Cultural revolution: How artists have been inspired by the Arab Spring

Events in London and elsewhere are highlighting responses by painters, poets and musicians to the Arab Spring, the run of political uprisings that has stunned the world, says Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

(WAEL SHAWKY)

We are all unchained Arabs now, it seems, or are eager to hug them or bottle their courage, or viscerally experience the emancipatory winds blowing across many of their sandy lands. Now it's cool to be an Egyptian, totally awesome to be a Tunisian, Syrian, Libyan, Bahraini or Yemeni dissident and to be an artist from these places is, well, very heaven. Longstanding stereotypes of Arabs as stupidly rich, misogynist, violent, ignorant and philistine have, for now, been packed away as Britain heralds its own Arab summer.

The London Mayor, Boris Johnson, and his team turn out to be diviners, spookily prescient. On 4 July they launched Shubbak (meaning window), London's first festival of contemporary Arab Culture – a wonderful idea, though at odds with the position taken by the Mayor's arts advisor, Munira Mirza. She had decreed that funding would not be forthcoming for activities themed around race, religion or ethnicity. Thankfully this iron lady did a U-turn and so an abundant feast is laid before us.

I met some Arab Londoners who claim they first mooted the idea to the Mayor's office, which ran off with it. But still, says one of them, a little ruefully: "It is good that they are doing it." Appropriation is an even more sincere form of flattery than imitation. Other cities have their own Arab fests. Liverpool, in particular, is programming some weird and wonderful events and partners some of the more original London shows.

The succulent and sometimes unsettling offerings include modern visual art; Middle Eastern rap; digital theatre; book and poetry readings; contentious debates on free expression; innovative endeavours like the Edgware Road Project developed by Julia Peyton Jones of the Serpentine Gallery; film shows; architecture and design at RIBA; dance at Sadler's Wells; the aesthetics of shopping; informal evenings of chat and music at Rich Mix in London's East End; and much more.

At a time of such flux, Arabs – diasporic and native – are hungry for affirmation, attestation of a new age of enlightenment and global respect. Ahmad Ali, a café owner, has tears in his eyes as he describes these feelings: "For so long it was hard to be an Arab, the world was against us. Now we are showing people the way and those of us with these roots have special sense, we are so proud."

Shubbak, says Boris Johnson, will give Londoners "a window through which to see contemporary Arab culture and some of the finest artists working in the region today." Though the mayor's enthusiasm is appreciated, many connoisseurs feel Boris's grandiloquence is just that. There has, in truth, been increasing interest in Arab and North African arts across Britain for some time. But the uprisings that started in December 2010 have injected new passion and urgency into works and performances, and the most apolitical artists are affected.

Way back in 2005, the extraordinary artistic directors Tim Supple and Josephine Burton started up Dash Arts, which develops new music, theatre and dance by drawing on talent and stories from the Middle East. The process is much more than collaboration – it is artistic centrifuge, where disparate elements merge and melt to produce works that astonish and delight and speak to and for our coalescing world. I agreed to be a Dash trustee, because I was overwhelmed by Supple's RSC A Midsummer Night's Dream, in various Indian languages and English. Dash co-produced Babel, a bold and beautiful dance piece by the part-Moroccan Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet, around striking Anthony Gormley sculptures. It won two Olivier Awards. Monthly Dash Cafés, at Rich Mix, introduce musicians and film-makers and encourage conversations that simply do not happen in politics or even the arts. These days much of the chat is about the Arab Spring.

In June, Tarik Saeed and Hussein El-Charkowi organised an Arab arts and music day at the Camden Centre. Saeed is a personal friend of DJ Man De Lev who started Funky Pharaoh, "London's hottest urban Arab music movement". Nearly 4,000 people turned up in Camden to hear traditionalists, acoustic bands, fusion, beautiful oudh players and rock bands. "I think many came because of the Arab Spring. We were celebrating [the] freedom our brothers and sisters are fighting for and trying to show London what we Arabs are, to break that ice, that we love freedom." Presumably the aim was also to reassure their compatriots thatArabs are not all sullenly contemplating the fastest way to paradise. El-Charkowi, who organised the art exhibition, is a portrait painter. I asked if that made him a sinner. "No. God didn't give me a gift so I didn't use it. To give and take away? I don't believe so. [It is] only a sin if you pray to the pictures. A Mufti told me that and then I painted him. He liked it very much. In Egypt now the people don't listen to ignorant religious leaders. Thank the God."

Last month, Reem Kelani, a British Palestinian singer, performed in London. She has a growing fanbase and has just brought out her debut album, Sprinting Gazelle. Her voice combines the poignancy of Billie Holiday with the glass-busting power of Aretha Franklin. The album pays homage to Sayyid Darwish (1892-1923), an Egyptian who wrote stirring and beautiful anti-imperialist songs. Kelani describes how those old compositions have new resonances and fresh meaning: "Darwish was [an] official outcast and suddenly you heard his songs in Tahrir Square. Not only that. Creative juices have been exploding left, right and centre for many artists. The last day I was in Cairo, people were just painting murals and singing. I did some recordings when I was in that historical square. Egyptian creativity is now more profound than in the past. I have seen musicians young enough to be my kids writing amazing stuff."

Other Arab interviewees felt the same wild optimism, though they withheld their full names or nationalities, as there is still fear that the forces of darkness could return. One, Abe, said: "The role of music and art is absolutely vital in the uprisings. The roots of the music have a universal appeal but also the resistance and upheavals gave it extra emotion and strength." Others spoke of a cultural "renaissance" after so long in bondage, and for some music itself has become an act of courage and protest. Shaheera Ahmad, a Masters student studying Arabic culture, is convinced that the new young Arab democrats "are using music for their message... with the internet, revolutionary music can become viral and spread fast."

The revolts are also heating the blood of Arabic migrants and refugees in Britain, who seem to be emerging out of frozen nostalgia and the ease built up after years away. Some youngsters talk of going home, to a home they have never seen, partly because the revolutions have been led by the impatient and idealistic young. Established expatriate artists and writers find themselves inspired by the dissidents. The British Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh told me of her happiness and how she thinks back on her own life decisions: "My God, these people are fighting. They didn't flee, like us, my friends. We just fled." Al-Shaykh left in her twenties, unable to stand the unrelenting violence in her country. Exiles keep preciously transported memories yet often feel dislocated from the realities of their changing homelands. Some have gone back, thrown their lot in with protesters and rekindled a fire within. That has happened to the British Egyptian novelist and activist Ahdaf Soueif, whose missives from Tahrir Square have been lyrical, passionate and authentic.

For some escapee artists, though, liberation brings only despondency.

When I met Yousif Naser, an Iraqi painter, in London, he was inconsolable. The Arab Spring means people have forgotten Iraq, he says. "Poor Iraq, now a wasteland." That is what he paints, enormous pictures, dark, hellish, from floor to ceiling, extraordinary Guernicas that few have seen, forceful yet fragile. Many, alas, are not interested in such art of pain which interferes with their rush to cash in on the mood of optimism, the current, irresistible story in the Middle East.

With the future not secured, uncertainty is causing depression among artists in Arabia too. Mohammed, a much loved poet (his real name and nation have to be kept secret, because of possible repercussions), will not just rejoice. Liberation may collapse or not come at all and is unpredictable. Fear is leading to a flooding of words out of his head – poems, songs, laments that he cannot stop or control or shape. He doesn't sleep much any more, he says, and he is taking anti-depressants. I used to teach him English in a language school many, many years ago. Then he wrote song lyrics and loved Eric Clapton. People think he is going mad and want to take him to a doctor. His outpourings are about political mirages and blood turning brown with fatigue, rotting in the arteries even as it rushes. It is unbearable stuff.

In August, Tim Supple will bring his remarkable One Thousand and One Nights to Edinburgh. The show has been written by Hanan al-Shaykh, in Arabic and English, and it features an Arab cast. Supple was due to rehearse in Alexandria when political tremors first hit Egypt, and so had to go to Fez in Morocco instead. I asked him how all this impacted on his actors and schedule. There were, first, the practical problems – inter-nation visa difficulties are always an indication of deep nervousness. Then there are actors who are marooned, away from their lands where uprisings are facing brutal state measures. Syrian actors in the troupe cannot go back for now, for example, but, Supple says: "The greatest effect has been the emotional impact on our company – the Tunisians and Egyptians arrived with a mixture of exhilaration and exhaustion – a kind of collective dazed energy – and then the Syrians began to face the most disturbing period of anxiety, upset and a feeling of helpless distance. Overall it has given the company and the work a febrile energy – more personal conflicts, sense of purpose."

Imagine the struggles of actors believing in the creative life yet feeling guilt that they should be out there instead, fighting in the conflict zones. They are frightened, too far away from home and yet obviously grateful to be so. As one Syrian actors put it: "My passion is here but my soul is there." Friends in Toronto who saw the show said they felt the tension. Hanan al-Shaykh believes that is because it animates and gives soul to today's real dramas. She can barely contain the range of emotions now within her

"The people are really affected – devastated as well as euphoric. What's happening echoes the story of the Arabian Nights – at the heart of that is justice and injustice, about wise Sultans and unwise Sultans, access, how to out-manoeuvre total power, the power of storytelling, words."

Supple's show certainly overturns all assumptions about women, sexuality, freedom and sensuality, and it bravely interrogates abusive power. One actor told the theatre critic Benedict Nightingale: "It is saying the imagination and art are the solutions to your problems, the major way to survive and find a new life... [that is] the fabulous power of art."

That power has too often been denied, even in our great and open Metropolis. "A", an Egyptian dancer in London, curvy with huge black eyes and perfume which filled the room, told me that at home they had threatened to burn her with acid. Who had? "The fundamentalists who hate anything that makes us happy. I want to dance again in front of my people and when I practice, my body moves like it never did before, sexily. London is worse now – they stop dancers and say horrible things about me. How funny it will be if Egypt is more free than London!" Think about that.

Fuad, an ambitious fine art student, told me he was questioning his training, the ideas about art he learnt in London and Paris. "Art must mean more than itself – if it is only about what a singer wants to sing or a painter who paints, it has no depth. Really moving art comes out of special times, human crises." He is determined to work in Syria, where his family came from. When he is allowed. Like "A", he feels stifled in Britain by the spread of Wahabism.

Does the sudden societal change free the artistic spirit or distract it? Do writers and artists living under oppression produce more intense, dark and complex works than those who live in ease in free nations?

My dear Syrian friend – let us call her Leila – is both elated and devastated these days. Her face changes colour from her usual beautiful olive to sickly pale, sometimes within seconds. Her 19-year-old son, Salem, was taught to play the piano by his grandfather, apparently an accomplished pianist and linguist who had studied in Paris in the 1940s. They moved to Britain in 2002, to get away, says Leila, from that "invisible pressure around everyone, like a ghost who is trying to choke you but you can't see him or touch him back. That fear in our bones."

They had a beautiful home, artworks, people they loved, yet they sacrificed all that to breathe freely and to give Salem a chance to resuscitate his talent. It didn't work. He wouldn't play. Now, he is back at the piano, slowly thawing, playing tentatively. His mother's joy is boundless but she is also perplexed. Just when Syrians are being subjected to appalling brutality, her son feels free of past terrors.

Seven months on from the first popular uprising, against Ben Ali in Tunisia, the Arab Spring has become a pat cliché, used, misused and overused by various manipulators from East to West. But artists – even budding ones – are different. Such seismic changes produce in them complicated responses – exhilaration of course, but dark premonitions and mistrust of mobs too. We saw it in South Africa, where a terrific body of resistance work, great and unique, was replaced by a flowering of a different sort. Sometimes there is foreboding too, and that sense that artists must still keep a clear eye even on those who are doing the liberating.

And then there is guilt – should artists write stories and poems, play flutes and fiddles, while the deserts burn? Fear trembles within them too. Many creative individuals I met were nervous. What if? Am I really allowed to paint any picture? Can I make Mubarak a sympathetic character in a novel and explore what makes such a man? Or would that be treason? Most of all there is responsibility – that awful feeling that artists must support the dissidents or be damned.

At the end of July, the Barbican will host artists whose work reflects the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and other lands held down by tyrants for too long. Those of us who have witnessed the events from a distance will be able to share the pain and pleasure through the imagination and talent of cultural practitioners who have been suddenly and irreversibly politicised. In the autumn, the Nour festival will return to Leighton House, featuring musicians, writers, critics and artists of Arab heritage. The brilliant Iraqi painter Suad Al-Attar will have a whole room devoted to new, dreamy pictures, trees of life. She has moved on from the heartbreaking paintings she did until last year, of war and loss.

These artists will hopefully answer some of these questions through their creations and debates and explain how in the middle of political chaos, hope and disappointment, overpowering violence and determined resistance, they protect the integrity, creativity and autonomy without which there can be no real art.

Additional reporting by Hannah Ellis-Peterson

Show and tell: Arabic art in the UK

After The Spring

Performed at The Royal Court as part of the Rough Cuts Festival, these three short plays from the Syrian Mohammad Al Attar, Lebanese Arzé Khodr and Egyptian Laila Soliman were written in response to the recent wave of political protests across the Arab world.

Royal Court Theatre, London SW1 (020 7565 5000) 11-12 August

Edinburgh International Book Festival: Revolution in the 21st Century – North Africa (Ahdaf Soueif & Hisham Matar with Allan Little)

As part of his series on revolution in the 21st century, Allan Little will be discussing the implications of the revolutionary protests in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya over recent months with the Egyptian author Ahdaf Soueif and Libyan novelist Hisham Matar, both of whom have had novels shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

ScottishPower Studio Theatre, Edinburgh (0845 373 5888) 26 August

A Night in Tahrir Square

Showcasing an extraordinary collective of veteran master musicians, singers, fishermen and philosophers who blend the Sufi tradition with Simsimiyya music from the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, this concert features the Egyptian vocalists Mustafa Said, Azza Balba and the Billy Bragg of Egypt, Ramy Essam, who lived in Tahrir Square in Cairo for the entire revolution, joining the protestors with his guitar to perform countless times a day on makeshift stages.

Barbican Hall, London EC2 (www.barbican.org.uk) 22 July

Rania Matar: A Girl and Her Room

This exhibition of photographic portraits by the Arab-American photographer Rania Matar studies and compares the lives of teenage girls in America with those in Lebanon and Palestine. Considering girls in their own spaces, the outcome is a touching and often disquieting account of the gulf between childhood and adulthood.

Mosaic Rooms, London SW5 (020 7370 9990) to 23 July

In the Penal Colony

The Palestinian company ShiberHur's dramatic performance of Kafka's work stars some of Palestine's most respected actors, including Makram J Khoury, Taher Najib and Amer Hlehel. The play, adapted by the Palestinian playwright and theatre director Amir Nizar Zuabi, will be performed in Arabic with English surtitles.

Young Vic, London SE1 (020 7922 2922) to 23 July

Edinburgh International Festival: One Thousand and One Nights

Written in Arabic, these never-ending stories, told to the King by the young Shahrazad, under sentence of death, were gathered from India, Persia and across the great Arab empire and then adapted by the acclaimed Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh. Told in two parts, the stories are performed by actors, musicians and a creative team from Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Paris and London.

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh (0131 248 4848) to 3 September

Nour Festival

The festival celebrating contemporary arts and culture from the Middle East and North Africa returns to showcase a new fashion collection from the Lebanese designer Ziad Gahame; a range of literary talks, including one considering gay and lesbian relationships in the middle east; musical performances from the Syrian composer Riyad Nicolas; and an entire room dedicated to the paintings of the Iraqi painter Suad Al-Attar. Also, next week at Leighton House, Amina Annabi (above) performs her fusion of world styles; jazz, Arabic song, rai, chaabi, reggae and jungle, as part of the Shubbak festival of contemporary Arab culture.

Leighton House, London W14 (020 7602 3316) 3 October to 30 November

Nacera Belaza: The Scream (Le Cri)

A duet performed by the Algerian dancer and her sister, this dance piece is an intense performance that explores spirituality through minimal movement, accruing into a trance-like experience through repetition and variation. It is set to a range of music including traditional Arabic chanting.

Sadler's Wells, London EC1 (0844 412 4300)23 July

MORGAN DURNO