misconception

Western viewers have considered non-western art in general to be a curiosity or quite separate from western civilization, ignoring centuries of cross-cultural influences thoroughly chronicled by Frederinck N.Bohrer in Orientalism and earlier by Edward Said. Arab art has been and still is seen from an anthropological, archaeological or purely aesthetic perspicuity.

Contemporary Arab arts remain one of the least visible in Britain despite recent shifts in the reception and representation of non-Western arts. The most familiar representations of Arab cultures in Britain are linked to Islamic art, mostly from the 13th century.

The perspectives that contemporary Arab arts bring to bear are all the more important today. This is in the context of the existence of 500,000 strong British-Arab communities, an even more substantial Arab Diaspora in Europe and elsewhere, and the centrality of the Arab region in a global world.

Recent political turmoil has isolated Arab communities and cast doubt over their characters and values. In the absence of any direct experience of contemporary Arab cultures, the British public is unable to make up its mind on the basis of direct experience. The uncertainty cast over the possibility of harmonious co-existence within a multicultural Britain is unsettling to all. The focus of British cultural establishments on ancient Islamic art only serves to reinforce perceptions of a spent cultural force. It also ignores the multiple dimensions of Arab cultures outside the Islamic context.