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Omnia Magdy began her portrait project out of disappointment with the decline of Egyptian cinema from its once celebrated golden era. She created a series of what has come to be called “sleeveface” portraits – mixing images of musicians from old LP (long playing) record covers with pictures of ordinary people. She chose to use images of stars from the history of Egyptian cinema, combining their well-known faces with the body of a model. The vintage photos she used are well-known and she chose to arrange each portrait to “match” the original in location, clothing, and props in order to create a provocative illusion of the past in the present and vice versa. (Jadaliyya)

#omnia magdy #jadaliyya #photography #cairo #egypt

africanoexiste

The Egyptian version of Frida Kahlo by Youssef Nabil

La versión egipcia de Frida Kahlo según Youssef Nabil

thepoliticalnoteboo1deac

Today is the fifth anniversary of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s death. In honor of that, here is a beautiful video of a reading of his poem “The Dice Player,” with animated calligraphy and a subtitled translation.

[Arabic Literature (in English)]

#mahmoud darwish #poetry #the dice player

5centsapound

Nedim Kufi: Absense

Iraqi-Dutch visual artist Nedim Kufi was forced to leave his hometown of Baghdad in 1990 following the chaos of the First Gulf War. His series ‘Absence’ explores the notion of exile and of loss, of a home beyond reach and of the people left behind.

I present here two inseparable images, exemplifying one existence, which tell the story of a departing homeland and of my resettlement away from it. The setting of the image was once our home in Kufa during the 1960s. The first image was created by my father, which he took with his dark red-box camera, and the second is of my creation, which I have modified with Photoshop as an unrestrained expression of my feelings of emptiness and banishment. Nearly forty years separate the two images, and by this act of remembrance, I am attempting to recollect that moment in time; emotionally, intellectually and qualitatively.

Whilst the situation in my country, Iraq, which I now watch from a distance, is deteriorating day after a day, there remains a virtual and concurrent existence between the two images, marking that daunting distance. It expresses the disconnection between the home of my childhood and that of my expatriation. Omitting my persona from the first image would, I think, be unique, if taken as a serious visual drama, an expression to help me reach closure by translating my hidden feelings during a lengthy period of loss and despair. I do not, however, think that this portrays my case only; it is the condition of every migrant departing his homeland, either willingly or forcefully, going astray into the unknown. -

My suggestion here is of an imaginary space, within which I might be able to acknowledge the plethora of illusions and obsessions which have occupied my mind, and which have brought me forward towards a serious search within this imaginary space. My question throughout the search has been: “Who omits whom?” After such a prolonged absence from my homeland, and after missing finding the way back, “home” became in my view, no more than an image empty of its prima facie content, flimsy as the word “missing,” now so commonly circulated in Iraq. - in the artist’s own words via arab review

#nedim kufi #iraq

CIHAD CANER: Root

#cihad caner #photography

CIHAD CANER: What Remains

War photographers don’t usually carry colored pencils in their bags. But Cihad Caner didn’t want to photograph war. Using a polaroid camera and colored pencils, Caner creates diptychs of Syria that pair bleak, black and white images with written appeals for normality penned in bright hues.

[...]

“Almost everything has scars from the war,” says Caner, who traveled from his home in Turkey to Aleppo and Azaz to make these images. The photos don’t center on violence or tragedy, but instead, in the periods of calm before the shelling and firefighting begins again, the people who remain.

Read/see more at Guernica.

#guernica #cihad caner #syria #what remains #photography

arabswagger

Vol. 2

High Res

arabswagger

High Res

NAZAR YAHYA: Four Dimensions

#nazar yahya

thepoliticalnoteboo1deac

“It started with thousands of people on the streets. It has resulted in millions of people on the move." This is an excellently produced animated video — fact-heavy and visually stunning — on the Syrian refugee crisis, which is the worst in two decades. 4.25 million are internally displaced and another 2 million have fled the country.

Go here for The Guardian’s further, extensive coverage of the Syrian refugee situation — it is spending today dedicating extensive coverage to this in particular and you can go here to the live blog titled "Syria refugee crisis — a day in the life." There is some excellent reporting including an audio dispatch from Katie Seaborne of Save the Children describing the terrible conditions of the Domiz camp in northern Iraq where over 160,000 Syrians have fled and an interactive map of where the refugees have ended up globally.

By Alex Purcell, Mona Chalabi, Mustafa Khalili and Mark Rice-Oxley for The Guardian.

#syria

Goodreads

Ancient hybridizations: Charlotte Higgins rethinks the relationship between "the classical world" and the Middle East.

The top 10 Ramadan apps.

Neo-Orientalists, nostalgia, and the idolization of the East.

The personal stories of Iranians impacted by economic sanctions.

Archeologists return to Leptis Magna, "one of the world's best preserved archeological sites" and one of Libya's best-kept secrets.

Memory Museums filled with everyday items remind Palestinian refugees of life before 1948.

Palestinian-British writer Selma Dabbagh on the need to forge a new space for Arab writers beyond national origins and, more importantly, beyond "foreign interest" readerships.

Ramadan soap operas offer a glimpse into the Egyptian zeitgeist, or "spirit of the times."

The new memes of the Egyptian revolution.

Five Arab novels to add to your summer reading list.

Image: Family 62, Mohammed Abla (2006)

#reader

KHAN YOUNIS REFUGEE CAMP, PALESTINE: Parkour as radical praxis.

In his book Hollow Land, the preeminent analysis of the visible and invisible ways through which Israel implements its control over Palestinians in and beyond the occupied territories, Eyal Weizman describes how “the mundane elements of planning and architecture have become tactical tools and the means of dispossession.” Gaza is the birthplace, in Weizman’s analysis, of a brutal and astute new military-urbanistic doctrine in which the battleground is shifted to embrace the most commonplace, mundane elements of the urban fabric—those dwellings, stores and workshops in which everyday life unfolds. Just as the Israeli Defense Forces learned to move seamlessly through walls, blasting a path deep into the city, room by room and building by building, in 2005 a group of youths from Gaza had a similar epiphany. Inspired by the nascent sport of parkour, born in the Parisian banlieues, they began to observe the urban fabric of Gaza as a playground through which they could move fluidly, using their bodies...to overcome boundaries and barriers.

#palestine #parkour #architecture

KUWAIT CITY, KUWAIT: "A House Among Towers," submitted by tumblr user khamachra.

This is a photograph of an old house, most likely from the 60s judging by the architecture. And what interests me most is that fact that it remains standing even after all the older structure around it were demolished to make way for skyscrapers.

This house has already been renovated once more since the taking of this photograph, and I sometimes wonder how many times it has been renovated and why.

#khamachra #kuwait #architecture #submission

MAHALLAT, IRAN: An apartment building by Ramin Mehdizadeh with walls made entirely of recycled travertine stones. Travertine powers the Mahallat economy, but manufacturing it produces 50% excess waste and pollutes the natural environment.

The recycled stones used for the exterior create a subtle effect on geometry of the project, which consist of façade with emphatic angles. Slight roughness of mixed recycled stones creates somewhat warmer texture, effectively complementing sharply tailored façade. As a result, the project, which speaks the language of modern architecture, uniquely blends with verdant trees and surroundings of Mahallat, an old town, which has seen more than a thousand year of history. Such coherent theme of locally-recycled stones is also reverberated in the interior of the project, where simple structure is accentuated by stone walls, creating a space that is expressed in a natural yet intimate manner.

Read more (and watch a short film about the project) here.

#mahallat #iran #ramin mehdizadeh #architecture #muftah

JERUSALEM: Palestinian urban architecture, 1940s.

From the Khalil Raad collection.

#architecture #palestine #khalil raad #jerusalem

Conservation as Non-Violent Resistance

...in the West Bank of Palestine, a group of architects — most of whom have international postgraduate degrees and could easily have found lucrative careers abroad — has returned home to preserve architectural heritage of the holy land, a heritage that is either being deliberately destroyed by the Israelis or being neglected by Palestinians. For the former, cultural heritage has become a battleground to stake a claim to the land — a war in which they have the ascendency — and for the latter, the upkeep of historically important sites and buildings is a luxury they cannot afford.

Riwaq, a nonprofit founded more than twenty years ago by Suad Amiry, works tirelessly to preserve the architectural fabric of Palestinian cities and villages. Their renovation projects function not only on the level of aesthetics, rejuvenating the old and decrepit, but also "as a tool of economic and social development" and "a form of non-violent resistance against the occupation."

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