Paris Exhibition Celebrates Divas of Arab World

The Arab Golden Age female artists are celebrated in a new exhibition, titled “Divas”, at the Institut du Monde Arabe, in Paris.

Umm Kulthum is the star of the exhibition, which runs through Sept. 26, is a richly illustrated flashback to the period between the 1920s and the 1970s.

[caption id="attachment_247724" align="alignleft" width="543"] Umm Kulthum[/caption]

The exhibition shed light on the women performing on stage and screen without fear of censorship, religious condemnation, and feminists, political activists, and pioneering impresarios facing down the patriarchy.

It featured the artists' costumes, jewelry, passports and posters, album covers, and high-heeled shoes.

Visitors can also watch footage of breathtaking performances and posing on the beach in hot pants, an image that contrasts sharply with present-day Western perceptions of the Arab world as a place where women are veiled from head to toe and silenced by all-powerful men.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Costumes worn by Lebanese singer Sabah in the 1970s, on display at the Arab World Institute.[/caption]

In a statement, Élodie Bouffard, the exhibition’s co-curator, noted that the exhibition breaks down a fair number of clichés and preconceived ideas about this part of the world. Women actually occupied center stage, embodied modernity, and were not at all absent from history.

The institute’s president, Jack Lang, who was France’s culture minister in the 1980s and early 1990s, recalled in an interview, that when he was a boy visiting Cairo, he sneaked into a theater where Umm Kulthum was performing and was stunned, absolutely breathtaken.

Lang added that he later heard another singer, Fayrouz, the exhibition’s other high-profile pa while touring in Lebanon as a young actor. He gave a medal as culture minister in 1988.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="600"] Fayrouz[/caption]

Lang noted that these women were not just remarkable vocalists, adding some participated in their country’s struggle for independence from the colonial powers, Britain and France, and joined in a wave of nationalism that swept across the Arab world.

The exhibition opens in pre-World War II Cairo, the artistic and intellectual hub of the Arab world, where concert halls and cabarets proliferated, many of them established by women, who also had a significant role in the film industry, working as directors, producers, actresses, costume makers, talent scouts," the exhibition co-curator Hanna Boghanim said.

Boghanim noted that many of these women came from very humble backgrounds, including Umm Kulthum, who is introduced in a velvet-curtained enclosure in the show.

Her story is told through photographs, album and magazine covers, videos, and bright-colored costumes created for the 2017 biopic “Looking for Umm Kulthum,” directed by the Iranian-born artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat.

Meanwhile, Fayrouz section featuers posters, album and magazine covers, photographs and other paraphernalia, some compiled by a dedicated fan.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Warda[/caption]

In contrast, the section of Algerian-Lebanese pa Warda is full of her personal possessions, which included sunglasses, medals, earrings, passports, an oud instrument, a brown leather suitcase, and an Agatha Christie crime novel.

The exhibition gets racier as it goes along, culminating with the last wave of 20th-century Arab pas, including the Egyptian-born Dalida, who became a superstar in France.

The displays also shows sequined evening gowns, stilettos, and powder compacts. There are also video monitors of a woman singing from a hot tub and rows of others lifting their legs in skimpy outfits.