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(Photo: Harry Foster  © Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation)


"- I chose to create furniture that bridges the gap between my Islamic carpet and my computer table.

- You can do anything with the Arabic language ... make it sing, make it jump. You can even make it dance.

- I mixed together different alphabets-Arabic, Chinese, Latin, Cyrillic ... as if they belonged to a single language.

- I needed time to remember and time to forget ..."
Yasser Badreddine Liliane Karnouk Nihal Mazloum Aldin Rashid Taouffik Semmad Shwan Sanaa M. Wassef

Whether inspired by the philosophy of Islamic art or by popular Arab culture, whether appropriating the traces of a luminous past or seeking to innovate, whether meditating on meaning or making words and colours dance for pure pleasure, these artists are forever mixing together influences, setting them in dialogue with each other, building bridges and creating links-links between the past and the present; connections among peoples, civilizations and cultures; bonds among ourselves ... we of yesterday, we of today, we who cross boundaries.

If the artist dialogues with tradition, he or she also and above all dialogues with our imagination, for the moment of a silence, the moment of a gaze, the moment in which mazag (pleasure) suddenly appears.