This essay contextualizes changes in our understanding of contemporary Arab art across time, by examining its modern genealogy. It addresses many of the challenges modernism in the Arab world has faced, as well as its perception and marginalization in the Euro-American canon of Art History. It looks at the modern past within the methodologies of Art History and its subsequent commodification within a growing interest in contemporary art from the Arab world (and larger Middle East) in the global art market. And it examines contemporary art production, which has spaces that conflict with traditional local and international art, as well as newer, more developed arenas of the diaspora and art market, all necessarily affected and politicized by unfolding regional events.
Arab art, modern art, contemporary art, globalization, representation.