Studying Arab & SWANA Art of the 20th Century: A General Introduction, in a Multiple Perspective
Wednesday 8 October at 5:00 PM
Thursday 9 October at 5:00 PM
Saturday 11 October at 4:00 PM
Join us for a three-day lectures on the 8th, 9th &11th of October, led by independent curator and researcher Morad Montazami on:
Studying Arab and SWANA art of the 20th century: a general introduction, in a multiple perspective.
Entrance is free, no registration needed
Program:
Wednesday 8 October at 5:00 PM
A postcolonial perspective: this session will question how can we account for and reassess the colonial nature or roots of “Arab modernism” through various examples of artists trajectories in a colonial and postcolonial art world; to debunk the eurocentric definition of “non-western art” and to rethink the role of cities such as Beirut, Bagdad or Casablanca, in between shifting modernities and geographies.
Language: English
Location: Auditorium
Thursday 9 October at 5:00 PM
An institutional perspective: this session will retrace the role of major and resilient museums, collections and cultural organizations or platforms, which hold a significant part of Arab/SWANA art and heritage; to map out the art histories connecting these institutions, at the heart of the process of collecting, archiving and producing resource, often in difficult context of political crisis and conflicts.
Language: English
Location: Auditorium
Saturday 11 October at 4:00 PM
A publishing perspective: this session will propose a brief historical account of art journals, publishers and book-making (including artists books) in Arab and SWANA art between the 1970s and nowadays, with a specific focus on Zamân Books publishing; founded in 2010 as a critical journal of postcolonial art history and visual culture, starting to publish exhibition catalogues and various formats since 2014.
Language: French
Location: Auditorium
Morad Montazami's Biography:
Morad Montazami is an art historian, a publisher and a curator. After serving at Tate Modern (London) between 2014-2019 as curator « Middle East and North Africa », he founded the platform Zamân Books & Curating,committed to transnational studies of Arab, Asian and African modern and contemporary art. He published several essays on artists such as Zineb Sedira, Walid Raad, Latif al-Ani, Bahman Mohassess, Michael Rakowitz, Mehdi Moutashar, Behjat Sadr... He recently co-curated Casablanca Art School, Tate St-Ives, Sharjah Art Foundation, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2023-2024and Présences Arabes. Art moderne et décolonisation. Paris 1908-1988, Musée d’art moderne de Paris, 2024.