Earlier this year, President Biden officially named April as National Arab American Heritage Month, and the community here in NYC came together to create an extensive art & culture festival to celebrate Arab heritage in all its forms.
Founded by Arab, American, and Arab American artists in New York, the first-ever New York Arab Festival is addressing issues such as cultural erasure, urban equity, and artistic justice.
Throughout the entire month of April, the festival hosted different events highlighting Arab & Arab American culture through programs highlighting fashion, performance art, Fawazir, music, public art, digital art, lectures, panels and even NFTs.
Although the festival is nearing its end, there are still a few more events rounding out the month that you can take part in!
Curating and Gatekeeping
Curating performance from contemporary Arab artists is often met with extremes. Whether fetishism or rejection, orientalism or xenophobia, curating Arab performance evokes multiple challenges that this panel will tackle. Gathering scholars who are equally specialists working in the fields of curation, education, and production, the panel will look at notions of canon and fetishism as proposed by Ismail Fayed, will look at migration and culture policy through the work of Mey Seifan, and the necessity for developing new economic and entrepreneurial structures to advance radical performance curation through the work of Sarah El Miniawy.
Batta and Badreyya in Fawazeer Fada’iyya (Space Fawazeer) – Episode 6
Batta and Badreyya take a trip to Mars, to share ancient recipes with aliens, and exchange food cultures, meeting cinema and television stars along the way. Join Ahmad Abokamar and Lamia Gouda on their intergalactic voyage, designed for TikTok by Harshini Karunaratne, art direction by Kareem El Hayawan, music by Mostafa Sobhy, produced by Wizara and directed by Adham Hafez
Maurice Louca: Live in Concert
Maurice Louca is a renowned, world-touring artist who combines electronic music, intense live guitar performance, complex instrumental arrangements, and powerful new jazz sounds to create dense, hypnotic, and transcendental concerts. Maurice is one of the most gifted, prolific, and adventurous musicians from Egypt, described most recently as a producer of ‘transcendent beauty in an unholy racket’.
The Living Digital
- Saturday, April 30, 2022
- 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
- La Mama Experimental Theatre Club (map)
The New York Arab Festival, in partnership with the historic East Village theater La Mama, are proud to present a series of digital art and video-performances exhibited from April 30th through May 8th. The exhibition explores the intersection of digital art with performance and performativity. It showcases the work of Ahmed El Shaer, Mey Seifan, Ichraq Bouzidi, and Fadl Fakhouri. Tucked into the theatre’s lobby, this exhibition offers a glimpse into the rich world of digital art by contemporary Arab artists, living in New York and beyond.
Batta and Badreyya in Fawazeer Fada’iyya (Space Fawazeer) – Episode 7
Batta and Badreyya take a trip to Mars, to share ancient recipes with aliens, and exchange food cultures, meeting cinema and television stars along the way. Join Ahmad Abokamar and Lamia Gouda on their intergalactic voyage, designed for TikTok by Harshini Karunaratne, art direction by Kareem El Hayawan, music by Mostafa Sobhy, produced by Wizara and directed by Adham Hafez
You can also follow them on Instagram to stay up to date on new happenings & how to get involved next year!