Géographie(s) des territoires de l’art

Cet article s’attache à interroger des dynamiques liées à la circulation des œuvres et des acteurs des mondes de l’art au Yémen : d’une part, en probléma­tisant les moyens que les artistes visuels utilisent pour accéder à la visibilité et à la valorisation de leur travail, et d’autre part, en rendant explicites les ressources spécifiques qui permettent aux artistes de se projeter profession­nellement hors du Yémen. Privilégiant une approche empirique, j’analyse dans la première partie de l’article des expositions qui ont lieu à Sanaa en 2010 en lien avec ou au sein d’institutions culturelles européennes afin d’observer comment l’on peut se projeter hors du Yémen sans sortir du pays. Émergent alors une série de questions liées aux rapports construits autour de ces circulations d’acteurs, d’objets et de regards. Ces modes de circulations sont interrogés à travers les logiques d’extraver­sion et les dynamiques de dépendance vis-à-vis de l’étranger, structurantes de rapports de domination en place. Je propose ensuite d’appro­fondir la sociologie des artistes afin de contextualiser le cosmopolitisme des artistes yéménites dans toute son épaisseur. Je m’intéresse alors à la question des géographies qui compo­sent la notion abstraite qu’est l’international au vu de l’expérience d’expa­tria­tion, d’études ou de lieux d’exposition des artistes yéménites. Ce choix de présenter d’abord des données empiriques, puis de les mettre en contexte à travers de données quantitatives, vise à faire ressortir comment les artistes habitent les modes de circulation de l’art au niveau local et international.This article questions the dynamics related to the circulation of Yemen’s art worlds’ works and actors through a twofold analysis: first, through proble­matizing the means visual artists use in order to access a condition of visibility and valorization of their work, and second, through rendering explicit the specific resources that allow artists to project their professional careers outside of Yemen. Grounding this analysis on an empirical approach, I study in the first part of the article art exhibitions that took place in Sanaa in 2010 and that were related to or were hosted by European cultural institutions. This case study aims at proposing a way to observe how artists can project their careers outside of Yemen without leaving the country. Thus emerge a series of questions related to the relations that are built in and around the mobilities of artists, objects, and the effects of the gaze of other intermediaries on their artworks. The ways in which these mobilities happen and what they imply to the people they engage are questioned in light of logics of extraversion and dynamics of dependency towards non-Yemeni interme­diaries, which structure existing relations of domination. The remaining of the article proposes a more detailed sociology of artists in order to contextualize the cosmopolitan experiences Yemeni artists accumulate. I then pay close attention to the question of the geographies that compose the abstract notion of what is referred to as “the international” and I do so through considering the experience Yemeni artists accumulate in terms of expatriation, studies abroad, or places where exhibitions take place. The choice to present an empirically grounded case followed by quantitative data to contextualize the arguments I make, aims at fleshing out how artist inhabit the ways in which art circulates locally and internationally

La notion de génération et les rapports de domination dans l’écriture d’une histoire de l’art au Yémen

The notion of jîl (generation) as it emerges in published and unpublished texts of Yemeni visual artists offers a unique opportunity to question how art history is built in Yemen. By studying how artists illustrate, document, and inform a partially written art history in these documents, this article analyzes this material, linking the process of individual objectification with the hierarchies and relations of domination that structure the socio-professional networks of artists. The first half of this article is dedicated to explaining a certain number of methodological questions that underlie the research and writing of art history in Yemen. The second part focuses on a collection of writings analyzing the notion of generation by studying and questioning the ways in which relations of domination are embedded into these sources. This approach aims to illustrate how the hierarchies that texts attempt to establish are observed in practice and how artists subsequently perform and reproduce them

Movilización, protesta y creatividad en Yemen: el arte de hacer política en la calle

A mediados de enero de 2011 comienzan a llevarse a cabo manifestaciones en Yemen inspiradas por los movimientos contestatarios tunecino y egipcio, sumando nuevas caras a la voz de la oposición que hasta entonces se relacionaba únicamente con partidos políticos y organizaciones de defensa de los derechos humanos. Gradualmente, los manifestantes antigubernamentales generan una nueva forma de actuación política contestataria como es el caso de la acampada permanente de la “Plaza del Cambio”, que en la capital Sana’a será el centro de ebullición de diferentes formas de protesta contra el régimen de Ali Abd Allah Saleh. La reapropiación del espacio público no sólo va a cambiar la geografía de la capital, sino que en tanto que “espacio seguro” (“safe space”) (Tilly 2000) se convertirá en un auténtico laboratorio en el que explorar repertorios de acción variados. Este artículo persigue explicar algunas de las claves sobre el quién, cómo y por qué de la movilización popular que tiene lugar en Sana’a desde enero de 2011, interrogando principalmente los aspectos más creativos de la protesta. Palabras clave: Yemen, repertorios de contestación, arte, política de la calle, arte de la calle.A mediados de enero de 2011 comienzan a llevarse a cabo manifestaciones en Yemen inspiradas por los movimientos contestatarios tunecino y egipcio, sumando nuevas caras a la voz de la oposición que hasta entonces se relacionaba únicamente con partidos políticos y organizaciones de defensa de los derechos humanos. Gradualmente, los manifestantes antigubernamentales generan una nueva forma de actuación política contestataria como es el caso de la acampada permanente de la “Plaza del Cambio”, que en la capital Sana’a será el centro de ebullición de diferentes formas de protesta contra el régimen de Ali Abd Allah Saleh. La reapropiación del espacio público no sólo va a cambiar la geografía de la capital, sino que en tanto que “espacio seguro” (“safe space”) (Tilly 2000) se convertirá en un auténtico laboratorio en el que explorar repertorios de acción variados. Este artículo persigue explicar algunas de las claves sobre el quién, cómo y por qué de la movilización popular que tiene lugar en Sana’a desde enero de 2011, interrogando principalmente los aspectos más creativos de la protesta. Palabras clave: Yemen, repertorios de contestación, arte, política de la calle, arte de la call

Impact of Transnational Experiences

Between the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, when Yemen was still divided into two states, many Yemenis obtained scholarships to study fine arts in the Soviet Union. Future plastic artists were working on masters and doctorates in mural painting, poster design, monumental sculpture, philosophy of art and many other disciplines. After spending many years studying in the USSR, the majority of them returned to Yemen, a new unificated State after 1990. This paper focuses on the educational and cultural experiences that took place within the context of ‘socialist’ transnational solidarity, and on the variety of influences on the development of the Yemeni plastic arts movement

Visual artists of Yemen : teetering between support and contention of the political order

Cette thèse s'attache aux rapports au politique des artistes visuels yéménites dans un contexte de domination, recouvrant trois États (les deux républiques qui précédent l'unification du Yémen et la république actuelle créée en 1990, jusqu'en 2015). En étudiant la domination en acte à travers une démarche ethnographique, ce travail interroge les conditions de production et d'action des artistes en soutien ou en contestation au régime, comme au cours du moment révolutionnaire de 2011. On observe ainsi le processus de politisation des mondes de l'art au Yémen contemporain, processus compris en tant qu'acquisition d'une signification politique par la pratique artistique et par les réseaux de relations entretenus par les artistes visuels. Ces requalifications de leur travail ou de leur pratique se font dans un contexte traversé par des luttes concurrentielles pour la répartition du pouvoir internes et propres à leurs mondes d'activité, mais aussi externes et propres à l'espace politique institutionnel. La politisation des mondes de l'art apparaît dès lors moins comme un instrument d'accès à cet espace qu'une voie pour accéder à plus de visibilité, à la reconnaissance, et à un meilleur positionnement dans les rapports agonistiques qui configurent ces mondes.This thesis focuses on the study of Yemeni visual artists' relation to politics in a context of domination, covering three States (the two republics that precede Yemen's unification and the current republic established in 1990, until 2015). Studying domination in action through an ethnographic approach, this work questions artists' conditions of production and of action in support to or in contestation of the regime- as in the case of the revolutionary period of 2011. The focus of this study is the politicization of art worlds in contemporary Yemen, a process understood as the acquisition of a political significance as observed in the artistic practice and in the dynamic networks that artists maintain. The requalification and reclassification of their work and their practice that results from the politicization of art worlds, takes place in a context of competitive struggles over distribution and access to sites of power. Such conflict over power occurs within their own worlds of activity as well as outside them and in relation to the domain of institutional politics. This thesis contends that the politicization of art worlds is more of a means to access visibility and recognition than a resource to participate in the political field. Through the politicization of art, artists are able to better position themselves within the agonistic relations that exist within art worlds

Contentious dynamics for sociopolitical change?

Observers as well as members of the Islah Party tend to present and explain the different streams that conform this political formation as a “pluralist dialogue” between various groups, ideologies, and personalities. In this light, the Islah Party is described as a mix of ideologies, discourses, repertoires of action, and projects of reform, which rather than dividing the party cohabit inside it. However, this pluralistic practice that until today has maintained the party externally united but not internally cohesive, has never been free of what Tilly, together with Tarrow and McAdam, called “contentious repertoires”. These repertoires have produced over time what this article proposes to analyze as contentious dynamics inside the party, one leading Islah towards the regime and the other towards creating an opposition against the regime. If what accounts for the party’s dynamics is the maintenance of a pluralist dialogue, where lie the limits of an externally united and internally un-cohesive political formation? Is unity viable in the long term under these conditions

Impact of Transnational Experiences

Between the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, when Yemen was still divided into two states, many Yemenis obtained scholarships to study fine arts in the Soviet Union. Future plastic artists were working on masters and doctorates in mural painting, poster design, monumental sculpture, philosophy of art and many other disciplines. After spending many years studying in the USSR, the majority of them returned to Yemen, a new unificated State after 1990. This paper focuses on the educational and cultural experiences that took place within the context of ‘socialist’ transnational solidarity, and on the variety of influences on the development of the Yemeni plastic arts movement

De la fabrique aux usages des identifications nationales : pistes de réflexion depuis la péninsule Arabique

L’ambition de ce dossier thématique est d’interroger les réappropriations plurielles et multiples des « romans nationaux » dans la péninsule Arabique. Il invite en effet à déplacer le regard de la fabrique du nationalisme aux usages des identifications à la nation. Comment s’intensifient, se brouillent, ou, au contraire, s’exacerbent les sentiments d’appartenance dans un contexte de mise à l’épreuve des constructions nationales et des formes de légitimation des autorités ? Dans quelle mesure ..