Abstract
As wars and violent conflicts devastated Iraq and Syria, neighboring Amman emerged as a center for producing, exhibiting and circulating contemporary art. With the influx of Iraqi artist and investors, followed by Syrian cultural producers a new market for cultural products has emerged. The number of art galleries in Amman more than tripled, new cultural institutions emerged, and older neighborhoods quickly gentrified. The actors who took part in these urban transformations are upper and middle-class women.
In this paper I look at role of women artists and gallery directors in Amman as producers and consumers of cultural products. I examine the emerging art scene in Amman through the lenses of urban space and gender (while venturing into the anthropology of art). Studies on urban Middle East tend to focus on the underprivileged Muslim communities, which marginalized the work on secular communities, intellectuals, and the urban upper-middle class. More specifically, it further obscured the ignored group: educated, intellectual, and secular women who manifest Western modes of agency and play a crucial role in cultural exchange between regional cities.
I view these women as contributors to the cultural and intellectual landscape of Amman: they produce and circulate knowledge; distribute art; enable social networks and social gatherings; and influence aesthetics standards by redefining the urban public sphere. Thus, they provide a multi-faceted case for thinking about the workings of urban space in the Middle East
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