Whose “Divas”? Exhibition, Gender, and the International Circulation of a Contemporary “Arab” Artistic Memory

How gender, art, nostalgia, and heritage are intertwined? How does displaying artistic references in Western cultural institutions produce practices of othering entangled with the national context where exhibitions are designed? How does the use of women to narrate the artistic memory of the other reveal a complex relationship with colonialism? To answer these questions, this presentation takes the “Arab divas” exhibition (2020-2024) curated by the Arab World Institute in Paris, as a departure point to examine othering in Western cultural institutions, representations of female artists, and gendered images and nostalgic feelings they generate. It argues that displaying female Arab artists from the 1920 to 1970 produced three effects: homogenizing Arab artistic memory, exhibiting artists as the “others” to be celebrated abroad, and a gendered colonial nostalgia to the “Golden age. This presentation links contemporary exhibitions to colonial policies and the foundation of Western cultural institutions in postcolonial era. As such, it questions “whose divas,” and explores how the exhibition defines it. It examines how processes of selecting and naming carry forms of un-naming and crafts a homogenized Arab artistic memory. It highlights how celebrating the “iconic” stars produces a process of othering, and shows that the making of Arab cultural memory from abroad produces gendered colonial nostalgia.