Middle East | Yemen | Arts

Amani Yahya, Yemen’s first female rapper: I will find a way, I will shine

Source:
It’s day three of the Liverpool Arab Arts festival, but one of its performers hasn’t yet been to a single event. Amani Yahya – billed as Yemen’s first female rapper – is still thousands of miles away. With her homeland on the brink of civil war, Yahya, along with her family, has had to flee to Saudi Arabia, where the kingdom’s strict rules mean her fledging musical career has come to an abrupt halt. On top of this, her visa to attend the UK festival has been denied. But, if exile and war would be enough to crush most people, the disappointment at missing the festival is the o
North America | United States | Arts

Wordless Ads Speak Volumes In ‘Unbranded’ Images Of Women

Source:
Advertisements don't need any words to say a lot about a culture. In the run-up to the 2016 election — and the possibility of a white woman being nominated — Hank Willis Thomas has mounted a new exhibit, featuring women in print. It's called Unbranded: A Century of White Women, and it features images from mainstream commercial print advertisements from 1915 to today. Thomas said, "We can almost never tell what it's actually an ad for, because ads really aren't about the products. It's about what myths and generalizations we can attach, and the repetition of imagery of a certain type.
Middle East | Saudi Arabia | Arts

50 Years of Self-Representation in Saudi Women’s Art

Source:
Saudi Arabia’s relatively young history (the kingdom was established in 1932) is filled with gaps due to poor documentation and preservation efforts, especially when it comes to the many contributions of Saudi women. These contributions have been declared trivial, discarded, and sometimes unjustly attributed to men (i.e. their husbands or fathers). Any information on the role of Saudi women in society comes from previous generations, who retell those histories orally and rely solely on their imperfect human memory. Efforts, however, have been made to remember the sporadic, yet significant