The Brooklyn Rail

A subtitle can sometimes confuse rather than clarify. Or perhaps it merely highlights the inherent tensions. In the case of Arab Presences, these are between “Arab” as a broad, collective term in contrast to the specificity of the city of Paris, between decolonization as a process (but certainly not one that spanned the entire twentieth century) and the French capital as the seat of empire. Like many exhibitions of this scale, Arab Presences is simultaneously over and underwhelming. One the one hand, with over two-hundred works—mostly paintings and sculpture, with some film and photography—by 130 artists, the exhibition is extensive, the artwork accompanied by a range of archival material. However, despite its expansive nature, it fails to present any compelling or innovative proposition regarding this wealth of material.

Beginning with the Lebanese poet and artist Gibran Khalil Gibran’s arrival in Paris and concluding with the establishment of the Institut du Monde Arabe, the exhibition unfolds chronologically and is divided into four fairly predictable sections—“Nahda: Between Arab cultural renaissance and Western influence”; “Farewell to Orientalism: the avant-garde strikes back”; “Decolonisation: Modern art between local and global”; and “Art and political struggle.” Each section is accompanied by a timeline that maps landmark events in “geopolitics” alongside major turning points in “cultural life” and “artistic life.” This rather deterministic approach posits art and culture as primarily reflective of political life, rather than constitutive of it.

However, there is no doubt that Arab Presences is an rare opportunity to see some masterpieces of modern Arab art, especially paintings by Egyptian and Iraqi artists—including Mahmoud Saïd’s The Woman with the Golden Locks (1933), Jewad Selim’s Alqailoula (1958), Shakir Hassan al-Said, Group of Figures (1959), Madiha Umar’s The Eyes of the Night (1961), and Effat Naghi’s The High Dam (1966), all of which are now part of institutional collections in the United Arab Emirates or Qatar. (Perhaps unintentionally, the exhibition maps the current state of acquisitions in the region, with collections moving from the historic hubs highlighted here to the new cultural centers of the Gulf states.) While introducing audiences to a canon they might not be previously acquainted with, the exhibition also includes work by artists—notably female artists of Lebanese origin such as Saloua Raouda Choucair, Etel Adnan, Simone Fattal, and Huguette Caland—who have become increasingly familiar to Western audiences in the last decade. Particular movements are highlighted; the Egyptian Surrealists with their connection to Breton continue to be firm favorites in such exhibitions. The focus on artistic groups from North Africa such as the Casablanca School and Aouchem is refreshing, even if expected. Unfortunately, the selection of works by these artists, especially Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Melehi, is somewhat uninspiring.

Nevertheless, the curatorial focus on Paris skews the art historical narrative in particular ways. On the one hand, artists are included or excluded based on their engagement with the city. This favors artists from francophone (and sometimes specific class and religious) backgrounds and/or former French colonies. Consequently, some artists are given heightened importance while others fail to appear altogether. Moreover, the significance of Paris in some artists’ professional trajectories is overplayed, shaping their representation. For example, the three 1940 black ink drawings by a very young Inji Efflatoun are captivating, with an introspective, nightmarish quality. However, they exemplify a very distinct (and indeed brief) moment in her career; Efflatoun, a reluctant francophone who would be later imprisoned by President Nasser for her Marxist commitments, spent her life attending to the struggle of marginalized: women, peasants, freedom fighters. Egypt, not Paris, was the inspiration for both her artistic and political work.

Time and again, the exhibition recenters Paris in the narrative of modern (Arab) art, securing it as its epicenter; the long durée of Arab Presences, which extends beyond the end date of 1988, identifies the city of lights as the leading art mecca long after this ceases to be the case, while simultaneously celebrating it as the seat of decolonial struggle. This is not to say that there is not work to be done reclaiming Western centers as part of liberation struggles in the global South; both Paris and London have been the focus of such research within Black and African studies. However, this exhibition fails to interrogate the categories that frame it (such as cosmopolitan), instead adopting them wholesale. Moreover, the specific and distinct experiences of different Arab (art) communities are dissipated by the overall flattening narrative. We are left wondering how Arab artists were engaging with each other outside of the traditional French institutions. In other words, is there an Arab Paris that is not mediated by French gatekeeping? And if so, how does this Paris complicate long enduring imaginings of the city?

Arab Presences comes at a moment of increasing anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment in France with Marine Le Pen's anti-immigration, National Rally party expected to win but fall short of an absolute majority in the snap elections announced by President Emmanuel Macron for the end of June. The political and educational work the exhibition is intended to do is clear, simultaneously highlighting the longevity of the Arab community’s relationship with the French capital, while humanizing these immigrant others by presenting them as shaped by the same artistic lineage. But despite promising viewers “a fresh look at the history of art scenes,” the art historical work the exhibition does is limited and ultimately quite disappointing.