 |
| Editor-in-Chief | Anthony Downey |
|---|---|
| Categories | Art magazines |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Founder | Kamel Lazaar, Lina Lazaar, Anthony Downey |
| Founded | 2011 |
| Country | UK |
| Based in | London |
| Language | English/Arabic |
| Website | www |
Ibraaz is an online forum for visual culture in North Africa and the Middle East.
Ibraaz publishes an annual online platform that focuses on research questions conceived through a network of editorial contributors based in the Middle East and beyond. [1] Its key editorial aim is to publish emerging writers and artists, alongside work by internationally renowned writers, academics, curators, activists, and filmmakers.
Ibraaz works by posing annual ‘platforms’ where a question is put to writers, thinkers and artists about an issue relevant to the MENA region. This platform is sent to respondents both within and beyond the MENA region. Content is added to the website every month. Contributions are archived every twelve months when a new platform begins.
Ibraaz also publishes a series of books, edited by Anthony Downey, under the 'Visual Culture in the Middle East' title. To date, these have included Future Imperfect: Contemporary Art Practices and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East (Sternberg Press, 2016); Dissonant Archives: Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2015); and Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2014).
Ibraaz was set up from discussions between Anthony Downey, Kamel Lazaar and Lina Lazaar. It was founded as a research platform to rethink stereotypical frames of reference that have defined discussions around cultural production from within and beyond the Middle East. [2] The inaugural platform was launched as part of the 54th Venice Biennale in June 2011, [3] alongside the exhibition The Future of a Promise, the largest Pan-Arab exhibition to be held at the Venice Biennale. Ibraaz Platform 001 responded to regional developments across North Africa and the Middle East, the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ and its effects upon the visual culture of the region. [4] Ibraaz is an initiative of the Kamel Lazaar Foundation. [5]
Ibraaz’s content covers mostly contemporary visual culture from or about the Middle East and its diaspora. However, it can also include non-visual culture, such as sound-based art, [6] and other periods, such as Modern art. [7] The content consists of essays, interviews, reviews, artists' projects, platform responses and video contributions in its online channel.
In addition to the online platform and publications, Ibraaz organize and co-host events relating to visual culture in the Middle East. These include book launches, [8] panel discussions [9] and the annual JAOU Tunis conference. [10] In 2013, Ibraaz held the conference Future Imperfect: Cultural Propositions and Global Perspectives at Tate Modern, London. [11] The event featured contributors including Douglas Coupland, Raqs Media Collective, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Zineb Sedira, and others.
Ibraaz periodically collaborates with a range of international artists and organisations, frequently publishing online exhibition catalogues and audiovisual content. Such partnerships have included with Asia Contemporary Art Week's FIELD MEETING Take 4: Thinking Practice, [12] held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Asia Society, New York City, USA in 2016; the Palestinian biennial Qalandiya International; [13] the Delfina Foundation, London; [14] Hayward Gallery, London, and Maraya Art Center, Sharjah; [15] and The Jerusalem Show, Jerusalem. [16]
Notable contributors to Ibraaz include:
Juan Downey was a Chilean artist who was a pioneer in the fields of video art and interactive art.
James Chapman is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester. He has written several books on the history of British popular culture, including work on cinema, television and comics.
David Tristan Birkin is a British artist working with photography and performance art. He is a Senior Lecturer at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Birkin is the co-founder of Visible Justice, a research platform for artists, activists, writers, journalists, photographers, filmmakers, and human rights lawyers working at the intersection of visual culture and social justice. He has also worked as a motion picture and theatre actor.
I.B. Tauris is an educational publishing house and imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. It was an independent publishing house with offices in London and New York City until its purchase in May 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing.
Jananne Al-Ani is an Irish-Iraqi artist.
Adam Chodzko is a contemporary British artist, exhibiting internationally. His practice uses a wide range of media, including video, installation, photography, drawing, and performance.
Ahmet Öğüt is a conceptual artist living and working in Amsterdam, Netherlands and Berlin, Germany. He works with a broad range of media including video, photography, installation, drawing and printed media.
Rabih Mroué is a Lebanese stage and film actor, playwright, and visual artist. Rooted in theater, his work includes videos and installation art; the latter sometimes incorporates photography, text and sculpture.
Eddie Chambers is a British contemporary art historian, curator and artist. He currently holds the David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Art History at the University of Texas at Austin.
Abdulnasser Gharem is a Saudi Arabian artist and also a lieutenant colonel in the Saudi Arabian army. In April 2011, his installation Message/Messenger sold for a world record price at auction in Dubai.
Omar Kholeif is an Egyptian-born artist, curator, writer and editor. Kholeif's curatorial practice focuses on art that intersects with the internet, as well as works of art from emerging geographic territories that have yet to be seen in the mainstream.
Ala Younis is a Kuwaiti research-based visual artist, painter, and curator, based in Amman, Jordan. Younis initiates journeys in archives and narratives, and reinterprets collective experiences that have collapsed into personal ones. Through research, she builds collections of objects, images, information, narratives, and notes on why/how people tell their stories. Her practice is based on found material, and on creating materials when they cannot be found or when they do not exist.
The Delfina Foundation is an independent, non-profit foundation dedicated to facilitating artistic exchange and developing creative practice through residencies, partnerships and public programming.
Nadia Kaabi-Linke is a Tunis-born, Berlin-based visual artist best known for her conceptual art and 2011 sculpture Flying Carpets. Her work has explored themes of geopolitics, immigration, and transnational identities. Raised between Tunis, Kyiv, Dubai and Paris, she studied at the Tunis Institute of Fine Arts and received a Ph.D. in philosophy of art from the Sorbonne. Kaabi-Linke won the 2011 Abraaj Group Art Prize, which commissioned Flying Carpets, a hanging cage-like sculpture that casts geometric shadows onto the floor akin to the carpets of Venetian street vendors. The piece was acquired by the New York Guggenheim in 2016 as part of their Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. Kaabi-Linke also won the Discoveries Prize for emerging art at the 2014 Art Basel Hong Kong. Her works have been collected by the Museum of Modern Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Burger Collection, and Samdani Art Foundation, and exhibited in multiple solo and group shows.
Anne Barlow is a curator and director in the field of international contemporary art, and is currently Director of Tate St Ives, Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018. There she directs and oversees the artistic vision and programme, including temporary exhibitions, collection displays, artist residencies, new commissions, and a learning and research programme. At Tate St Ives, Barlow has curated solo exhibitions of work by artists including: Outi Pieski (2024); Hera Büyüktaşcıyan (2023); Burçak Bingöl (2022); Prabhakar Pachpute (2022); Thảo Nguyên Phan (2022); Petrit Halilaj (2021); Haegue Yang (2020); Otobong Nkanga (2019); Huguette Caland (2019); Amie Siegel (2018) and Rana Begum (2018). She was also co-curator of "Naum Gabo: Constructions for Real Life" (2020) and collaborating curator with Castello di Rivoli, Turin for Anna Boghiguian at Tate St Ives (2019).
Qalandiya International is a contemporary art event and biennale that takes place every two years across Palestinian cities and villages. Founded in 2012, it brings together Palestinian and international art and culture organizations in collaboration to produce exhibitions, performances, talks, film screenings, workshops, and tours.
Maha Maamoun, is an Egyptian award-winning visual artist and curator based in Cairo. She is a founding board member of the Contemporary Image Collective (CiC), an independent non-profit space for art and culture founded in Cairo in 2004. She also co-founded the independent publishing platform called Kayfa-ta in 2013. She was awarded the Jury Prize for her film Domestic Tourism II at Sharjah Biennal 9 (2009). Maamoun is a fellow of the Academy of the Arts of the World.
Kamel Lazaar is a Tunisian-Swiss investment banker, serial entrepreneur and philanthropist active across the MENA region. He is the founder and chairman of Swicorp, an investment banking, private equity (PE) and asset management firm headquartered in Riyadh, and former Vice-President of Citibank in Saudi Arabia. He is known for innovative initiatives in the following fields: business, public policy, art and culture.
Lina Lazaar is a Tunisian art critic and curator.
Noor Abuarafeh is a Palestinian visual artist who works primarily with video installation, performance, and text-based art. Her work explores themes of memory, imagination, and the construction and interpretation of history.