Five years on from the Arab Spring, and following recent crackdowns in Egypt, artists, curators and gallerists across the Middle East say that freedom of expression in the region is more threatened than ever. But incidents such as the cancellation last month of a charity auction in Paris after the Israeli embassy objected to a work depicting a Palestinian political prisoner underline how self-censorship, fear of causing offence and heightened security concerns are increasingly becoming issues for artists and institutions in the West.
Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the Index on Censorship, says that the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris a year ago has made curators “particularly nervous about religion”. Works dealing with race and religion are the subject of new guidelines from the UK-based charity, which were published last month. Ginsberg says that, with the rise of Isil, “we have shifted back to religious offences and blasphemy and arguments of national security”.
Egyptian crackdown In late December, the Egyptian censorship and tax authorities closed down Townhouse Gallery, an independent contemporary art space founded in 1998, citing “administrative irregularities”. Paperwork and archival material was seized from the gallery and the affiliated Rawabet Theatre. A source close to the gallery told us: “The fact that the 25 January anniversary [of the 2011 revolution] is coming up is no coincidence; there are regular raids in downtown Cairo. The government is opportunistically using administrative excuses to close down spaces.” Egypt’s security forces have stepped up raids ahead of the fifth anniversary of the uprising against former president Hosni Mubarak.
Shiva Balaghi, a visiting scholar at Brown University, Rhode Island, in the US, says that the gallery’s closure signals “a broader shutdown of political freedoms in Egypt”. Tunisian arrests In Tunisia, five artists were arrested in November and charged with drug use. Eddine Slim, Fakhri El Ghezal and Atef Maatallah were arrested on 19 November while Adnen Meddeb and Amine Mabrouk were charged in late November under the same law when police found tobacco leaves on the pair. The court of appeal acquitted all five last month. Turkish clampdown The crackdown on freedom of expression in Turkey has intensified. The arrest of two leading Turkish artists over the New Year is the latest in a long line of clampdowns and censorship in the country. Atalay Yeni and Pinar Ögrenci were arrested during a peace march and charged with, among other things, supporting terrorist groups—charges they deny. They are due to stand trial in April.
Israeli pressure Political works are also under scrutiny in the West, posing another set of complex problems for artists, galleries and auction houses. Artcurial’s decision last month to withdraw a work depicting a Palestinian political prisoner following pressure from the Israeli embassy ended in the cancellation of the charity auction. Artists on the Front Page had been due to take place on 27 January.
A spokesman for Artcurial says that the auction was cancelled “by mutual agreement” with the organisers, the French newspaper Libération and the press-freedom advocacy group Reporters Sans Frontières. He says: “Following the Paris terrorist attacks [in November 2015], it is difficult to manage security issues and freedom of speech.” Libération says it ended the partnership “in the name of freedom of expression”. The work in question, by the French street artist Ernest Pignon-Ernest, reimagines the front page of Libération from 12 November 2004, the day after the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was buried. In an email to Artcurial, the Israeli embassy in France described the portrait as “a terrorist project” because “it implies that this is a man of peace”, according to Le Monde.
Artcurial’s withdrawal of the work is “far more serious” than the closure of Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery, says Fatenn Mostafa, the founder of Art Talks, a Cairo-based education and advisory firm. “It’s a legitimate work of art that was going to be sold in a legal and public auction for a charity supporting freedom of speech. How ironic,” she says.