Artwork of Arab Female Artists in the Context of Contemporary Cultural Life in the Middle East

This graduate paper is devoted to the study of the work of Arab female artists in the context of the contemporary cultural life of the Middle East. The main purpose of this work is to analyze the characteristics of female artwork in the Arab region. The material used for the study were selected works of Arab artists Gazbia Sirry and Ghada Amer that were created in the period from 1950 to 2010. The choice of masters is due to the fact that they are of Egyptian origin, but Gazbia Sirri works within the regional art scene, and Ghada Amer represents the Arab diaspora in an international cultural environment. The contemporary Middle Eastern art scene is a developing phenomenon, and female creativity is given special attention in the Arab and international cultural space, so the analysis of the oeuvre of Arab artists becomes an urgent research priority. During the study of the main stages of the formation of the Arab art scene was used a comparative historical method. Methods of cultural studies were used in the study of the theory and history of the interaction of Western and Eastern cultures in the XX-XXI centuries. Artworks of Gazbia Sirry and Ghada Amer were studied using artistic and stylistic analysis, and some characteristic features of their creative work were singles out. The study of the creative path of Gazbia Sirri demonstrated that women's art has been integrated into the general cultural process in the Middle East. Female artists turned to social and gender issues and have used images of women, but they belonged to the general artistic movement in the region. Studying the peculiarities of the creativity of Ghada Amer showed that the female artists of the Arab diaspora enter into a dialogue with the society of the country of residence. Nevertheless, the works of such masters are presented by curators as a separate trend in modern Arabic art.