Ali Cherri’s show at Marseille’s [mac] Is Watching You

Ali Cherri, "Les Veilleurs," at the [mac], Marseille's Musée d'art contemporain (photo Grégoire Edouard, Ville de Marseille).

15 AUGUST 2025 • By Naima Morelli
Are we watching or being watched? Ali Cherri’s new show in Marseille, on view through the 4th of January 2026, deconstructs the museum from the inside out.

 

Naima Morelli

 

It’s a bit like that abyss quote; if you look at history long enough, history starts looking at you. We are hit by this realization when we walk into the exhibition Les Veilleurs (the watchers, the watchmen), by artist Ali Cherri, at the [mac], the Musée d’Art Contemporain of Marseille.

The show prompts viewers to reevaluate the museum and, through it, the way we perceive history, upending the Mayan concept of strict chronology. We begin to think about history less as a linear succession of events, war, and artistic movements — mostly under Western guidance — but rather as a history of encounters, of findings, of stories. Of something that starts in medias res.

This non-linear conception of history is what museums around the world are showcasing, from the main exhibit at Louvre Abu Dhabi to the National Gallery of Singapore and the National Gallery in Rome. We can’t sustain the illusion of linear time any longer, the illusion of order, the illusion of art history, the illusion of being those watching, and not being watched in return.

This is what Les Veilleurs is telling us from the very first room. The entry point is already a mise à l’abyme: a photograph taken in 2020 depicts the storage space of the Marseille History Museum, whose geometry replicates and multiplies the actual architecture of the mac’s room, a gateway of sorts. By presenting rows of drawers and archival shelves, Cherri makes a clear statement: what lies behind the façade is equally worthy of attention. We are prepared to step into an exhibition turning inwards, exposing its own architecture and logic.

Behind the photograph, another surprise, another inversion: on an illuminated table are displayed a series of assemblages of heads and eyes, each turned toward the viewer. Among the objects are votive faces from antiquity, decorative fragments from 19th-century funerary monuments, Romanesque heads, and anthropomorphic busts with worn features. Their materials vary: stone, terracotta, plaster, and bronze. At first glance, it seems these faces are just displayed, but soon one realizes they are also positioned to look at the viewer. Every fragment looks back.

The vitrines divide and reflect them, creating a kaleidoscope of partial identities. Some have no eyes; others are nothing but eyes. There’s a tactile intimacy in their presentation; no didactic labels, no clear hierarchy. The visitor is forced to circle the table, lean in, and step back, and in this process, the viewer’s own body becomes part of the rhythm.

The lightbox where the artefacts are positioned removes all shadows, creating a ghostly suspension of matter. Objects float in space, decontextualized yet vividly present in their uniqueness. The transparent vitrines that separate them almost amplifies the imperfect, damaged form of the archaeological objects, arranging the fragments into loose constellations. Grouped by size and material, rather than by historical chronology, they appear to have a rhythm and tone, almost like a musical composition.

The birth of a show

Stéphanie Airaud, director of [mac] and curator of the show, explained that in 2024, when the museum acquired Ali Cherri’s work “The Gatekeepers FIRE and WATER,” a work originally created for Manifesta, she suggested Cherri come up with a specific presentation that would be in dialogue with the collections of Marseille’s museums.

To choose the works and objects that would be included, the artist and the curator identified several themes directly related to “The Gatekeepers” totems, such as animality, hybridization, the gaze, the face, sleep, and vulnerability.

The artist’s selection favored not masterpieces but misfits: damaged sculptures, minor artifacts, unremarkable busts, anonymous fragments. He picked up what is rarely seen, and arranged these works in ways that blur lines between conservation and apparition — à la Gustave Moreau.

“With Cherri, we selected the pieces through dialogue about their materiality, their presence, their trajectory, and the sensitive and formal correspondences that emerged between these pieces from the collections of the Marseille museums and Ali’s work,” explained Airaud. “The pieces gathered and displayed here are objects that have rarely or never been shown, are fragmentary, little recognized or known, but all bear witness to the material production of human civilizations, from ancient Egypt to contemporary Mexico.”

Scenographer Martin Michel and lighting designer François Austerlitz accurately translated Ali Cherri’s ideas, for whom the spatial arrangement is an integral part of the visitor’s experience.

The lack of labels stresses the importance of allowing the objects the freedom to be presented before the viewer and together without the apparatus of knowledge constituted by institutions. The only written voice in the exhibition is that of the author Karim Kattan, whose text commissioned for the exhibition can be found in the exhibition’s booklet, which contains notes on the works presented.

, Marseille’s Musée d’art contemporain (photo Grégoire Edouard, Ville de Marseille).,https://themarkaz.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Ali-Cherris-totemic-fish-watcher.jpg|Ali Cherri, “Les Veilleurs,” at the [mac], Marseille’s Musée d’art contemporain (photo Grégoire Edouard, Ville de Marseille).,https://themarkaz.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/good3.jpg|Ali Cherri, “Les Veilleurs,” at the [mac], Marseille’s Musée d’art contemporain (photo Grégoire Edouard, Ville de Marseille).,https://themarkaz.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Ali-Cherri-good.jpg|Ali Cherri, “Les Veilleurs,” at the [mac], Marseille’s Musée d’art contemporain (photo Grégoire Edouard, Ville de Marseille).,https://themarkaz.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Installation-view-of-Ali-Cherris-Les-Veilleurs-at-the-ac-Marseille-1.jpg|Ali Cherri, “Les Veilleurs,” at the [mac], Marseille’s Musée d’art contemporain (photo Grégoire Edouard, Ville de Marseille).”]


The chimera

As visitors keep walking through the rooms of the [mac], they start questioning what they see, as throughout the show Cherri is mixing the real objects from the reservoir of the Marseille museums with sculptures, objects, videos and artworks of his own making, to the point that it is sometimes difficult to tell what is “original” and what is “artist-made.” And in a label-less show without a strict chronology, is there even a difference?

This blurred line between conservation and artwork brings to mind the practice of other artists, who created their own fictional sciences and institutions, from Waalid Raad and his fictional foundation called The Atlas Group, or Khalil Rabah who created The Palestinian Museum of Natural History, and also Singaporean Robert Zhao Renhui, who created The Institute of Critical Geologist, where he presented viewer with partly-real, partly-fictional science.

A strong image that represents this way of muddying the waters that artists adopt to question absolute truths is well-represented by the image of the chimera. It is this mythical figure — the one artwork in the [mac] show which was picked to promote the show on the billboard and on the side of buses all around Marseille — that encapsulated the meaning of this exhibition.

A body part-animal, part-human, topped with a small, archaic-looking head. The head appears disproportionately small, as though the creature is not carrying a brain, but rather some mythical dimension from the past. The sculpture is made of a mix of materials: clay, straw, and sand, resulting in something that seems archaic, scary, and invented at once.

The chimera is an interesting image also because it corresponds somehow to our way of interpreting history, or perhaps the artist’s way of doing so. There is the body of the chimera, which we can assimilate to the hard, data-based, source-based part of historical knowledge — and then there is the imaginary, our surimposition, and how we read history according to our sensitivity.


Ali Cherri, “The Chimera,” in Les Veilleurs (photo Grégoire Edouard, courtesy Ville de Montpellier).


Peeling the layers

As one moves beyond the first gallery, the strategy of the mise en abyme deepens. A second photograph, displayed like a window, depicts the Salle de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie Comparée at the Musée Nationale d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. This is not an image created specifically for Les Veilleurs, but it strongly resonates with the rest of the show.

It shows a room full of animal skeletons and taxidermized animals, vitrines full of bones, and in the center, a human anatomical model, an écorché, with its skin peeled back. The only living figure is the artist, who lies asleep on a bench, just at the feet of the model.

This photograph is titled “Still Life.” The reference to the pictorial genre is intentional and ironic: what is “life” in this tableau is precisely what is most artificial. The écorché becomes yet another symbol of a layer of reality which has been peeled off, but also a surrogate for the artist himself, which still inhabits his body, while being lost in his dreams.

Moving into the second gallery, the mood shifts again. A large wooden table, reminiscent of a taxidermist’s workbench, displays delicate watercolors of dead birds. These were painted by Cherri himself during the pandemic lockdown, and are based on specimens from his personal collection of taxidermized animals.

The drawings are meticulously arranged, each accompanied by small handwritten tags, imitating the labeling system of natural history archives. We are faced with yet another questioning of labels, descriptions, the attempt to categorize life itself. But more than scientific studies, these watercolors are akin to mourning and slightly morbid portraits. We are left thinking that the act of classification itself robs a creature of its vitality. And in this sense, does the creative act of drawing hold the power to eternalize life?

Around the table, vitrines display further sculptural works: again, a mixture of the artist’s own pieces and borrowed artifacts. In one, a bird perches beside a stone lion; in another, two taxidermized owls stare blankly across the room. The ambiguity between natural and artificial, between specimen and sculpture, reaches a crescendo here. There is the idea of an ecology of form, resistant of categorizations.


The theatre of shadows

The final gallery functions like a stage. Here the light is theatrical. Cherri installs one of his sculptures on a raised platform, together with a Mexican figurine, and behind it, a shadow screen casts elongated silhouettes. The play of real and projected forms recalls shadow puppetry or early cinema. In a way, we begin to study the shadows as though they were characters unto themselves. We watch the sculpture, but we are also watching its double.

Not far from these figurines, two video works are projected here, in dialogue. In one, we meet “The Digger,” a man who visits a necropolis in Sharjah, an actual archaeological site whose tombs have been emptied, their contents moved to a neighboring museum. The man, whom we only see from a distance, patrols the dry, abandoned ground, as the last witness to a dislocated past. The second video, projected opposite, is the interior of the Natural Museum of Sharjah, a luxuriant yet immaculate space, constituting a strong counterpoint to the desert location.

In the show are also some paintings that work by virtue of surprise or loose association. Among the more haunting paintings is definitely a cracked image of a nativity. The leitmotif of going beyond the surface comes back here: the painting is so consumed that the paint shows its support, the raw canvas, which shows through.

Conservation experts have halted the restoration of the canvas, which has been varnished not to recover but to stop further loss, and it exists now in a state of arrested decay. Cherri’s choice to include it is telling. Like the écorché, like the birds, like the sleeping watchman, this painting is an emblem of suspended time, and a memento mori of the impermanence of all things.

Finally, by walking through the show, we finally meet the gatekeepers, Les Veilleurs — the two totemic figures that the artist created initially for Manifesta — which constitute both the starting point of the show and its conclusion.

The feeling is that rather than an exit, these two figures constitute a portal to a new consciousness. What the artist seems to propose is not an alternative history, but a critique of how histories have been conceived up to today. He opens up the idea of what a museum can be.

As Cherri explains, “…as a filmmaker, I give the viewer a point of view that I determine with my camera, I dictate what I see: first a landscape, then a close-up of a face, followed by rain through the window, and so on. I try to think about the exhibition experience in much the same way.

“So I put myself in the visitor’s shoes to think about the scenography and lighting. Furthermore, as the works are shown without their academic and museological references, the landmarks are blurred, and the forms merge together.

“Perhaps this is how a universal imagination can be constructed in which everything is mixed together, where we feel that this or that object belongs to all of us,” concludes Cherri.

Ultimately, the Veilleurs invites us to keep vigil, to linger, to pay attention, to familiarize, and finally to approach reality beyond strict categories. In that, we are called as subjects, as makers of our histories and participants in the grand narrative. We are the ones putting the little head of our own making on the body of an ancient lion. Forever hybrid, but constantly in search of order.

 

Naima Morelli

Naima Morelli is an arts writer and journalist specialized in contemporary art from Asia-Pacific and the MENA region. She has written for the Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, Internazionale and Il Manifesto, among others, and she is a regular contributor... Read more

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20 MARCH 2023 • By Karim Goury
<em>Tel Aviv-Beirut</em>, a Film on War, Love & Borders
Beirut

Interview with Michale Boganim, Director of Tel Aviv-Beirut

20 MARCH 2023 • By Karim Goury
Interview with Michale Boganim, Director of <em>Tel Aviv-Beirut</em>
Beirut

War and the Absurd in Zein El-Amine’s Watermelon Stories

20 MARCH 2023 • By Rana Asfour
War and the Absurd in Zein El-Amine’s <em>Watermelon</em> Stories
Fiction

“Counter Strike”—a story by MK HARB

5 MARCH 2023 • By MK Harb
“Counter Strike”—a story by MK HARB
Fiction

“Mother Remembered”—Fiction by Samir El-Youssef

5 MARCH 2023 • By Samir El-Youssef
“Mother Remembered”—Fiction by Samir El-Youssef
Essays

More Photographs Taken From The Pocket of a Dead Arab

5 MARCH 2023 • By Saeed Taji Farouky
More Photographs Taken From The Pocket of a Dead Arab
Cities

The Odyssey That Forged a Stronger Athenian

5 MARCH 2023 • By Iason Athanasiadis
The Odyssey That Forged a Stronger Athenian
Beirut

The Curious Case of Middle Lebanon

13 FEBRUARY 2023 • By Amal Ghandour
The Curious Case of Middle Lebanon
Beirut

Arab Women’s War Stories, Oral Histories from Lebanon

13 FEBRUARY 2023 • By Evelyne Accad
Arab Women’s War Stories, Oral Histories from Lebanon
Featured excerpt

Fiction: Inaam Kachachi’s The Dispersal, or Tashari

5 FEBRUARY 2023 • By Inaam Kachachi
Fiction: Inaam Kachachi’s <em>The Dispersal</em>, or <em>Tashari</em>
Book Reviews

Sabyl Ghoussoub Heads for Beirut in Search of Himself

23 JANUARY 2023 • By Adil Bouhelal
Sabyl Ghoussoub Heads for Beirut in Search of Himself
Art

On Lebanon and Lamia Joreige’s “Uncertain Times”

23 JANUARY 2023 • By Arie Amaya-Akkermans
On Lebanon and Lamia Joreige’s “Uncertain Times”
Fiction

Broken Glass, a short story

15 DECEMBER 2022 • By Sarah AlKahly-Mills
<em>Broken Glass</em>, a short story
Art

Art World Picks: Albraehe, Kerem Yavuz, Zeghidour, Amer & Tatah

12 DECEMBER 2022 • By TMR
Art

French-Algerian Artist Djamel Tatah’s Solitary Crowds

12 DECEMBER 2022 • By Laëtitia Soula
French-Algerian Artist Djamel Tatah’s Solitary Crowds
Art

Museums in Exile—MO.CO’s show for Chile, Sarajevo & Palestine

12 DECEMBER 2022 • By Jordan Elgrably
Museums in Exile—MO.CO’s show for Chile, Sarajevo & Palestine
Art

Where is the Palestinian National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art?

12 DECEMBER 2022 • By Nora Ounnas Leroy
Where is the Palestinian National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art?
Book Reviews

Fida Jiryis on Palestine in Stranger in My Own Land

28 NOVEMBER 2022 • By Diana Buttu
Fida Jiryis on Palestine in <em>Stranger in My Own Land</em>
Columns

For Electronica Artist Hadi Zeidan, Dance Clubs are Analogous to Churches

24 OCTOBER 2022 • By Melissa Chemam
For Electronica Artist Hadi Zeidan, Dance Clubs are Analogous to Churches
Fiction

“Ride On, Shooting Star”—fiction from May Haddad

15 OCTOBER 2022 • By May Haddad
“Ride On, Shooting Star”—fiction from May Haddad
Art & Photography

Two Women Artists Dialogue with Berlin and the Biennale

15 SEPTEMBER 2022 • By Viola Shafik
Two Women Artists Dialogue with Berlin and the Biennale
Film

Ziad Kalthoum: Trajectory of a Syrian Filmmaker

15 SEPTEMBER 2022 • By Viola Shafik
Ziad Kalthoum: Trajectory of a Syrian Filmmaker
Essays

Kairo Koshary, Berlin’s Egyptian Food Truck

15 SEPTEMBER 2022 • By Mohamed Radwan
Kairo Koshary, Berlin’s Egyptian Food Truck
Film

The Mystery of Tycoon Michel Baida in Old Arab Berlin

15 SEPTEMBER 2022 • By Irit Neidhardt
The Mystery of Tycoon Michel Baida in Old Arab Berlin
Essays

Exile, Music, Hope & Nostalgia Among Berlin’s Arab Immigrants

15 SEPTEMBER 2022 • By Diana Abbani
Exile, Music, Hope & Nostalgia Among Berlin’s Arab Immigrants
Art & Photography

16 Formidable Lebanese Photographers in an Abbey

5 SEPTEMBER 2022 • By Nada Ghosn
16 Formidable Lebanese Photographers in an Abbey
Film

Two Syrian Brothers Find Themselves in “We Are From There”

22 AUGUST 2022 • By Angélique Crux
Two Syrian Brothers Find Themselves in “We Are From There”
Music Reviews

Hot Summer Playlist: “Diaspora Dreams” Drops

8 AUGUST 2022 • By Mischa Geracoulis
Hot Summer Playlist: “Diaspora Dreams” Drops
Editorial

Editorial: Is the World Driving Us Mad?

15 JULY 2022 • By TMR
Editorial: Is the World Driving Us Mad?
Film

Lebanon in a Loop: A Retrospective of “Waves ’98”

15 JULY 2022 • By Youssef Manessa
Lebanon in a Loop: A Retrospective of “Waves ’98”
Book Reviews

Leaving One’s Country in Mai Al-Nakib’s “An Unlasting Home”

27 JUNE 2022 • By Rana Asfour
Leaving One’s Country in Mai Al-Nakib’s “An Unlasting Home”
Columns

Why I left Lebanon and Became a Transitional Citizen

27 JUNE 2022 • By Myriam Dalal
Why I left Lebanon and Became a Transitional Citizen
Featured excerpt

Joumana Haddad: “Victim #232”

15 JUNE 2022 • By Joumana Haddad, Rana Asfour
Joumana Haddad: “Victim #232”
Fiction

Rabih Alameddine: “Remembering Nasser”

15 JUNE 2022 • By Rabih Alameddine
Rabih Alameddine: “Remembering Nasser”
Film

Saeed Taji Farouky: “Strange Cities Are Familiar”

15 JUNE 2022 • By Saeed Taji Farouky
Saeed Taji Farouky: “Strange Cities Are Familiar”
Fiction

Dima Mikhayel Matta: “This Text Is a Very Lonely Document”

15 JUNE 2022 • By Dima Mikhayel Matta
Dima Mikhayel Matta: “This Text Is a Very Lonely Document”
Fiction

“The Salamander”—fiction from Sarah AlKahly-Mills

15 JUNE 2022 • By Sarah AlKahly-Mills
“The Salamander”—fiction from Sarah AlKahly-Mills
Art & Photography

Film Review: “Memory Box” on Lebanon Merges Art & Cinema

13 JUNE 2022 • By Arie Amaya-Akkermans
Film Review: “Memory Box” on Lebanon Merges Art & Cinema
Book Reviews

Fragmented Love in Alison Glick’s “The Other End of the Sea”

16 MAY 2022 • By Nora Lester Murad
Fragmented Love in Alison Glick’s “The Other End of the Sea”
Beirut

Fairouz is the Voice of Lebanon, Symbol of Hope in a Weary Land

25 APRIL 2022 • By Melissa Chemam
Fairouz is the Voice of Lebanon, Symbol of Hope in a Weary Land
Book Reviews

Joumana Haddad’s The Book of Queens: a Review

18 APRIL 2022 • By Laila Halaby
Joumana Haddad’s <em>The Book of Queens</em>: a Review
Art & Photography

Ghosts of Beirut: a Review of “displaced”

11 APRIL 2022 • By Karén Jallatyan
Ghosts of Beirut: a Review of “displaced”
Columns

Music in the Middle East: Bring Back Peace

21 MARCH 2022 • By Melissa Chemam
Music in the Middle East: Bring Back Peace
Essays

“Gluttony” from Abbas Beydoun’s “Frankenstein’s Mirrors”

15 MARCH 2022 • By Abbas Baydoun, Lily Sadowsky
“Gluttony” from Abbas Beydoun’s “Frankenstein’s Mirrors”
Poetry

Three Poems of Love and Desire by Nouri Al-Jarrah

15 MARCH 2022 • By Nouri Al-Jarrah
Three Poems of Love and Desire by Nouri Al-Jarrah
Fiction

Fiction from “Free Fall”: I fled the city as a murderer whose crime had just been uncovered

15 JANUARY 2022 • By Abeer Esber, Nouha Homad
Fiction from “Free Fall”: I fled the city as a murderer whose crime had just been uncovered
Book Reviews

Temptations of the Imagination: how Jana Elhassan and Samar Yazbek transmogrify the world

10 JANUARY 2022 • By Rana Asfour
Temptations of the Imagination: how Jana Elhassan and Samar Yazbek transmogrify the world
Columns

Sudden Journeys: From Munich with Love and Realpolitik

27 DECEMBER 2021 • By Jenine Abboushi
Sudden Journeys: From Munich with Love and Realpolitik
Columns

My Lebanese Landlord, Lebanese Bankdits, and German Racism

15 DECEMBER 2021 • By Tariq Mehmood
My Lebanese Landlord, Lebanese Bankdits, and German Racism
Fiction

Three Levantine Tales

15 DECEMBER 2021 • By Nouha Homad
Three Levantine Tales
Comix

Lebanon at the Point of Drowning in Its Own…

15 DECEMBER 2021 • By Raja Abu Kasm, Rahil Mohsin
Lebanon at the Point of Drowning in Its Own…
Comix

How to Hide in Lebanon as a Western Foreigner

15 DECEMBER 2021 • By Nadiyah Abdullatif, Anam Zafar
How to Hide in Lebanon as a Western Foreigner
Beirut

Sudden Journeys: The Villa Salameh Bequest

29 NOVEMBER 2021 • By Jenine Abboushi
Sudden Journeys: The Villa Salameh Bequest
Music Reviews

Electronic Music in Riyadh?

22 NOVEMBER 2021 • By Melissa Chemam
Electronic Music in Riyadh?
Art

Etel Adnan’s Sun and Sea: In Remembrance

19 NOVEMBER 2021 • By Arie Amaya-Akkermans
Etel Adnan’s Sun and Sea: In Remembrance
Columns

Burning Forests, Burning Nations

15 NOVEMBER 2021 • By Hadani Ditmars
Burning Forests, Burning Nations
Book Reviews

Diary of the Collapse—Charif Majdalani on Lebanon’s Trials by Fire

15 NOVEMBER 2021 • By A.J. Naddaff
<em>Diary of the Collapse</em>—Charif Majdalani on Lebanon’s Trials by Fire
Book Reviews

The Vanishing: Are Arab Christians an Endangered Minority?

15 NOVEMBER 2021 • By Hadani Ditmars
The Vanishing: Are Arab Christians an Endangered Minority?
Interviews

The Anguish of Being Lebanese: Interview with Author Racha Mounaged

18 OCTOBER 2021 • By A.J. Naddaff
The Anguish of Being Lebanese: Interview with Author Racha Mounaged
Book Reviews

Racha Mounaged’s Debut Novel Captures Trauma of Lebanese Civil War

18 OCTOBER 2021 • By A.J. Naddaff
Racha Mounaged’s Debut Novel Captures Trauma of Lebanese Civil War
Featured excerpt

Memoirs of a Militant, My Years in the Khiam Women’s Prison

15 OCTOBER 2021 • By Nawal Qasim Baidoun
Memoirs of a Militant, My Years in the Khiam Women’s Prison
Art & Photography

Displaced: From Beirut to Los Angeles to Beirut

15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • By Ara Oshagan
Displaced: From Beirut to Los Angeles to Beirut
Weekly

Palestinian Akram Musallam Writes of Loss and Memory

29 AUGUST 2021 • By khulud khamis
Palestinian Akram Musallam Writes of Loss and Memory
Editorial

Why COMIX? An Emerging Medium of Writing the Middle East and North Africa

15 AUGUST 2021 • By Aomar Boum
Why COMIX? An Emerging Medium of Writing the Middle East and North Africa
Latest Reviews

Rebellion Resurrected: The Will of Youth Against History

15 AUGUST 2021 • By George Jad Khoury
Rebellion Resurrected: The Will of Youth Against History
Latest Reviews

Women Comic Artists, from Afghanistan to Morocco

15 AUGUST 2021 • By Sherine Hamdy
Women Comic Artists, from Afghanistan to Morocco
Latest Reviews

Puigaudeau & Sénones: a Graphic Novel on Mauritania Circa 1933

15 AUGUST 2021 • By Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik 
Puigaudeau & Sénones: a Graphic Novel on Mauritania Circa 1933
Weekly

World Picks: August 2021

12 AUGUST 2021 • By Lawrence Joffe
World Picks: August 2021
Columns

Beirut Drag Queens Lead the Way for Arab LGBTQ+ Visibility

8 AUGUST 2021 • By Anonymous
Beirut Drag Queens Lead the Way for Arab LGBTQ+ Visibility
Columns

Remember 18:07 and Light a Flame for Beirut

4 AUGUST 2021 • By Jordan Elgrably
Remember 18:07 and Light a Flame for Beirut
Art & Photography

Gaza’s Shababek Gallery for Contemporary Art

14 JULY 2021 • By Yara Chaalan
Gaza’s Shababek Gallery for Contemporary Art
Columns

The Semantics of Gaza, War and Truth

14 JULY 2021 • By Mischa Geracoulis
The Semantics of Gaza, War and Truth
Columns

Lebanon’s Wasta Has Contributed to the Country’s Collapse

14 JUNE 2021 • By Samir El-Youssef
Lebanon’s Wasta Has Contributed to the Country’s Collapse
Columns

Lebanese Oppose Corruption with a Game of Wasta

14 JUNE 2021 • By Victoria Schneider
Lebanese Oppose Corruption with a Game of Wasta
Weekly

War Diary: The End of Innocence

23 MAY 2021 • By Arie Amaya-Akkermans
War Diary: The End of Innocence
Essays

Reviving Hammam Al Jadeed

14 MAY 2021 • By Tom Young
Reviving Hammam Al Jadeed
Art

The Labyrinth of Memory

14 MAY 2021 • By Ziad Suidan
The Labyrinth of Memory
Weekly

Beirut Brings a Fragmented Family Together in “The Arsonists’ City”

9 MAY 2021 • By Rana Asfour
Columns

Memory and the Assassination of Lokman Slim

14 MARCH 2021 • By Claire Launchbury
Memory and the Assassination of Lokman Slim
Weekly

Hanane Hajj Ali, Portrait of a Theatrical Trailblazer

14 FEBRUARY 2021 • By Nada Ghosn
Hanane Hajj Ali, Portrait of a Theatrical Trailblazer
TMR 6 • Revolutions

Revolution in Art, a review of “Reflections” at the British Museum

14 FEBRUARY 2021 • By Malu Halasa
Revolution in Art, a review of “Reflections” at the British Museum
Film Reviews

Muhammad Malas, Syria’s Auteur, is the subject of a Film Biography

10 JANUARY 2021 • By Rana Asfour
Muhammad Malas, Syria’s Auteur, is the subject of a Film Biography
TMR 4 • Small & Indie Presses

Children of the Ghetto, My Name Is Adam

14 DECEMBER 2020 • By Elias Khoury
Children of the Ghetto, My Name Is Adam
TMR 4 • Small & Indie Presses

Algiers, Algeria in the novel “Our Riches”

14 DECEMBER 2020 • By Kaouther Adimi
Algiers, Algeria in the novel “Our Riches”
TMR 3 • Racism & Identity

Find the Others: on Becoming an Arab Writer in English

15 NOVEMBER 2020 • By Rewa Zeinati
TMR 3 • Racism & Identity

I am the Hyphen

15 NOVEMBER 2020 • By Sarah AlKahly-Mills
I am the Hyphen
World Picks

World Art, Music & Zoom Beat the Pandemic Blues

28 SEPTEMBER 2020 • By Malu Halasa
World Art, Music & Zoom Beat the Pandemic Blues
Beirut

Wajdi Mouawad, Just the Playwright for Our Dystopian World

15 SEPTEMBER 2020 • By Melissa Chemam
Wajdi Mouawad, Just the Playwright for Our Dystopian World
Art & Photography

Arts in the Pandemic Age

15 SEPTEMBER 2020 • By Melissa Chemam
Arts in the Pandemic Age
Beirut

Beirut In Pieces

15 SEPTEMBER 2020 • By Jenine Abboushi
Beirut In Pieces
Art

Beirut Comix Tell the Story

15 SEPTEMBER 2020 • By Lina Ghaibeh & George Khoury
Beirut Comix Tell the Story
Editorial

Beirut, Beirut

15 SEPTEMBER 2020 • By Jordan Elgrably
Beirut

It’s Time for a Public Forum on Lebanon

15 SEPTEMBER 2020 • By Wajdi Mouawad
It’s Time for a Public Forum on Lebanon
Beirut

Salvaging the shipwreck of humanity in Amin Maalouf’s Adrift

15 SEPTEMBER 2020 • By Sarah AlKahly-Mills
Salvaging the shipwreck of humanity in Amin Maalouf’s <em>Adrift</em>

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