Panel

This panel coincides with the first exhibition presented at Aperture Foundation’s new Chelsea gallery. Nazar was organized by the Norderlicht Festival, the Netherlands, and features 18 artists from 17 Arab nations, many of them seen in the United States for the first time. The paucity of cultural material in the West about this part of the world today has contributed to widespread misunderstanding and pigeonholing, exacerbated by headlines reminding us constantly of conflict, violence, and discord. Recent events notwithstanding, contemporary artists living in Arab countries are fully engaged in cultural dialogues with each other as well as with their colleagues worldwide.

Moderator 
Isolde Brielmaier, Assistant Professor, Vassar College, and contributor to Nazar, publication and exhibition

Participants
Wouter Deruytter, artist (Belgium)
Lalla Essaydi, artist (Morocco)

This panel is part of the Aperture Foundation Lectures “Confounding Expectation II: Photography in Context,” and presented by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics and Parsons The New School for Design in collaboration with the Aperture Foundation.