"Re-Interpreting the Middle East" reflects on the experience that I am living in the United States of America as an Arab American and a Muslim. The creative process of art is often an act of resistance. Our culture and our place are images of each other and they are inseparable from each other. The West transformed the economic conditions of my home land into sociological exaggerations and ideologies. Spiritual values are political weapons used against my existence. Unfortunately the image of the Middle East is revealed as one large extreme Islamic land that is judged as a peculiar enemy. Examining different moments of my history, it is almost an impossible task to represent the un-represent-able to my viewer who never experienced civil war, occupation, diaspora, displacement, oppression, and other issues, namely the complex web of strife in Lebanon, for me as a Lebanese. Involving other artists to deal with these issues revived my aim to find a transition, a way of looking at another culture and finding it not threatening, not disturbing, but motivating. Benjamin Disraeli said "The East is a career." Ironically, negotiating against differences and the complexities of multiple identities made the Middle East a career not only for the west, but for me as well. As a single formal constraint for all work, participants have been asked to use a split or divided picture plane in order to negotiate their personal response to these issues each from their own diverse perspective. The split is permanent in my art work; it represents slippage between boundaries, and obstacles between hope and reality. In this project, the split is liquefied with hope. Giving birth to a new dream and transforming the monster of violence is tomorrow's promise. May Hariri Aboutaam |