New review: ‘In the City’ at London’s P21 Gallery

Electronic Intifada, 21st October 2013

[T]he works shown in In the City stress the interaction between cultures and between tradition and modernity. They assert that Middle Eastern and North African culture can be vibrantly modern on its own terms, not necessarily by absorbing Western art, and while still respecting and drawing on its own heritage.
So, for example, a poster for an imagined poetry slam in Nablus announces the venue as “Neapolis Theater,” a reference to the Roman-era theater built into the foot of one of the West Bank city’s famous mountains. The line-up is a veritable dream team of Palestinian poets, the present represented by Samih al-Qasim and the past — much more recent than that of the “venue” — by Mahmoud Darwish, Fadwa Touqan, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and Tawfiq Ziad.

The full article is here.