Bidoun Issue 2 Fall 2004

Walid Raad has a knack for tricks. A thirty-seven-year-old contemporary artist based between Brooklyn and Beirut, Raad has been known to confuse form and fact. He is the driving force behind an organization called the Atlas Group, which takes a serious and fastidious approach to the accumulation of documents related to Lebanon’s recent history in […]

Maarek Hob (Dans les Champs de Bataille/In the Battlefields) marks the feature film debut of Danielle Arbid. Telling the story of a besieged Christian family in East Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, the film centers on twelve-year-old Lina and her friendship with her free-spirited aunt’s maid, Siham. Coming from a documentary background, which includes […]

The Photography Biennial, held under the auspices of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, showed over 250 contributions both photojournalistic and artistic in temperament, a (surprising) number of which were well worth seeing. Farshid Azarang’s arrangement of old portraits of family members, for example, juxtaposed with images of TV screens, was a self-reflective commentary on history and the media that was intriguing and enigmatic, in a pleasant, Hassan Khan-ish sort of way. The work of Mohamad Ghazali, who won first prize with a graphic constellation of colored plaques propping up a series of forbidding architectural motifs and identical self-portraits, was similar in its shrewdly aestheticized, self-reflective appeal.

PREVIEWS

PROFILE
Walid Raad The Atlas Group Opens Its Archive
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie

Calligraphy: Three contemporary artists
Huda AbiFares

Calligraphy: An historical study
Huda AbiFares

THE ART OF ARCHIVING
Foundation Arabe pour L’Image Middle Eastern Photographic Archive
Antonia Carver

Collector’s Diary: Iran
Negar Azimi

Collector’s Diary: Mexico
Fouad Elkoury

THE POLITICS OF ARCHIVING
Islamic Arts at a Crossroads Museums embrace “Islamic Art”
Coco Ferguson

LITERATURE
Introduction Literature in the Balance
Alia Rayyan

INTERVIEW
Edwar al-Charrat on Egypt’s young literary scene

Ghassan Zaqtan recommends upcoming Palestinian writers

Thinking Fussha, Feeling ‘Amiya Between: Classical and Colloquial Arabic 
Iman Humaydan Younes

ART
Having a Take: Rosalind Nashashibi and Catherine Yass talk about making work in Palestine and Israel

FILM
Cannes, Paris, Ramallah Summer Film Festival Diary
Antonia Carver, Ali Jaafar, Alia Rayyan

Cinema RIF Yto Barrada’s Tangier Cinematheque
Antonia Carver

Bab El Chams Yousry Nasrallah’s epic
Ali Jaafar

Atash Tawfik Abu-Wael’s debut feature
Ali Jaafar

Domestic Battlefields: Danielle Arbid discusses her East Beirut classic
Maarek Hob

MUSIC
A Life Reconstructed Rediscovering Na ‘ima al-Misriyya
Negar Azimi

FASHION
As Four 101
Porochista Khakpour

Western Icons’ Orientalist Affair
Cesar Padilla

REVIEWS
Ala Ebtekar: ‘Elemental’ The Gallery at the intersection for Arts, San Francisco
Alison Bing

The 9th Tehran Photography Biennial: Khiyal Hall, Tehran Art Academy
Tirdad Zolghadr

Mediterraneans Macro al Mattatoio, Rome
Yasser Aggour

Laughter London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT)
Leila M

Arab Art Workshop Zenith Foundation; The Barbican, London
Malu Halasa

They Shoot Horses Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
Phil Collins

Susan Hefuna: “Xcultural Codes” Bluecoats Arts Centre
Bryan Biggs

Manima: A tale of two brothers

COOKING
Lisa Farjam, Editor-in-Chef

SPOTLIGHT

Nasser Latham: Journalist, translator, mediator
Alia Rayyan