ARABOFUTURS. Science-fiction et nouveaux imaginaires
Ed. by Élodie Bouffard, Nawel Dehina and Joan Grandjean
Exhibition Catalogue (Paris, Institut du monde arabe, 23.4. – 27.10.24), Paris, Manuella, 2024
Texts by Ibrahim Akel, Kawthar Ayed, Élodie Bouffard, Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Nawel Dehina, Diana Kassem, Joan Grandjean, Laura Hindelang, Nat Muller and Merve Tabur
ARABOFUTURS is an invitation to enter the dreamlike world of Arab anticipation. This book opens the door to new forms of the unknown and bears witness to the richness of aesthetics, intellect, and narrative of science fiction in the Arab world and its diasporas. It accompanies the eponymous exhibition, which features more than 20 video, visual, and performance artists, who renew perspectives, redefine identities, and seek to offer new possibilities to reality. Globalization, modernity, ecology, migration, gender, and decolonization are some of the key subjects of this scene, in which artists use motifs from science fiction or fantasy to challenge certainties and givens.
In addition to presenting the works exhibited and the artistic approach of each artist, this book is an introduction to the most current research on SF creations and new narratives present in all fields of art and carried by artists of Arab culture. French-, English-, and Arabic-speaking researchers and academics, specialists in the social sciences, linguistics, literature, cinema, and the visual arts, as well as in classical and contemporary culture, have been invited to write texts that shed light on this strong and little-known trend in contemporary Arab art in France.