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SEVEN BY SEVEN. Transcultural narratives from the Middle east and North Africa. Curated by Roi Saade

8 October | H. 17:30 Opening and Talk with the curator

Introduction:
Tommaso Sacchi, Assessore Cultura Comune di Firenze
Roberto Ruta, Middle East Now Festival
Valentina Gensini, Artistic Director Murate Art District

8 – 31 October 2020
Mart -Sat  14:30 – 19:30 | free entrance

For the current security statement, free access to the event in the hall will be allowed to a maximum of 35 people.
Reservation is recommended
Information:
info.mad@muse.comune.fi.it | 055.2476873

Special highlight of this edition of Middle East Now festival is the exhibition “7X7 SEVEN BY SEVEN. Transcultural Narratives from the Middle East and North Africa“, an original project produced by Middle East Now Festival, conceived and curated by Roï Saade and co-produced by Murate Art District.

In these times of revolutions, unrest, exclusion and individualism, photography can play a fundamental role in building bridges between communities in the Middle East and North Africa. The aim of this project is to explore the differences and similarities found in each city and celebrate their diversity and complexity“. , Roï Saade.

 

The exhibition was coordinated by Alessandra Capodacqua, and the exhibition design was curated by Archivio Personale.

7X7 Transcultural narratives from the Middle east and North Africa. Curated by Roi Saade

The works of 7 talented young Middle Eastern photographers – Myriam Boulos, Sina Shiri, Abdo Shanan, Amir Hazim, Reem Falaknaz, Erdem Varol, Mouad Abillat – brought together to provide a personal visual perspective of their city – Beirut, Tehran, Algieri, Baghdad, Dubai, Istanbul, Marrakesh – on a specific day of the week.

The result, SEVEN BY SEVEN, is a collective voice and vision, and at the same time a set of personal and highly original points of view on the life of people in the Middle East, a visual narrative alternative to the media representation of these cities, very often negative and linked to the facts of news and geopolitics.

As an integral part of the project, the curator has created, exclusively for the festival, 7 newspapers that can be browsed in the exhibition: 7 newspapers in whose pages the story is developed through images of every day of a hypothetical week in the Middle East.

SEVEN BY SEVEN is also presented through a special online platform – 7×7.middleastnow.it – which allows visitors to digitally explore the work of the 7 photographers and their visual account of the cities in which they live.

 

 


Biography

Mouad Abillat 

7X7 Transcultural narratives from the Middle east and North Africa. Curated by Roi Saade

Mouad Abillat is a Moroccan photographer and director. He has a degree in Audiovisual Technician and has also studied photography and screenwriting, which has influenced his style and led him to develop an interest in storytelling. By photographing young people on the streets of Marrakech with a unique and original style, he strives to portray the contradictions and fight against the stereotypes faced by the new generations today.

Erdem Varol

Transcultural narratives from the Middle east and North Africa. Curated by Roi Saade

Erdem Varol. Born in 1988, he lives in Istanbul. In 2017 Erdem published his first book “Free Fall” together with two fanzines, published in 2018 and 2019 respectively. He has held solo and group exhibitions in Turkey, Italy, France and elsewhere.

Reem Falaknaz

Transcultural narratives from the Middle east and North Africa. Curated by Roi Saade

Reem Falaknaz documents with his artistic work the social and physical landscape of the United Arab Emirates and its inhabitants. In 2014 he took part in the prestigious Arab Documentary Photography Program, and his international participations include the United Arab Emirates Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 and the Lahore Biennale in 2020.

Amir Hazim

Transcultural narratives from the Middle east and North Africa. Curated by Roi Saade

Amir Hazim is an artist and photographer based in Baghdad. He graduated from Baghdad College of Fine Arts and began his professional career in 2019, publishing in Arab News, The National and many others.

Abdo Shanan

Transcultural narratives from the Middle east and North Africa. Curated by Roi Saade

Abdo was born in 1982 in Oran, Algeria, to a Sudanese father and Algerian mother. He studied engineering at the University of Sirte, Libya, until 2006. In 2012 an internship at Magnum Photos Paris gave him the opportunity to reflect on his photographic approach and produce his first short story for the magazine “Rukh”. His photographs have been published in numerous international magazines and newspapers. In 2015 he received a nomination for the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund, in... 2019 he won the CAP (Contemporary African Photography) award for his project “Dry”, in the same year he was selected for Joop Swart Masterclass by World Press Photo.

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Sina Shiri

Transcultural narratives from the Middle east and North Africa. Curated by Roi Saade

Sina Shiri. He was born in Rasht, Iran in 1991. He started photography at the age of 16 and has since worked in various Iranian press agencies and magazines as a photographer. Today he is a freelancer and focuses on social issues and themes.

Myriam Boulos

Transcultural narratives from the Middle east and North Africa. Curated by Roi Saade

Myriam Boulos. Born in Beirut in 1992, she graduated in photography from the Academie Libanaise des Beaux Arts in 2015. She has taken part in international group exhibitions including Photomed, Beirut Art Fair, Berlin PhotoWeek, Mashreq to Maghreb (Dresden, Germany), Beyond boundaries (New York), C’est Beyrouth (Paris) and 3ème biennale des Photographes du monde arabe (Paris), and received the Byblos Bank Award for Photography in 2014. He uses his camera to interrogate the city and its... people, and his photos are a mix of documentary and personal research.

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A Book to Rebuild Beirut

Photographer Giulio Rimondi donates the sale of his book to the Association Arab Center For Architecture
Bookshop FAHRENHEIT 451 in Rome and the author provide 100 copies of the book BIRUT NOCTURNE.
The entire proceeds will be donated to finance the reconstruction of the most important historical buildings damaged by the explosion on 4th August.
Book a copy by writing to
libreriafahrenheit@yahoo.com
MINIMUM OFFER 35€ – shipping in Italy included