Arab-American Artists, Scholars Featured at Forum

posted on: Apr 3, 2013

Arab-American arts and letters will get the spotlight in “DIWAN5: A Forum for the Arts,” a conference Friday and Saturday at Dearborn’s Arab American National Museum.

Artists and scholars will speak about their recent work, the challenges of being an Arab-American after 9/11, and how that has affected their art or research.

Other topics will include how better to mainstream their culture and how best to combat anti-Arab prejudice with their creations. Some big names will be there, including Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian-American novelist who wrote the bestselling “Mornings in Jenin.” The public is welcome both days.

“‘Diwan’ means a gathering in Arabic,” says conference co-organizer Holly Arida, who teaches Middle Eastern Studies at Cranbrook Kingswood School in Bloomfield Hills.

She adds that, amusingly, the word comes from the Turkish ‘divan,’ or sofa. First organized in 2006 and now held every other year, this is the fifth DIWAN conference.

Other celebrities will include Tony-winner Suheir Hammad and the University of Michigan’s Khaled Mattawa, an award-winning poet. There will be presentations on new art, poetry and prose readings, and topical subjects like the Libyan revolution, with comments by two Libyan-American artists just back from Benghazi. By contrast, an Ottoman-inflected fashion show, “Our Second Skin,” sounds like sheer fun.

There also will be song and dance — and some great after-hours entertainment. Friday evening’s opening reception will feature Syrian singer Saadi, whom Arida describes as “an electro-pop diva.” And Saturday night will see a closing party at Trinosophes, a new club near the Eastern Market.

They’re holding it there, Arida says, in part to introduce out-of-towners to a bit of Detroit’s artistic edge. “We’ve got such a vibrant art scene here,” she says, “and I’m not sure artists around the country know that.”

Ironically, Arida notes that 9/11 ended up cementing more of a common identity among Arab-Americans, many of whom until that point often self-identified by national origin, not as part of a broader demographic. “After 9/11, with everyone thrown into the same position, it really galvanized artists to work together,” she says. “Artists started using their medium to project what Arab-Americans really are, so we aren’t defined by a handful of violent lunatics.”

Michael H. Hodges
The Detroit News