Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey

Member Events

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President Nada Shabout

On April 16th, Nada Shabout will give a talk, “The Right to ‘Be:” Arab Women Artists and Conflicts,” at the University of St. Thomas. She will participate in two conference panels: “Where is Beirut, Ramallah, Cairo…from Saadiyat Island,” at Ashkal Alwan’s Home Works on April 24 2010 and “Constructions of History and Their Aesthetic Transcription in Arab Contemporary Arts,” at the Free University of Berlin on April 30th 2010.


President Nada Shabout and Board Member Salwa Mikdadi edited New Vision: Arab Contemporary Art in the 21st Century published by Transglobe Publishing Ltd. with a second release in Oct by Thames and Hudson. The publication includes essays by Mikdadi, Shabout, Tarek Atrissi, Venetia Porter, and Sarah Rogers. http://www.tgpublishingltd.com/arab1.html


Nada Shabout received a National Endowment for the Humanities-Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant for her project, The Open Modern Art Collection of Iraq: Web tools for Documenting, Sharing and Enriching Iraqi Artistic Expressions.

The Open Modern Art Collection of Iraq (OMACI) project will prototype a robust, participatory content-management system to trace, share and enable community enrichment of the modern art heritage of Iraq. The project represents a collaborative effort of the University of North Texas, the Alexandria Archive Institute, and the School of Information at UC Berkeley. OMACI will create a virtual gallery with images of works of art, many of them now lost, from the Iraqi Museum of Modern Art in Baghdad, linked to publications, exhibition catalogs, and personal documentation. Technologies deployed in this project focus on ease of use and localization, extensive and inclusive documentation, community contribution, and syndication of content elsewhere on the web. The success of the system lies in its ability to reach a wide and participatory audience across the globe, offering users the ability to document, discuss, explore, and enrich Iraqi artistic expressions and experiences.

Shabout also serves as director of The Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Institute (CAMCSI), established in 2008, at the University of North Texas: http://art.unt.edu/camcsi.html

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Secretary Dina Ramadan

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Secretary Dina Ramadan will participate in a seminar Mediterranean Encounters at the 2010 ACLA conference. Her paper is entitled The Alexandria Biennale and Egypt's Shifting Mediterranean. This fall, Ramadan will join Bard College as assistant professor of Arabic.

President-Elect Sarah Rogers

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Sarah Rogers received a 2010 Palestinian American Research Center Post-Doctoral Fellowship for her project, Visualizing a Hidden History: Palestinian Art in Lebanon.

Board Member Beral Madra

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Since September 2008, Beral Madra has directed the Visual Arts Section of Istanbul 2010, European Culture Capital. She is currently producing "Portable Art", an exhibition project presenting contemporary art exhibitions to 20 districts of İstanbul and "Lives and Works in İstanbul", a residency project with 7 artists (Remo Salvadori, Anroni Muntadas, Viktor Burgin, Sanja Ivekovic, Peter Kogler, George Lappas, Sophie Calle).

Board Member Salwa Mikdadi

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Salwa Mikdadi has recently accepted a position as "Head of Arts and Culture Programme at the Emirates Foundation."

Secretary Rhonda Saad

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Treasurer Rhonda Saad co-organized the MESA panel, Pirated Politics: Contemporary art, artists, and the postproduction of the Middle East; and presented “(Mis)Consuming Reality in Omer Fast’s The Casting (2007).” In addition, she presented a paper, “Accounting for the Virgin in Khalil Raad’s Studio: Photographic Representations of the Holy Land at the Turn-of-the-19th- Century” at Concordia University's Travelling Photographies symposium in Montreal.

Board Member Silvia Naef

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Board member Silvia Naef's 1996 book on modern art in Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon has been translated into Arabic by Dr. Hussain Qubaysi: Bahthan an hadatha 'arabiyya, Tatawwur al-funun al-tashkiliyya fi Misr wa Lubnan wa-l-Iraq (Beirut: Agial li-l-funun al-tashkiliyya, 2008).

The book is available through www.alfurat.com