What stories do women of the Middle East have to tell?

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Nobel Peace Prize nominee and one of the Arab world’s most prominent bloggers, Lina Ben Mhenni, joins a prestigious list of female speakers for 'She Who Tells a Story', a half-day symposium presented by New Art Exchange. The symposium will reflect on current feminist positions in the Middle East and explore how women working in creative practices in the region have sought to tell their, and others’ stories.

Reflecting on the challenges and possibilities afforded by their identities as women, the politics of self-representation and the nature of their creative practice, the symposium seeks to construct a range of interdisciplinary, transnational conversations through which the women can explore their common, as well as their different, experiences.

Each speaker provides a distinctive insight into a different facet of culture and contemporary history in the Middle East. Such a collection of viewpoints should help challenge Western perceptions of women from and in the Middle East.

'She Who Tells a Story' has been developed within the context of New Art Exchange’s main gallery exhibition, ‘Realism in Rawiya’, which presents work of the first all-female photographic collective to emerge from the Middle East, Rawiya. Rawiya – which translates from Arabic to ‘she who tells a story’ – endeavours to present an insider’s view of a region in flux, balancing its contradictions while reflecting on social and political issues and stereotypes.

Event details

When: 2p.m. – 6p.m. Friday 15 February

Where:  New Art Exchange, 39 – 41 Gregory Boulevard, Nottingham, NG7 6BE

Admission: £10 (£8 concession)

How to book: Please book in advance as places are limited to 65. Please call NAE’s box office: 0115 9248630 or email [email protected] to book your spot.

Would you like to know more about photography in the Middle East? See Ian Jones' review of the V&A's exhibition, 'Light of the Middle East' in this month's Cassone.