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Contributions by Mai Abu ElDahab, Basma Alsharif, Lara Khaldi, Mary Jirmanus Saba, and Mirene Arsanios with Nikki Columbus.

This publication comprises four essays and one conversation with contemporary artists and curators discussing their experience of becoming mothers as professionals in the arts, its reality, and effects. While their reflections represent a similar strata of art worker in terms of background, class, and career trajectory, the impact of instruments of patriarchy on rendering maternity invisible that they describe is both recognizable and insidious.

Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab
Published by Mophradat and Archive Books
Text design layout by Valerie Arif
Arabic and English

It may be purchased for €15, plus the costs of shipping and handling.

You can purchase the book from Archive Books and its distribution network, or by contacting us: office [at] mophradat [dot] org

Click to read an excerpt (in Arabic).

By Iman Mersal

“If I’d been more aware and someone had asked me about “my mother’s picture” I would have shown them the bird she’d stitched onto the canvas herself. It is not aesthetic vision or skill that summons my mother’s presence in this canvas, but the slight punctum the bird gives me. I get nothing of this sort from our studio portrait. The bird’s eyes are always looking at me, as though they belong to her. The bird: motionless, for whose sake my mother sat and stitched by the window where the light came in, each pinprick a symbolic laceration in the process of its embodiment: cuts by the hundred to make it whole.”

Edited by Maha Maamoun and Mai Abu ElDahab

Design: Julie Peeters and Valerie Arif

Originally published and printed in Arabic

Translated into English by Robin Moger

You can buy the English copy through Kayfa-ta website or write to us at office [at] mophradat [dot] org.

Click to read an excerpt

In this post-truth era, how does one navigate the endless information available and choose a viable narrative of reality? In How to Know What’s Really Happening, Glasgow-based writer and curator Francis McKee looks at various techniques for determining verity, from those of spy agencies and whistle-blowers to mystics and scientists.

Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab, Maha Maamoun, Ala Younis
Designed by Julie Peeters and Valerie Arif
Published by Kayfa ta, Mophradat, and Sternberg Press
Available in two editions: English and Arabic

€6

You can purchase the book from Sternberg Press and its distribution network, and you could also contact us through office [at] mophradat [dot] org.

Contributions by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Haig Aivazian, Mounira Al Solh, Doa Aly, Andeel, Mirene Arsanios, Malak Helmy, Iman Issa, Mahmoud Khaled, Maurice Louca, Jasmina Metwaly, Joe Namy, Nile Sunset Annex, November Paynter, Roy Samaha, Sharif Sehnaoui, Rania Stephan, Christophe Wavelet, and Lauren Wetmore.

This publication comprises a series of interviews with contemporary artists, musicians, and writers who are in dialogue with Beirut and Cairo. While not purporting to be an overview of the art scenes in these cities, this book begins to draw a picture of how artists think about what it means to be active in the contexts of Beirut and Cairo. It offers insight into the circumstances that structured these artists’ stories, and the often accidental influences that have shaped how their practices developed.

Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab, November Paynter, Marnie Slater

Published by Mophradat and Sternberg Press

Designed by Julie Peeters

English

€15

You can purchase the book from Sternberg Press and its distribution network, and you could also contact us through office [at] mophradat [dot] org.

Click to read excerpt

Contributions by Federica Bueti, Malak Helmy, Francis McKee, Haytham El Wardany,  and Brian Kuan Wood

This publication comprises five essays that take an intimate look at language’s role in moments of dramatic change, and ask how to find meaning for artistic practices in these transformative conditions. Taking its cue from the aftermath of the events of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, Final Vocabulary does not provide answers as much as it captures the spirit of the moment of searching that the writers found themselves in.

The book was developed out of a live conversation at an event called the Informal Meeting, which took place in Leuven in January 2015, where participants were asked: “Our histories and references are often in a different language (abstract or actual) than we use ourselves; what tools do you think are or might be useful to help you trust your own memories and narratives? What, if anything, do you think we might borrow from art to experiment with language in different situations?”

Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab

Published by Mophradat and Sternberg Press

Designed by Kaisa Lassinaro

Available in two editions: English and Arabic

€8

You can purchase the book from Sternberg Press and its distribution network or contact us at office [at] mophradat [dot] org.

Click to go to publisher's page.

This publication proposes a set of aural exercises that show readers how to disappear, reappear, join a group, or leave a group. Its annex is a lexicon of some of the sounds that dwell in or are banished from the middle-class household.

Edited by Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis
Translated from Arabic by Jennifer Peterson and Robin Moger

Availabile in both English and Arabic.

Published by Kayfa ta and featured at Meeting Points 7, “Ten thousand wiles and a hundred thousand tricks”.