Whose “Divas”? Exhibition, Gender, and the International Circulation of a Contemporary “Arab” Artistic Memory
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12901783 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mayada Madbouly (0000-0002-5040-6637, University of Groningen, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-25 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Political Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1749-5679 • E-ISSN: 1749-5687 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ips/olaf047 |
| OpenAlex | W7130331157 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 28 |
How are gender, nostalgia, and memory intertwined? How does displaying non-Western 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’s bodies to narrate the artistic memory of the other reveal a complex relationship with colonialism? To answer these questions, this article takes the “Arab divas” exhibition (2021–2024) as a departure point to reflect on exhibitions as sites where national and international politics are entangled. It does so by focusing on the politics of nostalgia, their representations, and their experiences in exhibitions. The article explains the role of exhibitions in Western cultural institutions in producing colonial nostalgia. It argues that colonial nostalgia becomes gendered when these institutions use women as instrument to celebrate a selected past labeled as “Golden age.” The article is divided into five sections. In the first section, it questions “whose divas,” and explores how the exhibition defines it. Then, it explains how the exhibition homogenizes Arab artistic memory and produces processes of othering. After this, it links the exhibition to national and international contexts where it was designed and first displayed (Arab World Institute in Paris). In the final part, it focuses on the gendered colonial nostalgia
Colonialism · Context (archaeology · Exhibition · Point (geometry · Politics · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior · Cultural Studies
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Narrative Global Politics
Nubia Still Exists
In the Name of Womens Rights
Rechercher la race
The City of al-Zaman al-Gamîl
Lamenting Old Nubia Through Music
Soft power
Where the dust settles
The legitimate’ after the uprisings
Imperial Nostalgia; Colonial Nostalgia
Divafication
The ethics of autoethnography
Multiculturalism Obscured
Belly Dance, Pilgrimage and Identity
Iran's daughter and mother Iran
Imperialist Nostalgia
Do Muslim Women Need Saving
An Autoethnography of Hybrid IR Scholars
Of Love and Frustration as Post-Yugoslav Women Scholars
Negotiating submission. Pedagogies of coloniality in the everyday of veiled Muslim women in France and Switzerland
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |