Arts & Culture Center

Opening Soon

ARAB POP ART

Between East and West

September 12, 2025 - January 23, 2026

Co-curated by Laila Abdul-Hadi Jadallah & Lyne Sneige

The MEI Art Gallery is pleased to announce Arab Pop Art: Between East and West, opening to the public on Friday, September 12.  MEI’s latest exhibition celebrates a thought-provoking artistic movement that blends elements of Arab culture with the visual language of Western pop art to comment on social, political, and cultural issues in the Middle East.

Featuring the work of 13 artists from the Arab world and its diaspora, the exhibition explores the emergence of Arab pop art as a bold fusion of cultural identity and global visual language that highlights a vibrant, evolving, and cosmopolitan Arab identity. Influenced by Western pop art icons like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, but rooted in the Middle East’s rich traditions, the 25 works on display blend everyday symbols, regional motifs, and cultural commentary with striking imagery.  The result is a show that challenges norms while increasing understanding of art, identity, and culture in the Middle East. 

The MEI Art Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 10 am - 5 pm. Select artworks will be available for sale.
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Participating artists: Yusef Alahmad (Saudi Arabia/US), Chant Avedissian (Egypt), Marwan Chamaa (Lebanon/US), Yasmine Nasser Diaz (Yemen/US), Rasha Eleyan (Palestine/UK), Hassan Hajjaj (Morocco), Tony Khawam (Syria/US), Mous Lamrabat (Morocco), Ilyes Messoudi (Tunisia), Qarm Qart (Egypt/Italy), Rana Salam (Lebanon), Water With Water (Nathan Ross Davis & Sarah Elawad, Qatar), Helen Zughaib (Lebanon/US).

Lead sponsorship by the Open Mind Project, additional support provided by the Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco in Washington, D.C.

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Closing Soon

Maximal Miniatures

Contemporary Art from Iran

January 31 - August 22, 2025

Curated by Donna Honarpisheh

Farah Ossouli. David and I (2), 2014. Gouache on cardboard. 75 x 110 cm

Maximal Miniatures features the work of 13 leading contemporary Iranian artists who reimagine the rich visual tradition of the Persian miniature genre through inventive formal techniques, including experimentations with scale, color, composition, figuration, and abstraction. As an art form, the Persian miniature is grounded in a relationship between text and image in which paintings refer to poetic verses, stories from the Book of Kings (Shahnameh), important battles, heroes, and heroines, using a combination of calligraphic lines, architectural forms, and human figures.

Building upon the miniature’s transnational legacy, the featured artists cross multiple boundaries in their work to focus on questions of identity, gender, ecology, diaspora, and the mythologies that form past and present lives. These new interpretations create images that transcend representation and enter into the realm of the surreal, abstract, and otherworldly. By expanding the miniature form beyond its position as an illustrative work tied to the illumination of manuscripts, these artists point to the aesthetic possibilities of the miniature genre and create new maximal works across painting, sculpture, and works on paper.

Featured artists: Reza Derakshani, Parinaz Eleish, Amir H. Fallah, Arghavan Khosravi, Farideh Lashai, Farah Ossouli, Kour Pour, Elham Pourkhani, Shahpour Pouyan, Iman Raad, Bahar Sabzevari, Soraya Sharghi, Mahsa Tehrani.

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