New views of the Arab Spring

Issues of change and how citizens shape their societies are inspiring works from artists in the Middle East and beyond.

|
Victoria and Albert Museum
‘The Break’ by Nermine Hammam

Images and sounds from the Middle East wash through the news cycle with an emphasis on policy, democracy, and body count. Yet artists, too, are being swept up in these dramatic events. The issues of change and of how citizens shape their societies have produced new works from artists across the Middle East and beyond.

Marta Weiss, curator of photographs at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, offers an example in Cairo graphic-artist-turned-photographer Nermine Hammam, who is featured in the current show “Light from the Middle East: New Photography,” along with 30 others. Ms. Hammam manipulates her photos of police in Cairo’s Tahrir Square by placing them in idyllic settings, thereby capturing the empathy some protesters felt when they looked across the barricades to see young, even frightened, police.

“To have one artist’s subjective take on it is a reminder that [the Arab Spring] is not as easy to read as the images in the news might suggest,” says Ms. Weiss.
Like Hammam, Hala Elkoussy was also in the thick of events in Cairo. The Egyptian photographer and filmmaker loaned her equipment to documentarians during the initial demonstrations. But as she attended the protests, she found herself rethinking her role and methods, and quickly produced two videos that set the topical work of young Egyptian poets to music. While the video images are inspired by what’s in the news, they have the artist’s nostalgic, color-infused, contemplative style. One video, “Mr. X,” is about the way total strangers shared life-changing experiences on Tahrir Square. The other, “The Egyptian,” shows people from all sectors of society extolling freedom and democracy. Ms. Elkoussy says that by engaging in current events, an artist can help point others to purpose – even halfway around the globe.

Jamie Laurie, co-leader of a Denver-based hip-hop band, wasn’t in Cairo, but as he flew home from a visit to countries neighboring Egypt at the time of the upheaval, he jotted lines to what would become the title track of the Flobots’ 2012 album, “Circle in the Square.”

The song, says Mr. Laurie, refers to Tahrir Square, but also to pundits who had intoned that democracy in the Middle East was impossible, like squaring a circle. Other songs explore the difficulties of building a democracy from the rubble of a dictatorship. But at the album’s heart is hope.

“We were watching people in Egypt try to seize the future of their country, to make it more humane, more just,” he says. “None of us owns any of these ideas. We can definitely remind each other, and inspire one another.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to New views of the Arab Spring
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2013/0327/New-views-of-the-Arab-Spring
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe