The Arabic Connection in Articulating North African Modernity in Art

Abstract

This essay explores the articulation of the Arabic letter and text in the modern art of North Africa as a liminal space of interaction. Arabic text in particular offered artists a space of intersection between the various layers of identities of North Africa (al Maghrib al-Arabi) and the Middle East (al-Mashraq al-Arabi), including the new Arab political and cultural formulations. Moreover, through the Arabic letter, North African artists, as all other Arab artists, found a solution to the modernist paradigm that demanded a severance with history and tradition. The Arabic letter served as a point of connection between their past and the present.