Mid East Art founder Suzy Sikorski reflects on her unforgettable memories documenting artist’s stories in the region since embarking on a Fulbright Scholarship in 2016. With insights behind her drive to archive a close-knit community of Emirati artists, along with her recent photography skills and visual anecdotes that encompass her lifelong journey to cover Middle Eastern Art.
The vivid narratives of Suzy Sikorski’s lengthy photography adventures and artist studio sessions. Both a witness and active player in these memories, Suzy weaves her way into these beautifully captured stills.
Featuring an intro text by Suzy Sikorski on the origins of the UAE art scene that was included in the Imago Mundi Project she co-curated for the UAE and Bahrain in 2016.
An essay on the Palestinian photographer Ahlam Shibli in Tribe Photography magazine. Shibli’s hyper-visual images draw deeper attention to everyday life, and shift our understanding of marginalized communities as they are depicted in media images, closing the distance between documentary and spontaneous intimacy, and between critical detachment and compassionate engagement.
This is a personal story of how some of the leading Emirati artists have worked to fashion a path through an often fast-moving and potentially bewildering landscape of change. Senses of identity and belonging, of heritage and inheritance, loom large under conditions of constant transformation. In a place that is as young as the UAE, artists find themselves grappling with the recent past as they look towards the future.
‘The Quarantine Files’ series presents of the most inspiring stories of the pioneer Egyptian female artist Inji Efflatoun during her time as a political prisoner in jail from 1959-1963. Including first hand accounts from Inji herself, this article is a story of how bravery, perseverance and ingenuity lead to self-discovery and artistic explorations —all while confined and quarantined within a jail cell. Hope is just as contagious these days - read on.