Akram Zaatari's videos reframe the public perception of Muslim identities

FRIEZE MAGAZINE 
By Kadish Morris

Akram Zaatari, ‘The Script’, 2018, installation view, New Art Exchange, Nottingham. Courtesy: the artist; photograph: Reece Straw

YouTube, for Akram Zaatari, is a garden which he regularly visits and observes. Scrolling through pages of the video website as if strolling through the grounds, he scans then picks the most compelling clips, later arranging them for study or display. The works featured in the renowned Lebanese artist, photographer and archivist’s latest exhibition, ‘The Script’, is the result of years of sifting through publicly-shared content generated by people from the Arab world, most of which contains activities that have proliferated via copycat re-enactment resulting in ad hoc sub-genres that reveal perhaps previously undocumented facets of the communities that sustain them. [More]