Both Sides of the Curtain

Over the spring of 2017 marra.tein hosted staff of and artists participating in Meeting Points 8: Both Sides of the Curtain, providing invaluable research and production support to the the Beirut chapter of the project, which culminated in an exhibition and series of events at the Beirut Art Center 12 April – 4 June 2017.

In 2017, Zin Taylor (artists, b. Canada 1978, lives in Paris) was a resident at marra.tein, where he conducted research towards new work and presented his performance An Index for the Flute of Sub (2017) as a part of Meeting Points 8.

Also in 2017 marra.tein hosted Nile Sunset Annex (f. Egypt 2012, Taha Belal and Jenifer Evans, based in Cairo) as they conducted research and production related to their Meeting Points 8 project Dreams, Duplicates and Display Paraphernalia, collected art and six new publications by Hady Aboukamar, Doa Aly, Andeel, Amy Arif, Shehab Awad, Chris Beauregard, Taha Belal, Olivier Castel, Marc-Alexandre Dumoulin and Marianne Vlaschits, Faten El Disouky, Walid ElSawi, Jenifer Evans, Fadlabi, Ericka Florez, Malak Helmy, Mahmoud Khaled, Kareem Lotfy, Ahmed Nosseir, Mohanad Nur, Paul Simon Richards, Samira Ahmed Salim, Sarah Samy, Ahmed Shawky, Marnie Slater, Take to the Sea, Wadie Shenouda, amongst others.

Meeting Points is an international multidisciplinary contemporary arts event that takes the Arab World as a starting point to pose questions of broad relevance of and to art. Meeting Points tries to imagine and interrogate models for the production and presentation of contemporary arts, developed through research in the Arab World. Meeting Points 8: Both Sides of the Curtain began in Cairo in May 2016, then moved on to Brussels in December 2016, and Beirut in 2017, and was realized with different curatorial contributions along the way. Participants in the exhibition, film and public programs at Beirut Art Center included Andeel, Basma Alsharif, Fatma Bucak, The Dwarfs of East Agouza, Dora Garcia, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, Tamar Guimarães, Jean-Pascal Flavien, Josephine Foster with Victor Herrero, Judith Hopf, Hannah Catherine Jones, Gülsün Karamustafa, Joachim Koester, Basim Magdy, Joe Namy, Nile Sunset Annex, Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger, Marnie Slater, Zin Taylor, among others.

Mophradat is an international nonprofit arts association based in Brussels that creates opportunities for thinking, producing, and sharing among contemporary artists from the Arab World and their peers everywhere. For more details please go to www.mophradat.org.