The Thousand and One Nights

Friday 21 | 11 | 2025
4:00–4:45 PM
Auditorium, Manarat Al Saadiyat

Thousand and One Nights Revisited: Orientalism and Contemporary Expression

Presented by Bassam Freiha Art Foundation (BFAF)

Moderator:  Michaela Watrelot, BFAF Curator & Director of Exhibitions
Speakers: Sarah Rambourg, Nja Mahdaoui Foundation Executive Director | Mathias Ary Jan, Ary Jan Art Gallery Owner

The panel considers how the enduring legacy of One Thousand and One Nights continues to shape and challenge perceptions of the Orient in art. Taking Nja Mahdaoui’s contemporary calligraphic illustrations as a point of departure, the discussion explores how Arab artists are reclaiming visual and literary narratives historically filtered through a Western gaze. In dialogue with 19th-century Orientalist painting, on view at BFAF, Mahdaoui’s works assert a counterpoint: one grounded in cultural authorship, abstraction, and Arab visual modernity. The conversation will reflect on whether Orientalism remains relevant today, how its aesthetics continue to resonate, and where they are being challenged, reimagined, or reclaimed.

1991

Gives the lecture L’Orient des Vérités at The Thousand and One Nights: Source of Inspiration 7th Euro- Arab Itinerant University, held at the University of Palermo in Sicily.

 

1992

Creates La Volupté d’en mourir, conte de ‘Alî Ben Bakkâr et Shams an-Nahâr portfolio.

 

1992

Art directs a musical performance in collaboration with the Tunisian singer Mouna Amari on the occasion of his solo exhibition Les Mille et Une Nuits for the conference Mathématiques et reflets andalous en Occitanie, produced by the AMAM (Analyse Monde Arabe et Méditerranée) research group from the Université de Toulouse II – Le Mirail, at the Bibliothèque Municipale, Toulouse.

 

1995

Les Mille et Une Nuits, Galerie Chiyem, El Menzah, Tunisia

 

1993

Les Mille et Une Nuits, Bibliothèque municipale, Toulouse

 

2004

In collaboration with the Institut français Köln, presents the silkscreen portfolio La Volupté d’en mourir at the French pavilion of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Takes part in the panel discussion The Thousand and One Nights, together with the Iraqi poet and translator Kadhim Jihad Hassan and the French specialist of Arab literature and civilization, Professor Emeritus Edgard Weber.

 

2009

Creates exclusive graphemes for Scintilla Monaco’s 1001 Nights jewellery collection, executed by the Italian designer Giampiero Borsari in Dubai.

 

2012

Member of the Scientific Committee for The Thousand and One Nights exhibition, curated by Elodie Bouffard and Anne-Alexandra Joyard at the IMA (Institut du monde arabe) in Paris.

"This story from the tales of The Thousand and One Nights is told by Sheherazade over a period of seventeen nights (153rd to 169th) and is set during the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid (786–809). It concerns the fatal love between a Persian youth known as ‘Alî Ben Bakkâr and the caliph’s favourite concubine Shams an-Nahâr. The tragic story evokes the atmosphere, tension and luxury of the court, while Mahdaoui’s illustrations based on Arabic letter-forms are a remarkably innovative approach to the relationship between text and image.”

Venetia Porter, Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East (London: British Museum Press, 2006), pp. 66-67. 

Bibliothèque nationale de France (Réserve des livres rares), Paris

The British Museum, London