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Robert Assaye
Robert Assaye is a writer and critic living in London.

Articles Available Online


Issy Wood, When You I Feel

Art Review

December 2017

Robert Assaye

Art Review

December 2017

At the centre of Issy Wood’s solo exhibition at Carlos/Ishikawa is a room-within-a room. The division of the gallery into two viewing spaces –...

Art

April 2017

'Learning from Athens'

Robert Assaye

Art

April 2017

The history of Documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition founded in the German city of Kassel in 1955, is...

For thousands of individuals across the Arab world, 2011 has already become the year in which the political and social realities of their hitherto corrupt and despotic autocratic systems changed The world has watched with bated breath as populations in Tunisia, Egypt, and now Bahrain, Libya and also Yemen have mobilised against their (predominantly western-backed) rulers But alongside the elation has also been a host of other, less familiar sentiments: surprise, awe, intrigue and self-reflection The uprisings in Egypt and across the Arab world have done more than undermine the authority of geriatric dictatorships in the Middle East; they have called into question the founding principles of western diplomacy and the prevailing counter-Enlightenment ideology of cultural relativism   Much ink has been spilled by commentators debating the reasons for this flaring of the revolutionary spirit in the Middle East, but one view that has gained near complete consensus is that these protests are surprisingly nonpartisan: human rights and ‘dignity’ being called for above the institution of specific doctrine This particularly apolitical aspect of the protests has lent them both power and flexibility, allowing them to draw on a wide support base that transcends traditionally rigid social hierarchies   This has come as a shock for those western powers who have so vehemently justified their support of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East as the only pragmatic means of guarding against the bogeyman of Islamic fundamentalism in the region Because the Arab world, so they claimed, was both wild and uncivilised; a place where bearded men in flowing white robes roamed the streets instilling the fear of God in the hearts and minds of the people, where women were reduced to nothing but shapeless black shadows, where wild-eyed believers sacrificed themselves to the greater cause of Islam, and where the western values of liberalism and democracy were both unfamiliar and unwelcome Without the iron rods of dictators to keep them in check, the argument ran, the uncivilised wretches of these countries would find no other recourse than in Islamic fundamentalism and anti-western sentiment ‘The effect,’ says Gary Younge in an article for the

Contributor

August 2014

Robert Assaye

Contributor

August 2014

Robert Assaye is a writer and critic living in London.

New Communities

Art

January 2017

Robert Assaye

Art

January 2017

DeviantArt is the world’s ‘largest online community of artists and art-lovers’ and its thirteenth largest social network. Its forty million members contribute to a...
The Land Art of Julie Brook

Art

Issue No. 4

Robert Assaye

Art

Issue No. 4

Julie Brook works with the land. Over the past twenty years she has lived and worked in a succession of inhospitable locations, creating sculptures...

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Interview

December 2011

Interview with David Graeber

Ellen Evans & Jon Moses

Interview

December 2011

Six months ago, while preparing to interview David Graeber, I decided to conduct some brief internet research on the...

Art

September 2011

Interview with Cornelia Parker

Lowenna Waters

Art

September 2011

Cornelia Parker has over the past twenty years carved out a reputation as one of Britain’s most respected sculptors...

fiction

March 2014

The Nothing on Which the Fire Depends

Micheline Aharonian Marcom

fiction

March 2014

Friday 9 November 2009   The coffee is lukewarm, but she doesn’t mind to drink it this way. She...

 

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