This oral history, with insights from the publication’s editors and contributors, delves into its mission to shape perspectives on the Middle East

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie on 13BC and the artists using art, science and technology to map the world

Finding solace in the joy and eroticism of the late Lebanese artist’s work

A Beirut-based organization supporting Syrian filmmakers captures the response of contemporary art to the wars of our time

Things to chew over: In the Absence of Our Mothers makes histories of displacement uncomfortably felt

The importance of art in war zones

From Berlin to Beirut; from attacks on arts spaces to the birth of a daughter: the year in review

A round-up of the best current shows in the Lebanese capital

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie considers a collaborative intervention by Suhu Traboulsi and Walid Raad

From Hans Haacke’s 1993 exhibition ‘Germania’ through the works of the Palestinian writers Mahmoud Darwish and Wael Zuaiter to the films of Francesco Rosi and Jim Jarmusch – the evolution of Emily Jacir’s artistic imagination

What is the future of arts education in Baghdad?

On the ruptures and restlessness of much contemporary art, and how this is reflected in the 56th Venice Biennale

Can Egypt’s NGOs survive repressive new legislation?

How to survive exile

A slew of recent exhibitions and projects reveal an interest in the artist as anthropologist

Lady adventurers and the legacies of colonial history

Can art survive a civil war?

The act of writing and the ‘shadowy constitution of authorship’

The spiritual and the secular in art today

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie is a writer based between Beirut, Lebanon and New York, USA.