This book examines the ways in which artists and arts organizations today forge collaborative, socially engaged situations that involve non-professionals in the process of making art, often over a period of time, through creating opportunities to examine collective concerns and needs. Collaborative art praxis is gaining prominence in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia (MENASA) region. This is a discursive method that is experimental, with results that often expand the notions of what art isand how it can be produced. After an introduction to global approaches to such a practice, Ali examines the foundation of contemporary art in the MENASA that is linked to a longer history of colonialism. The book analyzes artist-led initiatives and community-based organizations through themes including relational aesthetics, war and violence, blight in marginalized places around the world, in addition to questions associated with art and its value in the fields of global contemporary art and society.
Introduction.
Chapter One: Charting Sociopolitical art in the Middle
East, North Africa, and South Asia.
Chapter Two: Getting to Know You:
Relational Aesthetics.
Chapter Three: Sharing Stories over Tea:
Institutional Frameworks and the Rise of Collaborative Art Praxes in the
Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
Chapter Four: What is it good
for: War, Social Engagement, and Contemporary Art Experiments.
Chapter Five:
Transformations in the Margins: Blight and the Arts in the Ghetto.-
Conclusion: contemporary art and its impact on societies in the MENASA region.
Atteqa Ali is an art historian, writer, and curator based in Dubai and New York. She has written for several publications, including an essay on collaborative and socially engaged art in the extended Middle East for Third Text. She is Assistant Dean of Student Affairs at Zayed University, United Arab Emirates.
