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Across decades of political turmoil, Dia Azzawi has painted the situations across his native Iraq the wider Arab world. From his first engagement in demonstrations in support of Gamal Abdul Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal, through coups, massacres and occupation, Azzawi has reflected ideas on nationalism, isolation and the...

Rasha Salti talks about the range of films she has programmed as curator of the 2016 edition of Safar: A Celebration of Contemporary Arab Cinema, which will take place at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in September 2016, as organized by The Arab British Centre. Reflecting on cinema...

Sussan Deyhim talks about her performance education in Iran, her development in bringing together spiritual folk and progressive experimentation, and the varied projects she creates today.

This interview examines aspects of the work of sound artist, composer and theorist, Seth Ayyaz. The interview is broken into three parts. First, <i>Ibraaz </i>Commissioning Editor Sheyma Buali breaks down the artist's ideas on 'the Islamic sonic-social.' Part two of the interview is a short discussion between Ayyaz and artist...

A reoccurring theme in Fayçal Bagriche's practice is the question of what one sees versus what is actually there; he reinterprets this by enacting his condition in various roles: whether as an artist, a performer or an actor. Here, <em>Ibraaz</em> Channel Editor, Sheyma Buali, speaks to him about enacting these...

In this interview, Global Art Forum 9 Co-Directors Turi Munthe and Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi discuss the concept around the 2015 Global Art Forum 9 (GAF), titled 'Download: Update?', with <em>Ibraaz</em> Commissioning Editor Sheyma Buali.

In this interview, Sheyma Buali speaks with Martina Caruso about the exhibition <i>My Sister Who Travels </i>(The Mosaic Rooms, 18 July–30 August 2014), and which featured six contemporary artists, Corinne Silva, Halida Boughriet, Jananne Al-Ani, Noor Abed, Paola Yacoub and Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, presented alongside archival images by Victorian archaeologist Esther...

Sheyma Buali reviews Intervening Space: From the Intimate to the World</em>, an exhibition curated by Yasmina Reggad of Aria (Artist Residency in Algiers) at The Mosaic Rooms, which showed pieces by six artists of Algerian descent working either in the country or within the diaspora today. Ranging in media, from...

The 2014 Global Art Forum was an exercise in collapsing space and time. Titled 'Meawhile...History' it was a presentation on the region in which it took place. Before movintg to Dubai, this, the eighth edition of GAF, opened at Doha's Katara Art Center. Here, Sheyma Buali looks back on the...

Ahd's directorial debut, in which she also starred, <i>The Shoemaker</i> (2009), premiered at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2009. Settled in Saudi and become a force of strength in the Gulf film scene. Her second directorial project, <i>Sanctity</i> (2012), was shot entirely in her hometown of Jeddah. Soon after...

Larissa Sansour's work, mainly in the form of video art but also photography, installation, graphic novels and other media, has shifted a great deal from the beginning of her practice. Her short films answer to the Palestinian question and often incorporate themes surrounding food, humour and, increasingly lately, science fiction...

In this essay, Sheyma Buali recalls an exhibition at London's Victoria & Albert Museum based on Hari Kunzru's novella <em>Memory Palace</em>. With this as her starting point, Buali weaves a complex narrative around memory, documentation, and 'conscience control', that reflects institutional attitudes towards the past and its relationship to the...

The 2014 Global Art Forum (GAF) – the eighth edition of this series staged annually at Art Dubai – is an imagined timeline of turning points in history. On the occasion of the eighth Global Art Forum, <em>Ibraaz</em> editorial correspondent Sheyma Buali talked to this year's GAF Co-Directors, curator-translator <b>Omar...</b>

'We need images to create history, especially in the age of photography and cinema. But we also need imagination to re-see these images, and thus, to re-think history,' is a quote by Georges Didi-Huberman, which was shared by Ali Cherri at the beginning of the following interview. The quote reflects...

For the most part, knowledge is fragmented and knowledge of history even more so. Often histories are simplified, placed within vacuums of loosely-defined regional and nation-state borders where nuances are overlooked. Artist Jumana Manna counters this by allowing her audience a window where histories become cross-continental networks, exposing the sometime-unsettled...

'It is problematic to define a work by nationality. Cinema has the potential for crossing checkpoints,' punned the Berlin-based Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari during his question and answer session at the 2012 London Palestine Film Festival (LPFF). Of course, Aljafari's comments can be applicable to any form of art or...

With every new development of communication and information technology, the world changes slightly; and with every political movement, an aesthetic is re-formed. It is an oft-repeated adage that the Internet has altered the way we share information, communicate and see the world but the same was said about television and...

Jean Fisher's introduction to Guy Mannes-Abbott's recently-published book <em>In Ramallah, Running</em> points out the significances of the spaces that we are about to run through with the author. Using Henri Lefebvre's differentiations between the 'perceived space' - that which is lived in, holding of purpose and meaning - and that...

The Arab British Centre's <em>Safar: A Journey through Popular Arab Cinema</em>, started on Friday the 21st of September at the ICA with an afternoon-long, three-session forum. It was a lively debate among Arab film scholars, directors, critics and programmers based in different parts of the world, and represented different spectrums...

On Thursday, the 23rd of August, Syrian filmmaker and co-founder of DoxBox Film Festival Orwa Nyrabia disappeared on his way to Cairo from Damascus. A statement to international press and film organisations was promptly released by his wife, Syrian filmmaker Diana al Jeiroudi: 'Syrian film producer Orwa Nyrabia disappeared on...

When drawing a visual image of the Gulf, it is perhaps difficult to dissociate it from the elaborate architectural renderings peddled by ambitious architecture and engineering firms, and the glittering vista of skyscrapers, highways, and man-made islands that have come to epitomize the area. Writer and critic Sheyma Buali takes...

In this interview for <em>Ibraaz</em>, writer and critic Sheyma Buali talks to Palestinian filmmaker Mohanad Yaqubi about his latest project, <em>Off Frame </em>(2013). Working with found documentary footage of the first two years of the Lebanese Civil War shot by the Palestine Film Unit (PFU), these precious reels were lying...