Since the 2011 Arab Spring street art has been a vehicle for political discourse in the Middle East, and has generated much discussion in both the popular media and academia. Yet, this conversation has generalised street art and identified it as a singular form with identical styles and objectives throughout the region. Street art's purpose is, however, defined by the socio-cultural circumstances of its production. Middle Eastern artists thus adopt distinctive methods in creating their individual work and responding to their individual environments. Here, in this new book, Sabrina De Turk employs rigorous visual analysis to explore the diversity of Middle Eastern street art and uses case studies of countries as varied as Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, Palestine, Bahrain and Oman to illustrate how geographic specifics impact upon its function and aesthetic. Her book will be of significant interest to scholars specialising in art from the Middle East and North Africa and those who bring an interdisciplinary perspective to Middle East studies.

This is a nostalgic, visual account of the best time and place to be a graffiti writer. In the 1980s, brothers Kenny, a.k.a. KEY, and Paul, a.k.a. CAVS, immersed themselves in the graffiti scene in the Boogie Down Bronx, dutifully photographing hundreds of pieces on now-discontinued MTA subway cars and capturing their proud comrades before, during, and after the act. Bombing White Elephants with their pilot markers and documenting them with their cameras, which they always carried, they were on the ride of their livesuntil 1989, when the last painted train was removed from service. Tags by names like QUIK, IZTHEWIZ, and many others appear here in color exposures, and dozens of artists share stories and drop knowledge with no filter. A foreword by graffiti historian Henry Chalfant, coproducer of Style Warsthe seminal documentary on New York graffiti and hip-hop culturekicks things off.

Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020 features artists Lauren Fensterstock, Timothy Horn, Debora Moore, and Rowland Ricketts. Nature provides a way for these invited artists to ask what it means to be human in a world increasingly chaotic and divorced from our physical landscape. Representing craft media from fiber to mosaic to glass and metals, these artists approach the long history of art's engagement with the natural world through unconventional and highly personal perspectives. Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020 is the ninth installment of the Renwick Invitational. Established in 2000, this biennial showcase highlights midcareer and emerging makers who are deserving of wider national recognition.The featured artists work in a wide variety of media, from Lauren Fensterstock, who creates detailed, large-scale installations using intensive modes of making drawn from the decorative arts, including paper quilling and mosaic, and from whom SAAM has commissioned a site-specific work--inspired in part by the illustrated renaissance German manuscript The Book of Miracles ---that will transform an entire gallery at the Renwick, to Timothy Horn, who creates exaggerated adornments that combine natural and constructed worlds, taking inspiration from objects as varied as baroque jewellery patterns and Victorian era detailed studies of lichen, coral, and seaweed, from bronze and glass, as well as unusual materials like crystalized rock sugar, to evoke the extravagant Amber Room in the Catherine the Great's palace of Tsarskoye Selo; and from Debora Moore, known for her exquisitely detailed glass renderings of orchids, and who is represented in this volume in her new series, Arboria (2018), in which Moore focuses less on realism and more on capturing an intensely personal experience of beauty and wonder, to Rowland Ricketts who creates immersive installations using handwoven and hand-dyed cloth, starting on his farm, where he cultivates the indigo plants he uses to colour his artwork, fully linking his material and process with the finished product. Participatory engagement from non-artists, forms a major part of Rickett's work, emphasizing the relationship between nature, culture, the passage of time, and everyday life.