Nada Shabout – Spirituality, Secularism, and Modernism in West Asian Art

Lesson part of the course Decolonised History of Art: Global Narratives from 1900 to the Present. Click here for the programme and the full course.

This lesson examines artistic production in West Asia in the decades of state formation, both in parallel with and following independence from European colonial rule, when the rise of pan-Arab and socialist ideologies reshaped cultural life across the region. In this shifting context, artists negotiated the tension between spiritual legacies, secular modernisms, and the search for cultural autonomy, situating their work at the crossroads of local identity and global avant-garde currents. The lesson examines the phenomenon of horoufiya and how it differed from modern calligraphy, highlighting figures such as Madiha Omar, Hashim al-Khattat, and Jumana El-Husseini, who transformed the Arabic script into a site of aesthetic and spiritual innovation. It also considers the weaving between figuration to abstraction in the work of Shakir Hassan Al Said, Baya Mahieddine, Milad al-Shayeb, Elias Zayat, and Kamal Boullata, where formal experimentation reflected broader debates on identity, memory, and modernization. Attention is also given to the Bagdad Modern Art Group and the concept of istilham al-turath, understood as the reactivation of heritage as a source of inspiration and innovation.

Nada Shabout is an art historian, curator, and educator renowned for her pioneering scholarship and curatorial work on modern and contemporary Arab art. Founding president of of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art from the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey, her research addresses the art historical neglect of modern and contemporary Arab art and its absence from the art history canon.