Author
Juliet Highet
Trained as a photographer, Juliet Highet lived in East and West Africa as well as India. In Nigeria she began writing and later edited magazines and books from the UK. Widely published on travel, the arts and culture, she is the author of Frankincense: Oman's Gift to the World (Prestel, 2006) and a specialist in traditional and contemporary Arab, African and South Asian cultures and heritage.
Articles by this author
The Artists of Dialogue
Arts & Culture
In 1884, a 23-year-old painter named Étienne Dinet took a break from Paris to travel to Algeria, where he became a prominent Orientalist artist—a European depicting scenes of cultures not his own. In the 1990s, art collector Shafik Gabr noticed that Dinet stood out among a number of Orientalists whom Gabr says approached their work as an “art of face-to-face engagement between East and West.” Gabr credits Dinet and other “respectful observers” with the inspiration to inaugurate East-West: The Art of Dialogue, an annual intercultural encounter program for emerging leaders.
Sea of Tears, Garden of Memory
Arts & Culture
Moved to memorialize the mostly anonymous people who continue to perish while crossing the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa to Europe, Algerian artist Rachid Koraïchi has opened both an exhibition and a working cemetery.
Hassan Hajjaj's Hot Remix
Arts & Culture
With brilliant colors, bold patterns and unbridled exuberance, photographer and designer Hassan Hajjaj has become one of the world’s most popular artists, remixing esthetics from Marrakesh to London, from heritage to hip-hop, with a playful, subversive swagger.
Modernism Awakening
Arts & Culture
The Modernist movement expressed postcolonial aspirations, elevated traditional cultures and redefined identities from Morocco to Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, the Levant, the Gulf and more. As Arab Modernist paintings command rising prices at art auctions, curators and historians are paying increasing attention to its diverse and dynamic origins.
More Than One Story: The Jameel Prize
Arts & Culture
Open to artists of any background and awarded in June for the fourth time, the biennial Jameel Prize recognizes contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition, encouraging what one judge calls the “alternative modernities” that are “happening everywhere.”