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Talal Moualla – Syria/United Arab Emirates

I am Talal Moualla, artist and poet and critic. I’m interested in all the parts of culture in our Arabic country. I was in Syria in ’92 in Ugarit, a city, the capital of Venezia before. This is because I had responsibility for the culture of this country. Ugarit is a city Mediterranean, and I lived also in the desert in Syria.

This is the reason I have in me together the desert and the water. This gives me more to try (help) to explain my idea about the man—the man, not in my country, but the man in the world in general, and how it feels, what is different now, what changes now in this work in the philosophy, in the thinking, in the politics, and all this. I work with the face. The face, I try in this image again to return to the figurative, but a new figurative, not an old figurative.

Now I work in Sharjah-- Sharjah the cultural capitol of the United Arab Emirates. I’m director of the Arabic Art Center and attempt to organize more activity in the arts. I founded the Biennale of Sharjah in ’93, and I found this good relation with the artists of the world in general. This is because the movement artistic changed now in the UAE, and we can show the young artists and show the postmodernism in his art, because the artists share their experiences in this country. We need this and we do more workshops with him, etc. etc.

I like in my painting or in my criticism to see what is happening in the world now. I’d like to change some things, say in the Biennale. I don’t like to see the new art now in activities in the Biennale. I know the Biennale now is more than 100 years in Venice, and we see now more than 500 biennales in the world. Maybe more than this, but I counted more than 500 biennales in the world. The biennale is an activity for the cities, not for other things.

Now there is new contact—in electronic or in computer or internet, etc. Now (there is) no place, no geography, no cities. This is the reason I’m interested in this activity—to create other activities, not the biennale, but other. And in this I need help from all artists in the world and all organizers to do other activity for this. Thank you.

moualla@emirates.net.ae