Curating performance from contemporary Arab artists is often met with extremes. Whether fetishism or rejection, orientalism or xenophobia, curating Arab performance evokes multiple challenges that this panel will tackle. Gathering scholars who are equally specialists working in the fields of curation, education, and production, the panel will look at notions of canon and fetishism as proposed by Ismail Fayed, will look at migration and culture policy through the work of Mey Seifan, and the necessity for developing new economic and entrepreneurial structures to advance radical performance curation through the work of Sarah El Miniawy.

Join us in an informal gathering around authentic food and drink at the NoLita outpost of the Egyptian street food restaurant Zooba, and enjoy conversations with artists and designers from the New York Arab Festival. Learn about upcoming projects, ask about their inspiration, and explore Egyptian food while learning about contemporary artistic practices from young Arab makers and creators.

How can artists, architects, and theorists from cities as diverse as New York, Cairo, and Riyadh mobilize public art to reclaim the commons? What promise - or peril - does digital art and Web3 pose to this collaboration? This panel discussion brings together artists, thinkers, creators, and policy-makers to ponder these questions and propose arts and culture as tools for rebuilding public sphere.

In cities around the world, climate change is making visible the infrastructures that were once hidden. What is the role of art in this process? How can art hasten and clarify this infrastructural awakening? This panel discussion brings together artists, thinkers, creators, and policy-makers to explore what it would mean to truly embed artistry within the infrastructural networks that sustain us.

Khalid Abdel-Hadi, a Jordanian-Palestinian artist, curator, and activist, is founder of “MyKali”, a SWANA-region, conceptual, queer/feminist/intersectional webzine launched in 2007. During this conversation, Khalid Abdel-Hadi will discuss working outside of institutionalized structures, as well as curatorial practices in the Arab diaspora.