Art Doesn't Lie | Basel Dalloul on Archiving Arab Art & Decolonizing the Art Market
The afikra PodcastShow Notes
We visit Basel Dalloul at the Dalloul Artist Collective to discuss the genesis of the Dalloul Art Foundation and the mission of the new artist collective. A technologist and lawyer by training, Basel shares his family’s journey into collecting art and the vision his father had for a Pan-Arab art collection in Beirut. They discuss how Arabism failed politically, but that culturally, the art from the region shows a great deal of sync and kinship, with artists empathizing with their Arab brethren. Central to the discussion is the role of art as an archive of history. Basel highlights the importance of Arab art as a reference site and how connecting artists from Morocco to Iraq reveals common themes that some may find inconvenient to tell. The conversation then shifts to the need to decolonize the art world, critiquing the tendency to celebrate Western art and seek validation from Western curators. Basel challenges the routine belief that Arab artists or art professionals are "not competent or good enough". He also addresses the broken global gallery system, which often dictates terms to artists and unfairly takes up to 50% of an artist's take. The mission of the Dalloul Artist Collective is to shift focus from the art to the artist, acting as an artist management agency to empower and educate the artist community.
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