Art Exhibition: CREATIVE DISSENT: Arts of the Arab World Uprisings

Alwan for the Arts presents
CREATIVE DISSENT: Arts of the Arab World Uprisings

Exhibition on view at Alwan for the Arts
April 5th through April 28th, 2016
Monday through Friday: 10am to 4pm
Saturday and Sunday: Noon to 4pm
or by appointment: (646) 732-3261

The specter that haunts the uprisings in the Middle East is the instantaneous nature of its slogans, the youthful character of its expression penned through laptops and tablets, paint and brushes, markers, stencils, found items, songs and smart-phone photos and videos, circling the globe at very high speed. This exhibition is designed to immerse viewers in the creative vitality of the continually evolving movement refracted in its aesthetic output.

The experience of how aspirations for freedom and justice merge with artistic expression – capturing the anger, elation, frustration, and hope of these revolutions in the form of graffiti, video, blog postings, cartoons, music, photography and even puppetry – are on display to highlight the universality of the quest but in local vernaculars. Drawn primarily from protests in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, Creative Dissent demonstrates the varied responses to the protest in the Arab World beginning in late 2010.

Creative Dissent is curated by Associate Professor of Islamic Art Christiane Gruber of the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and Nama Khalil, an artist and anthropology PhD student at the University of Michigan. Additional works have been selected by Negin Sherifzadeh, art curator at Alwan.

Creative Dissent is sponsored and organized in collaboration with the Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, MI.

This exhibition is free and open to the public.