This week we are truly excited to share with you a taste of some of our favorite creative endeavors coming out of France, Afghanistan, Iran, and Palestine. These brilliant creators are filmmakers, visual artists, street artists, and musicians. Some are responding to political issues in their communities, while others are making beautiful works as a part of an essential cultural contribution. We invite you to spend some time here today and let yourself sink into some of this genius.

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Nika Khanjani

Nika Khanjani’s film and art practice is with experimental hand-made films, expanded documentary, and video sketches. In her work she examines notions of dislocation, memory, the effect of distance on relationships, and ways of applying ecriture feminine to image-making.

CopyRight (16mm, 6min, 2006) An old man, a photocopy machine, and a secret.  This film is a poetic vignette of an old man, an old photocopy machine, and a secret. This film is one of several about the lives of volunteers, students, and professors who are part of the Baha’i University in Iran, which ran underground for over 25 years.

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Ramallah Underground

Music collective based in Ramallah, Palestine.

http://www.ramallahunderground.com/

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Arabesque – Graphic Design from the Arab World and Persia

Image from the Talib Type Project

Check out one of their projects called Talib Type, where the creation of three new Latin fonts that have an Arabic look and feel, have made a great contribution to the discussion around contemporary graphic design.

http://arabesque-graphics.com/main.html

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Princess Hijab

Princess Hijab is an anonymous street artist based in France. Her work involves painting veils on billboard advertisements in the Paris metro. She is at once a mysterious and very well respected artist.

To read more about her radical work and view some images please click here.

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Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat is a globally acclaimed video, film and photographic artist. Her subject matter has ranged from the deeply personal to the political. Turbulent is one of her most famous pieces.

An excellent reflection of this piece written by Atom Egoyan for the fall 2001 issue of Filmmaker magazine, when this piece first showed at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.

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Talibanksy

Talibanksy is a small group of anonymous street artists based in Kabul. Their work comments on the cost of war at both the financial and human level.

http://talibanksy.posterous.com/