The Arabic Connection in Articulating North African Modernity in Art Available to Purchase

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.