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OTHER
By Maymanah Farhad

“The mission of OTHER is to create a supportive organization that provides a collaborative environment for aspiring artists of Arab heritage. We envision for our collective a vibrant, community-engaged, multi-faceted arts and media organization that promotes self-representation of artists by inspiring and supporting social movement and youthful creativity.”-- OTHER: Arab Artists Collective

Since its inception in 2004, OTHER Arab Artists Collective has exemplified the ability of art to inspire dialogue among communities whose voices remain suppressed. With the blatant political polarization of ethnicity, culture, and religion after September 11th, the need for such sociopolitical art has never been greater.

Based in Detroit and the surrounding area, OTHER was conceived within a multicultural environment that is home to the country’s largest demographic of Arab and Arab-Americans. The founding members of OTHER include multimedia artist Radfan Alqirsh, painter/digital artist Mohamad Bazzi, Film/video/digital artist Imad Hassan, multimedia artist Joe Namy, filmmaker Rola Nashef and metalsmith Lana Rahme. Together these artists established a collective art studio in Detroit’s Russell Industrial Center. The studio has now become a nucleus of inspiration for creative discourse, stimulating intellectual, political and artistic activity among numerous artists from the Detroit area.

Within the context of cultures converging into hybridist identities, the collective’s existence speaks volumes of the experiences of immigrants and their descendants. Faced with the difficulties of establishing one’s identity in a society that demands assimilation, OTHER strives to transcend the supposed “cultural boundaries” that often alienate ethnic communities in the U.S. The collective’s involvement and engagement within its Detroit community has lead to several successful public art projects.
In 2005, OTHER was asked to create an installation piece as part of the Arab American National Museum’s permanent exhibition, Living in America, which educates the public about the experiences and lives of Arab Americans. The collective created Facing Identity, a multimedia installation work that consists of five wall murals and a video projection outlet. Facing Identity juxtaposes stereotypical media portrayals of Arabs with images of Arabs and Arab Americans in their daily lives. One wall mural displays a collage of what appears to be an assortment of family photographs, while another exhibits images from pre 9/11 popular culture, depicting Arabs through the ever-present Orientalist lens.

Upon entering the installation space, the viewer is surrounded by the semiotic dialogue of two contrasting visual cultures. Blatantly racist images of Arabs in popular culture and post 9/11 media are exposed within the installation as perpetrators of a visual assault that afflicts the Arab American community’s right to affirm its identity in the American sociopolitical landscape. The video projection titled, The Arab World: as seen on T.V., further impacts the viewer with the scope of the perpetuation of such stereotypes by displaying a three-minute montage of Americans summarizing the countless negative portrayals shown on television. Images of Arab American families then negate such stereotypical images on two adjacent murals. The positive images function as a direct response to the negative portrayals and, “call upon Arabs to reclaim their identity.”

The remaining mural shows faceless figures executed in gray and black abstractions. Aggressive lines adorn the bodies of each figure, as they appear to be emerging from multiple planes within the composition. The incorporation of such a mural raises the question of the future of a population whose identity has remained in the shadows of institutionalized xenophobia for far too long.

In recent months, major American newspapers have reviewed the work in articles critiquing the Arab American National Museum. Unfortunately some reviews have been nothing more than prime examples of the perpetuation of media stereotypes that plagues political discourse concerning Arab and Muslim Americans. One such review dismissed the photographs of Arab American families as “Hallmark greeting-card portrayals.” Another questioned the validity of OTHER’s exposing of discrimination in the media and the collective’s use of images of smiling Arab children by stating, “Islamic-motivated terror has compelled a rethinking of everything from airport design to foreign policy; smiling families have not.”

Such critiques propagate the dehumanization of the “other” through the rejection of Arabs as anything but terrorists. The message of OTHER’s installation is consequently missed. Negative images remain accepted as the norm while positive images are seen as imprudent or illusory, furthering the exact narrow-minded ideology, which the collective aims to combat.

OTHER’s subsequent public art project, Journeys and Distances, 2005, reaffirmed the collective’s dedication to art that transcends “cultural boundaries” with the creation of a monumental mural that explores the universal experience of immigration through an Arab American narrative. The mural was part of a multimedia art exhibition at the Padzieski art gallery in Dearborn, Michigan, which included the work of other Detroit artists inspired by various aspects of immigrant experiences. Christina Dennaoui, Adnan Charara, Sarah Khazem, Michael Mansour, Marwan Nashef and Jackie Salloum joined OTHER in the exhibition that incorporated traditional, digital, audio and visual media.

The conception of the mural began in the gallery space at the opening of the exhibition on September 15, 2005 with the unveiling of a large sketch of the work, which the artists then continuously painted live for the next two months. The artists of the collective alternated painting shifts while the mural was displayed, often inviting groups of school children to witness their work.

Journeys and Distances reads from right to left, with a procession that travels from a homeland comprised of ancient seeming trees, fertile agricultural fields and dignified faces of ancestral figures. The gnarled roots and branches of the trees frame the stone like faces of the figures, while diagonal lines from each face direct the viewer’s gaze towards the central focal point of the mural. Within the middle of the composition lies a sea of immigrants. Each immigrant carries the signifier of his/her labor towards the unknown world of the new country.

Above the immigrants is a maternal figure that watches over their journey, her garb flowing directly into the succession of migration, as she remains central to the surrounding landscape through which the immigrants travel. The migration ends in what appear to be buildings, jagged lines form abstractions that escalate into the upper portion of the mural. The final destination for the mural’s subjects is one that appears vastly different from the fluidity of gnarled roots and flowing lines of fertile fields. At the end of the procession, the immigrants are shown in their final state, as part of the abstract cityscape that is their final destination. Just as their ancestors were an integral part of the beginning landscape, they too become part of the world that lies ahead.

Journeys and Distances speaks of the collective experience of a people traveling between two worlds in search of regeneration. Throughout the migration, the subjects are clearly defined, from their ancestral roots to the symbols of skill and labor they carry into the new world. What remains to be unidentified is their final transformation once integrated into the new land. Will these subjects redefine themselves as components of the abstract cityscape? Will the gnarled roots of their ancestral land remain part of their being? The answers are left to the determination of the viewer. Through changing landscapes and transformations, the Arab narrative becomes that of all people.

Each artist of OTHER actively contributes to the Contemporary art scene through his/her individual work, which is then proliferated into an aesthetic language that ignites the creative discourse of the collective. As a collective their work pushes the boundaries of political activism and committed art. For more information visit www.otherart.org.

Ms. Farhat can be contacted at sccheeto@yahoo.com