One of the world’s most forward-looking independent arts organizations is Beirut’s Ashkal Alwan, dedicated to facilitating cultural production in Lebanon and the Arab region. Co-founded in 1994 by Christine Tohme and a group of artists, Ashkal Alwan introduced Home Works: A Forum on Cultural Practices in 2002, which takes place every two to three years, launching exhibitions, commissions, special projects, panels, talks, screenings, workshops and publications that encompass the visual arts, theater, dance and music, as well as broader cultural, theoretical and political concerns. This panel includes Ghalya Saadawi, writer, educator, and program head of Home Workspace Program in Beirut; Mirene Arsanios, Beirut-born and New York-based writer and co-editor with Saadawi and Iman Mersal of Makhzin, a bilingual literary magazine; Moukhtar Kocache, independent cultural advisor and co-founder of Rawa: Creative Palestinian Communities Fund, based in New York, Paris and Istanbul; and New York-based Gregory Sholette, artist, writer, educator and activist, who is an associate professor of art at Queens College and has served as a curriculum committee member for the Home Workspace program. On this special occasion, the panelists will discuss the political context of post-civil war Beirut and Lebanon, and what has been enabled and disenabled artistically and structurally. The broader politics of art education, global turns in art, institutionalization and the production of contemporary art and artists will be targets of the conversation, particularly with the model of the Home Workspace Program and Ashkal Alwan in mind.
New York City, NY; NYC