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# Thoughts on West Asian Performance Art
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/west-asian-performance-art/
- Published: 2011-07-22T14:29:48.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:48:46.000Z
- Description: We've been catching up on our reading at Hyperallergic HQ and came across this quote by Wafaa Bilal in the Dubai-based Brownbook magazine (Issue 25) about the state of performance art in West Asia …
- Author: Hrag Vartanian
- Tags: Opinion, #image-position-hidden, Performance Art, Wafaa Bilal, West Asia, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2025-11-17 09:23 (2009-2011)

[![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2011/07/brownbook25-24.jpg "brownbook25-24")](http://www.brownbook.ae/magazine?ref=hyperallergic.com)

We’ve been catching up on our reading in Hyperallergic HQ and came across this quote by Wafaa Bilal in the Dubai-based [*Brownbook*](http://www.brownbook.ae/?ref=hyperallergic.com) magazine (Issue 25) about the state of performance art in West Asia (aka Middle East):

> I think that a lot of modern artists and critics in the Arab world have placed a high value on craftsmanship and the object. As artists, we assign a value to an object, whether it’s a painting or a sculpture, but this is very similar except that it’s assigning a value to a performance. I think there are some performance artist \[from the Arab world\] working in the West who will influence the younger generation in the Middle East.

Never mind that the term “Arab world” is — yes, I’m going to use the word — problematic (and even bigoted, as if everyone who lives in Arab-majority nations is Arab … imagine if we called America the “Christian world”) but it does offer hope for a region that has produced little performance art compared to the rest of the world.

Coincidentally, *Brownbook* Issue 25 is quite good and focuses on Istanbul’s emerging art and design scenes. Though it would be nice if the magazine delved a little more into the politics of the nations and didn’t gloss over them in a superficial way. This is definitely a socialite/jet-setter/trendy publication but still worth a look.