Street Art in the Middle East

Description

Since the 2011 Arab Spring street art has been a vehicle for political discourse in the Middle East, and has generated much discussion in both the popular media and academia. Yet, this conversation has generalised street art and identified it as a singular form with identical styles and objectives throughout the region. Street art's purpose is, however, defined by the socio-cultural circumstances of its production. Middle Eastern artists thus adopt distinctive methods in creating their individual work and responding to their individual environments. Here, in this new book, Sabrina De Turk employs rigorous visual analysis to explore the diversity of Middle Eastern street art and uses case studies of countries as varied as Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, Palestine, Bahrain and Oman to illustrate how geographic specifics impact upon its function and aesthetic. Her book will be of significant interest to scholars specialising in art from the Middle East and North Africa and those who bring an interdisciplinary perspective to Middle East studies.

Sabrina DeTurk is Assistant Professor at the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises at Zayed University, Dubai. She was previously Associate Dean and Executive Director of Graduate Arts and Sciences at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. She received her PhD in History of Art from Bryn Mawr in 1998. Her research has been published in the journals Street Art and Urban Creativity, Afterimage and Aurora: The Journal of the History of Art.