Menart Fair, the new Parisian contemporary art fair dedicated to the Middle East and the Maghreb
Street Prayer from the Casablanca, not the movie series, by Moroccan photographer Yoriyas.
© Courtesy of Yoriyas and the 193 Gallery
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Menart Fair, the first contemporary art fair in Paris dedicated to the Middle East and the Maghreb, opened in a beautiful mansion in the Champs-Elysées district.
From Morocco to Yemen, the 22 selected galleries offer a diverse choice of artists from these regions.
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After ten successful years of Beirut art Fair in Lebanon founded by Laure d'Hauteville 10 years ago, the Menart Fair is born in Paris. The Lebanese capital is indeed recovering with difficulty from the explosion in its port last August and from a serious economic crisis. This is how Laure d'Hauteville, passionate about art, turned to Paris: "
Our goal is to introduce this very rich territory from an artistic production point of view to a neophyte audience
". The artists come from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. They are about sixty to be exposed untilto May 30 and are for the most part already recognized in their respective countries.
Women, 40% of the artists exhibited
Women are very present in this international fair, which overturns some preconceived ideas.
“
Generally, the people who carry the big artistic projects are women, around philosophy, literature, music, plastic art.
The proof is that, here at Menart Fair, we have 76 artists who exhibit and we have 45 who are women ”,
underlines the director of Menart Fair.
Women who use various media and who often mix plastic arts and literature, such as Etel Adnan, poet and artist who strews her works with words and signs or even Hanieh Delecroix Tabatabaei who covers her painting on paper with the word "lover" in Persian.
Principle of tenderness, by Hanieh Delecroix Tabatabaei.
© Courtesy of Hanieh Delecroix Tabatabaei.
Also see the work of the one nicknamed the Anglo-Moroccan Andy Warhol, the photographer Hassan Hajjaj.
His very flashy works, with kitsch prints are worth a detour.
3 Canal, by Hassan Hajjaj.
© Courtesy of Hassan Hajjaj and the 193 Gallery
Works that also evoke the chaos of the Arab world
A fair which gives an idea of the rich artistic diversity of this region and where the creators are bound by the same urgency in the face of conflicts or daily difficulties.
Thus, Ayman Yossri Daydban, Palestinian artist based in Saudi Arabia, whose work tells the universe in which he grew up.
The virgin of Basra, Ayman Yossri Daydba.
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