collective is an integrated whole that aims to be sustainable, and so it shifts when necessary and answers the requirements of its interested audiences, whether those are artists or neighbors. For example,

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the Medina kids’ workshops run every week and are multidisciplinary. As such, each session, a performing or visual artist, or any other type of practitioner might offer a workshop. This volunteer might be a visitor staying at the guesthouse. The collective seems more intuitive in its efforts to serve the mission through one continuing venture that has several branches. These parts are vital for the growing whole and often intersect. For example, the residency programs address the needs and wishes of artists and they also feed the community programs that the collective organizes. Through this platform, Queens Collective hosts holistic and integrated endeavors at select moments that serve each other, the entire venture, and its ongoing presence. In aggregate, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And because the organization has remained in the area for over five years, the neighbors have grown to trust the collective and reached out to them to provide workshops for what has been required. So now one of the founding members, half-German and half-Moroccan Hana Tefrati, who had arrived in Marrakech to find herself and began the collective with this in mind, sees the endeavor as a two-way street through which she gains, and the extended community does so as well. The riad, as Moroccans call a house, in which it is located has been a living, breathing organism that has grown as the organization has developed into a multifaceted addition to the city (Fig. 4.2). Even as it holds exhibitions, it is not the typical white cube gallery found in other parts of Marrakech, and, as such, others in the local art scene have been skeptical of it. Still, it has collaborated with institutions to respond to important developments in the city’s cultural landscape, including the Marrakech Biennial, and internationally, such as 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair. For the latter, Mint Works approached Queens Collective to produce a performance. Tefrati presented Desire Path at the Somerset House in London that has a message about the enduring strength of the queer community in Marrakech. The pulsating riad is a platform for diversity, community, and openness through its entire presence, rather than through any one aspect (Fig. 4.3). The organization as a whole is a work of art, perhaps like an installation, and has transformed over time. Its dynamic shape-shifting existence absorbs a variety of individuals and groups into its framework—this can be the case for installation art that often does not remain a fixed entity. It changes over time and location. Even as the projects at the riad have beginnings and endings, the most significant feature is fleeting. It is about the experiential nature of producing the undertaking, of having the chance

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Fig. 4.2  Queens collective space, Marrakech Medina, 2017. (Photograph by the author)

to express life’s little blisses, of seeing themselves and others they know speaking. The concrete remains are few and do not actually hold the same currency as the process of making them. Yet change does happen—not in any physical way, but in the mind and in the heart. Unlike the artwork examined in Chap. 3, the projects that Queens Collective organizes and facilitates might not fit comfortably into the definition of participatory, collaborative art that art historian Claire Bishop set up in her study. Its practices and projects are too functional, akin to outreach programs that aim to address particular needs in a community. The activities at Queens Collective might well be understood in this manner. The organizers offer the community resources, events, and means of sustenance. The group does provide goods for their neighbors. Yet, the tangible outcomes of its actions are few. Instead, the kinds of things that it does are ephemeral, and not geared for any particular result. In fact, as the organizers have stated, there is no grand project that they have produced. Rather, the simple existence of the entity is enough to sustain them. There may not be a disruption or provocation that Bishop finds

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Fig. 4.3  Queens collective space, Marrakech Medina, 2017. (Photograph by the author)

necessary in the labelling of something as art today; however, it is still a label that could be applied to the work of Queens Collective. Why is it important to be able to consider what the group enacts as art? The answer is twofold: expanding the potentials for artistic practices and viewing such initiatives as artistic expressions to shape new formulae for the relationship of art and life. Also in the medina of Marrakech, Le 18 is one of those grassroots arts organizations so important for artists in local contexts. Le 18 supports the growth of arts in the city and beyond through organizing exhibitions, programs, events, and residencies. Laila Hida is its founding director; she, like Queens Collective’s Hana Tefrati, began the initiative after time spent in Europe. The projects at Le 18 are quite literally fluid: Qanat is an ongoing initiative examining the ancient water systems of Marrakech from various points of view. A shared resource, water connects communities and symbolizes a fluid interdependence among individuals. A transdisciplinary, extended project like Qanat indicates the type of process-oriented work

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presented at Le 18. This studied approach to art and society resulted in ephemeral outcomes: in-depth discussions in the organization’s space; walks around the city; and linkages with the neighborhood.

4.3   Townhouse Gallery and Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo In Cairo, Townhouse Gallery has organized events that happen at the intersection of artistic practices and everyday life. As soon as Townhouse was established in 1998, it went quickly from an exhibition space to an entity sewn into the fabric of the neighborhood in which it was located as well as the community of artists and others that it supported. The organization relied on its neighbors as well. Until recently and probably still effectively true today, the infrastructure for the display of art and support of its production has not been strong in the MENASA region, at least not since the time of European colonialism. In a place like Cairo at the turn of this century, where the government did not favor experimental or political art, the Townhouse Gallery filled a void in the cultural scene. In the late 1990s, William Wells, a Canadian expatriate living in Cairo, was quite conscious of the need for a different kind of art space.4 He wanted to develop a non-profit gallery accommodating of a variety of practices and one that offered a home for socially engaged art that was cutting edge. This kind of art was beginning to be made in Cairo, but there were no institutions that supported such work. During his search for a space, Wells came across a suitable building in a back alley—one that was near, but away from the main thoroughfare. The structure was ideal for the kind of work that he wanted to exhibit; however, local artists felt that the location was not good for attracting audiences. They told him to find a place in the heart of center streets. And, in fact, at first, Wells had to recruit non-Egyptian artists to exhibit at the gallery because the local ones did not believe that anyone would attend a space tucked into a neighborhood.5 Wells felt intrigued by the back alley. Here, there was a community of its own making with a currency used to bypass any irregularities in the national economy. This self-contained society had its rules and regulations. There were all sorts of people working on the street: car mechanics, glass cutters, welders, and others. Wells thought that his gallery could add to the microcosm without “parachuting” in and imposing its ways of doing

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things. He believed that it could be a mutually beneficial relationship.6 With such a diversity of trades taking place in the area, the gallery and the artists working with them could find reliable sources for materials and services. This helped the neighborhood economically while the gallery benefited from the services rendered and the improved relationship and support system from the neighbors.7 A similar trajectory is found in other cities in North Africa and beyond. Broadly speaking, in many places around the world, it could be argued that experimental, grassroots arts organizations (or non-establishment institutions) have not had the luxury or aspiration to be an elitist platform for cutting-edge art. These spaces are deeply ingrained in the local communities from which they emerge and all of the sociocultural, political, and economic issues that accompany them. They rely on the good will of the area and interest of their neighbors to sustain operations at the organizations. Creating a harmonious environment in their locale appears to be crucial to their upkeep and existence. And, discursively, the communities often come to rely on the initiatives that the organizations offer. Now, with the existence of the category of collaborative art, participatory art, and socially engaged art, there is a name that could be given to the experiences created in these spaces that are encouraging and producing such a practice. Even while they are “organizations” or “entities,” they espouse an artist or a neighbor point of view, so one that is more relatable, familiar, and casual rather than official and hierarchical. At Townhouse, one initiative that weaved “neighbor” and “neighborhood” into a union is SAWA, an Arabic word literally meaning together. On Saturdays, the art organization opened its doors to anyone that wanted to make art. They supplied materials and space for such an undertaking. Artist-led workshops offered guidance in this endeavor. At first the project of social engagement through the arts was directed to the neediest communities in Cairo: refugees from Sudan. Soon other refugees joined them; first from Iraq and more recently from Syria. In a conference in the United Arab Emirates, the director informed that the Egyptian government disapproved of that kind of initiative and so the organization simply took “refugee” out of the title to keep the program afloat and thriving.8 It is now called SAWA Workshops for the Visual Arts. In the years following, the outreach expanded to newer audiences. People from various parts of Cairo, economic backgrounds, age groups, and ethnicities have participated in the program since it was established in 2006. Offered as a free event during which participants are guided in the

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making of art, topics like “surrealism” are explored in sessions that anyone can attend. As a result, the workshop has introduced the unlikeliest of people to the field. A former security guard discovered his talent and creativity. He is now an internationally exhibiting artist.9 While this success story might be unusual (although there have been others), it demonstrates the impact that the institution has made on the local community: its outreach wholly transformed the life of an individual. In turn, the gallery has reached an international level of notoriety due to the success of the program and individuals associated with it. The kind of influence that the organization could have did not go unnoticed by the authorities in Egypt. In December 2015, the government shut Townhouse down without citing provocation for the action and raid into the establishment.10 Apparently Townhouse Gallery set off bells and whistles, perhaps due to its popularity and ability to connect with its communities. The organization managed to reopen after almost a year in a new location. (It had temporarily opened in February 2016, but its building partially collapsed and then the government further demolished some of the structure.) The government imposed tight regulations and levied costly infrastructure requirements. Free speech, exchange of ideas, and an open society was what the SAWA Workshops for the Visual Arts embraced to attract thousands of people over the years; however, the exact things that drew attention to the project threatened its very existence. Unrestricted and open access to information was, as we all now know, a clear and present danger to the permanency of the oppressive regime in Egypt during the first decade of the twenty-first century. The authoritarians attempted to keep a check on dissenting voices, but eventually could not win in the technologically advanced world where communication is instantaneous and prevalent. The SAWA program contributed to an environment of free dialogue among the people of Cairo. According to Townhouse, “By providing a communal, un-politicized space where people—regardless of race, gender or class—can make art, the SAWA workshops break down obstacles of communication and understanding.”11 The foundation of the SAWA Workshops for Visual Arts was based within the ideology of the Townhouse Gallery: to serve as a platform for artists to have an open and accessible dialogue with audiences.12 For example, the gallery includes a library that is available for anyone to visit and take advantage of the diversity of books on the shelves—from ones that provide general information on art and history to those that are specifically about local and regional practices. The library is also an inviting

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space where visitors can sit for hours and freely utilize the Wi-Fi signals and have a cup of tea and meet with friends and colleagues (Fig.  4.4). Talking to each other, sharing stories, and engaging in the community rather than prioritizing individual lifestyles—these are the aspects of the program and institution that connect with the social dynamics of the local society. Evidence of the communal is found in the alley where Townhouse is located: chairs lined up together serve as a space for neighbors to sit and chat (Fig. 4.5). Existing together and exchanging ideas are critical features of both the organization and the society at large, as such the gallery offers an organic manner for art to function in the community, and the community can become engaged with the art. Without forcing a union, Townhouse Gallery has constructed a web to connect with a diversity of publics that seems to be lateral rather than top-­ down. The community is critical in the system that expands the interconnections between art and everyday life in order to benefit all participants. These dialogical avenues have the potential to open up channels for forging new tales that will be shared in the future.

Fig. 4.4  Library at Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, 2014. (Photograph by the author)

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Fig. 4.5  Alley outside of Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, 2014. (Photograph by the author)

In launching such actions, Townhouse features projects emerging out of an aesthetics based on social interaction rather than visual or conceptual forms. The organization does present exhibitions of art by local and international artists that include a wide variety of media. However, it could be argued that a more significant contribution to global contemporary art is the provocation and embrace of initiatives that prioritize social engagement. Townhouse addresses the community’s interests and requirements through a multifaceted platform that connects the arts with the society. The resulting “art” is expressed in shared exchange. Townhouse has held regional symposia to address topical issues in the art of the area. Building connections among likeminded colleagues in Cairo and beyond, the seminars have facilitated cross-dialogues to take place. According to its mission: “The institution collaborates with a range of artists and institutions in every aspect of its work, aiming to contribute to a comprehensive network in the local, regional and international arts community.”13 Building connections is a priority for the institution. With

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such linkages in the region, Townhouse promotes storytelling and collaboration as invaluable tools in the development of art. A smaller initiative in Cairo is Contemporary Image Collective (CiC) that is nonetheless a significant entity in the city for the arts. It is a cultural institution with a special interest in the overlap of visual culture, artistic practice and critical discourse. An artist run organization that often works collaboratively with the community, CiC has overlaps in its spirit as well as structure with Queens Collective in Marrakech. It is a grassroots organization located in what would have been a grand early twentieth century apartment building in the downtown area with an original elevator that seems precarious these days. The space is a haven for Cairo’s artists that seek out facilities for photography, including a dark room and digital lab. As the name suggests, Contemporary Image Collective is a repository of images, from offering support to photographers to create imagery through the provision of labs to the library (Fig. 4.6) that provides “an open, discursive space where artists and non-artists alike may engage with literature, multimedia and one another.”14 The entity shifts its shape

Fig. 4.6  Contemporary Image collective library, Cairo, 2017. (Photograph by the author)

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according to what is needed by the community. Although difficult to maintain the organization, its principles have found ways to continue its existence in order to support artists in Cairo and beyond. Clearly the interest of CiC and other organizations discussed thus far is to bring people together in order to encourage an exchange, whether it is ideas, energy, or actual things.

4.4   Ashkal Alwan and Temporary Art Platform, Beirut Ashkal Alwan in Beirut has offered a space for artists to be able to investigate a variety of approaches to making art. Christine Tohme is the founding director of the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, which is the full English name of Ashkal Alwan. It provides a physical facility for the presentation of art exhibitions, setting for panel discussions and other educational events, and residencies for artists from around the world (Fig. 4.7). In existence since 1993, Ashkal Alwan has been critical in the development of art practices in the city and regionally, including ones that are more socially engaged. It initiated as a collective of artists interested in supporting each other and an extended community of artists in the city, country, and beyond. Since this beginning point, more than two decades has passed, and several other arts organizations have been established in Beirut and around the extended Middle East, yet Ashkal Alwan maintains a prominent position. It guides the development of contemporary art practices in Lebanon and around the region. It is having a global impact primarily because of the presence of Tohme. She is instrumental in promoting the arts of the country and the extended region to audiences around the world. Tohme has been recognized as functioning in such a capacity. She was appointed curator of the 2017 edition of the Sharjah Biennial, an event that has reached an international stage. A more recent measure of her positioning in the art world is ArtReview’s Power 100 that assesses and determines a list of the most impactful figures in global art. It is not determined by a geographic area, but the art world as a whole. In 2018, she placed at 55, down from 50  in 2017. Her significance is evident through such a ranking.

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Fig. 4.7  Ashkal Alwan space, Beirut, 2018. (Photograph by the author)

Even as the founding director has achieved international recognition and accolades, and the institution that she founded has extended its reaches far beyond a niche audience, upon entering the space at Ashkal Alwan, there is a feeling of a grassroots, communal organization. There is no sense of a corporate institution, with a refined and pristine identity. It remains rough around the edges. Ashkal Alwan is located in an industrial area of Beirut and the space that it has is a former factory. This kind of a

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facility has been favored by commercial galleries as well as non-profit art ventures extensively in recent years. However, there is a tendency to convert the raw infrastructure into a clean environment. That is not the case for the Lebanese Association of Plastic Arts. Instead, it offers a relaxed set-up where conversations can be had, research can be completed, and art can be viewed (Fig. 4.8). The space appears to be open for all, approachable, and supportive in the display and study of art from the city, region, and globally. As such, Ashkal Alwan has perhaps toed the line between the global and local. It developed Home Works in 2002 as a forum for dialogue and exchange of art and ideas in the region. This has been a key feature at the organization that has fueled the discussion about art and related ideas, as well as led to its increased production in the region. It has been such an important forum for artists in Beirut and beyond to be able to address critical issues in contemporary art. The event has had a major impact on artistic practices across the region. In the first Home Works, professionals in the field were

Fig. 4.8  Ashkal Alwan space, Beirut, 2018. (Photograph by the author)

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invited to explore the notion of dislocation amidst the current geo-political and economic context at that time in the Arab region. Over the last two decades, many participants have shared art and ideas to increasing numbers of audiences. As the profile of art in the extended Middle East has become more prominent, many of the artists and curators have achieved global renown. And, as the event has gained more significance in the global contemporary arts calendar, well-known participants have arrived from various parts of the world. Artists and arts professionals that have presented ideas and art in Home Works in the different editions include Emily Jacir, Catherine David, Walid Raad, Naeem Mohaiemen, Okwui Enwezor, Janane Al-Ani, and many others. This forum has meant an increased communication among artists and arts professionals across varied lines, including national borders. As art historian Grant Kester has written, artists and groups globally have found benefit in the “facilitation of dialogue among diverse communities’ and that they are ‘context providers.’”15 Ashkal Alwan’s role has been vital in creating an arena for the interchange of ideas and practices. It is not simply for the display of art. Although Kester is referring more specifically to artist collectives, or a group of artists working together, an organization like Ashkal Alwan (as well as Queens Collective, Townhouse Gallery, and Contemporary Image Collective) might be understood as more process-­ based because it creates situations in which art can be developed and ideas can be pursued. With collaborative art praxis, artists are offering a similar set-up. As a think tank of sorts, it is not through just one approach, but rather a multi-pronged process to engage a community of artists and arts professionals, along with an extended public. Ashkal Alwan has published the notes for the gatherings, making available the concepts explored in the past. For Home Works II, the introduction makes clear quickly expanding participation: Originally conceived as a regional platform for cultural practices in the Arab world, the Home Works Forum has since shed its geographic/geopolitical focus to concentrate on kindred artistic and intellectual concerns that are operative all over the world.16

And what are these “kindred artistic and intellectual concerns?” A review of the proceedings suggests that these are linked to politics and society beyond the arts or to which the arts are connected. This interlacing is acknowledged in the introduction that limits the possibilities of truth.

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According to Tohme, “What the Home Works Forum allows for, rather, is a productive space in which political, social, economic, and cultural realities can be explored, reflected, and made manifest as visual and verbal articulations that occur with some consistency.”17 The event, as such, is a process much like how works of art are created in the contemporary moment. Throughout the world, many artists place more significance in the act of making, rather than any finished product. In recent artworks generally, various boundaries are dissolved. Lines are blurred between artistic practice and curating, between an artwork and an educational project. It seems that several practitioners and professionals are not interested in maintaining these potentially false splits. With such a shift in artistic practices, is it possible to reconsider the role of arts organizations? Also in Beirut, Temporary Art Platform (tap.) is an organization that attempts to find modes of erasing such borderlines. The Beirut-based initiative is the work of curator and writer Amanda Abi-Khalil. She has organized projects to bring arts to the community in a process-oriented manner. Abi-Khalil has collaborated with individuals and groups from the region and world. She has worked with artists, curators, intellectuals, government officers, and others. One of the main purposes of the organization’s activities is bringing together art and life, including the presentation of work out in public space and examining all of the implications of such undertakings. A project that took place in 2018 is Mathaf Mathaf/Chou Hayda. It involved negotiations with the prominent institution, National Museum of Beirut. A permanent display of ancient art is on view in its galleries, and Temporary Art Platform enlisted a contemporary artist to interact with the work and institution. Artist Annabel Daou examined the meaning of the national museum and its collections for the general public. Chou Hayda is a project produced in collaboration with groups of people, professional actors, and the artist. It is presented in an experiential manner—an audio tour through the galleries in which individuals (sometimes actors) express their views of the art, rather than it being an official voice from the institution or any other authority (Fig.  4.9). Through such an approach, the people have their voices heard and participate meaningfully in a major cultural institution in the country. Acting as agents, they claim the museum for themselves in this action and find methods to personalize the weight of the dynamic culture from history to make it significant for them today.

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Fig. 4.9  Chou Hayda, an audio guide project by Annabel Daou and the people of Beirut, with the voices of Julia Kassar and Georges Khabbaz. Commissioned by BeMA in collaboration with Temporary Art Platform, with the partnership of the Directorate General of Antiquities and the National Museum of Beirut. (Walking tour photograph by the author)

Tap. also organized a research project: “A few things you need to know when creating an art project in a public space in Lebanon.”18 This program was organized to provide insight into public art from legal and administrative viewpoints. For this project, tap. Gathered a roundtable of experts from the artistic, governmental, and legal sectors to discuss the challenges that an individual or group might face when attempting to put work out in the municipal realm. The initiative also included a field guide for such an endeavor. The goals of such projects are to blur the divide between art and everyday people. This is a critical aspect of collaborative, socially engaged, participatory art practices. By connecting with the public, art is momentarily integrated into the social fabric of a community, rather than always being

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something that is irrelevant to a majority of people. Through such initiatives that weave together creative ventures with community concerns, artists and arts professionals have attempted to have art viewed as a dynamic part of society. It is an activist dynamic that propels some artists to assume this role. Kester informs of as much: What unites this disparate network of artists and arts collectives is a series of provocative assumptions about the relationship between art and the broader social and political world and about the kinds of knowledge that aesthetic experience is capable of producing.19

Bishop expresses a similar notion: “artists devising social situations as a dematerialized, anti-market, politically engaged project to carry on the avant-garde call to make art more vital part of life.”20 And Bourriaud analyzes the situation in much the same manner: “the artist sets his sights more and more clearly on relations that his work will create among his public and on the invention of models of sociability.”21 Despite disagreements about what kind work is acceptable, the three prominent writers on collaborative art do agree that this kind of practice moves art to a place in which it connects with the society at large. This approach to analyzing artistic praxis has been considered for much of the twentieth century and, in particular, with such modes as happenings and performance art, but also with less obvious examples of objects produced within the movement of minimalism. The relationship of art and life or art and the audience/community has occupied many artists in the last 100 years. As already noted, in places around the MENASA, grassroots arts organizations are often tied to the community in a reciprocal relationship.

4.5   Darat al Funun and Emergent Organizations in Amman In Amman, artists and arts professionals from around the region are invited to take part in residencies, exhibit works of art, and give talks/ lectures. In providing spaces for such events, the longstanding Darat al Funun and other newer organizations in Amman have helped to shift the cultural landscape of the city. Support from the region has been crucial for the development of the arts in Jordan. Darat al Funun is actually the oldest organization discussed in the chapter. Established in 1988, it has been a mainstay in Amman by supporting

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artists and the exchange of ideas. Initiating with small events, the organization has developed into a major institution in the city over more than thirty years. It has sustained its communal outlook as it has grown into a multidimensional platform encompassing six buildings in the Jabal Weibdeh neighborhood and offering a wide variety of programs including exhibitions, talks, seminars, film screenings, residencies, concerts, a space for collaborative and socially engaged art, and publications. These initiatives have benefited artists and arts professionals in the city; however, their scope has reached well beyond national borders and have impacted the regional context of contemporary art. A significant program at the arts organization is The Lab that encourages innovation and experimentation in artistic practices. Its format is one that allows for varied projects to be presented in the exhibition space or programs to provide an educational context for the development of art. One such activity is the Summer Academy that takes place over the course of one month and is open to participants from Amman and around the world. In 2019, the motivation was to support artists as they might address significant issues prevalent in the Arab world. Participants came from several Arab-speaking nations and territories, including Egypt, Morocco, Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan. The ethos of the gathering was apparently to provide a well-rounded education to artists as they develop their paths as practitioners. The workshop leaders included an artist and art historians to form a support system made up of the practical and theoretical underpinnings of art. Through the multi-pronged approach, students explored both concepts like “home” and “postcolonialism,” as well as delving into the formal aspects of their practices. Revived in 2019, the Summer Academy had an earlier run. Initiated to commemorate Darat al Funun’s tenth anniversary, the educational platform was developed to provide artistic guidance for young artists from the region through meaningful interactions with an established artist. Syrian artist Marwan, who passed away in 2016 but continues to be one of the best-known practitioners in the region today, led the academy four times between 1999 and 2003. The students in the initial years of the program are now active participants in the art world in the Middle East, and some have become internationally renowned including Tammam Azzam who achieved notoriety for digital images in which he juxtaposed Western masterpieces with images of destroyed buildings in Syria. The structure of the academy appears to have been open and engaging, during

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which conversations were had and experimentations were encouraged. The younger practitioners had direct contact with the elder artist. The Summer Academy aimed to continue in 2020, at the time of writing, with its theme tied to social practice art. With the world in an isolated and socially distanced state of affairs due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the program appeared under threat; ironically, its topic is a celebration of people coming together to address the potential of art to be socially engaging, collaborative, and relevant. In selecting the theme, the educational project points to the significance of such practices for artists in the region. The open call for applicants stated as much: Setting them apart from their predecessors, artists today are operating more and more directly within the public sphere, often as part of grassroots initiatives, and expanding into both participatory and interdisciplinary projects, including architecture and environment.22

Aside from programming, the organization has provided a physical infrastructure to encourage interchange and dialogue. The extensive campus includes six historical buildings and outdoor areas that allow for the viewing and contemplation of art and related ideas (Fig. 4.10). The spaces provide locations for exhibitions, talks, film screenings, in addition to a library (Fig. 4.11) and places to sit and read by oneself or chat with others. These zones are critical for the support of artists and arts professionals and the development of innovative art. They are also available for anyone that wants to utilize the space. Makan Arts Space is a start-up organization that was perhaps possible in the wake of Darat al Funun, as well as the regional arts organizations described above. Townhouse Gallery and Ashkal Alwan are known around the territory and have inspired artists and arts professionals to create similar endeavors in their locales. These already existing initiatives opened up the possibility of undertaking such a venture. In 2003, artist Ola ElKhalidi began a small operation in an apartment in the Jabal Weibdah neighborhood of Amman, the area as Darat al Funun. Its mission was to offer a new space in the city as an alternative to the established and traditional institutions. Makan was to be a site for experimentation in contemporary art and social practice. In the time following its establishment, artists Samah Hijawi and Diala Khasawnih joined its directorship and the three ran the space collectively. As such, from its beginnings, it was a collective of artists rather than a hierarchically organized institution. Its

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Fig. 4.10  Outdoor space, Darat al Funun, Amman, May 2017. (Photograph by the author)

flexible structure helped to allow for dynamic types of projects, exhibitions, and involvement of the arts community at large. Works of art that would not have been acceptable in other spaces were welcome at Makan. Artist Raed Ibrahim was able to display a deeply personal work that explored societally taboo issues.23 He limited the invited audience to friends; however, having a space to create such a project was invaluable to his artistic development. Makan, Darat al Funun mentioned above, and some of the newer spaces available in Amman now provide such venues for hanging out and having dialogues. As already noted, this type of environment is critical in the exchange of ideas and opinions, often leading to the creation of new and unique works of art. The innovative and experimental spirit of Makan’s mission is found in projects that went beyond the physical space of the institution or

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Fig. 4.11  Library, Darat al Funun, Amman, May 2017. (Photograph by the author)

transformed it. One project occupied various parts of the city of Amman: “The Utopian Airport Lounge: An Exhibition of Public Art Projects.” Presented in 2010, the exhibition included the work of local and international artists that were invited to engage with the city. The premise offered this metropolis as a point of transition in the manner of an airport lounge, albeit an ideal one.24 Indeed, the population of Amman is one that is in transition, arriving from outside of the country or departing for another one. A small nation, it hosts a large number of refugees from the surrounding countries and territories. It is perhaps sheltering the most refugees in the world. Meanwhile, many native Jordanians have left for other parts of the world.25 The curator included artists that she believed would be able to develop projects that could engage audiences in varied

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urban sites. As a whole, the exhibition sought to address what are our beliefs and preconceptions about utopia. Another project that attempted to open the boundaries between the institution and its public is “Diwan Makan.”26 This simple installation offered an opportunity to share stories through conversations, dialogues, and debates that could result in a variety of inspirational ideas, chances for collaboration, and development of new initiatives. In the gallery space, an Arabic-style living room was created. Two artists—Omar Al Zobi and Samah Hijawi—designed the majlis and its furnishings. In 2015, Makan gave up a physical space and became less active. Its founders continue to be involved in the arts community in Jordan; however, they no longer live there. Those that were involved with this vibrant organization carry forth with the same ethos as Makan. They have started new art spaces or become involved in the latest initiatives in the expanding art world of the city. One such “institution” is the Spring Sessions. This program took over the physical space Makan once occupied. The mission of the seasonal educational initiative is to foster a collaborative forum for the exchange of ideas.27 Taking place every spring, the program offers workshops and classes over the course of 100 days. During this time, both emerging and established artists from Jordan and abroad come together to discuss, deliberate, and offer thoughts on art. The sessions include workshops that are experimental and experiential, rather than a typical educational encounter. Some organizers formulated a learning environment that involved the mind and body, from mental activities like discussions and readings to physical ones like walking and drinking tea.28 One such seminar was entitled, “Play is the gun!”29 Taking a cue from the early education philosophy that encourages play as a tool to learn, the workshop presented ways to engage participants physically to encourage mental development. This included imagining Amman as a giant playground and enacting childlike curiosity. By re-looking at one’s surroundings with naive eyes, the workshop provoked a fresh connection with the city. Another workshop was entitled “Åbäke.”30 It explored the divide that has come to be in our lives in which eight hours are dedicated to work, eight hours to leisure, and eight hours to sleep. To do so, the organizers requested the participants to react to their situations in their everyday lives. The purpose was to address the question: “What the hell is the difference between art and life?”31

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For 2018, Spring Sessions was a long walk over the course of weeks and moving from Jordan to Egypt during which time the participants were to determine what kind of art to produce and how to contribute it to the journey. In creating a platform for such workshops, the Spring Sessions encourages an active and open dialogue and experience for the development of artistic practices that are cutting-edge, innovative, and social. Within such a dynamic environment, collaborations could be pursued in which artists and arts professionals might find ways to work collectively rather than individually and connect with the socio-political reality where they live and work. Perhaps due to the environment created in Amman from such workshops and institutions, as well as the fact that political concerns are on the top of the minds of most residents that have landed in the city escaping from conflicts taking place in the region, new experimental organizations have opened or are currently being planned. Jadal for Knowledge and Culture is one such space that has inserted itself into the Jabal Weibdah neighborhood where Darat al Funun was established, Makan used to exist, the Spring Sessions currently takes place, and several other art institutions are situated. The founder and director is Palestinian and emerges from a political science background.32 Jadal is a multi-function space that includes a café, gallery, classrooms, and discussion room (Fig. 4.12). Storytelling and communal lifestyles are integral to the institution. Here, the organization offered children in the neighborhood an outlet for learning instead of hanging out in the streets. These newly arrived Palestinian families, perhaps in transition, did not have many options for occupying their children in positive ways. Curious, the new young residents entered the space of Jadal to see what is going on inside. After gaining the trust of the families, Jadal offered classes to the children and involved their mothers and fathers in the organization. It became a symbiotic relationship in which Jadal provided a need for its neighbors and gained an audience for its programs. The situation in Amman is unique and, seemingly, the missions of and programs at Darat al Funun, Jadal, Spring Sessions, and Makan have reflected the city’s population as a transitory one. The flexible organizational structures are suitable for this as well. In varied ways, each of these organizations addresses the connection between artistic praxis and everyday life. The conventional lines between these cultural spaces are erased. Through developing dynamic sites that connect with the

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Fig. 4.12  Café, Jadal for Knowledge and Culture, Amman, May 2017. (Photograph by the author)

communities beyond their walls, the four organizations have fostered projects that highlight social interactions. Indeed, it is the relations being built that are more significant than any one project. Rather, it is a holistic approach that connects art and life as one.

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4.6   Vasl Artists’ Association and T2F (The Second Floor), Karachi Further east, in Karachi, the organization Vasl Artists’ Association has found methods to promote and nurture the arts community in the city and the rest of nation, as well as extending artistic expressions to those beyond the realm of art. It has been in existence since 2001 and able to sustain operations for many years even as similar ventures have stopped providing services. The artists and other individuals involved with the group have initiated a variety of means to keep its doors open. Its greatest strength is perhaps through acting as a resource center for the arts in Pakistan. When it began, there were limited avenues for practitioners to find out about opportunities within and outside of the country. Vasl was established with such a task in mind. It wanted to bring individuals involved in the arts together to support artistic production in Pakistan. According to its mission, “The word Vasl in both Urdu and Persian poetry has rich associations, suggesting a meeting with a beloved that is simultaneously physical and transcendental.”33 The romantic notion underlies the foundation of the organization to stimulate creativity, especially in the encouragement of experimental art. Artist networks are so critical to fostering new approaches to making art, especially in locations where there is little infrastructure to aid in its development. Vasl is part of the larger international group Triangle Arts that is based in the United Kingdom and includes a partnership of associations from around the world. As part of the network, Vasl extends its reach to artists, arts professionals, and institutions beyond Pakistan. As such, it provides a locus of information on Pakistan for those outside of the country through becoming a recognized entity as a source to link with artists. Vasl maintains a list of art institutions in the nation, as well as information on artists associated with the organization. If a curator from London, for example, wants to get connected to young Pakistani artists, he/she would likely contact Vasl as one potential avenue for gathering required data. This could be problematic since the organization would tell about artists in its knowledge and circle. Still, its aim is to be inclusive of practitioners from around Pakistan to facilitate their careers and aid in the expansion of artistic ventures throughout the nation. For those within Pakistan, the aim of the organization is to contribute a range of prospects to artists for growing their bodies of work, from workshops to exhibitions to residencies. The latter offering is perhaps the

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most significant aspect of Vasl’s five-pronged approach to providing necessary services for the community of artists and arts professional around the country. In particular, its Taaza Tareen (extremely fresh) residency is geared to recent graduates from art school who are on the cusp of initiating their practices. The young artists are offered a space to live and work, and subsequently share their art with established individuals in the local art scene (Fig. 4.13). Through this outreach program, Vasl provides a support system for those just entering the professional realm. In this critical stage, graduates require guidance about how they can begin in the vocation of art. The organization has facilitated the careers of over 50 artists. In addition to the residency, research grants have been available to past participants of the Taaza Tareen that are selected by a panel of art professionals. Through such means, artists can potentially experiment with forms, materials, and concepts to develop art that is innovative. The effects of such an infrastructure can include the blossoming of the arts in the nation because artists were supported when they needed it the most in a variety of ways and were free to create dynamic works. Without

Fig. 4.13  Vasl Artists’ Association space, Karachi. (Photograph from Vasl Artists’ Association website)

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such a system, there would be limited avenues outside of art schools for the progressive evolution of an individual practice. Vasl offers a chance to continue the learning process so necessary in experimental art. The organization has an apartment in Karachi where the residencies can take place, as well as workshops and educational programs to be held (Fig.  4.14). Having a space where individuals can gather is critical to artistic development, as already pointed out in the descriptions of the varied art worlds across the MENASA. These sites allow for the exchange and discussion of topics ranging from simple to complex, from mundane to extraordinary or risqué. For this to be allowed in the conservative society in Pakistan is liberating. It is a safe zone within a potentially hostile environment. The intermediary quality of such sites found in Pakistan and across the region is a key factor for the possibilities that they offer to the arts and society. The prospect of such a liminal space for the incubation of concepts and ideas for artworks is enacted through it being in-between the everyday world and the art academy. Here, there is more freedom to express and experiment, to shock and shake up the fundamentals of what

Fig. 4.14  Vasl Artists’ Association space, Karachi. (Photograph from Vasl Artists’ Association website)

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we think we know. For some, this provocation is necessary in artistic expression. It is a role of the artist, according to the art critic Claire Bishop. Yet, to be cautious, the Vasl Artists’ Association is not necessarily attempting to create a provocative situation, but instead it is providing the means for artists to work, discuss, debate, present, and enact; as such the organization is offering services to a community of practitioners. An organization in Karachi that might espouse provocation is T2F (The Second Floor). The vision of the coffeehouse/cultural space is: “To establish and disseminate sustainable models of coexistence through safe spaces for inclusive discourse and the transmission and evolution of culture.”34 In 2007, the organization was founded by designer and activist Sabeen Mehmood who paid the price for creating a place for open dialogue. In 2015, she was the victim of a targeted shooting while driving after an event at the café that proved to be too provocative of a topic. It discussed the disappearance of nationalists in the province of Balochistan, Pakistan.35 Over the last decade, as the movement for independence has grown, thousands of individuals have been detained and never heard from again, some say at the hands of the national government. Despite receiving death threats, Mehmood carried on with the event because that was the ethos of the organization she founded. In Mehmood’s vision, T2F should be a space for the community to be able to say things they might not in other public settings; they can sing or dance openly; they are invited to take part in discourse; they can present art that might not be accepted elsewhere. The space was to be inviting and invigorating with its availability of books and areas to sit and relax and chat (Fig.  4.15). The café/cultural space continues despite Mehmood’s untimely demise and perhaps because of that very reason. Her legacy continues as events are maintained and the space continues to feed the community with actual food as well as ideas.

4.7   Conclusion Townhouse and Ashkal Alwan are two organizations that have achieved a globally recognized status with support from international sources; yet, both remain tied to the local community. What are the implications of such a trajectory that might move an institution from local to global and also from the periphery to the center? The infrastructure that they have is very different to the one found in the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates discussed in Chap. 3. The latter is an organization

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Fig. 4.15  T2F (The Second Floor), Karachi. (Photography from T2F’s website)

that is arguably quite radical and experimental in its mission despite the fact that the royal family operates it. Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, daughter of Sharjah’s ruler, is well versed in contemporary art debates and has not shied away from provocative topics in the programming at the foundation. That aspect, in tandem with the solid support it receives from the government has helped to transform it into a force in global contemporary art. This cultural foray shapes an image of the country as progressive and modern. By creating a forum for the presentation of contemporary art, particularly from the MENASA region, through the staging of global art fairs and biennials, the United Arab Emirates has promoted contemporary art and its own brand image.36 This is especially helpful when there have been many concerns and debates about the status of human rights in the United Arab Emirates, with artists and scholars being denied entry because of the topic of their research in the working conditions of the labor class. Varied developments in the country have been questioned by the global contemporary art world, thereby raising a debate about the support and exhibitions of art there. Lebanese artist Walid Raad was banned from

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entry into the United Arab Emirates in 2015. He arrived at the airport; however, he never left it until he was put back on to a flight departing out of the country due to “security reasons.” Other members of the group Gulf Labor Artist Association, New York University Professor Andrew Ross and artist Ashok Sukumaran were also denied boarding on a flight bound for Abu Dhabi and visa for Sharjah, respectively. This targeted action was related more to the threat against the exposing of practices at the construction sites in the United Arab Emirates, rather than any perceived security threat according to Sukumaran.37 In 2011, the existing director of the Sharjah Art Foundation was dismissed and an artwork was removed due to concerns about offending the community in the nation. There was outcry when these actions took place. Even as these have ensued, there is an acceptance of censorship on different levels in the arts perhaps because of the monetary support that the government provides.38 Sharjah Art Foundation as a government entity commissions artists to produce cutting-edge works that they might not have been able to produce otherwise. Townhouse Gallery is at the other end of the spectrum: a low-budget, grassroots organization that the government has rebuked. It has found ways around official attempts to stifle projects at the organization, rather than taking any actions to censor the work of artists. Ashkal Alwan also maintains its community-based quality, even as it grows and receives money from international sources like Ford Foundation. Even with such diversity, the three manage to find common ground in offering platforms to connect people and arts institutions. Sharjah Art Foundation, like Ashkal Alwan and Townhouse Gallery, encourages experimental approaches to making art, specifically ones that involve the community. The three organizations have been linked together in the twenty-first century and have collaborated on projects. Townhouse Gallery is an international partner of Ashkal Alwan. One potentially problematic quality shared among these three organizations is that they wield a tremendous amount of power in shaping the field of contemporary art in the region. Their particular approach to the production and displays of art has undeniable impact on the kinds of work made and circulated in  local and international contexts. The stamp of approval from them could potentially result in the growth of an artist’s career or inclusion in an international exhibition. As such, artists might be tempted to create works that could be acceptable to the organizations in order to vie for an opportunity to exhibit work or partake in some other

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opportunity. This underlying influence might compel a false shift in practices. Perhaps more artists are interested in socially engaged art because of the work of these three organizations. Or viewed in another manner, Sharjah Art Foundation, Townhouse Gallery, and Ashkal Alwan have made this praxis possible in the MENASA by supporting artists that utilize it through funding, workshops, talks, and exhibitions. Despite the authority of these organizations now, it is important to acknowledge that they once were fighting the authoritative voices in their local contexts. As already described in the chapter, Townhouse Gallery and Ashkal Alwan continue to operate as grassroots spaces despite increased notoriety and funding. Even the ruling family’s Sharjah Art Foundation had to reshape the existing conceptualization of artistic practices in the nation and region to more unconventional and experimental modes. The support of cutting-edge art offered artists room to create such work. And, even as artists and others have questioned and challenged actions taken by the foundation, in particular during the Sharjah Biennial in 2011, it has maintained the approval and interest of significant players in the field. Artists continue to want to exhibit there; curators and other arts professionals seek to develop projects and assume leadership positions at the foundation. Sharjah Art Foundation has undeniably provided extensive support to artists across the region despite dubious activities that have taken place at the institution and in the country. So, there is complexity in the relationships that individuals have with the organization and the expectations that they have of it. What is the answer to a problem like the Sharjah Art Foundation? Perhaps an answer has already been found because since the distressing outcome of the 2011 Biennial, such a controversy has not played out again at the institution that has repeatedly attempted to connect with the community both in Sharjah and its local residents as well as with artists and arts professionals throughout the region and world. The problems might now be kept under cover, or the censorship might not be obvious any longer and, as such, the institution continues to be praised for its programming and contribution to contemporary art in the region. As a member of the royal family and apparently a consummate art professional, Sheikha Hoor Al Qassimi has perhaps forged a path to be able to negotiate this tricky situation in order to maintain operations at the Sharjah Art Foundation. Indeed, all of the groups discussed in the chapter have to balance varied concerns in order to be able to be a vital part of an arts infrastructure that contributes to the development of contemporary art.

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Collectively, the organizations in the MENASA form connections with the local and regional individuals and entities to produce experiential situations, which might be considered performative works of art that uncover and examine topical and historical social and political conditions in nuanced manners. It appears that this kind of structure and circumstances allow and encourage artists to tackle the issues affecting the populations of their societies. Perhaps the types of approaches described in the essay are the most effective ways of doing so. As such, artists and arts organizations provide a service to the community. With such engaging activities, Vasl Artists’ Association and T2F in Karachi, along with the dynamic platform of Marrakech’s Queens Collective and Le 18, the current and former grassroots organizations in Amman, Beirut’s well-developed art world of smaller and larger institutions, and Cairo’s eclectic Townhouse Gallery and Contemporary Image Collective have offered ways to bring together art and life and offer art beyond conventional aesthetics, support the telling of anecdotes, and pursue methods to engage and collaborate with the public. They are just a few of the many institutions in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia that have found ways to address these very significant topics; ones that are arguably more critical to investigate in parts of the world beyond the West. In these areas that struggle with colonial legacy and the center/ periphery divide that shapes contemporary geopolitics, smaller arts organizations are often embedded in the communities where they exist (ones that prioritize the collective over the individual and encourage the sharing of stories) and thereby suggesting that they do need to address current socio-political concerns of the locale with its residents. The library/café/classroom/living room seems to be an important locus for such interactions. The institutions included in the essay feature this kind of a space where dialogues can take place. It is where the unique projects presented at the organizations fomented. For example, Queens Collective in Marrakech offers its space as a gathering place for the neighborhood. The workshop spaces at Townhouse Gallery in Cairo allowed for refugees to find a home, at least temporarily. At Darat al Funun, there are both indoor and outdoor areas welcoming of artists and the general public, while at Makan (meaning home), the living room offered a blank slate for the genesis of ideas. The Spring Sessions took over the latter’s space. And at Jadal for Knowledge and Culture in Amman, the café is an inviting place for those in the neighborhood and beyond. Karachi’s Vasl Artists Collective and T2F have physical spaces where artists

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have been able to present the most experimental and potentially controversial works in an assuredly safe location within a society that does not always support free expression. In these seemingly innocuous sites, tremendous creativity and change brewed and continue to do so. Even as these sites are significant, especially on the local level, such practices might not be deemed “artistic.” They would be understood as existing on the level of the “social.” However, is it possible to propose these organizations as a whole as works of art? All of what they accomplish feeds into the infrastructure of artistic practices, whether it is in a very concrete manner through providing a space, or on a much more ephemeral level by nurturing dialogue, exchange, and relationships. Given the situations in many parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia where the establishment does not offer such experiences to encourage the most dynamic and challenging art and might actively discourage it, the organizations described here fill a void through tangible and ethereal aesthetic expressions. They do so in manners that parallel the social relations found in the societies where they exist—communal rather than individual—and, as such, connect together art and life. The relational aesthetics of Bourriaud can perhaps apply to the organizations addressed in the essay because the line between the role of the artist and institution often gets blurred when considering participatory works of art. Often involving several individuals and groups, artworks that are socially engaged edge into the territory that is typically the realm of organizations. And in the case of the collectives that are embedded within the community, they are often engaged in a dialogical process to connect people and art. Conversation, talking, and interaction are elements of a social aesthetic that these organizations promote. Similar expression is found in the artworks discussed in Chap. 3. Indeed, as discussed in the same chapter, artists that have developed socially engaged, collaborative projects have formulated relational situations in which people interact with each other or aspects of the work over the course of time. Social, relational aesthetics offer conviviality as a manner to investigate sociopolitical dynamics in a given community or across varied parts of the world. Through such a welcoming manner, audiences are eased into issues of concern to the artist, group, and/or community through encouraging an engagement in the project. In this action, a union forms between artists and/or arts professionals and the world around them.

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Notes 1. Vasl Artists’ Association, “About,” accessed August 8, 2017, http://vaslart.org/about-vasl/. 2. Hanan Toukan, “On Being ‘The Other’ In Post-Civil War Lebanon,” Ibraaz: CONTEMPORARY VISUAL CULTURE IN NORTH AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST, May 8, 2013, https://www.ibraaz.org/ essays/63#_ftn5. Aid and the Politics of Art in Processes of Contemporary Cultural Production. 3. Queens Collective, “About,” accessed December 26, 2017, https://www. queenscollective.org/artistryasactivism. 4. “William Wells,” filmed on March 12, 2016 at March Meeting 2016, Sharjah Art Foundation, http://sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/ people/wells-william. 5. Glen Lowry, “Conversations with Contemporary Artists: Art and the Changing Middle East: Negar Azimi and William Wells,” recorded in 2011 at Museum of Modern Art, New York, http://www.moma.org/explore/ multimedia/audios/292/3286. 6. Wells, 2016, op. cit. 7. Negar Azimi, “Townhouse Gallery. Art Scene Egypt,” Nafas Art Magazine, 2004, http://u-in-u.com/nafas/articles/2004/townhouse-gallery/. 8. Wells, 2016, op. cit. 9. Maria Golia, “Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery: Social Transformation through Art,” Middle East Institute, April 27, 2015, http://www.mei.edu/ content/at/cairo’s-townhouse-gallery-social-transformation-through-art. 10. Alyssa Buffenstein, “Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery Reopens in New Location,” Artnet, November 11, 2016, https://news.artnet.com/artworld/townhouse-gallery-reopens-cairo-protests-742784, accessed August 8, 2017. 11. Townhouse Gallery, “SAWA,” accessed August 8, 2017, http://www.thetownhousegallery.com/2014/06/21/sawa-exhibition-photophilia/. 12. Townhouse Gallery, “History,” accessed August 8, 2017, http://www. thetownhousegallery.com/about/history/. 13. Ibid. 14. Contemporary Image Collective, “Library,” accessed January 2018, http://www.ciccairo.com/library.html. 15. Grant Kester, The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context (Duke University Press, 2011), 1. 16. Christine Tohme, “Introduction,” Home Works II (Lebanon: Ashkal Alwan, 2002), np. 17. Ibid.

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18. Temporary Art Platform, “A few things you need to know when creating an art project in a public space in Lebanon,” accessed December 2018, http://85.90.245.224/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/A-Few-ThingsYou-Need-to-Know-When-Creating-an-Art-Project-in-a-Public-Space-inLebanon.pdf. 19. Kester, op. cit., 9. 20. Bishop, op. cit., 13. 21. Bourriaud, op. cit., 27. 22. Darat al Funun, “The Darat al Funun 2020 Summer Academy,” accessed May 19, 2020, http://daratalfunun.org/?event=darat-al-funun-2020summer-academy. 23. Raed Ibrahim, Interview with the author, May 2017. 24. Makan Art Space, “The Utopian Airport Lounge: An Exhibition of Public Art Projects,” December 5–26, 2010, accessed August 6, 2017, http:// www.makanhouse.net/event/utopian-airport-lounge-exhibitionpublic-art-projects. 25. “RE-DIRECTING: EAST Conversation # 11: Ola El-Khalidi,” filmed July 16, 2015 at Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw, Poland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXcJlQOqsg0. 26. Makan Art Space, “Diwan Makan,” June 18, 2014, http://www.makanhouse.net/event/diwan-makan. 27. The Spring Sessions, “About,” accessed May 25, 2017, https://thespringsessions.com/about/. 28. The Spring Sessions, “Curriculum,” accessed May 25, 2017, https:// thespringsessions.com/curriculum-‫املهناج‬/. 29. Ibid. 30. The Spring Sessions, “2015 Curriculum,” accessed May 25, 2017, https:// thespringsessions.com/curriculum-2015-/‫املهناج‬curriculum-‫املهناج‬/. 31. Ibid. 32. Interview with director at Jadal for Knowledge and Culture, May 28, 2017. 33. Vasl Artists’ Association, “About,” op. cit. 34. The Second Floor, “Our Vision,” https://www.t2f.com.pk/our-vision/. 35. Lois Parshley, “The Life and Death of Sabeen Mahmud,” The New Yorker, April 28, 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-lifeand-death-of-sabeen-mahmud. 36. For a full discussion the topic, please see: Atteqa Ali, “The Rise of Art Institutions in the United Arab Emirates and its Impact on Contemporary Art in the Extended MENASA Region” in Karen Exell and Sarina Wakefield, Eds., Museums in Arabia: Transnational Practices and Regional Processes (London: Routledge, 2016).

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37. Hrag Vartanian, “Artist Walid Raad Denied Entry into UAE, Becoming Third Gulf Labor Member Turned Away,” Hyperallergic, May 14, 2015, https://hyperallergic.com/207176/artist-walid-raad-denied-entry-intouae-becoming-third-gulf-labor-member-turned-away/. 38. Hanan Toukan, “Boat Rocking in the Art Islands: Politics, Plots and Dismissals in Sharjah’s Tenth Biennial,” May 2, 2011, https://www. jadaliyya.com/Details/23938/Boat-Rocking-in-the-Art-IslandsPolitics-Plots-and-Dismissals-in-Sharjah%60s-Tenth-Biennial.

References The Spring Sessions. “2015 Curriculum.” Accessed May 25, 2017a. https:// thespringsessions.com/curriculum-2015-/‫املهناج‬curriculum-‫املهناج‬/. Temporary Art Platform. “A few things you need to know when creating an art project in a public space in Lebanon.” Accessed December 14, 2018. http://85.90.245.224/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/A-Few-Things-YouNeed-to-Know-When-Creating-an-Art-Project-in-a-Public-Space-inLebanon.pdf. The Spring Sessions. “About.” Accessed May 25, 2017b. https://thespringsessions. com/about/. Vasl Artists’ Association. “About.” Accessed March 15, 2019. http://vaslart.org/ about-vasl/. Azimi, Negar. “Townhouse Gallery. Art Scene Egypt.” Nafas Art Magazine, 2004. http://u-in-u.com/nafas/articles/2004/townhouse-gallery/, accessed August 8, 2017. Buffenstein, Alyssa. “Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery Reopens in New Location.” Artnet, November 11, 2016. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/ townhouse-gallery-reopens-cairo-protests-742784. Darat al Funun. “The Darat al Funun 2020 Summer Academy,” accessed May 19, 2020. http://daratalfunun.org/?event=darat-al-funun-2020-summeracademy. Golia, Maria. “Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery: Social Transformation through Art.” Middle East Institute, April 27, 2015. http://www.mei.edu/content/at/ cairo’s-townhouse-gallery-social-transformation-through-art, retrieved August 6, 2017. Kester, Grant. The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context. Duke University Press, 2011. Lowry, Glen. “Conversations with Contemporary Artists: Art and the Changing Middle East: Negar Azimi and William Wells,” Recorded 2011 at Museum of Modern Art, New  York. Audio, 1:46:34. http://www.moma.org/explore/ multimedia/audios/292/3286.

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Makan Art Space. “Diwan Makan.” June 18, 2014, http://www.makanhouse. net/event/diwan-makan. Makan Art Space. “The Utopian Airport Lounge: An Exhibition of Public Art Projects,” December 5–December 26, 2010. http://www.makanhouse.net/ event/utopian-airport-lounge-exhibition-public-art-projects. Mikdadi, Salwa. “Art and the Arab Citizen: Raising Public Consciousness through the Arts.” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Accessed June 2015. https:// www.guggenheim.org/blogs/map/ar t-and-the-arab-citizen-raisingpublic-consciousness-through-the-arts. Parshley, Lois. “The Life and Death of Sabeen Mahmud,” The New Yorker, April 28, 2015. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-life-and-death-ofsabeen-mahmud. “RE-DIRECTING: EAST Conversation # 11: Ola El-Khalidi.” Filmed July 16, 2015 at Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw, Poland. Video, 1:04:55. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXcJlQOqsg0. The Second Floor, n.d. “Our Vision,” https://www.t2f.com.pk/our-vision/. The Spring Sessions. n.d. “Curriculum.” Accessed May 25, 2017. https:// thespringsessions.com/curriculum-‫املهناج‬/. Tohme, Christine. “Introduction.” Home Works II. Lebanon: Ashkal Alwan, 2002. Toukan, Hanan. “Boat Rocking in the Art Islands: Politics, Plots and Dismissals in Sharjah’s Tenth Biennial,” Jadaliyya, May 2, 2011, https://www.jadaliyya. com/Details/23938/Boat-Rocking-in-the-Ar t-Islands-Politics,Plots-and-Dismissals-in-Sharjah%60s-Tenth-Biennial. Townhouse Gallery. “History.” Accessed August 8, 2017a. http://www. thetownhousegallery.com/about/history/. Townhouse Gallery. “SAWA.” Accessed August 8, 2017b. http://www. thetownhousegallery.com/2014/06/21/sawa-exhibition-photophilia/. “William Wells.” Filmed March 12, 2016 at March Meeting 2016, Sharjah Art Foundation. Video, 23:04. http://sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/ people/wells-william.

CHAPTER 5

What Is It Good For: War, Social Engagement, and Contemporary Art Experiments

5.1   Introduction Turmoil might be an appropriate term to capture everyday life in parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and, South Asia given historical political events and social dynamics that have an ongoing effect on the region’s stability. Western mainstream media has ensured that such volatility is highlighted again and again to the loss of any positive or uplifting news that might emerge from the region. The late scholar Edward Said had exhaustively documented and analyzed in his book-length study the kind of reporting provided of the Muslim-majority territory and situations involving Muslims. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World exposed the biases of news stories and other representations, particularly in the selection of newsworthy topics like terrorism. The book was written in 1981; however, it continues to be relevant in how current events are portrayed and presented in the news. In fact, the type of media coverage of such a topic has heightened in the post-9/11 period. It has become a trope of contemporary times that when a mass killing takes place, the authorities wait to declare it an act of terrorism until the assailant is confirmed to be a radicalized Muslim. In the United States, where mass shootings have become commonplace events, if a white person commits the act, then he is typically called a shooter rather than a terrorist in the case of a Muslim. There are official explanations given for such discrepancies, but the effect on the © The Author(s) 2020 A. Ali, Collaborative Praxis and Contemporary Art Experiments in the MENASA Region, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47925-1_5

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popular imagination has led to a demonization of a community. Muslim-­ Americans, for example, are viewed suspiciously through a lens of predetermined beliefs such as the killer belonging to a terrorist group or declaring a manifesto in social media or some other platform. The scholar Stephen Sheehi offers Islamophobia in the United States as an insidious agenda infiltrating mainstream society, and not simply an extreme conservative phenomenon.1 He posits it as an ideologically motivated activation of racism that parallels the institutionalized racism against different groups in the United States, including Latinos and African Americans. At the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, the systemic racism in American society was displayed clearly in the murderous death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a white police officer. Captured on video, the aggressive force of the police could not be denied or excused. The ongoing abuse mounted by the system on African Americans had to be addressed now. Perhaps an unpacking of the historical issues leading to such an event could occur again; this time in a manner to analyze the complexity of situation in order to dismantle. If such a process begins to take place, then what might be the effect for Muslims in America that have been stigmatized. Up until the present time, in the context of the post-Cold War era, Muslims and Islam have replaced Communism as the next big threat. The vilification of a religious community justifies actions taken against its members and the Islamic world. This historical moment has witnessed the rise of American and European led wars and conflicts that have taken place in the MENASA, as well as proxy battles fought upon this soil. The growing unease in the region has led to subsequent campaigns, driving people from their homes to seek refuge in other parts of the world. In the United States and Europe, essentially the West, Muslims have felt a sense of unease as the community has come to be associated with acts of terrorism. The growing culpability of Muslims has been heightened in the twenty-­ first century in part because of their association with any terrorist attack that happens globally, but more specifically with the events of 9/11. The resulting impact has been felt by ordinary adherents of the religion globally. It might now sound cliché; however, 9/11 would change things forever. Before this point, Muslim communities were already viewed in an uncertain manner and questionable; after such a massive strike, the hostile intentions of Muslims could no longer be questioned or denied, or so it appeared from the kinds of reactions that began to take place in the initial wake of 9/11 from hate crimes happening to individuals to attacks of

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mosques to more covert operations enacted by the US government.2 Still, in the days following the coordinated hits on US soil—something that had not occurred before this point on such a scale—the American president spoke about Islam as a peaceful religion. The effort to normalize the religion and religious community and co-opt it into mainstream society, as Sheehi has pointed out, signaled that it was and should continue to be viewed as essentially different from “us” because it is predicated on the stereotype in the United States that posits Muslims as the “other.” It is implicit racism. In line with such a point of view, the government ordered a large-scale operation to arrest and detain suspicious individuals that could have knowledge of the attacks. More than seven hundred people were arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now called Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE). The selection of individuals by the government seemed dubious. Artists Chitra Ganesh and Mariam Ghani collaborated together with the community to investigate the detentions through an ongoing project that speaks directly to the environment of uncertainty and tension that has arisen in the United States. It is entitled Index of the Disappeared. As could be ascertained by the government documents that they began to collect and archive, individuals, mostly men, were taken from their homes primarily because they were Muslims under extenuating circumstances, and not because they were directly or even indirectly linked to terrorist activities, organizations, or associations. The most extreme infraction that could be cited were low-level immigration violations like overstaying a visa period, something common and usually not marked for arrest. After being detained, they were questioned again and again about terrorist groups and events, about which these individuals knew nothing. They were simply easy targets: immigrants. Again, Sheehi discusses such a phenomenon in which immigrants become scapegoats in the United States, whether it is Mexicans or Muslims.3 In both cases, the othering is critical to building a narrative in which the immigrant’s culture is not progressive and developed. The initiative opens up about the experiences of immigrants from the extended Middle East in the period after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York. As a number of scholars have analyzed, they have become culprits assuming the blame for those claiming to fight in the name of the religion. As a result, every Muslim might be imagined to be accountable for acts in which they have had no part. This assumption is both an internalized impression and an outwardly expressed sentiment when Muslims believe that they must condemn any act of violence committed by adherents of

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their religion.4 It is much more nuanced and complicated than overt racist attacks; some have indicated that Islamophobia is weaved into seemingly innocuous statements that actually demean and demonize Muslims as inherently patriarchal and oppressive to women. Implicit in such statements is a declaration that the religious community is antithetical to the American way of life and can be a threat to its liberties and, as such, adherents should be viewed suspiciously.5 This kind of stereotyping is exactly what artists Chitra Ganesh and Mariam Ghani wanted to expose. Their belief was that innocent civilians were being seized in the days, months, and years after 9/11 because of their religion and ethnicity, and not because they were in any way linked to terrorist activities. Index of Disappeared is a work of activism and art. It fuses together stories and information brought forth by people in the community as well as redacted documents released by the US government alongside commentary by the artists through the way they present the data and the imagery/words they choose to highlight. Through the contemporary art experiment, they expose the workings of the officials and their impact on the lives of people in the nation and engage audiences in a dynamic environment recalling situation rooms. Michael Rakowitz also initiated Enemy Kitchen in the first few years after the 9/11 attacks and situated it in the United States, although in his work there are many references to Iraqi culture. Also, like Ganesh and Ghani, his collaborative work emerged out of the US response to the 9/11 attacks. The first iteration attempted to connect with students in a dialogue about the American campaign in Iraq and the “war on terrorism” that the then President George W.  Bush termed for a nebulous battle against extremists intending to do harm to the United States. In 2003, as part of this so-called war, the United States entered Iraq on what was later understood to have been falsified reports of the Iraqi government’s attempts to build weapons of mass destruction. The fabrications were put forth by the leadership of the US government at that time. After the start of the US-led battle, Iraqi immigrants began to sense hostility, whether directly or indirectly, from the nation that they now called home because of actions of the country’s government from which they immigrated. Once again, immigrants offered a ready target for the backlash and blame. Rakowitz, whose maternal grandparents came to the United States from Iraq, felt that he needed to offer an alternative to the violence associated with Iraqis. The artist did this through cooking lessons for preparing Iraqi dishes. The project grew over the years into a multidimensional

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undertaking that involved the community and offered traditional Iraqi cuisine to American audiences through a food truck. It provided sustenance from the “enemy.” The work addresses the impact of governmental activities on ordinary people; in this case Iraqi-Americans are viewed suspiciously as the enemy. After considering the two US-based projects, the chapter will subsequently turn to initiatives that are in situ in the extended Middle East. Taking place in the trenches, the two projects examine the ongoing impact of global political policies and activities, reaching back to the time of European colonialism in the region. Such events have created instability in everyday life, yet the people living there do not let the conditions stop them from finding modes to address the instability. To tackle the environment of struggle and refugee status into which Palestinians are born, architects Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti founded Campus in Camps in 2012. Refugees since 1948 when Israelis forced out Palestinians, the ongoing status defies the typically temporary nature of having to leave one’s homeland. In a state of permanent temporariness, what are the options in Palestine for how life is enacted? Education in this milieu requires a different approach from traditional ones. Campus in Camps provides an alternative educational platform that empowers the participants to be active learners in an egalitarian setting. It literally brought a university to the site of a Palestinian camp and began a curriculum about existing forever in a temporary set-up. The site constructed for classes and events associated with the program was reflective of the unique circumstances of Palestinians: a tent made of concrete. For Palestinians who are born into the position of the victim, the image of oppression and subjugation is eternally associated with them. But what of the possibility of something else, something more than victimization? The intention of Campus in Camps is to empower refugees that have been born into the system and are the third generation to experience this status. They are away from a home that they may never have even seen, yet it is critical to a sense of belonging because that was where their great-­ grandparents grew up and developed the heritage to which they are eternally linked. Through a two-year program, participants develop the skills and knowledge to enact projects that enable and protect the community. They offer value beyond victimhood. The program is associated with Al-Quds University in Ramallah and Bard College in the United States through which participants can earn a qualification. However, the program is deliberately located within the camp because that integration was

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crucial to the analysis of life in this location and development of initiatives that are meaningful to this situation. The campus had to come to the camp, rather than the other way around. The instability wrought from European colonialism continues to impact societies that they once ruled directly, as discussed in detail in Chap. 2. For these locations it has often been a struggle to establish normative conditions to steady the society—violence has marked this part of the world. Pakistan was a nation-state born out of the divisive strategies that the British rulers maneuvered during their reign in order to remain in control of its colony. Eventually Hindus and Muslims sought separate territories within the once united land. Today the ongoing tensions with its neighbor have destabilized the region. Within the Muslim-majority nation of Pakistan, there have been internal difficulties among different sects of Islam; the economy has pushed some to seek illicit means of getting by; and dirt and squalor proliferate in cities where civic mindedness is not celebrated or promoted. In Karachi, some concerned citizens have taken action to clean up their city and make efforts to create a safer and more positive place for themselves and their fellow countrymen. Walls of Peace is an initiative in Karachi, Pakistan that is situated directly in the location where artists are attempting to create an environment that is supportive of the community. Begun in 2015 and still active in the city, Walls of Peace has covered hundreds of public surfaces in the city with positive images and phrases. It is part of the multidisciplinary movement entitled I Am Karachi. Started by concerned citizens, the movement was created in service of the public in Pakistan’s largest city by taking it back from forces that are a threat to its security, development, and culture. It aims to instill hope and pride into Karachi residents and positivity into the urban landscape. It has tried to do so through a number of initiatives including a youth forum, theatre festival, music festival, talks, film festival, dialogues and debates, in addition to the public walls project. According to the I Am Karachi website it has seventy initiatives with thirty partner organizations.6 Their work received a lot of attention from the local and international media as they transformed hate into love. The initiative reached those beyond the closed off world of art that has grown in the last decade in the city. Artists gave back to the community to shift attitudes and practices. Through knitting the four projects together, the study aims to produce a canvas that stretches across the MENASA and the diaspora to investigate and interweave how artists have handled politics of the region. Their

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contemporary art experiments are the outcomes of collaborations with communities outside the arts to address issues of concern for the societies. They take matters into their own hands to offer up potential solutions to move beyond an incapacitated, victimized stance to one that benefits themselves and provokes audiences to shift their perceptions. They stitch together the possibilities of art within society, especially making it significant for communities that face violence and instability.

5.2   Index of the Disappeared: The Poetics of Presenting Facts The American government began the so-called war on terror in response to the 2001 attacks in the United States and has continued it in some form perhaps on the assumption that its actions around the world are taken to protect its citizens. Yet, its foreign policy has wreaked havoc on innocent victims globally, some of which are Americans.7 Index of the Disappeared is a collaborative project that artists Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh began in 2003 in response to the detaining of Muslim immigrants in the United States—primarily of Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian descent—on immigration violations immediately following the events of 9/11. However, these individuals were more likely suspected of playing a role in the attacks or planning a future terrorist strike. Oftentimes these people were held mistakenly; their arrests were based more on their religion or nationalities than on any wrongdoing. The individuals were placed on a list of “special interest” suspects and were eventually deported three years later. This is the type of information that Index of the Disappeared provides to audiences as part of its campaign. Based in New York, the project is a means to collect data and provides a forum for public dialogue on a multitude of issues concerning immigration in the United States. These include the rights and struggles of this community in the face of a government that is supposedly acting on the call to guard citizens. The manipulation of such a policy is at the heart of Index of the Disappeared. The case of the Muslim immigrants’ detainment in the days after 9/11 highlights government secrecy and suppression of documents, rather than a sound approach leading to the gathering of valuable information. Public policy in which some people living in a country are treated differently from others is thus made suspect through Index of

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the Disappeared. It is the denouncement of an entire community for the acts of a few individuals. For the overall endeavor, the artists have produced a number of works including a video, web project, ‘zine, and library that dig into the complexity of current conditions. It is an ongoing venture. The project has had several different iterations as well, ranging from more of an informational archive space to varied forms of an art installation. The presentation is typically site-specific, but it is always meant to be informative and raise awareness and seeks to promote dialogue and discussion. As the artists explain, “An index can be a trace, a signpost, an indicator or a measurement. Our index begins in the gaps where language ends; that is, in the records of absence and absence of records where official language fails and new languages must be developed in its place.”8 It is precisely in this crux or middle ground where the project exists. It provides official documents that are often redacted, in tandem with sketches and poetic phrases that express injustice in order to unpack the tragic situation that those who been arrested, along with concerned families, have faced. In order to produce the multifaceted project, the two artists worked together and with the community to collect, document, and develop the work of art that is usually presented as a resource room (Fig. 5.1). Installed in gallery spaces, Index of the Disappeared offers a deliberate crossing of art and politics. The artists provide points of entry to audiences to be able to become more knowledgeable about the situation and participate in it through the discourse that the project encourages. The work includes the very first document released in the wake of 9/11. It came out many months after the attacks; in the days after 9/11, the government had conducted a sweeping operation and took 766 men into custody. Initially charged with immigration violations, they soon became “special interest” detainees connected to the events of 9/11. Most of the information in this file was redacted save for arrest dates and nationalities of those arrested. Families were left in the dark regarding the status of their relatives. In 2004, the artists began to reach out to the community to broaden the archive and provide a fuller context to the disappearances than offered officially. It was an alternative means to seek information. Furthermore, it positioned the community’s voice as an authoritative source for analyzing the government’s actions. This installment of the overarching project is known as How Do You See the Disappeared? A Warm Database. The reference to warm is suggestive of a different approach to questioning than the

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Fig. 5.1  Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh, Index of the Disappeared: After Effects, 2005. ((c) Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh. Courtesy of the artists)

icy and formal one assumed by the government. For this effort to gain more substantive and humanized information, the artists shared a questionnaire that could be filled out by individuals that had undergone arrest, detention, or deportation. First of all, it was voluntary and anonymous. Instead of being accusatory, the questionnaire asked questions to seek more elaborate descriptions and stories, rather than supposed “facts.” One such inquiry: “What would be the right questions to ask to know you without knowing your name?” By phrasing the query in such a manner, the hope was perhaps to find a richer, deeper understanding, rather than it being about what he or she knew. The wholistic framing of the questionnaire provides a multidimensional analysis of the situation, opening it beyond a black and white portrayal of an individual and his/her [false] ties to terrorist groups. Sympathizers of the detainees could also answer a

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survey in order to contribute to the “warm” database, one that seemed more dignified in comparison to the treatment offered by the American government. The notion of “warm” suggests the life behind the number or suspicious events—a heartbeat—rather than the cold “factual” nature of most databases. Ghani worked on the Warm Database as a project linked to Index of the Disappeared, but more specifically linked to and involving the community. She sought warm information rather than cold, hard facts in order to know the detainees without making them vulnerable to the law or government. Importantly, this was attempted in Dearborn, Michigan that has the most concentrated Arab community in the United States. Ghani conducted interviews with thirty individuals in the neighborhood that were presented at the newly inaugurated Arab-American National Museum in 2005. The artist questioned: “If someone questioned your right to call yourself an American, what is the one story, object, image or document you would offer as your proof?” Participants were asked to reduce their American identity to one “point of proof.”9 During the run of the exhibition, audience members were invited to contribute their answers as well. The artists received postcards that were added to the warm database. By offering such an insight into lived experiences, the participants in the project took the situation beyond headlines to a deeper and more nuanced picture. Viewers of Index of the Disappeared were brought into the fold and exposed to the dynamic lives of immigrants that are often cast as scapegoats throughout American history. For example, Italians coming to the United States in the nineteenth century faced difficulties and racism as they settled into the country as immigrants that were seen as “black” at first and uncivilized. It took much effort and the threat of war for Italians to be viewed as more acceptable “white” Americans worthy of citizenship in the nation in the twentieth century.10 Ironically, the nation of immigrants has been intolerant of immigrants since its early days; newer nationalities replacing previous ones as unwanted and suspicious. Artist Ben Shahn explored this topic in a series of paintings as well as works in other media on the controversial trial of two Italian-American immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti who many felt were easy targets to be made culpable.11 In fact, immigrants have often been a convenient group to blame for difficulties during challenging moments in history. The time after the 9/11 attacks has been no exception. A sketch was rendered of possible suspects, often fitting the stereotypes of would-be terrorists, namely Muslims. And as the perceived threat grew in the days after the

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largest terrorist attack in the United States, the government became emboldened to escalate its security measures, even if it meant sacrificing civil liberties.12 This was not instigated by one group or on one level of society, but it was rather a systematic and collective procedure resulting in the targeting of Muslims as circumspect. According to Sheehi: [Islamophobia] does not originate in one particular administration, thinker, philosopher, activist, media outlet, special interest group, think tank, or even economy sector or industry, though indeed, these actors are collectively responsible for the virulent dissemination of anti-Muslim and anti-­ Arab stereotypes and beliefs, circulated in order to naturalize and justify US global economic and political hegemony.13

For the public art organization Creative Time’s exhibition entitled Democracy in America (2008), Ganesh and Ghani developed the presentation of Index of Disappeared as a kind of situation room that is in the midst of an investigation (Fig. 5.2). The visitor to the installation could become part of the work through adopting the role of an investigator. All of the required information was presented on tables, in files, and on shelves. At once a source of pure, direct, and uncensored information, Index of Disappeared is simultaneously ambiguous, dynamic, nuanced, and poetic. The site-specific installation included a slideshow, sound loop, documents, shredded documents, and office supplies. Although all of these items might be found in an investigation room, the manner in which they were placed in the space constructed a story about how the government conducts such scenarios in general and specifically in the case of the searches, detaining, and questioning enacted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. There is a circularity in the process and subsequent presentation of the work. And in the case of the Creative Time presentation, the work seems to double back on to itself. It is an archive, but it is also about the archive. Generally writing on the project, the artists state, “These visual forms of public dialogue are designed to confront audiences with the human costs of public policies, challenging them to re-consider the arbitrariness of political debate in specific, individual terms.”14 Even as there is a clearly announced agenda for the project, the effort of the artists appears to be directed to visual and sensorial appeal. There is a certain aesthetic that is pronounced in the varied installations. This quality lends itself to an experiential encounter for the viewer. Reminiscent of archival artistic practices that have grown in importance in different parts of the world, Index

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Fig. 5.2  Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh, Index of the Disappeared: Codes of Conduct, 2008. ((c) Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh. Courtesy of the artists. Photo: Meghan McInnis)

of Disappeared recalls qualities of the installation art of Ilya Kabakov, Walid Raad, and others. A decided difference with such artists is that the former is composed of legitimate documents that convey a narrative of detainment, often with key information missing or kept secret. In the case of the latter artists, there are imaginary, made-up elements included in the displays. Still, the fictional aspects refer to a true story. Even as both denote actual events and history, the stories in the works of art are fabricated. Meanwhile, Index of the Disappeared shares the words and experiences of actual people that have undergone detainment. They do not divulge everything that has been made public, but instead “curate” a selection of documents to develop a narrative. The scenario that is set up is based on a true story. While the information is actual, there is an artistic manner of presentation. For the mimetic space, there are devices associated with official investigations including card catalogues, shelving full of folders and binders containing images and texts, and a table covered with papers that have been reviewed and

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reviewed again. And then there are shredded documents coating whole areas of the floor. The element is also typically present in an investigation room. In the display at the Park Avenue Armory, Ganesh and Ghanim made it hard to avoid it. Reaching an absurdist level, mountains of shredded papers pile up around the space and flow out of mechanical shredders. The over-the-top staging of a conventional office feature gets viewers to consider the covering of information about detainments and other such matters. Other components of the room-sized installation included a slide show of what appear to be infographics exploring Codes of Conduct, intelligence collection and analysis, and military processes. Stacks of redacted texts are thrown haphazardly on a desk and upon shelves. Images of bloodied, presumably dead children are visible. The title of this particular manifestation of the project is Index of the Disappeared: Codes of Conduct, seemingly in reference to a s set of rules by which governments and their militaries are presumed to abide (Fig. 5.3). However, in the case of detained civilians in the aftermath of 9/11, these statutes have been manipulated in the name of capturing terrorists. Through the presentation, Ganesh and Ghani offer alternative scenarios that vocalize the voices of detainees and their sympathizers. They make sense of the many documents, briefs, images, and other information that have reached the public hands. Through a poetic approach, the artists help us to understand the situation as it stands. In sum, the experience of being in this situation room is at once true and “dramatized” for effect. It offers actual documents, as well as the impact of the coordinated inquiry on human lives. This is but one of the manners in which Index of the Disappeared is offered for public dialogue. Each of these presentations are part of a critical discourse that the artists have attempted to create about this topic. It was non-existent when they started to investigate the disappeared. The multiple manifestations of the information is crucial for them to be able to share information with the public that they have acquired through community collaborations.15 When the information is brought to this level, we can understand how an event that was ostensibly unrelated to that particular individual could now define his life. In studies, it has been determined that American Muslims felt a need to tone down their religious expression or continue to be viewed as the enemy within borders. That is, faith is questioned both from outside and within oneself.16

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Fig. 5.3  Black site cell. Diagram included in Index of the Disappeared

5.3   Enemy Kitchen: Political Dimensions of a Welcoming Culture Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz has stated his observations of the links between hostility and hospitality, beyond their phonetic similarities. His work has often been entrenched in political matters; since 2001 he has incorporated elements of food into his practice through which he has drawn together the welcoming nature of societies in the Middle East where food is offered profusely during special events and ordinary

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gatherings; meanwhile, the violent and unstable associations are acknowledged and examined as well. Instead of disregarding either aspect of the binary view of such cultures, he blends the two into one. The title of an ongoing project, Enemy Kitchen captures the dualistic sides that are addressed in the initiative. The project has been developed over fifteen years and includes various dimensions designed to convey the message of the work. On the one hand, he is questioning the actions of the American government that invaded a sovereign nation on what would later be confirmed as false pretenses. On the other hand, the artist is clearly not fond of the dictator Saddam Hussein that the United States forced out of power at the price of the lives of hundreds of Iraqi civilians. As such, the people who had suffered terribly under the Saddam regime continued to face tragedy as an outside force shifted the situation in their country that resulted in a more destabilized situation for the citizens than under the Saddam regime.17 Rakowitz has conveyed these dubious outcomes through a work that is hospitable, but also hostile. The work addresses the effects of international politics, war, and crimes against humanity. He does this in a caring and giving manner. He is hospitable as he exposes the hostility of world leaders, both dictators and those that claim to be defenders of freedom. The work is welcoming and inclusive, all the while being offered by the so-called enemy. After the initiation of the American-led battle in Iraq, Iraqi immigrants (as well other Arab-Americans and Sikh Americans) in the United States felt anxious and uncertain about their position in the North American country. An Indian American scholar of Middle East studies Deepa Kumar wrote about the need to write a study about the impact of 9/11 on Muslims; her book begins with the experiences she underwent being mistaken as a Muslim and how she was treated.18 Iraqi-Americans assumed a precarious role when the country of their home attacked the country of their heritage. For many, they felt that a target was placed on them because they came from the country responsible for the production of weapons of mass destruction. They became targets of hate crimes.19 Their questionable place in the United States continued even after the false claim that ignited the war was refuted. They became strangers in their homes. This was a special treatment for them, as opposed to other Americans.20 As recent as 2019, the American agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported a man to Iraq from his home in Michigan even though he had never stepped into the country and did not speak

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Arabic.21 He was sent with no money and little insulin, resulting in a “diabetic crisis” and his death two months later. The US President Trump had called for such deportations of Iraqis, even though many had entered the country legally as refugees. This tragic event, taking place many years after Rakowitz initiated Enemy Kitchen, is exactly what the artist was attempting to address and perhaps even prevent. He formulated a situation in which he smiled as he doled out food and talked about his family’s heritage, but he made it clear that the meal was being provided by the perceived enemy. The groundwork for Enemy Kitchen was indeed in Rakowitz’s family history. Food had always been important for the artist who grew up in an Iraqi family. From his mother’s side, he is an Iraqi Jew. The family immigrated in 1946 to the United States, and the elders helped the next generations to maintain ties to their cultural heritage through passing on and sharing recipes with the younger members of the clan. This early exposure was foundational for Rakowitz’s artistic practice. The experiences he had growing up would feed (no pun intended) into the types of works he would create. The projects, including Enemy Kitchen, focus on all of humanity and its points of convergence. Food is important for us all, uniting us in a social space. For Rakowitz, his methodology is to create a “social sculpture” that forms as a relational installation. Critic and Curator Nicolas Bourriaud’s understanding of the social sculpture is critical in investigating the work that Rakowitz has developed. Conversations and a convivial space are what the artist provokes through the ongoing work in question. In its first iteration, the artist organized cooking workshops utilizing the recipes of his Iraqi-Jewish mother. He offered the lessons to various groups, including students in the United States. In the shadow of the events of 9/11 and the American invasion of Iraq, such an offering adopted a potent reflection of contemporary politics. Taking place after those transformative events, the cooking lessons given to students revealed the power of food and communication (Fig. 5.4). As Rakowitz taught his family’s recipes, a discussion ensued. The children revealed the biases implicit in the society after the “enemy” attacked. The artist tells that the students expressed reservations about making Iraqi food because it belonged to the enemy; one student had in his mind that Iraqis were to

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Fig. 5.4  Michael Rakowitz, Enemy Kitchen, 2003-ongoing, Cooking workshop. (Photograph from the artist’s website)

blame for the 9/11 attacks. Another student corrected him and stated that it was not Iraqis, but Osama bin Laden. A third participant quickly retorted that it was actually the American government that was the perpetrator of the heinous act. And so ensued the social sculpture in which a situation was conceptualized and enacted by the artist, but what followed was entirely up to the participants. Meant to be an alternative discourse on Iraq, the young participants of the workshops found ways to add to the dialogue on gastronomical terms—a student proposed the addition of Southern fried chicken to the menu of Iraqi plates, an invented tradition. In this simple gesture, they absorbed and played out the intentions of the artist; however, they did so in a manner that the artist could not have predicted. Their voices were critical in the development of the work of art. As art historian Grant Kester has pointed out, artists began to function as facilitators rather than producers. In assuming an active role, participants are consumed into an artwork, and thus experience it in a different

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manner from a conventional relationship that a viewer has with a painting, for example. In the case for Rakowitz’s art, it reaches out to the audience—more so in an experiential manner rather than a physical manner. As the schoolchildren participated in Enemy Kitchen, they became a part of it and shaped its meaning. Extending out, the work is art by the relations it formulates in a given context—the aesthetic element is about these relative conditions that may be presupposed but are often formed in an experiential manner. It could be argued that this mode of making art is democratic, engaging, and, as such, more likely to strike a chord with an extended community rather than just art world insiders. The basis of the kind of collaborative art that Rakowitz produces is clearly to be found in the 1960s with such movements as situation art, performance art, and happenings when artists went out beyond the typical arenas reserved for art. Still, the artist did imagine actual “objects” that were manifested through food items, for example, a “perfectly shaped” kibbeh (meat and bulgur ball found throughout the Arab world) is ideal.22 As the project grew, he conceptualized a food truck as art (Fig. 5.5). He worked with the Iraqi community in Chicago and US veterans of the war in Iraq to create a functioning business that is a poetic comment on war and identity. The veterans were asked to serve the food—Iraqi cuisine. For them, it was a reminder of the food they encountered while on duty. However, because they were restricted from fraternizing with the locals while serving in Iraq, this project afforded them an opportunity to understand the culture that they were supposedly “defending,” but in fact helping to destroy. In this scenario, Iraqi chefs gave orders to American sous-chefs and servers, thereby inverting the normal relationship between citizens of the two countries. From 2003 to 2012, he partnered with Milo’s Pita Place, an Iraqi-Armenian family-run restaurant in Chicago. The city has one of the largest populations of expatriate Iraqis in the world. Although he created a business, the work is not so pragmatic and quotidian. Its aim is not the practical and profitable running of a company, but rather to use the everyday, relational aspects of offering and sharing food with the community as a launching ground from which to have meaningful discussions and debates about biases, implicit racism, global politics, and the dire situation and devastation reaped through warfare. As such, Enemy Kitchen is a dynamic project that crosses the line between art and business to highlight a critical point of debate.

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Fig. 5.5  Michael Rakowitz, Enemy Kitchen, 2003-ongoing. (Photograph from the artist’s website)

The traditional dishes of kibbeh meat patties, grilled fish known as Masgouf, Debes wa Rashi (Date Syrup mixed with Tahini), and others have been served on plates that were looted from Saddam Hussein’s palaces, sold in an open market, offered on eBay, from where the artist purchased them. Later on, the dishes were repatriated since they never should have been removed from Iraq.23 For Enemy Kitchen, paper replicas of the plates were utilized to remind audiences of the dubious provider of their meals (Fig. 5.6). Of course, Rakowitz has no relationship to the Saddam regime; however, Americans with a limited understanding of the situation may conflate all Iraqis with the corrupt government. In the popular imagination in the United States during the early years of the millennium, any Iraqi (or brown person) was the enemy.24 The military’s insignia appears on the truck in large-scale and painted with a highly visible yellow while the rest of the vehicle is coated in

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Fig. 5.6  Michael Rakowitz, Enemy Kitchen, 2003-ongoing, Cooking workshop. (Photograph from kickstarter campaign by artist and Museum of Contemporary Art)

military green. The insignia is also placed on a dispenser that is full of rose water to clean hands after the meal, a traditional gesture enacted in Iraqi homes. Engraved under the insignia is a wish for guests, “Bless your Hands” in both English and Arabic. As the artist informs, the guest rubs hands with the water and places them in his/her hair as a way to have a lingering reminder of the meal that was had. In the case of the Enemy Kitchen, the lingering reminder is a generous and delicious meal that simultaneously is littered with wartime references of brutality and collateral damage. The kind sharing of sustenance is always undermined by the constant realization that the gift is being offered by the one who intends to commit harm against you. Or, so you believe. The artist has described this aspect of the experience of participating in Enemy Kitchen as resulting in the “pleasant aroma of your disturbing experience on the truck.”25 From 2012 to 2017, the food truck was stored in the parking lot of Babylon, a Chicago restaurant. In 2016, vandals attacked the vehicle, looting it and writing hate speech on it. Rakowitz refurbished the truck with funds collected from a self-initiated online fundraising campaign that

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the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Chicago supported with promotional gifts to be given away according to tiers of monetary donations. The project and its message continued to remain important, as already suggested in light of the current events that have been reported. Since this point, the meals have been offered for free during specific events including the artist’s exhibition at the MCA. As the project has become recognized and popular, does its provocative, disruptive quality get diluted? Is it now simply a “hipster-approved” activity, reduced to entertainment value? Whether it does or does not depends on the context of its presentation. Enemy Kitchen is an artwork that engages audiences with difficult and demanding questions and concerns in a manner that might appear to be simple, and maybe even shallow. It is in the space of these contradictions where socially engaged art finds its potency in order to address urgent matters in a community.

5.4   Campus in Camps: Engaging the Permanently Temporary The plight of Palestinians has been an eternal concern deeply woven out of the conflict with Israel and those that have escalated this contentious situation in which a people have been forced out of their homes to territories far away. Not only have they lost their homeland, they have had to watch others take it over. Seventy years into this struggle with no end in sight, generations have been born into a world where the homeland does not belong to them and they live as refugees. Others that have experienced the conflict from the beginning have passed away without having witnessed the resolution to the tragic circumstances. Refugee status is by definition a temporary one. Seventy years into the struggle, can they still be viewed as refugees? In this unique and confounding condition, Palestinians find themselves to be permanently unsettled. This is the framework of the dynamic project, Campus in Camps, as artist/architect Sandi Hilal presented during the 2016 March Meeting at the Sharjah Art Foundation. In her animated talk, the artist roused the audience of artists, arts professionals, and scholars from the extended Middle East region. Admittedly a sympathetic group, nonetheless she energized and got them to understand the particular situation of Palestinians, be invested mentally in a situation that might not affect them

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directly and conceptualize the kind of education that could serve them in the best possible manner.26 The project that she developed with her life partner and often collaborator Alessandro Petti was to be specific to the very particular context of Palestinian refugee camps. In these locations, no longer are they dominated by tents or other temporary structures. Instead, concrete buildings have been erected. However, as the architect explained, the progression toward this state of the camp has been fraught with difficult personal and political choices. Hilal described in her passionate presentation at the March Meeting that in the years after they were literally pushed out of their homes and given a tent as a residence, Palestinians faced harsh winters and found it difficult to accept that they would need more secure structures in order to survive. In their submission to more permanent edifices, they feared that they might have appeared to give up on the steadfast conviction that they should be repatriated with the homeland because it was stolen from under their feet. As the years dragged on, the long-­ lasting structures continued to rise up, but only with the intent to destroy all of them once they could return home. This mindset has allowed them to maintain the belief in the “right of return,” a law that permits citizens to enter freely the land from which they originated.27 Politically it is a concept that acknowledges the unjustified expulsion of Palestinians from the land upon which they were living and to which they are tied culturally and otherwise. As such they are neither here nor there. No longer a passing condition, Palestinians are in a state of “Permanent Temporariness.”28 Meanwhile, the architects have been working with universities in Palestine, where there was a different way of seeing and framing the struggle. The trauma of the camp had been presented or the paradise before the existence of the camps; both are denials of lived reality and a romanticizing of what was there previously.29 Life in the camps today is not just a tragedy, and the nostalgic view of the past is not always helpful. Palestinian life today is the camp and understanding and accepting this situation does not mean that they have abandoned the desire to return to the homeland. Instead this acknowledgment allows them to address their circumstances where they are today. Hilal and Petti proposed Campus in Camps to offer an alternative scenario that acknowledged the specific conditions of life in the Palestinian refugee camps. The unique situation needed to be recognized, according to the architects. It was a “third space” that legitimized the current life of Palestinians and brought together the university and the camps in order to

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arm youth with the knowledge, skills, and infrastructure to undertake community-driven projects that address life in the camps in the wake of the 70th anniversary of being displaced. The architects wanted to initiate new ways of representing this location that was beyond the nostalgic views of the past and tragic images of current events. To this end, they opened the program to young motivated participants to engage with the educational organization for a period of two years. Being trained architects, Hilal and Petti designed a space to symbolize the short-term, yet enduring quality of Palestinian refugee camps. They created a tent made out of concrete that serves as the site for gatherings and project development. With such an experimental endeavor, it was necessary to find participants whose ideas and goals aligned with the mission of the initiative. All of them had a background in volunteering, which seemed to bode well for what Campus in Camps could accomplish. A total of eleven young participants were recruited, and they appeared to embody and define what the projects would entail.30 Its flexible structure responded to their needs and interests. Different instructors offered varied points of entry into community engagement through lessons that could prepare them for such activation in the camps. In addition to classes and seminars, the participants also had access to complex ideas that visiting artists and scholars shared through lectures. At the end of the first year, an academic committee was formed organically. Essentially, the initiative offered the infrastructure and resources needed to address life in the camps. A collective dictionary was compiled: a series of publications containing definitions of concepts considered fundamental for the understanding of the contemporary conditions of Palestinian refugee camps. Different participants contributed to this document by sharing stories, doing interviews, and investigating through photography. They addressed such topical issues as citizenship and public space. In the second year of the program, they developed situations to encourage the engagement with the community and its specifications. “The prolonged exceptional temporariness of this site has paradoxically created the condition for its transformation: from a pure humanitarian space to an active political space, it has become the embodiment and an expression of the right of return.”31 One project that was formulated considered the garden of Al Feniq (the phoenix) Cultural Center. This facility was built through an initiative of the residents of Dheisheh camp in the 1990s. It provided a much-needed space for camp dwellers to get out of their cramped quarters and gather together in a public space that organized

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events and would eventually add a garden to the built space. Under constant attack during varied insurgencies led by Israeli authorities, the center managed to remain intact and maintain its activities, including a food drive during which residents shared whatever they could with each other. Campus in Camps utilized the interior space to have meetings and hold sessions with the participants. One proposal developed in the second year of the program intervened in the site to renovate and update the garden that is such a significant common space for the people of Dheisheh camp. Offering a pleasant setting, residents could be outside and take in the fresh air and enjoy the beautiful surroundings. When Campus in Camps decided to renovate the garden, the participants identified five aspects to address: “(1) Visibility and Accessibility; (2) Spaces for different activities; (3) Shading; (4) Interaction; (5) Safekeeping.”32 The group offered solutions to such concerns through varied elements that could be added to or changed about the garden (Fig. 5.7). They dealt with the first concern by suggesting to perforate the solid enclosure around the garden in order for those outside of the garden to see in, and those within to see out. This simple gesture offered a way to unite the garden with the rest of the camp. One aspect of the second issue was to recognize the kinds of activities that they wanted to stage in the garden, including a place to watch movies en plein air, as well as have a space for lectures. Both activities are ways for residents to stay informed by sharing stories. Campus in Camps proposed

Fig. 5.7  Campus in Camps (Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti), The Garden: Making Place. Contributors: Aysar Al Saify, Qussay Abu Aker, Naba’ Al Ass, Murad Odah. (Photograph from the organization’s website)

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shading to be used to allow for more outdoor events and activities to take place. The group suggested to utilize recycled materials in order to form a play area that could be attractive for different age groups. And, finally, safekeeping is important throughout the camp, but critical for the garden in order to have a safe haven for partaking in many different activities and events outside the home. The initiative was but one that was undertaken by Campus in Camps to address life in this locale. Others included “The Square,” “The Bridge,” “The Pool,” “The Suburb,” “The Pathways,” “The Stadium,” “The Municipality,” and “The Unbuilt.” These sites provided actual places to address, as well as questions and concerns for the participants to consider. The locus allowed for specific exchanges and activities to happen as they analyzed the concept of the right of return and where that might feel more real. Moving away from camps to more sustainable cities might offer added convenience and comfort; however, in this shift there is a perception that reaching the homeland is only more difficult and uncertain for Palestinians. With such particular conditions and situations, Campus in Camps treads through delicate space to define ways in which artists and designers can engage and investigate with the specific issues, ideas, and concerns of refugees and temporary residences.

5.5   Walls of Peace (I Am Karachi) Inaugurated in 2015, Walls of Peace involves a collective of artists, teachers, and students in Karachi that have made an effort to reclaim public spaces away from hate messages, dirt, and illegal advertising and transform the city walls into works of art. Walls of Peace has covered hundreds of public surfaces in the city with positive images and phrases. It is part of the multidisciplinary movement entitled I Am Karachi (IAK). Started by concerned citizens, the movement was created in service of the public in Pakistan’s largest city by taking it back from forces that are a threat to its security, development, and culture. Its aim has been to instill hope and pride into Karachi residents and positivity into the urban landscape. As described online: “The IAK Walls of Peace campaign was initiated by I AM KARACHI (IAK) to enable the people of Karachi to reimagine walls that have been covered by hate speech and negative graffiti into symbols of peace through artistic intervention.”33 I Am Karachi approached Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture to create art in the city. The head of the Department of Fine Art is Adeela

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Suleman, an internationally recognized artist. She also leads Vasl Artists’ Association. As such, she immediately began to recruit her colleagues in Vasl and faculty and students at Indus Valley to develop the undertaking. In the first phase, Walls of Peace proposed a three-tiered project to contribute to the I Am Karachi movement. The first level of engagement involved creating stencils that could be easily applied to the walls. In the second tier of the project, gangs of men were enlisted to spread messages of hope instead of the hateful, violent, and crass ones that they typically spray-painted and wheat-pasted during the course of the night in the city. The third undertaking recruited artists, art students, craftspeople, and other volunteers to design and paint the walls. The collective wanted to improve the urban landscape for the local population as quickly as possible. In true activist style, the participants hit the streets almost overnight to make a change. They contributed what they could to develop civic life for all of the residents and visitors to the city, cleaning up blocks of the city and painting the walls lining the streets. This action caught the attention of media outlets, both locally and internationally. At first, the collective did not consult the general public in the making of the murals. After the initial phase, the group opened up the process of developing the project by soliciting feedback from participants and residents/workers in the sites. Up to date, the project has transformed more than 282 walls in Karachi (Fig. 5.8). The project will continue to add imagery to many more surfaces throughout the city. Walls of Peace began to appear in the summer of 2015. One area that they took over is a main thoroughfare named M.T. Khan Road. The artery connects Karachi’s port with the rest of the city. On a one-mile strip, the participants executed a variety of paintings in the extreme summer heat. Students stenciled on different patterns and imagery, including outlines of famous Pakistani landmarks. They represented other buildings and sites around the country by making colorful, eye-catching paintings. Volunteer artists painted patterns on the walls that are familiar in the region. Craftsmen were brought in to create the kind of work typically found on trucks (Fig. 5.9). Truck art is so familiar to the residents of Karachi and throughout Pakistan. It is an urban or local folk art found on trucks, buses, rickshaws, and other vehicles traveling around the nation. Truck art’s presence in this contemporary art project is fitting since it is eye-catching and can be seen from a distance. However, its inclusion also suggests that it goes beyond the domain of folk art. It is a viable form on many levels including in the

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Fig. 5.8  Walls of Peace, I am Karachi. Organized by Vasl Artists’ Association and Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Involving artists, designers, students, and volunteers, Karachi, 2015. (Photograph by the author)

most experimental art today. Adeela Suleman was instrumental in involving these craftsmen. She has worked with them regularly on her art that transforms ordinary materials and objects into works of art. Truck art is significant for many contemporary Pakistani artists as a local technique that can expand the boundaries of art. It can connect everyday life with the realm of art. The distinctive paintings utilizing the truck art technique as well as the other approaches to the wall art offered an alternative backdrop to the usually bleak view that is seen on the road. These bright pictures were meant to be attention grabbing, taking the focus away from the dreary urban locations, but more importantly from volatile declarations, vengeful hatred, blatant distrust, and crass commercialism. Typically, anyone usurps the walls of Karachi for their purposes ranging from posting illegal advertisements selling services and wares to writing anti-sectarian messages, in particular ones that encourage violence toward Shia Muslims. Instead of vitriolic pronouncements inciting hatred and brutality that one finds

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Fig. 5.9  Walls of Peace, I am Karachi. Organized by Vasl Artists’ Association and Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Involving artists, designers, students, and volunteers, Karachi, 2015. (Photograph by the author)

scrawled onto walls throughout the city, the participants wanted to spread love, happiness, and peace. Their goal for the project was to simply be positive. For example, one painting declares, “I love Karachi” (Fig. 5.10). Even as this notion seems simplistic, Walls of Peace offered a manner through which citizens could reclaim their city and take ownership in its upkeep. The public could take pride in their hometown and have hope for its future. Finally, it could celebrate the city’s diversity rather than be fearful of it. By the time of the summer of 2016, Karachi had been through a difficult period of hostility and instability. In fact, its history is riddled with volatile and deadly activities, including sectarian killings, bombings, and theft. By inserting affirmative imagery into the urban landscape, the artists and students offered an optimistic vision for Karachi’s future, which is perhaps naive and simplistic in its expectations for what art on a public wall  could accomplish.  Nonetheless, concerned artists saw this as an opportunity to contribute what they could.  These were the visual guidelines of the project and continue to inform the newer projects that Walls of Peace tackle. Pride; ownership; hope; diversity. The four terms connect to philosophies that speak about the

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Fig. 5.10  Walls of Peace, I am Karachi. Organized by Vasl Artists’ Association and Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Involving artists, designers, students, and volunteers, Karachi, 2015. (Photograph by the author)

work’s purpose—one that seeks outcomes beyond the conventional understanding of what is art and what it can do. As the organizers explain, for Karachiites, there are several sources of pride for them. From significant sites in the city to key individuals in its history, from stories told about the urban life to its culinary delights; these served as sources of imagery.34 Out of this proud legacy, people in Karachi might feel a sense of ownership and accountability to support the celebration of such a history. These outcomes offer hope in the future of the city, rather than uncertainty about its precarious diversity. As mentioned above, in the initial phase of the project, the impetus was to get out and make a visible change as soon as possible. Later on, the initiatives were systematically planned. At first, the aim was to shift the scene from one of atrocities and animosity to a more peaceful and positive expression of care and community. To do this, the organizers recruited those same people that help to fuel the animosity and vehement destruction. These gangs of young men typically receive financial benefits for wheat pasting papers or scrawling slogans under the cover of the night; as

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such Walls of Peace paid them to accomplish the same task. In the latter case, the stenciled imagery provoked a sense of pride instead of murderous tendencies. A main organizer of the artist collective, artist Munawar Ali and these young men worked after dark to cover surfaces throughout the city in the guerilla manner in which they typically approached their tasks. Of course, graffiti artists have worked for so long using the same method. In the morning, Karachiites woke up to stenciled visuals of donkey carts and their drivers, a typical scene in the city. They saw declarations stating: “I am Karachi; United for Peace.” In this intervention, the artist collective provided a means to shift the dialogue without interfering with business of moneymaking for the gangs of people working for various political and religious groups, something that could have resulted in a violent situation for the organizers.35 Instead, any potential difficulty was diffused by using the same forces that have contributed to the problem in Karachi. After the initial canvassing of positivity, Walls of Peace began to imagine the next step for shifting the outlook for the city; this time they would do it in a more deliberate manner. The collective assessed what it had accomplished, and then considered what to do next. They decided to plan a series of paintings on strategic walls. An open call was put out to which anyone could submit a concept for a wall. This allowed the public to participate. The designs were chosen in a careful manner in order to spread a message of positivity and pride, rather than raising concerns, confusion, or protest. During the process of executing the work, the collective solicited opinions and stories from the participants and the general public to analyze the reception of the project. The feedback provided a source from which the organizers could modify subsequent initiatives. One significant proposal happened at the train station; the collective recruited artists to contribute portraits of vendors who sell items at the site. The paintings of the men with their wares, from fruit to tea, line the boundary wall of the station, thereby responding directly to the location of the painted surfaces. The vendors found pride in seeing their portraits publicly displayed; those merchants that were not the subject of a painting insisted on having their likenesses included in the outdoor gallery. In this reaction, the impact of the public art was immediately palpable. One of the principal guidelines of Walls of Peace—to instill ownership in the district—was accomplished in two ways. First, the collective prepped the walls for painting. In this simple action, the group changed the environment at the site. After removing piles of rubbish, the train station

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boundary was renewed and inviting. The photographs taken before the intervention versus those documenting the space after the paintings were completed reveal the transformation (Fig. 5.11). Now the site was clean, and there was motivation to maintain this appearance by those that utilize the space. Secondly, ownership quickly happened when the decision was made to place work in a location occupied by the poorest in society and make that work about them. It offered humanity in how they see themselves and how others see them. Normally overlooked and not celebrated, the sellers saw themselves as dignified individuals in the paintings. In addition to the train station, Walls of Peace has worked in various sites around Karachi. Shifting the view of an area, the involved artists help to transform small corners of the city. In a part of the metropolis that includes several schools, one can now find images of familiar urban sights painted according to the Urdu alphabet. These appropriate visuals appear instead of advertisements or chalking with profanity. As the collective of artists continues to develop projects that connect with a more diverse

Fig. 5.11  Walls of Peace, I am Karachi. Organized by Vasl Artists’ Association and Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Involving artists, designers, students, and volunteers, Karachi, 2015. (Photography by the author)

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group of audiences, it has considered different options for how to accomplish such an undertaking. Potential plans include a mobile art gallery that can take art to the people rather than asking them to go to the institution. In this development, it is possible to analyze the project as one that offers art as a way to engage the public sphere to shift perceptions. Rather than stoking the need for violence, Walls of Peace offers hopeful signs to unite the community.

5.6   Conclusion As mentioned in the introduction of the book, the need to connect with the world around them is critical to many artists in the region, giving them a sense of purpose and meaningful practice. The ones in the chapter gave back to the community by producing circumstances to engage with the issues and concerns that it faces. Instead of simply presenting the topics that need dialogue, they immerse the community and audiences into the experiences to instigate a discussion. Index of the Disappeared, for example, pulls the viewer into a complex system of government-sanctioned detainment, torture, and lies in the name of national security, even as it lifts civil liberties. The intricate web of dishonesty and scapegoating find parallels with Enemy Kitchen that refers to the shift in the war on terrorism from Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 to Iraq in the wake of the discovery of weapons of mass destruction. Tied to the latter, Enemy Kitchen acknowledged that Iraq and by extension Iraqi-Americans were framed as evil and hostile invaders. Iraqis—any of them—became highly suspicious and potentially dangerous. The manipulation of policy to target immigrant communities that both Index of the Disappeared and Enemy Kitchen highlight continues to be a menace in recent times. In 2019, an American citizen of Iraqi heritage was sent “back” to Iraq. In fact, he never lived in the country. Born in a refugee camp, his family found asylum in the United States. After being deported back to Iraq where he did not know anyone or the language and had little money, he died from complications related to diabetes. Such a tragic event is what the artists wanted to prevent. Of course, what it highlights is the deep-seated racism prevalent in the United States that might have previously seemed to be an issue that was getting resolved over the span of time. The works by Rakowitz and Ganesh/ Ghani pointed out that an endemic problem existed, and it would be difficult to move past it without acknowledging the systemic prejudices that maintain such conditions. The kind of deeply rooted racism that exists in

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the United States was brought out in the clear light of day when police killed a black man without any fear of retribution. The brutal murder of George Floyd by a white police officer might begin to unravel the workings of institutionalized racism. His name will be etched into the minds of Americans for many years, and maybe longer because his death initiated a groundswell from the people. By appreciating the complexity beneath the surface of the situations, a movement beyond might be facilitated in order to bring about change in a sustainable and long-lasting manner. The other two collectives in the chapter address endemic conditions developed out of years of inequality and oppression. The attendant issues did not arise suddenly out of a vacuum. Instead they are deeply connected to the instability of the societies in Palestine and Pakistan. The shaky ground for these parts of the world arose from the fractures caused by European interference. Although experienced more than seventy years ago, it continues to destabilize the earth beneath their feet. Yet in both societies, the two projects signal that the people have already assumed the power to shape the future. No longer simply victims of the system, whether it is the former colonizer, the American government, or global policies, the communities have found voices and the projects described here have conjured up ways to utilize them. This may sound like a utopian fantasy, but it is far from such an idyllic end. The hard work of taking ownership is only part of the solution. Change will happen in a slow and sometimes retrograde manner. What the initiatives highlight is a ray of hope that cannot be underestimated for its impact on contemporary societies around the world, from Chicago to Palestine to Karachi, and beyond.

Notes 1. See Stephen Sheehi, Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims (Clarity Press, Inc., 2011). 2. Bryan D. Byers & James A. Jones, “The Impact of the Terrorist Attacks of 9/11 on Anti-Islamic Hate Crime,” Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, 5 (2007): 43–56. This article analyzes the initial increase and subsequent decrease in anti-Muslim crime as a potential result of the pleas of public figures to refrain from such actions. 3. Stephen Sheehi: Deconstructing Islamophobia, filmed on April 6, 2012 by AlternateFocus, video, 28:25, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= SIGdOpDurAk.

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4. There has been much debate about the need for Muslims to apologize for or condemn any act of terrorism that happens in the name of Islam. In 2017, an American Muslim college student put together a Google doc with all of the instances in which Muslims have condemned terrorist and other hateful activities in an effort to show that this has happened many times in recent history and also to call into question such a stance that had become expected at this point. See, for example, Arwa Mahdawi, “The 712-page Google doc that proves Muslims do condemn terrorism,” The Guardian, March 26, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/ shortcuts/2017/mar/26/muslims-condemn-terrorism-stats. 5. See, for example, from some of the more than one thousand publications on the topic: Peter Gottschalk, “Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Sentiment in the United States,” in Jane I. Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Eds. The Oxford Handbook of American Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Narzanin Massoumi, Tom Mills, David Miller, Eds. What is Islamophobia?: Racism, Social Movements and the State (London: Pluto Press, 2017); and Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012). 6. I Am Karachi, “What is I Am Karachi,” accessed June 2016, http://iamkarachi.org/what-is-iak/. 7. Charles Lane, “We expected the war on terror to unite us. What went wrong?” Washington Post, September 11, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-expected-the-war-on-terror-to-unite-us-whatwent-wrong/2018/09/10/5fb58c38-b4ff-11e8-a7b5-adaaa5b2a57f_ story.html. 8. Chitra Ganesh and Mariam Ghani, “Index of the Disappeared,” accessed October 11, 2019. https://www.mariamghani.com/work/626. 9. Mariam Ghani, “Point of Proof,” accessed October 11, 2019, https://www. mariamghani.com/work/213. 10. Brent Staples, “How Italians Became ‘White’,” The New  York Times, October 12, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/12/ opinion/columbus-day-italian-american-racism.html. 11. Alejandro Anreus, Ben Shahn and the Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001). 12. Alejandra Rodriguez, “Is the War on Terrorism Compromising Civil Liberties? A Discussion of Hamdi and Padilla,” California Western Law Review, 39, no. 2, https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1167&context=cwlr, retrieved February 1, 2020. 13. Sheehi, op. cit., 31–2. 14. Ganesh and Ghani, op. cit. 15. Ganesh and Ghani, op. cit.

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16. See Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Nazir Nader Harb, “Post-9/11: Making Islam an American Religion,” Religions 2014, 5, 477–501. 17. Daniel L.  Byman, “Iraq and the Global War on Terrorism,” Brookings, July 1, 2007, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/iraq-and-the-globalwar-on-terrorism/. 18. Deepa Kumar, op. cit. 19. Cynthia Lee, “Hate Crimes and the War on Terror,” in Hate Crimes: Perspectives and Approaches, edited by Barbara Perry (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2009), 139–166. 20. Haddad and Harb, op. cit., 479. 21. Alissa J. Rubin and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, “ICE Deported Him to a Country He’d Never Seen. He Died 2  Months Later,” The New  York Times, August 8, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/us/ iraq-jimmy-aldaoud-deport.html. 22. “Michael Rakowitz on Enemy Kitchen,” filmed in February 2012 for “Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art at Smart Museum of Art Chicago,” video, 3:49, https://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/exhibitions/ feast/, retrieved October 2019. 23. Caitlyn Kim, “Saddam Hussein Dinnerware Used in Art Exhibit Returned to Iraq,” WNYC, December 15, 2011, https://www.wnyc.org/ stor y/175776-saddam-hussein-dinnerplates-used-ar t-exhibitreturned-iraq/. 24. See Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012). 25. Kim, op.cit. 26. “Sandi Hilal on Campus on Camps,” filmed on March 13, 2016 at March Meeting 2016: Social Practice: Case studies at Sharjah Art Foundation, video, 20:49, http://sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/events/ mm-2016-social-practice-case-studies. 27. Amnesty International, “Israel’s refusal to grant Palestinian refugees right to return has fuelled seven decades of suffering,” May 15, 2019, https:// www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/05/israels-refusal-togrant-palestinian-refugees-right-to-return-has-fuelled-seven-decades-ofsuffering/. 28. Title of Hilal and Petti’s exhibition at New York University Abu Dhabi art gallery. For more information, please see: “Permanent Temporariness: Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti,” New  York University Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, February 24–June 9, 2018, https://www.nyuad-artgallery.org/ en_US/our-exhibitions/main-gallery/hilal-petti/. 29. According to Hilal during her talk at March Meeting 2016 at the Sharjah Art Foundation.

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30. Campus in Camps “About,” June 11, 2013, http://www.campusincamps. ps/about/. 31. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” United Nations General Assembly, Paris, December 10, 1948, https://www.un.org/en/universaldeclaration-human-rights/index.html. 32. Campus in Camps Initiatives, The Garden, June 18, 2013, http://www. campusincamps.ps/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/130624_The_garden_web.pdf. 33. Vasl Artists’ Association, IAK Walls of Peace Public Art Project, May– December 2016, implemented for I AM KARACHI, supported by Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, http://vaslart.org/i-am-karachi/. 34. Vasl Artists’ Association, “Visual Strategy” in Our City & the State of Its Walls, http://vaslart.org/i-am-karachi/. 35. Interview with Munawar Syed by the author, March 2016.

References Anreus, Alejandro. Ben Shahn and the Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Byman, Daniel L. “Iraq and the Global War on Terrorism.” Brookings, July 1, 2007. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/iraq-and-the-global-war-onterrorism/. Campus in Camps. “About.” June 11, 2013. http://www.campusincamps. ps/about/. Campus in Camps Initiatives. The Garden. June 18, 2013. http://www.campusincamps.ps/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/130624_The_garden_web.pdf. Ganesh, Chitra and Mariam Ghani. “Index of the Disappeared.” Accessed October 11, 2019. https://www.mariamghani.com/work/626. Ghani, Mariam. “Point of Proof.” Accessed October 11, 2019. https://www. mariamghani.com/work/213. “Sandi Hilal on Campus on Camps.” Filmed March 13, 2016 at March Meeting 2016: Social Practice: Case studies, Sharjah Art Foundation. Video, 20:49. http://sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/events/mm-2016-socialpractice-case-studies. I Am Karachi Walls of Peace. “About.” Accessed August 3, 2016. http://iamkarachi.org/what-we-do/wall-of-peace/about-iak-walls/. Vasl Artists’ Association. “IAK Walls of Peace Public Art Project, May–December 2016, implemented for I AM KARACHI, supported by Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture.” Accessed February 1, 2018. http://vaslart. org/i-am-karachi/.

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“Israel’s refusal to grant Palestinian refugees right to return has fuelled seven decades of suffering.” Amnesty International, May 15, 2019. https://www. amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/05/israels-refusal-to-grant-palestinianrefugees-right-to-return-has-fuelled-seven-decades-of-suffering/. Lane, Charles. “We expected the war on terror to unite us. What went wrong?” Washington Post, September 11, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ opinions/we-expected-the-war-on-ter r or-to-unite-us-what-wentwrong/2018/09/10/5fb58c38-b4ff-11e8-a7b5-adaaa5b2a57f_story.html. Kim, Caitlyn. “Saddam Hussein Dinnerware Used in Art Exhibit Returned to Iraq.” WNYC, December 15, 2011. https://www.wnyc.org/story/175776saddam-hussein-dinnerplates-used-art-exhibit-returned-iraq/ “Michael Rakowitz on Enemy Kitchen.” Filmed February 2012 for Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art, Smart Museum of Art Chicago. Video, 3:49. https://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/exhibitions/feast/. Rodriguez, Alejandra. n.d. “Is the War on Terrorism Compromising Civil Liberties? A Discussion of Hamdi and Padilla.” California Western Law Review, vol. 39, no. 2. https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a rticle=1167&context=cwlr. Rubin, Alissa J. and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, “ICE Deported Him to a Country He’d Never Seen. He Died 2 Months Later.” The New York Times, August 8, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/us/iraq-jimmy-aldaouddeport.html, retrieved October 11, 2019. Sheehi, Stephen. Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims. Atlanta: Clarity Press, Inc., 2011. Staples, Brent. “How Italians Became ‘White’.” The New York Times, October 12, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/12/opinion/columbus-day-italian-american-racism.html. United Nations General Assembly, Paris. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” December 10, 1948. https://www.un.org/en/universal-declarationhuman-rights/index.html.

CHAPTER 6

Collaborative Art Praxis and Globalization: Agency and Marginalized Communities Around the World

6.1   Introduction Collaborative art praxis that seeks to address and work with communities and the issues and concerns that they face might well be analyzed as a venture that has matured into an organized movement because of the significant contributions from artists in varied nations, rather than as a development germinated in the standard art centers in the West and subsequently exported to points outside of these areas. Shifting the focus away from the United States and Europe, artists in Global South nations are highlighted through powerful works utilizing collaborative art praxis. But even many of the works that are based in the United States are coming from areas outside of the mainstream art world in the country. The margins are what is fueling this arguably first global art movement. Thus, it is possible to consider it to be a sweeping emergence out of the periphery that has spread around the globe and is a signpost of the deconstruction of the typically one or a limited number of axis points that have been standard locations where critically engaged contemporary art gets formed. The ramification of such a shift is potentially massive because this approach to practice that has thrived in the margins is rapidly defining art today.

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Indeed, initiatives that African American artists launched in marginal areas have perhaps been the most significant recent projects of socially engaged art. The internationally renowned projects of social practice art have taken place in the ghetto, the inner cities of America. Rick Lowe, Theaster Gates, and Mark Bradford have developed community-centered proposals that have involved many individuals in three major American urban areas. In Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles, three artists have chosen to reflect and act upon the requirements of neighborhoods in need. This chapter will briefly outline the works. In Houston, Rick Lowe was an early practitioner of such practice. He initiated Project Row Houses and involved artists, designers, urban planners, and others in refurbishing and building low-income housing in the city’s Third Ward neighborhood. Theaster Gates has been engaged in a number of projects that have transformed neighborhoods in the South Side of Chicago. And Mark Bradford began an organization in South Los Angeles to connect the African American community with contemporary art. Their initiatives have transformed urban areas through targeted actions that ultimately shifted the realities of the communities residing there. It is enlightening to compare these works with collaborative art praxis in urban areas in the MENASA. It is crucial to keep in mind the significant differences between these locales; the political developments in the United States in May and June 2020 have shown the world the painful and tragic specifics of the situation of black people in America. The apparently unprovoked murder of an African American man, George Floyd, by a white police officer uncovered the systemic racism in the nation and the absolute need to address it. No other race group could know the situation of black people in the United States. It is laced with a history of slavery, segregation, implicit inequality, and police brutality. The Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie expressed the real specificity of the black American experience, even as she is an African black person living in the United States. It was not too long ago when it was an overtly racist society. She writes: “If you meet an elderly American Black man from Alabama, he probably remembers when he had to step off the curb because a white person was walking past.”1 The chains of slavery have never been fully unshackled and so the tragedy of George Floyd’s murder is a contemporary event that became possible because of this long history of being black in the United States. Yet again, these same events have agitated people across the world because of similar circumstances that marginalized groups face in varied places globally. Acknowledging the overlaps might help

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unite the marginalized or at least address some of the disconcerting incidents that disenfranchised people experience in different parts of the world. This is not an attempt to equate one for the other; however, it is about highlighting key elements that are similar. This has the potential of having a powerful impact on how marginalization can be dismantled. In the predominantly African American, low income neighborhoods in the United States where artists have started profound projects, the arts have been woven into the fabric of the area to transform it from within. The three initiatives addressed in the chapter have been welcomed by the communities they have involved and made a positive impact and shifted reality in disenfranchised neighborhoods within large, multidimensional cities. In developing economies in the MENASA, urban areas are a microcosm of the world where the poor and wealthy live side-by-side but utterly separately. Challenges are tremendous for the working class that are marginalized in their societies and lack a platform to be heard by others. Muhajir immigrants in the mega-city of Karachi are poor and reside in squalor. Tentative Collective, three artists that have collaborated to produce art that is engaged with communities in Pakistani urban centers, worked with a Muhajir neighborhood to facilitate the making of a film by and for the residents of the site. In offering assistance, Tentative Collective provided the means for neighbors to express themselves. Meanwhile, in the Manshiyat Naser district of Cairo, residents are very familiar with filth and refuse. Many of them are the city’s garbage collectors, living together in the same neighborhood. eL Seed, a Tunisian/French artist based in Dubai, came to the area with the intention to beautify it with an extensive public art project. Although he did do this, over the course of actualizing the work, he realized that it was he and others outside of this community that needed to shift their points of view about the residents of Manshiyat Nasser, rather than needing to change things within the neighborhood. What comes out of both of these productions is the agency of the marginalized, and their desire and ability to have it despite being disenfranchised and subject to negative claims from the outside about their means of sustenance and living conditions. As eL Seed informs, preconceived notions and stereotypes color the perceptions that people form about others. As is the case with Tentative Collective, he develops an experiential framework that addresses such misconceptions; however, this is accomplished in indirect or perhaps unintentional ways. The dirt and grime of the urban areas are not explained away but given a context through the initiatives. Aligning the projects in urban centers in developing nations in

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the MENASA with inner cities of the United States, the chapter addresses how the margins have been activated and empowered in collaborative works of art. These sites are reviled and disregarded by much of the people within the societies in which they are located; however, they are also full of possibilities. The artworks presented in the chapter reveal such hope and optimism. They do so by disrupting the conventional views of the marginalized. Provoking alternative modes of reality or realization, the projects mold new ways of thinking of and seeing these communities by undergoing collaborations with them and hearing their stories. Rather than imposing narratives upon them, their voices enrich the works that become more about process rather than product. This crucial feature of socially engaged art is a method for activating agency and deepening the understanding within and outside of the margins. The history of art offers some critical examples of marginalized artists that have caused disruptions to the mainstream. An appropriate example for this study is the work of British-­Pakistani artist Rasheed Araeen who found resonance with the Black Panther movement when he moved from the country of his birth, Pakistan, to the country where he would live for much of his life, England. His activist performance art of the 1970s provides insight into the kinds of overlaps that might be found among “Black” people. In 2020, the world learned about the  immigrant parents of Kamala Harris, the first Black and South Asian woman to be nominated for a major political party’s candidate for Vice President of the United States. Her Indian  mother was actively involved with  the University of California at Berkeley’s Afro American  Association, signaling that she identified  herself and was accepted as Black. In forming such alliances, minorities could find modes to have a voice in society. 

6.2   A Global Art Movement: Critical Expressions in Collaborative Art Praxis Three artists have arguably developed the most significant works of collaborative, socially engaged art. They have done so in “historical spaces of blackness,” meaning that these locations are crucial to analyze, preserve, and utilize because of their importance in the story of African Americans.2 On the basest level, they engage with the communities to which they are tied in order to help them. The forms of art that they create are “social sculptures” that connect with people in order to embrace the humanity present in everyone. Instead of failure or lack of opportunity, these artists were able to see the potential of life in the neighborhood and facilitate their neighbors’ assertion of their agency in defining their realities.3

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Theaster Gates has developed projects that seem to stretch the limits of artistic practice. He has been instrumental in revitalizing the South Side of Chicago, a neglected neighborhood, through getting support from the Mayor of Chicago and the University of Chicago. The Stony Island Bank was a defunct financial institution and its abandoned building stood on Stony Island Avenue in the South Side of Chicago for almost thirty years. Gates purchased the building for $1 from the city with the understanding that he (and his foundation) would raise the money to refurbish the structure and make it safe for visitors. There was four feet of standing water in the basement and much of the physical facility had deteriorated, but still the artist managed to renovate it and repurpose it into an arts center with a book library that was donated from Johnson Publishing (Fig. 6.1), slide library bestowed by the University of Chicago (Fig. 6.2), reading room, gallery spaces, meeting rooms, and collections holding (a compilation of imagery and objects referencing African Americans). A couple of blocks away from the Stony Island Arts Bank is the Dorchester Art and Housing Collaborative that is a residential community for mixed income families (Fig. 6.3). In a neighborhood that is desperate for decent affordable housing and safety, the Dorchester project that is led by Gates has transformed a district. Children now more appropriately use a park located across the street that was once infested by drug dealers. Gates designed the homes (thirty-two in total) and left some space for a community center where different events and meetings take place, including free yoga classes. Around the corner is a community garden that has yielded many fruits and vegetables for the neighbors. Through such initiatives, Gates goes beyond what might be considered politically and socially motivated art, meaning that he provided actual services to the neighborhood that serve particular functions, rather than producing a painting that presents the issues facing the area. The latter is perhaps a more conventional example as a method to creating work to help a community, while the former enters physically into the space of a community. Gates’ mode of making “art” is one in which he “shapes” something into existence, whether it is a clay pot or a socially engaged project.4 The term “social sculpture” was coined by artist Rick Lowe, whose initiative is described below. The “social” is what critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud has identified as a critical reoccurring strain in much of contemporary art. The process is critical even if there is not an actual object/outcome in the end. It is about the experiences that are encouraged rather than the tangible products. The experiential outweighs the material.

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Fig. 6.1  Johnson Publishing library, Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago, 2016. (Photograph by the author)

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Fig. 6.2  Slide collection, Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago, 2016. (Photograph by the author)

Another example in the same neighborhood is the Black Cinema House that is dedicated to playing films connected to the African American experience. The space that Gates designed is meant to be a comfortable venue for watching movies and discussing them. It includes a library of books that were once housed in Gates’ home. It is in the same building where Gates has his art studio. Embedded in an African American neighborhood, the “artwork” offers a gathering place to relate with others from the area or those interested in the initiative. In the beginning, Gates purchased and refurbished a house in the Stony Island Bank area, and organized soul food dinners to which individuals came from all over Chicago. During the dinners, the discussion would be guided to the history of African Americans from slavery onward. The experiential events brought much attention to the practice of socially engaged art. Gates would eventually form a master’s degree program in social practice art at the University of Chicago. Prior to Gates’ development in Chicago, artist Rick Lowe had found a manner through which to address the impending demolition of shotgun

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Fig. 6.3 Dorchester Art and Housing Collaborative, Chicago, 2016. (Photograph by the author)

homes in the Third Ward neighborhood of Houston. Here, he was able to contribute to the transformation of the predominantly African American section of the city. Project Row Houses is a longstanding initiative of twenty-five years that has garnered worldwide attention. Recognized and lauded globally, there is so much written about this exemplary and multifaceted project, which has spawned several offshoots that have remained linked to the umbrella organization. This limits the contribution that the current study could make to analyzing the program and its impact. As such, in this investigation into the institution, the focus will be to find alliances with projects in the MENASA, in addition to highlighting the kinds of situations that are paralleled in both areas. One point of intersection is the effect of marginalization and lack of opportunities to be found in derelict neighborhoods. In the early 1990s, Rick Lowe had been meeting regularly with other African American artists. They had wanted to find a way to help the historical Third Ward community and its residents. They realized that the area was under threat; however, they also knew that there were modes out there to shift this

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positioning. So, when in 1993 Lowe became aware of twenty-two shotgun houses in an abandoned state, he and his cohorts did not shy away from their dilapidated condition. Instead, they had the vision to appreciate what could be a unique and prosperous development based squarely on the history of African American culture. The architectural design of the shotgun house landed in Houston because of the migratory pattern of the slave trade, coming from west Africa and going through the Caribbean and into America. The symbolism was critical to acquiring of the property and transforming it into spaces for art that have had a dynamic effect on the neighborhood and preserved a vital aspect of its history (Fig.  6.4). Along the way, the organization has provided housing and services for young mothers heading single-parent families; 58 affordable rental units for people from the community; and offered assistance to empower local small business owners. It has also taken care to fight gentrification of the neighborhood, a process that often results in the displacement of existing residents. And, even as the profile of the organization has achieved a global reputation, it has remained enmeshed in the local. While facilitating the development of economic and living conditions of residents in the Third Ward, Project Row Houses has been committed to the infusion of arts into the area, and the support of local artists through providing space and time for them to grow their practices. There are revolving art installations throughout the vicinity. And students and emerging artists have taken full advantage of their time in residence. Some of them have gone on to become internationally recognized artists, including Julie Mehretu and Shahzia Sikander. In addition, architects and architectural students have been tasked with designing spaces with low budgets. The organization continues to provide services and resources for its neighbors. In fact, it is expanding in various ways to help the Third Ward, as well as communities in other cities. The MENASA projects discussed in the chapter, and throughout the book find resonance with Project Row Houses and Stony Island Arts Bank described above and Art + Practice described below. Existing on the edges of society, the groups with which the artists and arts organizations connect are often invisible to and ignored deliberately and dehumanized by the rest of society. These initiatives are embedded into communities that they are attempting to aid. The same can be claimed by various organizations and initiatives in the MENASA. They connect with the history of the space and/or residents to develop the projects. This appears to be important in order not to “parachute” into an unfamiliar site. By linking to the

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Fig. 6.4  Project Row Houses, Third Ward, Houston, 2019. (Photograph by author)

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past, the projects find more significance in the present. In doing so, the initiatives work with communities to formulate a dignified and longstanding story of the residents. In effect, this creates the shift in ways large and small. In Los Angeles’ Leimert Park, Art + Practice is an organization that artist Mark Bradford conceptualized along with collector/philanthropist Eileen Norton and social activist Allan DiCastro. Bradford’s way of conceiving the initiative was different from Gates and Lowe because, unlike them, he did not view it as part of his art. Instead, he saw it as a way to give back to his community by injecting contemporary art into the neighborhood. The initiative has shifted the landscape of the neighborhood of Leimert Park in South Central Los Angeles, one of the crime-ridden and economically struggling areas of the city (Fig. 6.5). However, in its heyday Leimert Park was a cultural center for various forms of art. It was also an economic hub for small businesses. A historically black neighborhood, Leimert Park Village was a planned community where primarily white residents lived in the beginning after its development. By the late 1940s, African Americans began to move into the 1.5-mile square area, despite intense resistance from white people. Eventually it became predominantly a black district, and Afrocentric business and culture thrived in the urban space. An art gallery presented the work of emerging and established black artists. Performance spaces highlighted music associated with African American life, including jazz and blues.5 Other initiatives provided forums for gathering and creating, and invited important African American figures to speak. Leimert Park was a cultural hub and had been booming until the early years of the twenty-first century apparently. This provides the backdrop of Bradford’s program in the neighborhood. With such illustrious history, Leimert Park Village endows a thoughtful background for the arts to return to the area in order to help shift perceptions and impart new modes of producing and presenting art. Art + Practice has an active gallery that presents exhibitions of a range of contemporary artists known nationally and internationally. Identifying the larger number of foster children in the surrounding area, the organization’s main initiative aims at reaching this particular group. It has a program training local foster youth (18–24) in art by offering a structured internship to get residents prepared for a brighter career path. The organization has a smaller scope than the Houston and Chicago initiatives. Still, it has received a lot of praise for what it has been able to accomplish. It attracts many people in the neighborhood and beyond to events like

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Fig. 6.5  Art + Practice, Leimart Park Village, Los Angeles, 2018. (Photograph by author)

exhibition openings and artists’ talks. This project was developed to bring contemporary art to the area, rather than expecting the residents to attend galleries and museums in distant parts of the city. With Art + Practice in the neighborhood, world class exhibitions are within easy reach, and the area’s youth has access to new activities and a potential career path. The organization also offers workshops in a variety of life and art skills from

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grant writing to photography to contemporary art writing. The multipronged approach is one that Dorchester projects and Project Row Houses espouses as well. It is one that disrupts life as usual in marginalized neighborhoods.

6.3   Disruptive Practices at the Margins Art historian Claire Bishop has indicated that participatory, collaborative endeavors related to the arts have to be provocative in order to be categorized as a work of art.6 The specific term that she embraces to draw a line between the true work of art versus an ethical or activist activity is “disruption.” If the dictionary is consulted, to get at the heart of what is a disruption, it states “a problem or action that interrupts something and prevents it from continuing” or “doing things in new ways that change the way an industry or business operates.”7 In both of these definitions, there is some form of an active role to be assumed—a call to action. This animated deed creates a shift in practices and modes of conceptualizing situations and people. Disruption stops the progress of business as usual. It sets up a detour by re-routing a mode of thinking. It makes us wonder what we have been doing, thinking, and saying all along, and begs us to look again to reconsider practices. Bishop’s analysis is absolutely insightful and offers a clear understanding of a role that many artists assume. Indeed, they reflect key aspects of society back on to those within that society or ones that might judge it. Artists cause us to pause and contemplate that state of our world. As such, Bishop’s assessment is valid. What is less clear is why she feels it is necessary to not view certain types of projects that have consumed artists over the last decades as art. Is art not what artists make? Indeed, she likely would not assign the label of art to some of the projects that are described in the chapter because they mimic the work of community arts organizations or the type of endeavor with which a social activist might become involved. But does it matter to these artists/activists if what they do is called art or not. The nomenclature to define their works is likely to be secondary to many of the practitioners of collaborative art praxis, as was already addressed in the introduction. They shift between making a more typical work of art and ones that are socially engaged. However, if we are to take Bishop’s definition to heart, then the projects in the chapter might still be categorized as artworks. They provoke audiences just as much, and probably much more so than works made with conventional media. The experiential and engaging endeavors push

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participants and visitors closer to the issue by having them deal with it directly. They provoke us to think about the inequalities that exist in the world today, whether economic, racial, or other indicators, and get us to recognize that those are deeply ingrained into society because of a long history of oppression. Marginalized groups are not suddenly cast to the side; they are defined according to what has happened in the past. The impact of slavery, segregation, colonialism, and economic disparity; all of the extensive historic processes are embedded into the foundations of contemporary society and continue to affect life currently in varied manners in different parts of the world. The disruption that is incited coerces participants and bystanders to review their understanding of a particular situation, event, people, or history. For those on the margins that do not typically have the voices to stand up for their rights, needs, and desires, the kind of participatory, collaborative, and socially engaged work that has been initiated by artists could be critical in their abilities to demand a change. It is often a visceral encounter that the artists set up to formulate a transformative moment; for example, Theaster Gates offers suppers during which slavery is discussed. This kind of situation is often performative and harkens back to the history of performance art through its experientiality. A particular work by the artist Rasheed Araeen sheds light on the kind of provocation that performance art can offer and might be applied to the performative ethos of socially engaged art. It can also address conditions that may be applicable to marginalized communities around the world. An immigrant to the United Kingdom, Araeen was born in what would become Pakistan, and he moved to London when he was thirty years old. In 1977, Araeen performed for an event that the Artists for Democracy organized. The group was a collective of practitioners that included immigrants from the Caribbean and other black people. Araeen found parallels in his experience with the challenges they faced. He had been raising his “black consciousness” since 1971 when a racially motivated murder of a black man took place in Leeds.8 He claims that this event was a turning point in his practice. The artist began to produce work on the struggles of “blacks” in England. His statement testifies to this shift in his art. As he recalls in a 2010 essay, “I called it ‘Black Manifesto,’ to adopt an identity that honored the struggle of all those people who became ‘black’ under colonialism, and still remain ‘black’ under the prevailing neo-colonial conditions both in most Third World countries and in Western cities where there

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are large immigrant communities from these countries [my emphasis].”9 Araeen began a seminal journal to explore such topics entitled Third Text that continues to remain important in postcolonialism studies and the arts. So, when in 1977, Araeen performed Paki Bastard: Portrait of the Artist as a Black Person, he offered an insight to his experiences that he considered as relating to the suffering of black people in the United Kingdom. During the live event, he was physically present and endured the abuses that minorities underwent in the United Kingdom during the 1970s. The title was a derogatory term often shouted at Pakistani immigrants in Britain. During the performance, the artist exposed the type of treatment that “Paki bastards” had to endure. He was blindfolded, beaten, and tortured. This radical performance was an expression of his activist self. His awakened being became physically involved with the struggle, rather than only conceptually. He expressed the conditions that apply to all “black” people in the United Kingdom. By highlighting the alliances that could be formed among marginalized groups, Araeen offered the oppressed a manner through which to find a voice. Through a popular movement, “blacks” could come together to strengthen the demand for equality. The cause could encompass a larger community of individuals and groups undergoing the same kinds of struggles. For Araeen, it was very affective to unite “blacks” as one. In more recent years, he has continued to investigate alliances to be found among marginalized, dark-skinned groups of people. In 2010, he organized a special issue of Third Text that addressed the topic of “negritude,” a concept that Leopold Sedar Senghor developed to formulate a method for Africans to raise their consciousness and assume a role of self-­ affirmation, rather than waiting for others to hand it out to them. In effect, it is about the agency of the marginalized. Senghor was a politician as President of Senegal; but, his most important contribution is on the intellectual front and, in particular the philosophy of negritude that advocated a rootedness in African culture to create a governmental and, by extension, a societal system that would make better sense in Africa, rather than sustaining the European ways.10 It was a potent manner through which to fight racism. The title of the special edition of Third Text was “Beyond Negritude,” suggesting that newer ways of thinking were necessary today. Araeen published an email to the Professor of Comparative Literature Denis Epko on his analysis of a trip he had taken to the Dakar Biennale of Art and the seminar that he attended on Senghor and negritude. His way

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of conceptualizing its importance suggests that he wanted to apply these conditions of black Africans to those elsewhere. In the message, he wrote that the philosophy of “negritude” was taken too literally, rather than metaphorically. He asserted that the concept was in need of being saved from reductionist thought that limited its application to African art. Instead, he believed that the philosophy needed to be re-interpreted “so that they become fundamental aspects of a society which is conceived and constructed on the basis of symbiosis, not only in Africa but beyond.”11 This particular statement indicates the ongoing significance of connecting marginalized communities—the concepts are not just valid in Africa but beyond. He wanted to “rescue” the philosophy of negritude in order for it to gain “universal significance.”12 Although the issue happened, it was not with the fanfare that Araeen expected. He assumed that the reason was linked to the popularity of Fanon’s theories for African academics, particularly in Western institutions. He views these ideas as ones that lead to fossilization once confronted and denounced.13 Essentially, the impression is that the problem has been dealt with, and no longer is an issue. The events of June 2020 related to the murder of George Floyd and subsequent riots and protests made us brutally aware of the inequality among races in the United States. What Araeen finds useful in Senghor’s rhetoric is that “it is not limited or trapped in [the] specificity [of Africa].”14 It would begin there but extend beyond in order to initiate a process of decolonization from within “blacks.” In this chapter, the projects developed in African American communities in the United States and points within North Africa and South Asia are ingrained in the cultures of the communities in which they exist. And they find modes of resistance to unshackle themselves. It is a long process of decolonization or halting of oppression. The need to untie the bounds to the oppressor has to be assumed by the marginalized communities, and this requirement echoes across the world. Although it may seem problematic to make any comparison among communities from almost the furthest reaches of the globe, the precedence for such an exercise is clear and valid. It proved to be helpful to Araeen and his cohorts in London during the 1970s and later. As the comparison is made in this study, it seems as relevant today. In Chicago and Cairo, relationships were formed between insiders and outsiders to challenge long histories of inequality. And, as already stated in the introduction to the chapter, this key feature of expressing the issues and concerns of marginalized is definitive of collaborative art praxis. “Blacks” or disenfranchised groups around the world are united in utilizing this mode of artmaking to

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address issues and concerns in the community by activating the agency of marginalized communities.

6.4   Perception: eL Seed’s Anamorphic Mural in Manshiyat Naser, Cairo, Egypt In Cairo, the self-described “calligraffiti” artist eL Seed became familiar with a neighborhood on the literal and metaphorical fringes of Cairo. His project extended outside of the studio space to form relationships with residents in this community that caused him to shift his perception. He had heard about the people of the Manshiyat Naser neighborhood, a suburb of Cairo where most of the city’s garbage collectors live (Fig. 6.6). After visiting the area, he decided to create a large-scale anamorphic painting to cover parts of fifty buildings in the district. However, the timeline and journey from its inception to completion formed an unforgettable experience for the artist and his team members, along with the residents of this neighborhood that is often viewed as filthy and degenerate by those from outside of it. This judgmental perception is what eL Seed wanted to confront and possibly transform. The collaborative project began when the artist had decided what he wanted to do and had to find a way to accomplish it. But the real significance of the work occurred in between this point and until it was complete. The final product was not the actual work of art. Instead, it was the experience that gave meaning to such an undertaking. The preconceived ideas and beliefs that the artist had before this encounter altered during this period. And, fittingly, his concept was precisely to do that; he had wanted to change how the residents of Manshiyat Naser view themselves and are perceived by others. eL Seed had planned to overhaul the neighborhood by beautifying it with a massive painting; however, the result was actually that he was the one who was transformed. He changed his perception of the people in the district through the relationships that developed over the course of the experiential project. The area did not need to be made more aesthetically pleasing; those who are outside should aim to understand this location in ways beyond their limited points of view. Case in point is the terms that neighbors utilize to describe themselves versus people that live elsewhere. Those that are within the community call themselves Zaraeeb, meaning pig breeders. The Coptic Christian society in the quarter has been breeding pigs that they feed from

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Fig. 6.6  eL Seed, Perception, Mural across fifty buildings, Manshiyat Naser district, 2016. (Photograph from the artist’s website)

the garbage they collect from across the city. They recycle 80% of the waste in this manner that the Cairenes discard. From the outside, the residents of Manshiyat Naser are considered to be among the filth and referred to as Zabaleen that suggests they are people of the garbage. Ironically, the Zaraeeb consider the city dwellers to be the garbage people because the latter are the ones that produce so much waste. The Zaraeeb community is providing a service to the city of Cairo by cleaning it up in a sustainable

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manner. They cleanse the urban environment by extracting its refuse from which they sustain themselves. eL Seed explained his shifting perception and understanding of the district’s residents: I heard about this community without having any idea about them, other than knowing they were associated with garbage. So, like anyone else, I went in with many misconceptions. I assumed these people would be poor and dirty. I got a slap in the face—my perceptions were entirely wrong. The Zaraeeb were not living in the garbage but from the garbage, which is totally different. They are very proud of what they do, because they know that without them, the whole city of Cairo would be engulfed in garbage.15

After visiting Manshiyat Naser, he came up with a phrase to paint in his signature style. Appropriately, he took the words of a third century Coptic bishop Saint Anthanassius of Alexandria for a work that would live in a Coptic Christian neighborhood. The statement reads, “Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eyes first.” Instead of judging people and places unknowingly, it is crucial to be able to “see” them properly. It is a simple trope; however, its meaning is profound, particularly for the people of the area that is known as “Garbage City.” Such a title is derogatory and strips the residents of their dignity. The abject misnomer reduces the neighborhood to one aspect that denigrates its worth. The area is labelled by outsiders that do not appreciate or comprehend the value of the residents’ work and lives. On the other hand, the words of the Coptic bishop implicate the reader and give him/her the responsibility of taking the necessary actions to undo an unjust perception. This is the role that we as humans are capable and compelled to adopt in order to coexist. The interactions and relations that form during a lifespan are critical to the development of humanity. Many artists recognize this process as fundamental to shifting frames of thinking. In the past, practitioners of art have transformed points of view through images and objects; now, they also do so via experiences. And eL Seed’s Perception offered a forum for the artist, team members, and residents to have transformative encounters. The popularity of and interest in the project since it was enacted testifies to its relatability, and how significant such experiences are to those beyond this particular area of the world.

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However, there were aspects particular to this neighborhood during the process of creating the large-scale mural. First, when the artist had decided that he wanted to include several buildings to produce the work, he knew he should go and discuss the concept with the neighbors. So, he went door-to-door in the manner of politicians or old-style businessmen to sell his idea to the people. Soon after he started this onerous and important task, he was told that the simpler way to get an approval from the residents of Manshiyat Naser was to seek the “blessings” of the local priest, Father Samaan. Once he was able to share his plans and potential outcome with the key individual and gain his consent, then everyone else opened their doors and minds to the dynamic project. In fact, they welcomed eL Seed and his cohorts with open arms. The residents were curious about the work. They discussed it with the team. The children of the area received impromptu art lessons as the work was completed. The artists played football with them during their breaks. The team would offer food to the children but was always turned down. eL Seed found out later that the young residents had been taught to decline such offers in case that person faced more hardships then they did. These simple moments provided a dynamic insight into this often-­ misunderstood community and gave the impetus for transformation to take place. The artist believes that he was the one who changed; however, judging from the images taken during the process, it appears that the neighbors underwent a metamorphosis as well. Their beaming faces indicating the pride that they felt to be chosen for an endeavor. eL Seed has described his reformed mode of thinking through citing one specific example. When he initiated the plotting of an anamorphic painting, he formulated a system by numbering the buildings. At first, each part of the work was identified by the building number. However, over time and encounters, the system shifted from numbers to individuals. The project was humanized. And the residents represented their humanity. Soon, the resident’s name, like “Uncle Ibrahim’s home,” identified a particular location. In the words of the artist, “All those families in the houses became names, became people, became memories that we now share. The community became family, and we became family for them.16 Even though there was a specific outcome planned for the project, the accidental and random happenings ended up being far more significant. eL Seed has joked that the mural took a lot longer to complete because he was offered so many cups of tea during its execution. Utilizing a pulley system, the artist and his team painted on the sides of buildings, going up

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one story at a time. On each level, the residents insisted that the painters take some time to have the hot beverage or a meal. This hospitality was integral to the neighborhood, even though it struggles economically. The giving and generous nature of the community is clearly articulated and detailed by the artist. The stories that he has conveyed since the mural’s completion are emotional and appear to be deeply meaningful to him. He projects a humbled stance as he discusses the life-changing experience. These are not tangible objects, although he did produce a large-scale painting. He acknowledges, and it is evident that that aspect of the project will not last. The colors will fade; new buildings will be erected; sections might be worked over with a fresh coat of paint. This is the fate of most works of graffiti. Images and messages are created and conveyed, and often disappear over the course of time. Nonetheless, the impact can be tremendous, as can be noted throughout the history of graffiti art. In this particular case, the documentation of the overall project suggests the lasting outcome is not the mural, but the experiences garnered during its tenure. The talks, images, and write-ups testify to the transformative power of art. The social aspects are more significant than the physical ones. As a kind of graffiti artist, eL Seed is comfortable working in the realm of the public. By stepping beyond the internal, private sphere, the artist accepts and embraces the environment around him. He works with text as a visual form, utilizing a centuries-old practice of writing in the Arabic language. The artist transforms the tradition into a contemporary expression through shifting its shapes, conventional colors, statements, and, perhaps most importantly, its location. Translating small-scale text to an extensive wall was also done in the past when Quranic text covered portions of walls inside of a mosque, for example. eL Seed’s appropriation of words is typically connected to contemporary situations, and his scale is larger than life. When he composes a text as an outdoor mural, he selects words that would be meaningful to the particular site. He does not descend in to unload a message, and immediately leap out when the painting is complete. As such, el Seed’s work is enmeshed into the context of the surroundings that had been chosen. These conditions applied in a very meaningful manner when he undertook this work, his largest and most ambitious one. Created in his signature style, Perception of 2016 (Fig. 6.7) includes Arabic text written in a calligraphic mode. This visual language has a long history in the Islamic world dating to the early days of the civilization. While various scripts developed over time and territory, the written word has been critical since

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Fig. 6.7  eL Seed, Perception, Mural across fifty buildings, Manshiyat Naser district, 2016. (Photograph from the artist’s website)

the founding of Islam. The basis of the religion is the word of god passed directly to the Prophet Muhummad. Although a written compendium of god’s words did not exist until after his death, since the Qur’an was penned these scriptures have been meant for the worshipper to read for themselves, without any intermediary. As such, text became a significant aspect of art and architecture in this part of the world. People in the area would be very familiar with Arabic calligraphy, seeing it written in books and on walls, and on other innumerable surfaces. As such, the visual form of eL Seed’s project would have been acceptable to those living in the neighborhood, even though they are mostly Christians. Calligraphy is a logical marriage of image and text. The lines of Arabic text are naturally visual and transformed into a picture-like shape. For eL Seed, it seems that the phrase he had selected shifted into an experiential form because of the relationships he developed during the process of painting the mural. As is conveyed in the description of the progression of this work, the experience outweighed any phrase that he might have used or any image he could have created. Through the active interactions with the community, his work gained much more significance. These deeds end up being the elements that add up to the sum of the work of art.

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6.5   Tentative Collective’s Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema (My Karachi Mobile Cinema) and Self-­Directed Strategies for Art in Communities Formulating experiences was a key strategy for Tentative Collective, a partnership among Yaminay Nasir Chaudhri, Fazal Rizvi, and Hajra Haider, with projects situated primarily in Karachi, Pakistan. Begun in 2011, Chaudhri was the initial organizer; she emerged from an architecture background. No longer actively working together, the impetus for forming the group was to foster a collaborative and interdisciplinary working ethos in the making of art through which to develop connections with the larger world. The group members collaborated with artists, curators, and other arts professionals. But they also partnered with those outside the realm of art, including fishermen and domestic workers. One critical aspect for the work that they produced is that it should be site-specific in the public sphere. By staging temporary interventions in the urban landscape instead of constructing permanent structures, Tentative Collective sought to promote conversations about everyday life, rather than impose a particular vision of it. At first, Tentative Collective’s projects engaged the community in the process of creating a work of art. Beginning in 2012, Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema (My Karachi Mobile Cinema) offered a voice to city dwellers by developing a collaborative mobile cinema. Normally marginalized and unheard, citizens offered insights into their daily existence through producing films using the accessible technology of mobile phones with assistance from the collective. Tentative Collective asked residents a simple question: “What do you do on your day off?” Ranging from porters at the train station to migrant workers at Karachi’s ports, participants turned into film directors to produce narratives that straddle the uncertain divide between the private and the public. With the films that the people made themselves, audiences from within and outside the neighborhoods could be exposed to different views of the areas and the residents. The films were not professionally produced, so they avoid becoming romantic tales of the oppressed that elide the filth consuming the places they call home. Instead, it is a documentary look at a community, primarily so that they can enjoy seeing themselves and their neighbors on film. The brutal honesty of the productions offers insights into what transpires in these areas of the city. They show private moments along with more public ones. But this separation is not so clear in the films or life. What is inside often spills

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outside of protective walls and barriers, and vice versa. The public and private are related and feed off of the other, even in places that maintain boundaries. But in certain neighborhoods, it is difficult to keep the two realms apart. With an integrated community of families and longstanding residents, the business that is usually kept behind closed doors is in reality known to others. And, in fact, the culture encourages neighbors to know each other and help out when needed. Indeed, for Tentative Collective, the two arenas, though they appear to be opposites, often intersect and are not entirely isolated from each other. Instead, the interstices are fueled by both private and the public moments and actions. In the in-between arena, possibilities emerge for expression and agency. It is in the middle ground where people feel free to become vulnerable on a certain level like they might if they were inside their homes. They are more truthful and unreserved in the in-between space than they might be out in the open. The residents creating films did appear to be excited about exposing their lives and sharing their ways of being, their interests, and their ordinary activities. They became famous for the moment. The joyous expressions suggest that it was a desired position that they wanted to assume, and perhaps it was a cathartic experience to be able to reflect over and tell their tales. They did not seem to hold themselves back. As the participants had full control over how to represent themselves and their areas, they did not appear to censor any aspect of their day to day existence. They did not offer a romanticized vision of what they do or where they live. Instead, they just showed themselves, but in doing this simple act, something spectacular did seem to take place: they found a voice. Being able to talk, dialogue is embraced. They become famous for the moment through their words. Tentative collective provided the necessary equipment and training for the people to develop their narratives on film. After the participants completed the filming, the resulting production would be presented in the same location as where the film was made. The artists had developed a unique platform from which to project the movie. With film screenings presented through a rickshaw-powered projector on to walls and other public surfaces in the same neighborhood/area in which they were made, participants had the opportunities to see themselves and others they know on the big screen (Fig. 6.8). The porters at the train station sat back and enjoyed the showing on the façade of the train station, unconcerned at

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Fig. 6.8  Tentative Collective, Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema (My Karachi Mobile Cinema), 2012–2015. (Photography courtesy of Yaminay Nasir Chaudhri)

that moment about hauling baggage around the premises. Instead they watched themselves and their colleagues projected larger than life (Fig. 6.9). The films showed their daily existence and the kinds of situation they encountered regularly. “Kolachi Brothers” takes viewers through a day in the life of porters and offers vignettes of moments when they are not attending to suitcases: washing their recognizable orange jackets emblazoned with their identifying numbers; taking a meal; talking and joking with each other; having a running race; and other simple pastimes. The invitation to create a work of art about themselves had likely never been extended to them, which is an opportunity that the collective was able to provide. However, the resultant expression that they produced is something that only the porters could contribute. It was not about having a more authentic voice; it was one that was from their own points of view, rather than the image that an outsider wanted to present about the community. They were also the ones that could appreciate the imagery and narrative captured on film.

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Fig. 6.9  Tentative Collective, Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema (My Karachi Mobile Cinema), 2012–2015. (Photography courtesy of Yaminay Nasir Chaudhri)

Another screening took place in a Karachi neighborhood where poor migrant workers involved in the export fishing industry reside. This time the film projected was about the people living in this area. A muhajir (Muslim migrants coming to Pakistan from various parts of South Asia after its partition in 1947) helped to produce the film at this location. It is surprising that a woman would take on this role since they are more private and less prone to interact with those beyond family. However, Zebunissa had been living in the neighborhood for a long time and, as such, her neighbors were probably familial, on an actual or metaphorical level. With a familiar face making the case for the film, the residents opened up about their lives and shared intimate moments about their daily existence. Like the railway station production, the film in the neighborhood of Ali Akbar Shah Goth offers a view into the lives of the people in the location. A young man guides viewers around the area and introduces us to

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different personalities: the meat seller, qing qi (manipulated motorcycle transport) driver, residents old and young, and others inhabiting the space. The gritty environment grounds the film in reality even as the performative nature of the protagonist creates a spectacular impression (Fig. 6.10). He proudly introduces all of the different parts of the neighborhood. He wears a glittery mask that offers him as a kind of celebrity, performer, or diva character despite the rundown surroundings. The residents enjoy and dance the night away in the film, even though the expectations might be that the area is downtrodden and thus depressed and lacks any sense of joy. Through involving ordinary residents of a neighborhood in the making of art, Tentative Collective generated a forum in which those individuals attained agency and spoke for themselves. It offered public representations of communities typically overlooked, ignored, or perhaps not seen as worthy. They are not put forth in exotic or glorified ways to be consumed by the other—the art world denizens or the liberal elite. Rather they are dignified, everyday people living their lives, supporting their families, enjoying free time with comrades, and contributing to society. Simply stated: they present themselves. In doing so, they claimed their agency in self-expression. The question might arise about impact and outcome of the works by Tentative Collective. What difference did it make to the community to have films produced by themselves and for themselves? If this project is compared to the mural in the Manshiyat Nasser district and the urban initiatives in Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles, then perhaps the real effect of the works is the process of making such efforts in seemingly Fig. 6.10  Tentative Collective, Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema (My Karachi Mobile Cinema), 2012–2015. (Photography courtesy of Yaminay Nasir Chaudhri)

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distraught, insignificant, unworthy areas. Further than this, the experiential dynamics of the endeavors offered the significant impact about which some critics might ask. As critic Claire Bishop argues, if it is to be considered along the lines of art, then the statistics and measurable outcomes should not be a factor in its production. She has critiqued this line of inquiry that other critics and historians have followed in order to justify the practice of socially engaged art. For her, it reduces art according to requirements set by governmental agencies. In doing so, artistic experimentation, provocation, and disruption are less possible. But if the projects are judged according to these values that Bishop believes are critical elements in contemporary art, then would Tentative Collective’s Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema qualify as a work of art? Perhaps it could. However, the group’s work seems to be deliberately low key and circumspect of attention in its announcement and acts of provocation. Inviting a group to make a film about itself and handing them the tools to take action might seem like a small gesture; however, it offered a transformative experience on a local level. They filmed their neighbors and friends through their own lenses and projected and shared these viewpoints together. The process was primarily confined within the community and remained there even after completion. There has been critical interest in the project from outsiders; that has been the case more so with eL Seed’s mural and the formative projects in the United States. Yet the experiences that took place during their production and initial reveal to the respective communities were critical to the participants. What happened after the works were completed is another matter. Perhaps it is equally significant in terms of the life of the works of art; but, nonetheless, another aspect of the value of the artwork.

6.6   Conclusion Tentative Collective advances an experimental and dynamic approach to making art in the public sphere. The ephemerality of their productions makes the method more conceptual and less product oriented. The projects are linked to the urban condition and seek to respond to it. Both films described here have attracted attention to areas that are often ignored or places full of blight. The same is true for el Seed’s Perception, as well as the seminal works discussed in the chapter. In the minds of Cairenes, Manshiyat Nasser is Garbage City. The South Side of Chicago is full of abandoned houses and buildings. The Third Ward of Houston is a rundown part of

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town. Leimert Park is littered with dirt and crime. Each project attempted to shift perceptions and ways of existence. They connected with individuals in those locations to do so. One approach was not appropriate for all these sites. Each one was individually formulated to consider the local conditions. What did this community have to say? As such, interaction and the attendant forms of dialogue, discussion, and the social dynamics are fully integrated in the endeavors. And, in fact, all of the projects in the book are indebted to dialectical situations. Talking is a critical element in forming a socially engaged work of art. As such, the works become social sculptures that address life in urban areas to create a shift in perceptions from both within and from those outside of these locales. Globally across a vast geography and varied conditions, artists are finding parallel modes to develop projects mindfully in marginalized communities. Some of the conditions in these locations are mirrored halfway across the world; one circumstance in particular is about how disenfranchised communities might achieve a voice to partake in the discourse and have a say in their situation in life. What is the significance of having a voice? And why is its presence critical in the projects addressed in the chapter? A voice allows one to be heard; it cannot be denied wholly once it is used. Even as people have spoken and been ignored throughout history, the voicing of grievances is a powerful tool. In taking such an action, the agency of the people is uncovered. Agency is critical to acquire for the oppressed. When the marginalized do something about their positions in the world, then change takes place. Doing something might simply be to talk to each other or to oneself about the conditions in which they live, work, eat, socialize, and so on. Taking action can be to acknowledge such circumstances. Without that action, the status quo remains in effect. Through forming an infrastructure in which open dialogue is encouraged and even demanded, these artists initiate ways in which agency can be appropriated and assumed. In such scenarios, the marginalized have acted on their own behalf and expressed their points of view via interactions and activities arising from the situations that artists formulated. These contexts offer spaces in which the oppressed can speak. For the US-based projects, the ability to speak and determine for oneself is one outcome of the initiatives. The spaces that are now available in the Southside of Chicago, the Third Ward in Houston, and Leimart Park in Los Angeles offer potential sites of resistance as neighbors gather and talk. Talking is such a powerful deed. In Cairo, “Perception” shines a light on the people of Manshiyat Nasser district; eL Seed heard their voices and saw their

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actions through which he shaped the mural and conveyed the process of its making. The people were not silent as the team painted the phrase; they actively shared their community with it and spoke their stories. For the residents of Karachi, the opportunity to make a film about themselves was chance to talk about their lives, experiences, and feelings. The small gesture of chatting can have a transformative effect, in immediate and sustained ways.

Notes 1. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (New York: Random House, 2016), 405. 2. Project Row Houses, Social Practice. Social Justice symposium, January 24–25, 2014, 13 videos, https://projectrowhouses.org/blog/ social-practicesocial-justice-symposium-2018. 3. Ibid. 4. Theaster Gates, “How to Revive a Neighborhood with Imagination, Beauty, and Art,” filmed in March 2015 at an official TED conference, video, 16:45, https://www.ted.com/talks/theaster_gates_how_to_ revive_a_neighborhood_with_imagination_beauty_and_art?language=en. 5. Leimert Park: The Story of a Village in South Central L.A. A documentary film, accessed June 26, 2019, http://www.leimertparkmovie.com/ PressReleases/LeimertParkHistory.pdf. 6. This point is discussed in detail in Chap. 2. 7. Macmillan dictionary, 2009–2020, https://www.macmillandictionary. com/dictionary/british/disruption 8. Rasheed Araeen, “Why ‘Beyond’ Negritude?,” Third Text, 24, 2 (2010): 167–176. 9. Ibid. 10. Barbara Celarent, Review of Liberté 1: Negritude et Humanisme by Léopold Sédar Senghor | On African Socialism by Léopold Sédar Senghor and Mercer Cook, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 119, No. 1 (July 2013): 299–305. 11. Araeen, op. cit. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. eL Seed, “A project of peace, painted across 50 buildings,” filmed June 2016 at TED Summit, Banff, Canada, video, 11:18, https://www.ted.com/talks/ el_seed_a_project_of_peace_painted_across_50_buildings?language=en. 16. Ibid.

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References Araeen, Rasheed. “Why ‘Beyond’ Negritude?” Third Text. 24, Issue 2 (03/2010): 167–176. Bruckbauer, Christine and Patricia K. Triki. The Turn: Art Practices in Post-Spring Societies. Vienna: Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2016. Social Practice. Social Justice symposium. Filmed January 24–25, 2014 at Project Row Houses, Houston. 16 Videos. https://projectrowhouses.org/blog/ social-practicesocial-justice-symposium-2018, retrieved July 28, 2019. Darling, Michael and Theaster Gates. 12 Ballads for Huguenot House. dOCUMENTA (Book 13). Cologne: Walther Konig, 2012. eL Seed, “A Project of Peace Painted Across 50 Buildings,” Filmed June 2016 at TED Summit, Banff, Canada. Video, 11:26. https://www.ted.com/talks/el_ seed_a_project_of_peace_painted_across_50_buildings?language=en, retrieved November 15, 2019. “Emily Jacir Named Winner of Seventh Biennial Hugo Boss Prize,” Art Daily, nd, https://artdaily.cc/news/27249/Emily-JacirNamed-Winner-of-Seventh-Biennial-Hugo-Boss-Prize#.XmyC5S2B0Wp. Finkelpearl, Tom. What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013. Gates, Theaster. “How to Revive a Neighborhood with Imagination, Beauty, and Art.” Filmed March 2015 at an official TED conference. Video, 16:45. https://www.ted.com/talks/theaster_gates_how_to_revive_a_neighbohood_ with_imagination_beauty_and_art?language=en. “Leimert Park: The Story of a Village in South Central L.A. A documentary film.” Accessed June 26, 2019. http://www.leimertparkmovie.com/PressReleases/ LeimertParkHistory.pdf. Miranda, Carolina A. “How the Art of Social Practice is changing the World, One Rowhouse at a Time.” Art News, April 2014. http://www.artnews. com/2014/04/07/art-of-social-practice-is-changing-the-world-one-rowhouse-at-a-time/.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion: Collaborative Art Praxis and Contemporary Art Experiments

7.1   Introduction The multivalent art worlds in the extended region of the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia have advanced tremendously in the last two decades. And while centuries ago in the area, there was imperial support of art that has been celebrated around the world, contemporary art has not received much government funding and only lately achieved international renown. However, the global contemporary art world has started to recognize the crucial contributions of artists from the region, as evidenced by exhibitions that have been held at major international contemporary and modern art museums including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and Tate Modern Museum in London, among many others. One vital explanation for such growth is the presence of grassroots arts organizations and artist-led initiatives in the varied art centers of the MENASA. These platforms have helped to fuel the making of dynamic art that expands the definitions of what it is and how it can be produced. It is often through such places as grassroots organizations that budding artists and general audiences are exposed to theories and concepts of contemporary art. They serve as centers for learning about innovative art practices from around the world because they provide information and resources to artists in the area, including venues for cutting edge exhibitions of contemporary art. Here they can find like-minded individuals with whom to discuss art and perhaps collaborate. These spaces often offer © The Author(s) 2020 A. Ali, Collaborative Praxis and Contemporary Art Experiments in the MENASA Region, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47925-1_7

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the freedom for the most experimental art to be explored and expressed. They might be the site where artists get together to collaborate or where ideas foment for new initiatives. One such inventive potential for the making of art is an artist-led project involving both artists and non-artists in new schemes. Artist-led initiatives are typically invested in developing new modes of practicing art. This book has highlighted practices in which collaboration and experimentation are key methods in developing rigorous and dynamic works of art that are socially engaged. The works are often provocative through inciting participants to challenge normative conceptualization of historical and contemporary debates by asking that they contribute to the shaping of new knowledge. Often latent and oblique, the provocation typically happens over time and in convivial ways to engage audiences in this shift that happens together rather than directed by the artist. The final chapter provides an overview of how artists, organizations, and participants function together to encourage collaborative art praxis and contemporary art experiments that redefine what art can encompass.

7.2   Artist-led Initiatives and Grassroots Arts Organizations The manuscript has considered these two seemingly distinct aspects of socially engaged, collaborative art. One is the artist-led initiatives, which find artists at the helm of programs that forefront modes of outreach to the community. The other is grassroots, community-based arts organizations that are often led by artists. However, in between these two ends of an arch of collaborative art praxis, there is much in common. The complex undertakings that artists initiate are indeed comparable to the outreach programs enacted at community-based arts organizations. Both are often inclusive of multifaceted aspects and continue over a period of time. Not only do grassroots organizations and artist-led initiatives in the MENASA provide a service to the arts community, they also offer civic, collaborative projects as a way of creating something that might be more meaningful and relevant in places where basic human needs still have to be met. What is the role of the artist in this sociopolitical situation? The desire to help a people in trouble and connect with the community is evident in the work of artist collectives and community-based organizations in the MENASA that have been discussed in this study.

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The socially engaged projects of these organizations and artists are perhaps more appropriate in developing parts of the world (or generally in marginalized communities anywhere) where artists may experience a sense of responsibility toward their fellow citizens and thus seek a greater sense of purpose in their artistic practices or, at least, one that might serve the community in some manner. An outcome of this situation might be that the arts become a potential platform to hear voices that are seldom heard, and meanwhile the normally sheltered field of art gains audiences through active participation from various communities. Artist-led initiatives serve as models for inclusion and diversity by engaging varied populations, from emerging artists to endangered youth to ignored ethnic groups to disenfranchised economic classes. In doing so, they connect with the extended urban locale. Specific strategies might be deployed to engage participants in particular parts of the world. Oral histories and communal lifestyles are hallmarks of MENASA societies. Both artist-led projects and organizations embedded within the community prioritize storytelling. Collaboration and open dialogue are at the heart of these endeavors. Discourse, narratives, and simply talking are keys connecting people with the concepts and issues that artists want to investigate, and communities are facing. By having a dialogue, a new appreciation is often achieved. Through conveying anecdotes and hearing stories being told, participants voice their points of view and listen to the opinions and understandings of others. It is in these moments of sharing that fresh perspectives can be formed and, as such, a new arena takes shape. And because the focus is so much on discourse, there are a lack of concrete objects created as a result of such practices. Instead, we find an ephemerality to these projections, and the aesthetic aspect gets measured in relationships that have been fostered over time or, as the curator and critic Nicolas Bourriaud coined the new approach to determining a work’s intriguing qualities, relational aesthetics. Many of the initiatives/organizations have spaces that facilitate the sharing of narrative accounts and investigate the coexistence and codependence of entities and individuals. It is important to acknowledge the significance of the growth of the spaces, particularly in terms of the cafés, discussion lounges, galleries, and libraries existing within the physical structures. The spaces that organizations in various parts of the region have constructed have ensured a location for research, dialogue, discursiveness, exhibition, and exchange. Open to all, the café, lounge, or library becomes a place to plot collaborations and have open dialogues.

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The space can also help in the formation of new concepts, leading to the possibilities of artistic collaborations and innovative works of art. In the tradition of the nineteenth century British writer Virginia Woolf who declared that everyone, but especially women need “a room of one’s own,” perhaps the critical point of continuity is that a dedicated space is needed. In the case of the current study, “a room of one’s own shared by all” is a phrase that acknowledges the historical conditions that may have impacted the growth of dialogues on art and its theoretical underpinnings. With the dialogical nature of socially engaged art, the interstices are opened up and serve as fertile ground for growth and development of ideas and forms of art. The liminal characteristic of this zone is like the third space that Homi K. Bhabha describes as a meeting point particularly significant in the postcolonial context because it exists outside national boundaries. Here, the postcolonial identity is brokered and takes shape, only to shift again. The postcolonial being can plot a manner to gain agency and lay claim to their significance. Both the third space of the postcolonial condition and the liminal zone of socially engaged art serve as sites of contestation that allow for dynamic results to ensue, where new situations, experiences, and categories arise. For the latter, this space is one defying normative roles of artists and artistic production. Instead it is a place with the potential to move outside of the conventions of art today. Perhaps the making of socially engaged art is most significant in the postcolonial context to open up possibilities for innovative concepts, analyses of transitional conditions, and transformations. Such works would perhaps only have been possible with the infrastructural support provided by grassroots organizations. They offer opportunities to produce the projects that have been highlighted in the book. For example, Sharjah Art Foundation is a critical player in bolstering the networks of artists and art projects across the region and globally that experiment in social engagement. The foundation is not a grassroots organization since it is emerging out of the establishment, but it is certainly tied to the extended arts community in the MENASA. Its contribution to such practices is featured in Chap. 3 that includes two works of art that it commissioned. The Sharjah Art Foundation’s role is certainly strong around the region—it has opened up possibilities for artists to play and formulate new modes of expressions in collaborative praxes, along with other ways to make art. It is also tied to a network of organizations including the community-­ based arts initiatives discussed in Chap. 4. Among

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the more “established” ones are Townhouse Gallery in Cairo and Ashkal Alwan in Beirut. Both have grown their reputations tremendously over the years, and have garnered support from internationally renowned funding entities. They have a strong relationship with each as well as the Sharjah Art Foundation. They have perhaps paved the way for newer, smaller groups that have emerged in varied parts of the region. Their presence has indicated that such enterprises can be very meaningful and crucial for the arts to thrive in the societies across the MENASA. Townhouse, Ashkal Alwan, and newer spaces provide platforms for experimental practices. Further than this, they embody an innovative ethos and interpretation of art. Instead of maintaining distinctions between the role of an artist versus an artist-run organization, the dichotomous positions are merged in the work of some artists that create socially engaged projects, as well as in the missions of small, grassroots organizations that are embedded in neighborhoods and communities. Within the reflexive dynamics, collaborative art projects assume a kind of organizational framework. For example, Mirna Bamieh developed Palestine Hosting Society that sounds like an entity welcoming audiences to Palestine. Both an artwork and beyond, it is a dynamic experience that is organized in the same manner as any event for which a planner might set up a dinner party. In this case, it is the artist herself that takes care of such responsibilities, along with the support of the institutions where she presents her artwork. In such actions, the artist treads into the functions of an organization. Conversely, small groups of artists join forces to design a platform for practitioners and communities to interact in events, programs, and projects. It is similar to what collaborative artists do—and, in fact, it is artists doing it at the behest of an organization. With extended, process-oriented activities, grassroots groups in the region (and around the world) offer ongoing modes of engagement for communities of artists and beyond to contribute to and shape the development of the entity. As it grows, it shifts according to the current dynamics of the group, society, and world in a manner that might be compared to an interactive work of art. For groups like Makan in Amman and Marrakech’s Queens Collective, they do not have a particular agenda that they have to fulfill and report back to the authorities. Instead, the community-entrenched organizations grow in random and organic ways. The artist Mirna Bamieh has stated the same about her intentions for Palestine Hosting Society.1 The reflexive conditions signal the kinds of practices that are critical in artmaking today.

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Artists and arts organizations investigate the production of art itself through setting up scenarios that extend beyond conventional analyses of art to definitions that add to artistic practices and allow for new questions to be tackled. The overlapping conditions of the artist-led initiative and the grassroots arts organization form a structure through which to analyze contemporary art; it is one that is connected to other frameworks of understanding how recent artistic practices move beyond an insular status of art. Rather than being distinct from the other, art and life intersect to offer critical views into both.

7.3   Democratizing Knowledge: The Importance of Being Collaborative and Socially Engaged Collaboration, collectivity, working with others is both a necessary and desired quality for the projects and spaces discussed in the book to make art meaningful to those beyond the practitioner and network of arts professionals and institutions. By working with others, the artists and grassroots, community-based organizations find modes to expose and encourage the connection of art and life. This is enacted when an artist or an organization  socially engages community members through  addressing a need that a group indicates is needed to improve the quality life for it or it might be initiated by an artist or organization that determines a deficiency to be tackled. Rather than being a cerebral, individual practice that can only be appreciated by the few, these individuals and entities offer complex and nuanced theoretical concepts in manners that might be accessible to all, and to which they contribute to make it more meaningful and informed to them than a “still,” individually produced work of art that investigates similar ideas and concerns. Through formulating convivial situations for all to partake, the outcome, it might be suggested, would be a democratization of knowledge. No longer would art require a highly specialized set of knowledge to understand  it. Instead, its appreciation could be extended to the masses or only has meaning because of the many. In doing so, communities and individuals within those groups could attain a level of awareness of the impact of history and historical conditions on life today and they could contribute to that story. By having and sharing this knowledge, they might be empowered to attempt to shift present conditions to better suit their requirements. Further than this reasoning, community members could be viewed in the role of knowledge builders

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rather than just participants. In some cases, the community members are central to gathering the data and information for analyzing a situation, event, or development. As such, collaboration with others is crucial for the projects discussed in the book. These organizations and artists investigate serious topics in lighthearted manners that do not foreground the complicated concerns on the table (sometimes literally). Instead, the modes of production are social and perhaps more effective in targeting participants. Rather than alienating outsiders, they are invited to partake and engage in the activity—to become a part of the artwork. If someone is offering a meal it perhaps becomes more possible to address the weight of history. By coming together, individuals can talk about such matters in a forum that allows for many voices to be heard without them being a threat. Some might say it is human nature to want to know others and how they feel, and share one’s ideas and experiences with others. The artists and organizations discussed in the book exploit this aspect of the human condition, whether knowingly or not. They get others to share ideas and opinions, as well as have encounters that might shift their understandings of society and the shared culture. This kind of quality is something that several critics of this approach to making art have suggested are a defining feature of works that are participatory, collaborative, and socially engaged. The offer bridges to connect art and life, and promote art’s significance within the larger society. Claire Bishop, Nicolas Bourriaud, Grant Kester, Maria Lind and Liam Gillick, and others suggest such a desired outcome for collaborative art praxes. And, in fact, this has been a critical objective in “avant-garde” or postmodern practices that have challenged the art/life divide for many years and in a variety of manners. Such a binary has not existed always, especially in the Global South where objects, spaces, and imagery have functioned as part of rituals, ceremonies, and rites of passages that are central to these societies.

7.4   “But Is It Art?” Collaborative Art Praxis and the Avant-Garde These artist-led initiatives and, it could be argued, grassroots organizations offer participation in their production along the conditions outlined in Gillick and Lind’s essay on the topic. They write that such projects put forth “participation as an extension of social consciousness and established

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form for political engagement where a structure is proposed that requires some active and sustained engagement by the non-artist user in the construction of a new set of relationships.”2 They offer the Oda Projesi collective and its initiatives as a key example. If the group’s work is explained, it would sound similar to the work of a small, community-based arts organization. It offers workshops and holds events like lectures, discussions, and roundtables. In fact, they converted their apartment in the Galata neighborhood of Istanbul into “a multipurpose non-profit public space.”3 Such a classification and the types of projects initiated might suggest that Oda Projesi is not creating art but offering services. In 2005, “From place to space” was an exhibition at the Kunsthalle Friedricianum presenting an architectural contest that Oda Projesi conducted and had neighbors participate on the jury selecting the most successful proposal. The winner of the competition was the only one that did not display a physical model; instead, they gave a speech in which they discussed the importance of users having agency and about creative collectivity in designing spaces. Oda Projesi’s architectural contest could potentially be the work of a community center, for example. As Bishop has informed, “it is difficult to distinguish their approach from a slew of community-based practices that revolve around the predictable formula of children’s workshops, discussions, meals, film screenings and walks.”4 Yet, even as they develop community projects, Oda Projesi’s work has been presented at museums around the world. Bishop’s concern is that questions of aesthetics are not applied to groups like Oda Projesi. However, cannot factors for what is aesthetically strong shift according to artistic practices. What makes a good work of art can still be applied to the kinds of initiatives that the collective has produced. The transformational experience might be considered—it need not be something visual—and that transformation does not need to be measured as shocking many or too few to shift their points of view tremendously. Rather, it is the act of creating platforms through which key issues and ideas get addressed by involving participants, thereby causing a transformation in beliefs and analyses. Taking Bishop’s example, Jeremy Deller’s Battle of Orgreave is more of an experiential work rather than a conventional one that is aesthetically pleasing in a visual manner. Rather it is the situation created through which a transformation takes place in the minds of the participants as they reenact a decades-old confrontation between protesting miners and the police. Just as Bishop argues that the work’s effectiveness should not be measured according to certain standards in the manner of a government agency, the work of Oda Projesi

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might be just as effective in creating a shift in the people that interacted with the group rather than it being about statistics or measurable outcomes. The group speaks about its success through the relationships it builds with the community.5 It is through these interactions that the group seems to operate in an “artistic” manner—artists help shed light on the world and shape new ways of understanding and viewing what we think we know, have seen, or experienced. The Oda Projesi method is not so menacing as to be insidious, but rather it is latent, almost subliminal in the modes that it employs to form connections with its public and offer alternative perspectives. The ability to cultivate such conditions in which participants are able to experience a self-reflexive transformation in how they view themselves, others, and the world around them, is perhaps not easily achieved. Artists can create the groundwork for developing such scenarios through providing platforms for engagement; however, the ensuing process is likely led by participants. The question arises if it matters whether such initiatives are considered to be art. As mentioned in the introduction, for some artists the answer is simply no.6 What they do could be framed as activism or not, as art or not; the concern for them has more to do with the need for action. However, outside of emergency situations, the efforts of artists might be enacted in a manner similar to creating any kind of art today. The process involved in developing a work is critical and, in fact, often more significant than the “final” product in artistic practices today. This scenario is what fuels the projects at the communal space of the Queens collective in Marrakech. Instead of fixed beginnings and endings, the process of making art meaningful and connecting with the community is ongoing. It is the sustained efforts to shape the situation at Queens collective that continue to shift, respond, and adapt according to what is needed. In essence, the process is ongoing and faces its own set of challenges that could include the availability of resources, including money and materials, and the difficulties that can be faced in a communal living arrangement. Rather than idealizing collaborative art praxis as emancipatory, it is more appropriate to consider these situations as an alternative way to make a work of art; however, an actual product may never even be achieved. More significant are the chances to play and experience encounters and incidents for those involved. Since the situational context of collaborative art projects typically challenges normative modes of artistic production, others can be engaged in more meaningful ways than by only viewing an artwork. Rather, as Bourriaud explicates, art is passed through rather than in front of it. For

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example, the Palestine Hosting Society requires artist Mirna Bamieh to connect with others to do the research in order to assemble dinners that engage a larger community. In such a project, the aesthetic experience comes out as the artist tells the stories of the food that is then consumed by the participants in the dinner. In this scenario, there is a multisensorial undertaking through which the artist addresses her concern over the disappearance of Palestinian foods and, by extension, its culture and the agency of the people. The valuing of this work according to relational aesthetics might not be so different from the kinds of criticism that are used to “judge” any other form of art now. And, in fact, quality judgments of art have been regularly questioned in postmodern criticism, particularly in light of artistic developments outside of the West. No longer can notions of beauty stand up to challenges over how such a quality can be measured. In Bishop’s analysis, this is particularly difficult with participatory art that does not photograph well.7 And since the value of an artwork has for so long not been entirely based on how beautiful it is, other criteria have been determined. These standards have shifted over time, as well as corresponding to beliefs of different societies or even individuals (critics), and also according to the kinds of art practices that artists have attempted. Unlike Kester, who believes that new ways to consider this art practice needs to be formulated, there is a potential to appreciate collaborative, socially engaged art according to how recent art has already been evaluated. One significant model for analyzing a work of art is through its ability to address sociopolitical concerns, yet also be outside of them as well. They might be entrenched in the political and, at the same time display an impartiality in order to guide viewers through dilemmas. In potent expressions, artists can shift ways of seeing and analysis, as well as allure viewers in a manner to facilitate such change in interpretation or expansion of understanding. And these outcomes would be accomplished through engagement with communities both large and small and in a variety of ways. Their “success” is typically not about how many people were involved or how much the project changed the lives of participants; rather, the impact is measured in ephemeral ways that cannot be easily quantified. For Bishop, a good work of art needs to be disruptive to be successful; it could be argued that all of the artist-led projects and the initiatives of the grassroots organizations outlined and examined in the book foster disruption, but do so in fundamental, indirect modes that extend over time and avoid a “shock value.”

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Emily Jacir who was a seminal practitioner in the methodology discussed in the book utilized a collaborative approach to be able to service the Palestinian community and delve into their concerns completely with both her mind and body. When she enacted the wishes of the community, her proxy role was decidedly physical, in addition to the emotional and intellectual aspects involved in undertaking such tasks. Through her body, Palestinians were present in the places that have been inaccessible to them—locations that hold so much significance, whether it is because of the actual people inhabiting those sites or the memories or links that permeate the surroundings. Jacir’s selected mode of practice encouraged participating community members to take ownership of the work. They offered passionate narratives to stir the political imagination. And the viewers of the installation or resulting imagery and text could find personal narratives about public political situations that would not allow them to assume an objective distance from the conditions that Palestinians faced at the time in 2000 and, sadly continue to experience into the third decade of the twenty-first century. Jacir’s enactment and presentation of Palestinian realities allowed viewers to get a firsthand insight into their lives beyond the headlines. The provocative quality of the project and other works that the artist has produced is the ability to simplify the problem without denying its complexity: a woman’s apparently modest wish to be able to visit her parents’ village is an impossibility given the current political situation in the region. Jacir’s highlights the austerity of such desires to cast a human face to the politics.

7.5   Sociopolitical Issues, Provocation, and Art in the MENASA Political issues are at the heart of many socially engaged, collaborative projects in recent times. In the second chapter of the book, the study addresses five works of art that are tied to the sociopolitical context of the region. Through dynamic expressions that explore both formal concerns of artistic practices, materials, and techniques, as well as conceptual frameworks to connect with topical issues, these artists highlight critical sociopolitical developments in the varied societies of the MENASA. They open up historical beliefs and statements to analyze contemporary situations. For example, Hasnat Mehmood’s practice investigates the process of colonialism and its ongoing impact on the people and places that were once

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subjugated. The self-serving colonizers stripped the occupied territories of its possessions from actual physical objects like paintings to more ephemeral and intangible “products” such as culture and language. In the Indian subcontinent and many other areas of the world, English became the preferred language to the demise of other dialects. In asking anyone willing to do so, Come Read Us Another Story provides a service to disenfranchised communities that might have become disconnected with their languages, cultures, and perhaps primarily, their worth. By setting up a literal platform for the sharing of narratives, the artist encourages participants to contribute tales about who they are and where they might belong in their languages. The participants enact the meaning of the work rather than simply looking at it to analyze how the historical legacy of colonialism shapes the current sociopolitical climate and global power dynamics. Again, as Bourriaud outlines the shift in viewer engagement, one passes through the work rather than in front of it. Mehmood’s overarching project Word, Image, and Language addresses political debates through engaging viewers rather than simply informing them. As mentioned above, this mode could prompt more of an understanding or appreciation of the concerns addressed in the work through active involvement that targets the particular issues at hand and doing so in an oblique manner. This latent method of activating and engaging viewers with the themes of an artwork has been a critical feature of works of art in the extended MENASA region during the turn of the millennium up until the present moment and will likely continue to be a mainstay aspect of contemporary artistic practices there. Through espousing an indirectness, these artists lure in viewers, attracting them through visual aesthetics and dynamic appearances. Once they are brought forward to the space that the work occupies, the artist analyzes the difficult sociopolitical debates that permeate it through having been engaged with the community in some manner. This is then double backed to the society from where it emerged. In this complex back and forth, artists put forth new ways to understanding our world. Engaged audiences undergo a transformation after having experienced a work of art. It may not be a massive shift, but a change happens, nonetheless. Ali Cherri offers such a transformation in both indistinguishable and profound ways. In a work like The Digger, nothing much happens. However, it is through experiencing the day-to-day existence of the caretaker in its mundane and repetitive ways that questions arise in viewers. By

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utilizing a variety of angles, both up close and expansive, the artist shapes a narrative to place viewers into the life of this lonely figure. They assume his role as he guards the extensive necropolis and protects the heritage that has become increasingly important to the new economies of young, oil-­ rich nations. Their achievements of the present apparently require a basis in history in order to be legitimized. As such, the caretaker carries on with what might be officially a vital task of presenting the past. To the viewer, it may appear as if the isolated figure in a remote location is being forced to excavate for an ancient basis for the new, present development. This could be considered inhumane because he proffers his life to the pursuit. Cherri’s filmic production transforms the apparent dazzling patina and luminosity of global cities in the Arabian Gulf into one that is slightly more transparent and visible of what actually is a coordinated and deliberate agenda to project an image of a society that has been great since antiquity. The hidden program is exposed. The propaganda allows for such places to continue to grow and expand through the historical narrative that gets generated by such initiatives as digging up the desert. From Susan Hefuna’s seemingly innocuous videos filmed in varied sites in Germany that in fact refer to a destructive colonial history and current traumas shaped around migrant communities, to the videos, drawings, and installations of Naiza Khan who taps into archival documents to assess how a population has been marginalized both yesterday and today; these works are engaged with sociopolitical themes in dynamic and nuanced ways. There are points of intersect in the work of the two artists. Both infer centuries-old colonial machinations that have shifted into today’s inequities. It’s about a group that may be viewed suspiciously or with uncertainty, or simply ignored/overlooked. The impact of colonization is only in recent decades beginning to be understood. Its ongoing toll is felt on a number of institutions and practices in contemporary societies in postcolonial nations. Governments are shaped according to the ways of the former rulers; education is structured to reflect the colonizer’s preferred approach. As the silent referent,8 the colonial systems continue to operate even as the occupiers have departed. Globally the impact is felt by those from the former colonies that enter the lands of the erstwhile colonizers. What might be viewed as a reverse invasion, immigrants and refugees assume the role of the hostile enemy coming in to take away the precious resources available. Ironically as European nations began interacting with societies across South America, Africa, and Asia prior to the time of colonization, they set their agendas to acquire highly coveted

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natural and manmade resources of these exotic locales. Finding materials like ivory, consumables like tea, and cultural productions like miniature paintings, the Europeans endeavored to accumulate such valuables, at first by trade and eventually through colonization. As such, places that came under the control of European governments and companies took them in droves back to their homes, for example, to display in “cabinets of curiosities” and eventually the first museums in Europe. So when migrants are looked upon suspiciously when they want to enter the land of the former colonizers, it is quite ironic since Europeans had enacted organized measures to take what they could from the societies that they colonized. Meanwhile, refugees and migrants seek to escape dysfunctional locations and broken infrastructures in order to find “a better life.” Such romantic and, one might say simple demands do not compare to the systematic decimation of Asian, South American, and African lands, their cultures, and the natural resources that are present. Yet, as Hefuna’s videos attempt to imbue into the minds of viewers, the newcomers to the European nations are not always welcomed by some citizens because they are perceived as figures of blight in the society, or are ignored by the government even as issues of their safety and welfare increase. The disparity often goes unaddressed. In the case of the population on Manora Island, Naiza Khan’s ongoing project exposes how these residents are shunned and ignored by their government and society. However, it could be argued that the same holds true for the communities that Hefuna presents in her videos. Being contributing members of their adopted nations, immigrants can demonstrate their allegiance to their new homes. They not only take, but give back as well. For Manora Island residents, there is little concern displayed by the authorities and not much actioned to pry them from the fringe and into the mainstream population in Karachi. Instead the island’s residents take what they can without an invitation to do so. Having been stripped of their community and its resources, the residents are left to their own devices and means to patch together a meager existence without official assistance or support from the citizenry in the city and country. Hefuna and Khan shine a spotlight on these marginalized communities through artworks that do not impose a heavy agenda declaring what should be done to alleviate the situation. The projects described in Chap. 2 may not be directly collaborative in their approach to production, even though all have aspects that extend beyond the individual artist; however, their methodologies to addressing sociopolitical concerns in a critical

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manner serve as guidance for artists that are invested in the collaborative mode of making art. They offer contemporary art experiments in order to highlight the current debates that should have the attention of the entire society. Rayyane Tabet’s Home on Neutral Ground investigates issues across a region. The manner in which it does this is just as crucial to point out. He is a storyteller, and he engages audiences by drawing them into a narrative. The story is not so much about geopolitics, but about the human dimension. The artist harnesses large-scale sociopolitical concerns by humanizing them so that viewers can connect with what may be abstract concepts. All of the artists included in the chapter offer nuanced and dynamic works about difficult topics infecting societies across the MENASA and world. Artists that are developing collaborative art projects might be influenced by the strong foundation of artworks that take such an approach to making art about politics and social issues; the ones described in Chap. 2 are only a few and very recent examples. In such cases, the artworks might provoke audiences without them even realizing that such a procedure has been enacted upon them. They begin to empathize with the other or understand their own situations more clearly. All this happens deep inside the thinking mind. In such a methodology, audiences have learned and analyzed current events and issues without the artist having to stand upon a soapbox. As such, they set a precedence for the works that this book investigates in detail.

7.6   Provocation and Collaborative Art Praxis A collaborative, socially engaged approach to investigating art’s principles might lead to a more dynamic understanding of arts and appreciation of how it can function in a given society. It could shift art from occupying a fringe or elitist position to one that is central to human development and progress. Its intrinsic value will perhaps begin to be acknowledged as a practice that can help us to gain a perspective on the world around us by us contributing to its production; the insight can help shape the future of humankind. Although optimistic and possibly assessing too much worth to artistic practices, it is an ongoing intention for some practitioners and professionals. Claire Bishop has quoted the artist Dan Graham, as mentioned in the first chapter. It is useful to present the observation here again in the last one because there is an apparent push and pull for artists as they go about the task of making art: what is it and why are they making it. Graham tapped into what might be characterized as an anxiety or guilt. Or

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it could be viewed as a call to action. Bishop acknowledges its existence through utilizing the statement as the first words of her seminal essay: “All artists are alike. They dream of doing something that’s more social, more collaborative, and more real than art” (my emphasis).9 Such a concern might become more urgent in places that struggle with basic human needs or extreme political conditions. Bishop does not provide a reference or context in which the artist said these words. As such, it is unclear what exactly he meant and if he was sincere in these comments or acting in sarcastic and facetious manner. Perhaps he was joking, in a way to dismiss the new trend in artmaking, or maybe his analysis provides insight into how artists have started to understand and interpret their roles in society. They want more than what it is now—something that is more real—and have acknowledged that collaborative and social modes will help to make it that way. However, as has been argued in this book and elsewhere, art has always been intrinsically tied to a larger context of social and political developments and has been integrated into society. The collaborative, socially engaged modes help to highlight this quality of art and draw it out from a latent, unassuming position to one that is front and center. In places facing turmoil—whether social, political, or economic— artists might feel compelled to connect with a broader public to address such issues in their art that can be meaningful for the society. Chapters 5 and 6 offer an examination of works that address war, violence, and blight. These considerations are particularly significant for the societies in the MENASA that have faced battles being waged on their lands and economic hardship as one result of colonial occupation that continues to create instability in postcolonial regions of the world. Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh’s Index of the Disappeared charts the situation for the communities that struggle with the perceptions prevalent and put forth in the mainstream media in the United States. Because they were attuned to what was happening in their country, the two artists could reflect upon disturbing developments connected to Arab/Muslim people. Their ongoing project is not only a work about the detainment of men, primarily of Muslim and/or Arab descent, but it actively attempts to inform and be informed about them through a variety of means. It acts as a public service announcement gathering and giving data on the latest statistics. And, as examined in the book, these statistics are not cold, hard facts, but dynamic insights into the people and the difficult situation they face. Similarly, Michael Rakowitz’s work Enemy Kitchen

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came into being because of his awareness of the “War on Terror” enacted by the land of his birth, the United States, on the land of his heritage, Iraq. Being engaged in the political issues of the day might be a requirement for artists, at least for some it seems critical to have knowledge and understanding about global and local developments. Like Index of the Disappeared, Enemy Kitchen is a direct outcome of war and its impact on immigrant communities in the United States. Rakowitz is clearly invested in being informed about, analyzing, and subsequently addressing the Iraqi-American community and how it was being perceived in the days, weeks, months, and years after the start of the US-led battle in Iraq in 2003. His insight provides a viewpoint that was not being expressed during the height of the war: the enemy is not the people of the nation, but its government. On one level, the work could be considered as one-­dimensional as such a declaration because an aim of the piece was to show that the community is not that scary. Of course, the artist did not supply such a simplistic message. In fact, he seemed to undermine such an outcome of understanding by titling the work Enemy Kitchen [my emphasis], for example. Enemy Kitchen, with its ongoing and multifaceted aspects, did give much more than that to help audiences asses the Iraqi-American community, the war in Iraq, as well as immigrants and wars in general. Its complexity might be underlying, offering viewers/participants an easier way to enter and “live through” the work. A similarly facile interpretation could be made of Perception by eL Seed. It is a mural that aimed to change the negative perceptions of the residents of the Manshiyat Nasser district as a kind of “PR campaign.” However, as the artist enacted the piece, his own perceptions shifted. No longer was it about “doing a nice thing” for a marginalized community. Instead the action became self-reflexive. As the artist stated, the residents did not need to do something different, it was him and other outsiders that needed to shift to be more accepting and understanding, to be more compassionate and aware of the ways of others. Raising one’s awareness through connecting with others and simultaneously sharing such information is a critical task of the artists and grassroots organizations discussed in this book, including Tentative Collective. Artists as facilitators can provide situations in which the many through their perception and ability to perceive can offer guidance in understanding the world around us.

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Notes 1. “Collaborative Art in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia,” panel discussion, College Art Association Conference, February 2020. 2. Ibid., 205. 3. Creative Time, “Making—Oda Projesi,” filmed October 12, 2012 at Creative Time Summit: Confronting Inequity, video, 8:32, http://creativetime.org/summit/2012/10/12/oda-projesi/, retrieved March 3, 2020. 4. Claire Bishop, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents,” Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (New York: Verso, 2012), 21. 5. Ibid. 6. See Chap. 1 for a discussion on a panel at the New School for Social Research. 7. Bishop, op. cit., 26. 8. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?,” Representations, Special Issue: Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories, 37 (Winter 1992): 2. 9. Bishop, “Introduction” in op. cit., 1.

References Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London and New York: Verso, 2012. Bishop, Claire, ed. Participation. London and Cambridge: Whitechapel and MIT Press, 2006. Bourriaud, Nicolas. “Postproduction.” Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World. Sternberg Press, 2006. Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods. Dijon: les presses du reel, 2002. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?” Representations, Special Issue: Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories. 37 (Winter 1992), 1–26. Gillick, Liam and Maria Lind. “Participation.” In Contemporary Art: 1989 to the Present, edited by A.  Dumbadze and S.  Hudson, 204–13. Malden: Wiley-­ Blackwell, 2013. Creative Time. “Making—Oda Projesi.” Filmed October 12, 2012 at Creative Time Summit: Confronting Inequity. Video, 8:32. http://creativetime.org/ summit/2012/10/12/oda-projesi/.

Index1

A Abi Khalil, Amanda, 93, 109 Activism, 2, 4, 5, 10, 67, 69, 86, 136, 211 Activists, 2–5, 8–11, 19, 22, 62, 111, 122, 143, 158, 174, 181, 183, 185 Adeela Suleman, 157–159 Afghanistan, 14, 15, 30, 48–50, 164 Africa, 31, 33, 38, 179, 185, 186, 215 Al Amal School for the Deaf, 78 Al Qasimi, Sheikha Hoor, 71, 123 Amman, 18, 91, 92, 111–118, 126, 207 Al-Ani, Janane, 108 Arabian Gulf, 35, 39, 215 Arab Spring, 14 Araeen, Rasheed, 21, 22, 174, 184–186 Archaeology, 39, 40 Artforum, 6, 61, 63, 86 Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and Politics of Spectatorship, 6

Artist-led initiatives, 23, 203–209 Art + Practice, 179, 181, 182 ArtReview’s Power 100, 105 Ashkal Alwan, 18, 80, 92, 105–111, 113, 122, 124, 125, 207 Atoui, Tarek, 17, 70, 78, 79, 85 B Bamieh, Mirna, 17, 70, 80–85, 207, 212 Beirut, 18, 91–93, 105–111, 126 Bhabha, Homi K., 206 Bishop, Claire, 5–7, 9, 10, 16, 17, 61–63, 68, 69, 77, 85, 86, 97, 111, 122, 183, 198, 209, 210, 212, 217, 218 Black Panther movement, 22, 174 Bourriaud, Nicolas, 6, 15–17, 64, 68, 70, 80, 85, 86, 111, 127, 148, 175, 205, 209, 211, 214 Bruguera, Tania, 5

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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C Café, 19, 117, 118, 122, 126, 205 Cairo, 18, 22, 91, 92, 99–105, 126, 173, 186–192, 199, 207 Calligraffiti, 187 Calligraphy, 22, 192 Campus in Camps, 20, 21, 137, 153–157 Chaudhri, Yaminay Nasir, 22, 193, 195–197 Cherri, Ali, 39–42, 58, 214, 215 Chicago, 20, 21, 150, 152, 153, 165, 172, 175–178, 181, 186, 197–199 Chou Hayda, 109, 110 Classroom, 117, 126 Collaborative art praxes, 2, 5, 7, 12, 14, 17, 18, 20, 29, 32, 61, 63, 69–72, 209 Collaborative art praxis, 5–23, 72, 91–127, 171–200, 203–219 Collaborative practices, 1, 2 Collective/collectives, 1, 2, 5, 6, 10, 11, 18, 19, 21, 62, 86, 92, 94–105, 108, 111, 113, 126, 127, 143, 155, 157, 158, 162, 163, 165, 184, 193–195, 204, 210, 211 Colonial, 12, 30–32, 37, 39, 48, 53, 126, 215, 218 Colonialism, 11, 137, 138, 184, 213, 214, 29–32, 37–39, 43, 48, 58, 58n1, 76, 93, 99 Colonizers, 11, 30, 31, 37–40, 51, 53, 165, 214–216 Communal, 2, 5, 9, 12, 19, 48, 85, 94, 101, 102, 106, 112, 117, 205, 211 Community arts, 2, 94, 183 Community-based projects, 2 Community/communities, 2, 32, 62, 91–127, 134, 171–200, 204

Conviviality, 70, 77, 80, 127 Council, 78, 79 Cricket, 15, 48–50 Cultural bomb, 33, 37 D Daou, Annabel, 109, 110 David, Catherine, 108 Decolonising the Mind, 33, 39 Decolonization, 186 Decolonize This Place, 2 Deller, Jeremy, 62, 210 Democratization of knowledge, 208 Dialogical, 7, 63, 102, 127, 206 Dialogical art, 2, 12, 17, 63, 77, 85, 86 Dictums 10:120, 72–77 The Digger, 40, 41, 214 Displacement, 10, 17, 179 Disruption, 7, 17, 18, 62, 63, 69, 97, 174, 183, 184, 198, 212 Documenta, 1, 2 Dorchester Art and Housing Collaborative, 175, 178 Dubai, 13, 39, 40, 54, 173 E The Edible Wild Plants Table, 82 eL Seed, 22, 173, 187–192, 198, 199, 219 Enemy Kitchen, 20, 136, 146–153, 164, 218, 219 Engagement, 9, 16, 32, 33, 44, 48, 54, 71, 72, 79, 84, 100, 103, 127, 133–165, 206, 207, 210–212, 214 Enwezor, Okwui, 108 Ephemeral, 9, 95, 97, 99, 127, 212, 214

 INDEX 

Experiential, 9, 12, 16, 23, 62, 65, 76, 96, 109, 116, 126, 143, 150, 173, 175, 177, 183, 187, 192, 198, 210 F Fanon, Frantz, 186 Forensic Architecture, 2 Fragments, 41, 42 G Ganesh, Chitra, 20, 135, 136, 139, 141, 143–145, 164, 218 Garbage City, 189, 198 Gates, Theaster, 21, 69, 70, 172, 175, 177, 181, 184 Ghani, Mariam, 20, 135, 136, 139, 141–145, 164, 218 Gillick, Liam, 12, 209 Globalization, 11, 14, 21, 32, 51, 171–200 Globalized, 1–23, 32, 39, 47, 51, 54, 93 Goldin, Nan, 5 Graham, Dan, 10, 217 Grassroots organizations, 23, 72, 92, 93, 104, 124, 126, 203, 204, 206, 207, 209, 212, 219 Guggenheim Museum, 8, 203 H Haacke, Hans, 4 Haider, Hajra, 22, 193 Happenings, 6, 64, 77, 111, 134, 150, 190, 218 Hida, Laila, 98 Hijawi, Samah, 113, 116

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Hilal, Sandi, 20, 137, 153–156, 167n29 Homage, 51–53 Home on Neutral Ground, 15, 48, 217 Horseshoe arch, 14 Hospitality, 81, 146, 191 Houston, 21, 172, 178–181, 197–199 Hussain, Amin, 2 I I Am Karachi (IAK), 21, 138, 157–164 Ibrahim, Raed, 114 Immigrant, 20, 22, 46, 135, 136, 139, 142, 147, 164, 173, 184, 185, 215, 216, 219 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 135, 147 Index of the Disappeared, 20, 135, 139–145, 164, 218, 219 Indian subcontinent, 14, 214 Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, 157, 159–161, 163 Inner city, 21, 172, 174 Interaction, 6, 12, 30, 33, 45, 51, 73, 74, 76, 85, 86, 103, 112, 118, 126, 127, 156, 189, 192, 199, 211 Iraq, 14, 20, 30, 70, 100, 136, 147–151, 164, 219 Israel, 8, 17, 20, 82, 153 J Jabal Weibdah, 113, 117 Jacir, Emily, 7–11, 108, 213 Jadal for Knowledge and Culture, 92, 117, 118, 126

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K Kanders, Warren B., 2–4 Karachi, 14, 15, 18, 21, 22, 50, 51, 55, 57, 91, 92, 119–122, 126, 138, 157–163, 165, 173, 193, 196, 200, 216 Kester, Grant, 6, 7, 15–17, 61, 63, 68, 77, 86, 108, 111, 149, 209, 212 Khan, Naiza, 15, 50–58, 215, 216 Khasawnih, Diala, 113 L Larsen, Lars Bang, 85, 86 Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, 105 Lebanon, 78, 93, 105, 110, 112 Le 18, 19, 98, 99, 126 Library, 19, 101, 102, 104, 113, 115, 126, 140, 175–177, 205 Lind, Maria, 12, 209 Los Angeles, 21, 172, 181, 182, 197, 199 Lowe, Rick, 21, 172, 175, 177–179, 181 M Makan Art Space, 18 Manora Field Notes, 15 Manshiyat Naser, 22, 173, 187–192 March Meeting, 7, 71, 153, 154 Marginalized communities, 21, 40, 51, 171–200, 205, 216, 219 Marrakech, 14, 18, 19, 91, 92, 94–99, 104, 126, 207, 211 Marrakech Biennial, 96 Marxloh Crossroads, 43, 46, 47 MASS Alexandria, 74 Medina kids workshops, 19, 92, 96 Mehmood, Hasnat, 32, 33, 37, 38, 58, 213, 214

Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema, 22, 193–198 Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia (MENASA), 7–23, 29–58, 70, 71, 79, 91–127, 133, 134, 138, 172–174, 178, 179, 203–207, 213–218 Migration, 5, 32, 46 Mikdadi, Salwa, 13 Mint Works, 96 Mohaiemen, Naeem, 108 Morocco, 14, 112 Mulji, Huma, 16, 64–70, 85, 87n7 Mural, 22, 158, 187–192, 197, 198, 200, 219 Muslim immigrants in the United States, 20, 139 N Neocolonialism, 30, 32 New School for Social Research, 5 New York, 2, 4, 5, 8, 13, 20, 124, 135, 139, 203 The New York Times, 4 9/11, 20, 134–136, 139, 140, 142, 143, 145, 147–149, 164 O The Observatory, 53, 54 Oda Projesi collective, 62, 210 Ola ElKhalidi, 113 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, 96 Oral histories, 12, 205 P Paki Bastard, 22, 185 Pakistan, 15, 21, 22, 30, 32, 48, 50, 51, 54, 66, 75, 92, 119, 121,

 INDEX 

122, 138, 157, 158, 165, 174, 184, 193, 196 Palestine, 3, 10, 11, 20, 82, 112, 137, 154, 165, 207 Palestine Hosting Society, 17, 69, 70, 80–84, 207, 212 Palestinian homeland, 83 Papastergiadis, Nikos, 6 Participatory art, 2, 7, 10, 14–16, 44, 61–63, 85, 100, 110, 212 Perception, 188, 189, 191, 192, 198, 219 Performance art, 94, 111, 150, 174, 184 Petrified, 41–43 Petti, Alessandro, 20, 137, 154–156 Postcolonial, 11, 12, 22, 31–33, 39, 76, 206, 215, 218 Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (P.A.I.N.), 5 Project Row Houses, 172, 178–180, 183 Q Qanat, 98 Queen of England, 35 Queens Collective, 92, 94–99, 104, 108, 126, 207, 211 R Raad, Walid, 108, 123, 144 Rakowitz, Michael, 2, 3, 20, 70, 136, 146–152, 164, 218, 219 Refugee, 8, 9, 18, 20, 43, 46, 76, 81, 92, 100, 115, 126, 137, 148, 153–155, 157, 164, 215, 216 Relational art, 2, 85, 86 Riad, 96 Rizvi, Fazal, 22, 193 Ruangrupa, 1

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S Said, Edward, 25n19, 133 SAWA Workshops for Visual Arts, 101 Senghor, Leopold Sedar, 185, 186 Sharjah Art Foundation, 7, 15–17, 48, 70–75, 79, 122, 124, 125, 153, 167n29, 206, 207 Sharjah Art Spaces, 75 Sharjah Biennial, 15, 17, 48, 70, 72, 75, 78, 105, 125 Sharjah cricket stadium, 15, 48, 49 Shawky, Wael, 16, 70, 72–74, 76, 78, 85 Silent referent, 30, 215 Social aesthetics, 85, 127 Social engagement, 1, 100, 103, 133–165, 206 Social function, 6, 63, 85 Socially engaged art, 2, 11, 12, 14, 21, 61, 75, 77, 99, 100, 112, 125, 153, 172, 174, 177, 184, 198, 206, 212 Social practice art, 2, 7, 61, 113, 172, 177 Social sculpture, 148, 149, 174, 175, 199 The Spin, 79 Spring Sessions, 18, 92, 116, 117, 126 Stony Island Arts Bank, 175–177, 179 Storytelling, 19, 50, 57, 66, 73, 104, 117, 205 Syria, 14, 47, 100, 112 T Tabet, Rayyane, 15, 48, 49, 58, 59n16, 217 Tacet, 17, 78–80 Taflayout, Siham, 94 Tefrati, Hana, 94, 96, 98

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INDEX

Temporary Art Platform, 93, 105–111 Tentative Collective, 22, 173, 193–198 Third space, 154, 206 Third Text, 185 Tiravanija, Rirkrit, 64, 69 Tohme, Christine, 105, 109 Townhouse Gallery, 18, 92, 99–105, 108, 113, 124–126, 207 Triangle Arts, 119 Truck art, 158, 159 U Umayyad, 14 United Arab Emirates (UAE), 15, 16, 40, 48, 50, 70, 71, 74, 100, 122–124

V Vasl Artists’ Association, 18, 92, 119–122, 126, 158–161, 163 Via Fenestra/Frankfurt (Oder), 43, 44 Violence, 10, 11, 17, 19, 53, 135, 136, 138, 139, 159, 164, 218 W wa Thiong'o, Ngũgı̃, 31, 33, 37, 39 Walls of Peace, 21, 138, 157–164 War, 14, 20, 70, 76, 81, 133–165, 218, 219 War on terror, 30, 139, 219 Weinberg, Adam, 4 Wells, William, 99 Where we come from, 7, 8, 11 Whitney Museum of American Art, 2 Within, 17, 78–80