This article analyzes the revived interest in issues related with the Arab world since September 2001 and its reflection in the worlds of art and culture. Exhibitions and articles published since that time have attempted to decipher a cultural reality presented as being complex and unknown by applying sociological approaches or by focusing on geographical and cultural forms of representation, which are, however, insufficient from the perspective of aesthetic thought in Art History. These shortcomings have been offset by widespread research and area studies which, grounded in the post-colonial paradigm, have led Arab art to occupy an ever larger space in global art as a whole, especially in terms of the construction of its modernity. The article contextualizes these processes with references to works by a few essential scholars and provides an introduction to the monographic issue of the journal Awraq in full.
Postcolonial paradigm, Arab art, modernity, representation.