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The Morning Star 2026 Conference
Confrontational, persuasive, subversive
MICHAL BONCZA recommends a striking collection of images on the state of the Arab world
Mona Hatoum Over My Dead Body, 2005 (left) and (right) Batoul S’Himi World Under Pressure, 2012

GENERAL Vo Nguyen Giap, who masterminded the Vietnamese wars of liberation against both the French and the US, was fond of saying that his most reliable re-supply of weapons always came from his enemies.

Those words spring to mind while paging through the book Arabicity: Contemporary Arab Art— it is exactly what most of these Arab artists have done.

Ayman Baalbaki’s Destnation X, 2013 (left) and (right) Kader Attia, Demoncracy, 2010;
Emily Jacir, Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Which Were Destroyed, Depopulated, and Occupied by Israel in 1948, 2001 (left) and (right) Mounir Fatmi The Paradox, 2014
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