Meriem Bouderbala: Female Arab Art

When we speak about the Arab Countries, and specifically of Arab Women, we immediately associate them with the idea of harem, veil, and dance. Arab women are seen as oppressed and repressed by a culture that does not leave space for the feminine side of itself. This can be true if applied to a certain sphere of that culture. But, it is also true that female Arab artist have come a long way to gain recognition in the contemporary art world. This is the case of the Tunisian Meriem Bouderbala.

By using her own body in her work, the artist challenges the enduring Orientalist vision of the image of the Arab women by comparing her own body with that of exoticism that become established in the collective imaginary. Meriem studied painting and engraving at the school of Beaux-arts in Provence from 1980 to 1985 obtaining a Post-Graduate Diploma in Plastic Arts. She then moved to London in 1986 to study engraving at the Chelsea School of Art.

Since 1986, Meriem has exhibited her artwork frequently in Tunisia and throughout Europe. Meriem’s work has received wide recognition and she has won a number of prizes and important commissions. Some of her work are parts of the permanent collection of the Arab World Institute in Paris.

Meriem’s work is theoretically conditioned by her passion to explore and exploit the potential of "minority art," or contemporary art that works outside of traditional schools of thought. Her works play with photography and installation, and challenges the body representation and identification of oneself and of the other.

Saloua Raouda Choucair at Tate Modern

For the first time in its history, Tate Modern has dedicated the world’s first major museum exhibition to Lebanese artist Saloua Raouda Choucair.

Choucair (born in Lebanon, 1916) is a pioneer of abstract art in the Middle East. Through painting and drawing, architecture, textiles and jewelry, as well as her abundant sculptures, one can understand how Choucair worked in different media following her interests in science, mathematics, Islamic art, and poetry.

The exhibition focuses on Choucair’s sculptures from the 1950s to the 1980s, created in wood, metal, stone, and fibreglass, as well as extensive examples of her early abstract paintings.

The show opens, with a youthful Self-portrait from 1943, a stylized rendering of a serious young woman. This painting was made shortly after Choucair began painting under the tutelage of leading Lebanese artists Mustafa Farroukh and Omar Onsi. Contrary to the tastes of her teachers, Choucair developed a passion for Islamic art and architecture during a trip to Egypt in 1943. Choucair’s work combines elements of western abstraction with Islamic aesthetics.

The domestic scene explored in the three versions of Les Peintres Celebres was most likely based on Leger’s Le Grand Déjeuner, (she studied in the studio of Fernand Léger in Paris) a large painting depicting a harem of three naked women having tea around a small table. But rather than recreate the scene a la Léger, Choucair instead conducted a deliberate, feminist ‘de-Légerisation.’

The major work in the opening galleries is an exquisite little painting called Paris-Beirut. An Islamic star, Cleopatra's Needle, the colours of the desert, the Arc de Triomphe: all are reduced to their essential forms and held in perfect balance in the picture.

The exhibition's last room has beauty in abundance, numerous sculptures: some are planetary, evoking eclipses and starbursts. Others have affinities with womankind – corkscrew curls, metal bows and gyrating curves – and the quirkiest are highly strung, shivering excitedly as one passes. Even without any knowledge of the Sufi principles apparently underlying this art, one has the sense of a free and humorous spirit perpetually at work.

Choucair's sculptures fuse Islamic design with modernist traditions. Like her paintings they are small-scale, vibrant and cleverly balanced. One of these sculptures, carved out of wood, with joint, seems to vibrate from top to bottom with interior life – unseen human existence.

Choucair’s sculptures often resemble architectural structures, in particular those with repeated units, such as modular housing. She once said that given another life to live she would choose to be an architect.