Liverpool Arab Arts Festival has attracted some of the most inspiring Arab culture to Liverpool since it was founded in 1998. Today, twenty-six years on, the festival celebrates all art forms, from traditional Arab music to contemporary dance and theatre inspired by local and global Arab heritage.
Underpinning the programme every year is an exhibition or exhibition series that encourages local audiences to consider their connections with the Arab world in real terms.
This year, Port Cities, running from 12th – 20th July, invites Mohamed Abdelkarim, Laila Hida, Nadia Kaabi-Linke and Siska to reflect on the unique histories and modern identities of port cities across the world, inevitably linking Liverpool to Arab ports like Tripoli, Alexandria, Rabat and Tunis.
Some of these port cities were touched on the LAAF’s last outing, with work looking at trade routes and legal oceanic boundaries affecting Arab migrant identity and perception, particularly in the UK and Western Europe.
July’s exhibition promises to draw more pointed comparisons between Liverpool and its Arab-world counterparts.
Mohamed Abdelkarim’s sound installation, ‘Nobody Remembered the Ark, Said the Sea’, is a new audio work from the perspective of seawater and mythical creatures. The stories they tell will surround humanity’s exploitation of the sea for warfare, and the trade of goods and human beings.
Laila Hida’s ‘Reversed Landscape’ is an expansion of ‘Le Voyage du Pheonix’, her ongoing research project. Liverpool promises to offer an exceptional amount of research material and subjective geography to bounce off, with places like Sefton Park’s Palm House (set to host the closing events of LAAF this year) acting as a manifestation of displaced commodities and the global history that accompanies it, but also as a manifestation of nature, controlled, subdued, and celebrated by locals within a context of British exploration to exploited frontiers.
‘Heartbeat Wavelines’, by Nadia Kaabi-Linke, directly links Liverpool with Tunis. The two port cities share similar histories. War, depravation and perpetual commerce-driving change, lead to the fall of buildings that are never restored. The resulting installation is a full-scale drawing of the derelict wall of one of Liverpool’s North dock’s ruins, with windows from the Megara Hotel in North Tunis inserted into the local brickwork.
A mix of film and charcoal, this simple idea may well be the most resonant and memorable work from this year’s programme, and its specificity to Liverpool right now, makes it an artwork that deserves to be seen in person before it ceases to exist entirely.
Liverpool Arab Arts Festival is an essential part of the story Liverpool tells. The fact it has remained a staple part of our cultural calendar is testament to the passion of the stories it has told over the years.
Alongside the Port Cities exhibition, there are performances, workshops and film screenings spread across sites including Unity Theatre, Bluecoat, Liverpool Philharmonic’s The Music Room, Liverpool Central Library and The Plaza Cinema.
And from 12th July, an audio exploration of Port Cities (‘Slow Listening’) is available to hear on Spotify, TikTok and Instagram, sharing the sounds that are, at the same time, unique to each city, but that sinuously connect them too.
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Liverpool Arab Arts Festival runs from 12th – 21st July at various venues and online
Port Cities is open 12th – 21st July, 12-4pm, at Space Liverpool on Stanhope Street
Find out more about LAAF at www.arabartsfestival.com
Words, Kathryn Wainwright