Page - 179 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 4/2018

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 4 2o18 Charlotte Bank | Remaking a World 179 2012 and 2014 as a reaction to the war. 19 But apart from these initiatives that were launched with the specific purpose of presenting art and culture from Syria, it has been the many smaller non-profit project spaces that are characteristic of Berlin’s art scene that have offered opportu- nities for Syrian artists and included them in their regular programming.20 This has given the new arrivals possibilities to exhibit together with other artists, who are already established in Berlin and to interact with diverse audiences. In this way, it has enabled the artists to get a foot in the door of the highly competitive art scene of the German capital. But regardless of such positive beginnings, there still remains a number of important caveats that I will outline in what follows. Despite the so-called “global turn” of the international art world since the 1990s, artists, and particularly those from non-Western countries, are often affiliated with their places of origin and expected to represent a particular cultural identity. Works by Middle Eastern artists are often presented according to an alleged uniformity of the socio-cultural and political sphere of this vast region, that entirely disregards its diversity. One example of this tendency is the ubiquity of themes related to religious culture, especially practices of “veiling”, that have been common in exhibitions of contemporary Middle Eastern art.21 For Middle Eastern artists living in the West, the need to present a less essentializing picture of their cultural background becomes pertinent. Like all other migrants, these artists are faced with the reductive, ethnic-culturalist definitions of migration that still prevail in mainstream cultural debates.22 However, the wish to counter stereotypical reductionism easily risk reducing their work to “reactions”, rather than active productions. Expected to conform to a particular cultural identity, they are often called upon to “explain” aspects of their countries of origin to Western audiences through their work, placing an emphasis on educational aspects rather than artistic ones.23 That the multifaceted subtleties of the art works are at great risk to be lost in this process goes without saying. Yet success as artists might mean actively engaging with such expectations and balancing them, while developing strategies to steer free of exploitation. For newly arrived Syrian artists, balancing the expectations of the local art scene with their own combined desires to produce work according to their own inclinations and establish them- selves as professional artists, remains challenging. Syrian artists in Berlin are still relatively sought after due to Syria’s regular presence in the news, but also because audiences remain interested in the fate of the country and its people. For the art scene and market, this is an asset. Simultaneously, the need to re-establish their careers in Berlin leads Syrian artists to actively seek out opportunities to engage with the artistic infrastructure, whether through exhibitions, talks or other forms of participation in events. In their (understandable) eagerness to participate in the city’s art scene, there is a considerable danger of becoming trapped in a cycle of producing 19 Kulturvertretung. 2014. KunstStoff Syrien 2014. das non-profit-project 29. März – 8. April 2014, Berlin <http:// www.kulturvertretung.de/kunststoff-syrien/kunststoff-syrien> [accessed accessed 10th June 2018]. 20 Examples are: Art-Lab Berlin <https://artlabberlin.wordpress.com>, Bi’bak: <http://bi-bak.de>, Box-Freiraum: <http://www.box-freiraum.berlin>, Kurt-Kurt: <http://www.kurt-kurt.de>. 21 See e.g. Nahidi 2013, p. 210 for a discussion of this issue. Behiery 2012 examines a series of very different projects related to the practice of “veiling” and discusses how such works deconstruct and counter mainstream discourses around the “veil”. 22 Hess 2013, p. 110, 114. 23 See Naef 2010, pp. 487 – 489 for observations on exhibitions of Iraqi artists in the West.