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Palestinian Art: speaking through a state of indifference

Global Arab Network - - Adam Turner

Sunday, 12 April 2009 00:24

A panel discussion based on the recently published book Palestinian Art: From 1850 to the Present by Kamal Boullata. It will include a Q&A session with the author and members of the panel, and will be followed by a reception.
The panel will be chaired by Professor Kamal Abu Deeb with Kamal Boullata, Professor Jean Fisher and Professor Mel Gooding.

Organised by the Arab-British Centre & Saqi Books in association with the London Middle East Institute, SOAS (LMEI).

About the Author:

Kamal Boullata is a Palestinian painter and writer. He was born in Jerusalem in 1942. He graduated from the Fine Arts Academy in Rome and from the Corcoran Gallery School of Art in Washington, D.C. In 1993 and 1994 Kamal was awarded Fulbright Senior Scholarships to conduct research on Islamic art in Morocco.

Public collections holding his art include the British Museum, London; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; New York Public Library, New York and many others. His writings on Arab and Palestinian art have appeared in exhibition catalogues, anthologies and periodicals including the Journal of Palestine Studies and Michigan Quarterly Review. He is the author of Recovery of Place: A Study of Contemporary Palestinian Art (in Arabic) and the editor of Belonging and Globalisation: Critical Essays in Contemporary Art and Culture. He is also the author of Palestinian Art, the only authoritative account of Palestinian art in the English language to date.

About the Panel Speakers:

Professor Kamal Abu Deeb holds the chair of Arabic Studies at SOAS. A leading scholar in Arabic literary criticism and culture, Abu-Deeb has written extensively on Arabic poetry and poetics and the critical discourse in the Arabic tradition.

Professor Jean Fisher is Professor of Fine Art and Transcultural Studies at Middlesex University in London. She is also author of Vampire in the Text: Narratives of Contemporary Art.

Professor Mel Gooding is Research Professor at Wimbledon College of Art in London. He is also Editor of Painter as Critic: Patrick Heron: Selected Writings.

About the Book:

This pioneering book offers an insider's analysis of the development of Palestinian art from the 19th century to the present day. Kamal Boullata's diverse selection of pre-1948 paintings through contemporary media works highlights the political concerns of Palestinian artists and their unique contributions to modern Arab culture. Work by artists who continued to live in their homeland is examined alongside that of artists of the Palestinian diaspora, including art world luminary Mona Hatoum. Particular attention is paid to the role of women artists, revealing how strategies of resistance have been employed against the dominant artistic expression.

Reviews of the Book:

“Boullata takes the reader close to the struggle of those visionary, obstinate Palestinian artists who create so that their anonymous heroic land with its ancestral olive trees may survive.” - John Berger, Winner of the Man Booker Prize for G.

“Boullata’s historical writings and art criticism in Arabic, English and French have become the standard by which all other writings on Palestinian art are measured.” – Joseph Massad, Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History, Columbia University, New York

“The first comprehensive history of modern and contemporary Palestinian art...Boullata sheds light on its little-known early developments under the influence of Russian icon painters and unravels the complex reconfigurations and strategies in art and culture after the nakba.” – Catherine David, Conservateur des Musées Nationaux, Paris.

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Thursday, 23rd April at 6.15pm
Khalil Lecture Theatre
SOAS, University of London
Thornhaugh Street
Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
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Global Arab Network

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