Open Discussions/ Gulf Cultural Club
*Rose Issa (Curator, writer & producer) **Najlaa El-Ageli (Founder of Noon Arts) ***Yousif Nasser (Iraqi artist & journalist) ****Becky Harrison (Communications & events officer,The Arab British Centre)
COVID-19 has dealt a devastating blow to the arts: galleries have closed, artists have not been able to exhibit their work and the lockdown, which is not completely over, has dampened a thriving Middle Eastern arts scene. But in London galleries focusing on Middle Eastern art have organized online exhibitions and zoom discussions with artists. Through facebook and other online forums artists have shared their work and communicated with one another.
How have artists responded to the pandemic? Has a new art of hope emerged heralding a brighter future? Have artists portrayed the suffering of the victims of COVID 19? Five prominent artists/curators will discuss Middle Eastern art during the time of COVID-19.
14th October 2020
Chairman: This is the seventh programme of the Gulf Cultural Club which we are holding online. Before I start this programme I want to remember my very good friend who some of you may recall. Dr Hani Al Saigh. He used to be in London and was at was a curator of the Baghdad Museum. He died a few years ago and normally he would come to Abrar House and he would have been one of the key speakers at this programme.
There was a recent article that I read in one of the newspapers Will the art world ever be the same again? It talked about how even big galleries are having problems. There are difficulties for artists in presenting their wonderful work because of the footfall not being there and the galleries being closed. Auctioneers are also facing tremendous challenges.
Najlaa El-Ageli: Good evening everybody and thank you for this opportunity It has been a tough year. It is not over yet. I am started as an independent curator in 2012. I was focusing on contemporary Libya art something that was never available and that started with a major exhibition I curated here in London with eight major artists.
After that the ball sort of kicked on and I curated about 15 exhibitions in London and then in Malta, Italy and Spain. Due to the war in Libya I have focused more on North African artists and curated an exhibition called Pop Art from North Africa where we looked at 19 artists from all over North Africa and we exhibited it in London first of all in 2017 and then it travelled to Spain. I have been asked to do it in Cordoba this year but it got stopped because of COVID. But they exhibited in summer in their building. We also did an online exhibition about how the artists are dealing with COVID. Some of them were in Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Morocco and so on and some were stuck in Europe, in Paris or in Italy.
And it was quite an interesting journey which got a lot of feed back and we launched it online. This is one of the projects that we carried on with and the exhibition just came to an end.
Another exhibition which I was supposed to be launching physically was of five emerging artists again from North Africa called Waves with a gallery here in London. It was artists from Sudan, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. Again it got stopped and we ended up doing it online for two months, July and August and they had to work hard at making people interested in it and we created a lot of stuff online with Instagram. I had a seminar on line with one of the artists with the Arab British Centre which was quite successful. We got the media to take part.
It is hard but with this exhibition we sold some of the art work. We did not expect some of the artists to sell and one of the Tunisian artists sold nearly all of his work which was fantastic. Things are beginning to get back on track. In London they just finished the Africa Art Fair. It was physical and online. There were not a lot people going to see it but at least it is something where we can interact with the art directly.
Some of the artists are not very happy. They feel they are lost with this COVID like the rest of us so it has not been an easy year but through Podcasts and the social media we have to keep the discussion going and to shed the light on what is happening.
Yousif Nasser: I am a painter. I live in London and I am from Iraq. I think that is enough about myself. There are two sides of what I want to talk about. One is what I am doing here and the other is what is happening in some countries of the Middle East which I follow: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.
It is not an easy task to answer the question put today. What have artists done? Have they responded to the pandemic or not. Have they responded to the pains of the victims? This is too early to answer. This might take time if it happens at all.
I can’t see much happening in the four countries which I have just mentioned. Normally for the last years there were lots of troubles and turmoil and there were revolts and art movements declined in these four countries. Most of the galleries are either closed or the people stopped going there. Maybe for economic reasons people do not buy art work anymore or they buy less than before. So there are lots of reasons.
In Iraq generally there was not such a big art movement although there are lots of artists. There are not that many specialised galleries in Iraq and in Syria. Syria is almost completely finished but there are no exhibitions or any government held occasions like art exhibitions and so on.
Egypt is better and Lebanon is better but now what happened in Lebanon is another thing. So I think people feel there is a lot of pain coming from somewhere not from the academics themselves. That is a pain we need to look at and tackle. There have been lots of victims of the revolts that have been taking place in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq which create all sorts of anger as they indicate the great injustice that people are subjected to in these countries.
Talking to artists in these countries this is what they work on. There is some sort of anger as the epidemic hampered the people’s attempt in their struggle to get some sort of decent life. There is maybe indignation or anger. I got that directly from some Iraqi artists not against what the epidemic might cause to peoples’ health. It is actually because the epidemic stopped their struggle.
In Iraq the people recently revolted against the government which resulted in lots of casualties. There were 800 people killed and about 4,00 wounded by the government which depends on pro-Iranian militias for support. As this government approaches the point when they might submit and acknowledge the needs of the people and change and give them some rights. As they approached this point the epidemic struck and everything had to stop. So there is anger.
Part of my work is that I am doing lots of drawings about the uprising in Iraq. I published some of it. My work is on different projects. This is one of the projects that I am working on and I hope that I can carry on and I might exhibit them at some point.
I am optimistic about the art movement and what his happening in these countries. Optimistic that the people might get what they want. What they need. But my heart is filled with pain, filled with fear at the scale of the pain to come. This is the balance I try to keep right when I do my art work. The balance between being optimistic and at the same time not ignoring the scale of the pain that people are suffering.
Just one more thing to say is that online seminars are now taking place in Iraq. Many universities now broadcast these meetings every week. It is great. It is very useful. But it cannot replace the original experience when you go and see an exhibition itself. It cannot do that. That is what we are having now.
I will now talk about the other project I am working on which is called Fifteen. It is a personal account about war experience which I went through in 1982. When Beirut was under siege by the Israeli militia, the Israeli army I was inside Beirut itself. It was a small experience compared to what other people have suffered but I thought that now was the time to work on it. What I am looking for is that people can join me to create an anti war movement from this point.
I am working on this project with other people and we always start an anti war movement and it fades out and we forget about it. I am starting a new one with the help of many friends who are working with me now.
My experience was that I volunteered to help the Palestinian Red Crescent Society as I was working on their publications. But during the war there were no publications so I volunteered to help in the hospital and I was sent to pick up a wounded man. And he was a fighter. He was shot in his chest. So they asked me to bring him to the hospital.
The hospital was a fabricated building. It was not a real hospital and I had to bring him to the third or fourth floor with no lift or anything and the man was bigger than me at the time. I was hungry and tired because of the war. There was no food, no nothing. So I tried with another person to carry this person up to the hospital. They gave him a bed on the fourth floor. You cannot call it a hospital bed. It was just something to lie on. So I managed to take the man up. He was hit by a bomb and all his chest was filled with shrapnel. So you could see blood everywhere.
This man, when I put him on the bed he asked me if I smoked. He wanted to smoke a cigarette and I laughed. The doctor got very angry and said what do you mean you want to smoke? The smoke will come out of your chest. You are full of holes. So I denied that I was a smoker. The doctor said give him a cigarette when he started shouting. But I cannot now say I have cigarettes when I told him I do not smoke. The man just picked up something from his pocket. He picked up two Lebanese bank notes, one ten and one five. They were full of blood because the shrapnel went through them and it was like an Arabesque.
And he gave them to me and said go and buy ten packets for me. I could not refuse. I knew that no one would accept to sell cigarettes with this money. I kept it. I put it in my pocket and bought the cigarettes for him. That is the end of the story. I went to help another wounded person. I wrote about that in details. I left the hospital after the siege had ended I left to Syria with this15 lira. I forgot them in my pocket. The Syrians took everything I had. They took all my belongings including my passport which was a forged passport. They put me in prison for a few days and this15 lira was in my pocket. To cut a long story short I lived in Syria for three years. After that I felt that I need to leave as I was not in a good situation so I left to Cyprus with the 15 lira. That 15 lira could have given me troubles in the Syrian airport but I managed to get through it.
In Cyprus they let me in no problem. I stayed for seven years in Cyprus and worked as a designer for the PLO. But after the Iraqi invasion of Cyprus we all had to leave. Where should I go? I left for Norway. I had to hide this15 lira. When I went from one place to another I left everything behind. All my belongings. Nothing at all. I had to leave my studio all the time. Lots of books and drawings. I left everything but his 15lira stayed with me. I had to put it inside my coat. In Norway they let me in. I stayed for a month but they discovered that my passport was forged so I had to leave.
I left for England this time. The English authorities searched me but they did not find the 15 lira .They put me in jail because they did not find anything. So I was sent to court. The court ordered me to leave but I did not leave for two years. And they accepted that I stay in the UK. This15 lira was still with me. It stayed with me. I left everything apart from that and it stayed with me. For me it was very important. This was something which crystalized the turmoil I had been through in my whole life.
So now I have this15 lira. It still has the blood stains and the cuts. The project depends on this15 lira. So the central point of my project is the 15 lira which I want people to take part in. I want artists especially to take part in it. I have a film maker, a painter, a sculptor and a musician. I want them to add their experiences. Not necessarily from a war but how they feel about it.
Becky Harrison: Thank you very much for inviting me. I am the events and communications manager at the Arab British Centre. I am going to be talking about the work the organisation has been doing during the past six months during the lockdown. The Arab British Centre is a charity that was founded in 1977 that works to further the understanding of the Arab World in the UK. We do that through three main avenues. We have a building in central London where we house a number of different organisations and individuals who work to foster understanding. So we have organisations like the Shubbak Festival and Zeitun Palestinian olive oil. We a host a number of different courses like Arabic language and most importantly the thing that I will be talking to you about today is our cultural programme.
In the past we have hosted big events with lots of people – gatherings, events, cinemas. All the things that were impacted by the lockdown. We are a very small organisation. There are only four people and because we have our own building we were very fortunate during the pandemic we were able to be really nimble and we did not have to furloe any of our staff. We were able to work from home really quickly and very easily we were able to respond to the pandemic.
This presentation will be a quick overview of the projects we ran during the past six months as a result of the pandemic. We closed the centre in March and a couple of days earlier we had decided that we needed to do something. So we launched the Friday hang out as a bit of an experiment.
Nagla who just spoke was one of our guests. We wanted to encourage the cultural community and give artists a chance to talk about their work. The Friday hangout brought together people who were interested in Arab culture. There were really friendly conversations and I was encouraged by the fact that we were working from home in isolation. We were missing the contact with our colleagues and being together in shared spaces.
So this programme ran over 12 weeks and during this time we had visual artists, writers and producers from across the UK and from Arab communities across the world. People were tunning in globally and coming back week after week to join in this kind of informal creative state. People shared their fears of the pandemic and the crisis moments.
Youseef Kerkour who is an actor had a lot of work that had been cancelled and he gave a lot of inspiring advice about getting into voice over work and we received a tweet three months later that someone who had been to that hang out had just received their first voice over job directly following his advice. That is really great and shows the value of giving friendly advice in an influential way.
People even now are asking when the hang outs are returning and we have received a lot of positive comments. We as an organisation were in a position to be really responsive and acted really quickly and offered a space for people to come together at a time when they were looking for a bit of normality.
We have a lot of different projects that had to be re formatted this year as a result of the pandemic. The first of these was making marks. It is a partnership with the British Council which offers GCC artists the opportunity for exchanges and collaborations and it is targeted at people who are under 30. We were supposed to conclude our exchange with a group in Kuwait. This was one of the first of the programmes that had to be cancelled in early March. Having an exhibition was impossible but we wanted to pass on some of the amazing work that the artists had done as part of the commission. They worked so hard and they were really amazing. We were really lucky that the British Council were flexible with the grant and we devised a digital programme.
So we created a website with a video display. It was dual language. It featured all the making marks artists that we had the pleasure of working with and you will see the work that was created as part of the programme that should have been in the physical exhibition. To bring life to these projects we ran an extensive social media strategy including things like on line workshops, artists talks, resources for artists anywhere in the world – all for free. They were all on the Making Marks website.
This was all about increased connectivity. Maybe we were a bit clueless and we had not heard of zoom before the pandemic and we were struggling to keep in touch with all the people we were working with on the exchange, different whatsap groups. All of a sudden we found out about zoom. The website is great and so is social media but it is just not the same as an exhibition unfortunately. On the other hand through social media and the British Council which has a global reach and the artists work was given a global audience and it will there for a long time.
With the projects that involved travel and exhibitions a lot of the money that would have been allocated to hotels etc was used to create more new opportunities for artists. We wanted to create new opportunities because of the pandemic and the kind of limitations it placed on artists. There was no travel, limited access to studio space, no exhibition space and we decided to launch a digital residency programme which encouraged collaboration across borders and which was geared towards digital dissemination. We had around 60 applications and then we narrowed it down to four which was really difficult.
We had an Omani artist called Radwan Amarouki and a British called Alex Maxwell who created a beautiful black and white piece which explores their identity. With Love From Nowhere is a digital exploration of different places. I really recommend you check this out. The reflection from that project about working during lockdown is that our artists said working remotely through the internet made it easier for them to communicate which I found really interesting. They felt it made them more honest.
The final project that I am going to talk about is the Safar Film Festival. It is the only festival of Arab cinema in the UK and it was founded in 2012. This year was meant to be our landmark edition. We were also going to have editions in Glasgow. That did not happen. A lot of the fundraising streams had closed and went to COVID relief support which is the right thing to do.
We really wanted to mark the fifth edition so we applied to a COVID relief fund in the DFI and the Arab ambassadors who supported the festival allowed us to create a digital programme. We ran a significantly reduced programme themed around journeys. We also created a new website. By hosting the festival on line we were able to have some very interesting discussions. We had some very moving conversations about cinema landscapes and a lot of different themes.
We had people tune in to the festival from 44 countries. Some of the people had never been to a film festival before. We also ran a fund raising campaign and raised £2000 which really exceeded our expectations. We miss the buzz of the festival and the opportunities for networking and friendship. We were all intrigued at how things turned out. The main thing I would like to highlight for this presentation is that we would not be able to do anything without our partners. The digital reach that we have means everyone has really pulled together and there is so much support within the cultural community that we relied upon be that in promoting other people’s events, getting people in a hangout or in social media channels. It shows a real sense of creative solidarity.
We were so fortunate in that we were able to offer that kind of opportunities for artists when so much had been cancelled. We are looking forward to seeing how things pan out – whether the arts scene will ever be the same again. We will definitely be incorporating more online activity into our activities. There are benefits that we have noticed but it is not the same as being there.
Rose Issa: My name is Rose Issa. I am based in London and I have been curating visual arts from Iran and the Arab world for the past 40 years. My website covers my work. I publish books and do exhibitions. Now I mainly publish books. I am mostly a publisher and a curator with public institutions. What I want is to focus on is the question of how artists responded to the pandemic. I did not hold exhibitions during the pandemic. Many things were postponed. I had an Arabicity project with the Mediterranean in Malta. We postponed it until next year. What I can say is that during the pandemic the funny sense of humour of many people emerged in the instagrams. That is how many people communicated. And there was a funny side of the sad happenings. I agree with our Iraqi artist Nasser that for the artists of the Middle East the major concern is not COVID. It is a gradual, violent, criminal destruction of the region.: land and history because of the many invasions, the presence of the militias who were funded by foreign policies and agendas, if not by accident, like the mini Hiroshima of Lebanon.
We saw countries like Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen all destroyed physically but also financially. This is very important for the arts scene. Apart from the Gulf. I put the Gulf aside because Trump and Netanyahu are not my friends. The devaluation of currencies in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria Iraq, Lebanon and Iran is due to scandals and corruption. Through the sanctions many artists became poor – for example those who had their bank accounts in Lebanon have had their money confiscated by the banks. The strange thing is that only a year ago there were many Iraqi, Syrian and Palestinian artists based in Beirut. They were flourishing because they preferred Beirut to the Gulf where there was less of the public and less communication. This is all finished because now the banks have confiscated their money and the people are thinking more about survival.
How are they doing with COVID? I think this is a minor issue compared to the corruption and the scandals and the sanctions that the art community is facing today. This is why we have to record our history and that is why I am focusing on publications. I encourage every curator and every institution to publish and record what is happening, per year, per month and per region because that is the only thing that will stay. Politicians come and go. We do not remember the names of all the ministers who came and went in the last 2000 years. But we do remember the names of the artists.
The second question I was asked to addressed is has a new art of hope emerged heralding a bright future? Artists do not produce work to order. There is an event and suddenly they don’t come and produce. They have to digest. Things have to sink in before they can produce. Some have a fantastic sense of humour. I am going to show you a book. I don’t know if you know the book by an Iraqi architect Karl Shabo and he wrote this funny book about the Middle East. The title is And then God created the Middle East and said let there be breaking news.
This is what we are dealing with breaking news, catastrophes. Instead of focusing on art we have to see if we have electricity and water. If the building is destroyed, if our friends are alive. So you have to have a sense of humour. Which side of history do we want to be on – the corrupted side of Trump and Netanyahu or do we want to be on the side of the fighters? For me the fighters are those who are fighting for their lives, for dignity, for decency, for culture. Artists for me are the good ones who are on the side of history, memory, decency, justice and beauty. You can take works made of barbed wire or the paintings of the destroyed buildings of Lebanon during the civil war. The artists managed to present all these catastrophes in a conceptual and political way which represents their concern.
This comes with talent and talent is what I respect most in an artist. And how do they fight against corruption and injustice? When I was asked is there hope I would say hope no, anger yes. There is a lot of anger, there is a lot of protest, there is a lot of desire for life which is combined with talent. As we say the rope for lies is short. So the lies will come out. In the end we will see the truth even if it takes years, months and decades. But the public knows where the lies are.
So what will remember in future? The artists and the art works. What remains from the Roman empire is the art works, philosophers like Aristotle. It is not the politicians who we will remember, the dirty corrupt ones. We will remember the artists who enlightened us and who brought beauty into our lives. There is a lot of hardship in the region.
To the third question have artists portrayed the suffering of the victims of COVID I would say not to my knowledge. Frankly it is too early. We have so many other problems and priorities which take over and things have to settle. We have to think about it, digest it in order to produce. I doubt it if in Beirut artists are going to their studios.
Problems are accumulating in our region. I take the Gulf away – that is the money making side of things. But from Tunis to Iraq we have a whole history of annihilation of schools, hospitals and arts centres.
So hope is for me the talent that artists have and that they would develop to survive and to bring art to the forefront and to reflect the beauty of life and sometimes even the beauty of destruction. Some manage to represent beautifully the destruction and will remember it. If it is ugly it will not be remembered. The pandemic is a minor part of our problems.
In the UK people are worried if the pubs close at 10. This is not a problem of the artists. It is a problem of people who are not hungry and are being bombarded by superficial desires for life. What we need is really to give encouragement to all these young people, promoting them on line.
My generation doesn’t do online. I do physical things. Books. That is why during the past four years I have been focusing on curating only with public institutions and publishing books. That is what will remain. Online you can cut the electricity and everything disappears.
So I encourage artists to invest in themselves, I encourage cultural centres and curators to invest in their work and make those publications available for free or maybe sell them online.
* Rose Issa is a curator, writer and producer who has championed visual art and film from the Middle East for more than 30 years. She has lived in London since the 1980s showcasing upcoming and established artists, producing exhibitions with public and private institutions worldwide, and running a publishing programme. Through curating numerous exhibitions and film festivals, she introduced Western audiences to many artists who have since become stars on the international scene, including: Ayman Baalbaki, Shadi Ghadirian, Monir Farmanfarmaian, Bahman Ghobadi, Hassan Hajjaj and Farhad Moshiri. http://www.roseissa.com
**Najlaa El-Ageli set up Noon Arts in 2012 as a small private arts foundation established to explore the new burgeoning Libyan arts scene that was born out of the revolutionary spirit and that heralded a new creative movement. The aim of Noon Arts was to spot and nurture the work of talented local artists and bring it to the international stage. Working as a freelancer from a London base at the moment – a city that hosts most thriving Arab arts and culture scene – Najlaa hopes to continue to source the best of both emerging and established artwork from Libya as well as the diverse terrain that is the MENA region and its many diaspora communities spread across the Western world. www.noonartsprojects.com
***Yousif Nasser was born in Amara, Iraq in 1952. He has been painting and drawing from an early age. His early years were a mixture of education and menial labour including work on building sites. In 1975 he graduated from the academy of fine arts in Baghdad with BA in Fine Arts and worked as a designer for the Iraqi Communist Party’s daily newspaper Tariq Al Shaab (The road of the people). His life in exile began in 1979 when he fled to Lebanon after the Baathist regime began persecuting political activists. In 1990 he moved to London and established the ARK which show-cased neglected aspects of cultural diversity, hosted hundreds of events, ranging from art exhibitions and classes, musical and film evenings and lectures. His latest project is a major exhibition around the anti-war theme in which Middle Eastern and international artists are participating. www.yousifnaser.com
****Becky Harrison is the Communications and Events Manager at the Arab British Centre, a London-based charity that works to further understanding of the Arab world in the UK. Founded in 1977, its flagship programmes include the SAFAR Film Festival, the UK’s only festival of cinema from across the Arab world; the Arab British Centre Award for Culture; and Making Marks, an exchange and development programme for early career artists from the UK and Gulf Countries. www.arabbritishcentre.org.uk
