'Arab Women Artists Today' lecture series concludes

(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Joelyn Baluyut | The Peninsula

The series“Decolonizing Art Narratives: Arab Women Artists Today” concluded on Wednesday featuring the artist Youmna Chlala. The lecture series brings together critical female Arab voices in art and design. 

Youmna Chlala presented her projects and arts through a series of photos of her works explaining the details and story behind it. She said that most of her work revolves“about the way we engage with material, each other, space and time.” The lecture series was conducted via Zoom.

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“I moved a lot between sculpture and drawing, all of it going back to the idea that through the body and the way it engages space, we can get a little bit closer to try to understand where we are,” she explained.

The lecture series is a collaboration between Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) Painting and Printmaking Department, and the Fire Station. 

Chlala was born in Beirut and is based in New York. She is an artist and a writer whose work investigates the relationship between fate and architecture through drawing, video, sculpture, prose and performance. The Peninsula asked how as an Arab woman artist she can contribute to the art development in the Arab world, she responded saying it's not about representation but the exchange between artists and institutional spaces.

“I think the world in good ways and difficult ways doesn't function as an isolated island anymore and so it's very easy for arts to be another vehicle of exchange and I think the most important thing for me is not so much how to represent, but how to exchange between artists or between institutional spaces all over the world opens up this question of what is an Arab woman artist and how does she provide new ways of seeing and new ways of being that are sort of outside of the mainstream discourse,” she explained.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of the sectors in the industry, including the art world. Chlala said that pandemic made artists assess the importance of their participation in the world of arts.

“There has been some art scenes that have continued and never stopped that even in the pandemic era have kept moving. And those are sort of untouched and I think there are some that took a pause and re-considered like what it means to be always moving in the world,” she said.

Chlala continued:“I do think what the pandemic did is it didn't reshape our relationship to the art world but it made us re-consider, for each person has a different answer – how important it is to and how we want to participate in the art world, I think that is one way how I see it, kind of positive moment, and it's to reconsider how to spend our time and what we are making.”

Youmna Chlala is a Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute in New York. She has exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, The Drawing Center, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Dubai Art Projects, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter and MAK Center for Art and Architecture. 

She also participated in the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo, 7th LIAF Biennial in Norway, and 11th Performa Biennial. 

Chlala is the author of the poetry collection, The Paper Camera (Litmus Press, 2019). She is the recipient of a 2018 O. Henry Award and a Joseph Henry Jackson Award. She is co-editing a new series for Coffee House Press entitled Spatial Species.

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