Suspended Territories: Artists from the Middle East and North Africa

Contemporary art production in Arab countries still remains largely unexplored. Often general and trite assumptions are made distinguishing between East and West, Arabic-Islamic and Western-Christian civilisation, without addressing each culture's specific characteristics in appropriate ways. Aware of the fact that the reception of art from these countries calls for a new approach, the museum for contemporary art, MARTa in Herford, Germany, has invited nine female artists from Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iran and Iraq to share their work. They all came to the West as university students or exiles, and most of them never returned to their homes. This exhibition focuses on their works of art and devotes ample space to the particular biographical and national details in the lives of these women. The diversity of their artistic styles links many different aspects, reflecting on the concept of cultural boundaries, and the crossing of those boundaries, as well as the on-going conflicts and upheaval in their home countries.