Algerian artist Rachid Koraïchi (born 1947) created The Invisible Masters as a set of 99 handmade cotton banners. Each banner features Koraïchi's inventive signs, and pays homage to one of 14 Sufi mystic masters such as Rûmî and Hafez. This book reproduces the entire series with critical commentary.

Featuring more than 100 extraordinary works of art from 1800 to the present, Earth Matters reveals how African individuals and communities have visually mediated their most poignant relationships with the land—whether it be to earth as a sacred or medicinal material, as something uncovered by mining or claimed by burial, as a surface to be interpreted and turned to for inspiration, or as an environment to be protected. Both internationally recognized and emerging contemporary artists are represented, from the continent and diaspora, including El Anatsui, Ghada Amer, Sammy Baloji, Ingrid Mwangi and William Kentridge. Highlights include a pair of rare Yoruba onile figures, a one-of-a-kind Punu reliquary from Gabon, and 3 bocio figures from the personal collection of legendary French dealer Jacques Kerchache. The text includes statements by contemporary African artists including Wangechi Mutu, Clive van den Berg, Allan de Souza, and George Osodi. National Museum of African Art curator Karen E. Milbourne explores how diverse African concepts of healing, the sacred, identity, memory, history, and environmental sustainability have all been formed in relation to the land in this pioneering scholarly study.

Is it possible to speak of a contemporary art with an Islamic difference? This question is the subject of an exhibition that brings together artists who come from the Islamic world. Tapping into certain aesthetic, political, and spiritual notions, this book seeks to highlight the nuanced reactions of each individual artist.

Against the musty stereotypes and prejudices that still consider Africa a dark continent full of nameless, Third World nations always striving but never managing to catch up with the West, Authentic/Ex-Centric positions Africa as the source of many of the ideas associated with European modernism. From Cubism's radical abstraction to 70s performance art and its use of ritual, shamanism, and magic, the influence of African art has long been underap-preciated. Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name held to critical acclaim on the fringes of the 2001 Venice Biennale, Authentic/Ex-centric offers a glimpse of the ways in which African and African and African Diaspora artists have interpreted and translated the aesthetic and social experiences of post-colonial Africa into new idioms of artistic expression, and argues for their proper location in the broad narrative of global conceptualism. Including work by such artists as Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Willem Boshoff, Godfried Donkor, Rachid Koraichi, Berni Searle, and Yinka Shonibare.

The first-ever book-length history of Arab graphic design PROSE AWARD WINNER, ART HISTORY & CRITICISM Arab graphic design emerged in the early twentieth century out of a need to influence, and give expression to, the far-reaching economic, social, and political changes that were taking place in the Arab world at the time. But graphic design as a formally recognized genre of visual art only came into its own in the region in the twenty-first century and, to date, there has been no published study on the subject to speak of. A History of Arab Graphic Design traces the people and events that were integral to the shaping of a field of graphic design in the Arab world. Examining the work of over eighty key designers from Morocco to Iraq, and covering the period from pre-1900 to the end of the twentieth century, Bahia Shehab and Haytham Nawar chart the development of design in the region, beginning with Islamic art and Arabic calligraphy, and their impact on Arab visual culture, through to the digital revolution and the arrival of the Internet. They look at how cinema, economic prosperity, and political and cultural events gave birth to and shaped the founders of Arab graphic design. Highlighting the work of key designers and stunningly illustrated with over 600 color images, A History of Arab Graphic Design is an invaluable resource tool for graphic designers, one which, it is hoped, will place Arab visual culture and design on the map of a thriving international design discourse.

Offering a wealth of perspectives on African modern and Modernist art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, this new Companion features essays by African, European, and North American authors who assess the work of individual artists as well as exploring broader themes such as discoveries of new technologies and globalization. A pioneering continent-based assessment of modern art and modernity across Africa Includes original and previously unpublished fieldwork-based material Features new and complex theoretical arguments about the nature of modernity and Modernism Addresses a widely acknowledged gap in the literature on African Art

The Hand of Fatima traces the khamsa, or hand motif, across the Arab-Islamic world and beyond. It explores multifarious khamsas, from amulets to fine art, with a special focus on the hand symbol in Algeria, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and Shiʿism.