This study aims to show that something significant is taking place in Qatar’s museum gift shops—a reformulation of the signifiers of national identity through contemporary commodities. While traditional gifts and handmade crafts remain prized and promoted, the introduction of modern museum merchandise is a sign that Qatar has entered into a new stage of national identity formation. Souvenirs narrating the nation are no longer natural or traditional aspects of the country’s heritage, as they have been for decades, but are now made of synthetic materials that —— in an age of global neoliberalism —— are internationally recognizable. If souvenirs are meant to signify Qatar’s cultural heritage, then how do the new products on the block— iPhone covers, accessories, t-shirts—fit into the narrative? How do modern museum merchandise and commercial artifacts sold in Qatar’s museums, souqs, and shopping malls problematize Qatar’s traditional historical narrative? Or do they extend Qatari national identity into new directions—ones that are no longer beholden to the past?

This paper addresses the power and politics of contentious creativity in Saudi Arabia. I examine the ways in which artists navigate and extend the boundaries of what is permissible under the constraints of overwhelming state power, state prohibitions on expression, and often times, state financial support for the arts. The state underwrites many endeavors yet the results sometimes challenge the state turath industry. My objective is to elicit the tension between art as dissent and art as a cooptive valve. The importance of artistic expression mushroomed over the last ten years in Saudi Arabia. You Tube videos especially expressed the resentment of many marginalized citizens and foreign residents. Stand up comics and hip-hop musicians quickly cultivated a mass following. Now, however, there is an explosion of creative and critical expression in all forms across the country. Significant debates are underway and are articulated in the wider realms of art, music, dance, comedy, film and leisure. I suggest, on one hand, the state encourages art to buttress its international image and to deflect domestic attention from difficult, explicitly political debates. On the other hand, artists push the boundaries of behavior and opinion and offer new social scripts that provide ways to communicate displeasure with the status quo. There is a cat and mouse game unfolding between state powers and divergent social forces through artistic endeavors. I also explore fraught encounters at the edges of expression and how such encounters appear to intersect with class, gender and ethnicity, e.g., the harassment of a foreign boy dancing the macarena in the street; the damage done to the speakers of a Malaysian band or resentment felt by unemployed Saudis at investment in art and leisure rather than in jobs and infrastructure. This analysis draws on authoritarian transitions, social movement and critical art studies. I utilize songs and visual arts that could be interpreted as provocative or politically salient. (It does not address social media.) The changes in Saudi Arabia are indeed significant. Too often overlooked, however, is the reality that only religious privilege and conformist social norms are being addressed. Social openings may be easier than economic agendas like taxation and less public employment. The reality is that any revision in the distribution of political power is still off limits. That is why it is critical to analyze artists in various mediums who are pushing the envelope ever closer to questions of political power.

Saudi Arabia has long been criticized both internationally and locally for sponsoring a conservative Islam. It recently discovered that the field of culture and arts is a pivotal site in which to construct and display a new national identity that counters that prevailing image. For almost two decades, this initiative has taken two major forms. First, a remarkable state-sponsored exhibition called Roads of Arabia has toured the world, thus far on display in over a dozen destinations throughout Europe, North America, and Asia. Secondly, there is large-scale state support of contemporary art exhibited abroad, facilitated by institutions, and programs launched to promote Saudi art and culture. The state’s use of art and culture marks a new stage in its cultural diplomacy, revealing a desire to portray a specific image of Saudi Arabia for international, particularly Western, consumption. Such representational activity is highlighted against a traditional image of the stronghold of a radical version of Islam often held responsible for encouraging modern fundamentalism. In this paper, I consider the role of state-sponsored art in creating a new national identity against an image of a conservative society and authoritarian government. I also pay special attention to the “burden of representation” (Mercer 1990) characterizing the representational efforts that seem directed more towards a foreign audience than towards a local one. I link this discrepancy to the sometimes-involuntary factors encouraging the project of musealization. For instance, the Roads of Arabia exhibition itself was triggered in 2006 by Jacques Chirac, the then president of France. Musealization can be defined as “the process by which an object is removed or detached from its original context or setting for its exhibition in a museum-like manner and environment” (Osterlund 2013). Concerned with the politics involved in constructing a national discourse in an international context, I examine the musealizational efforts made by the Saudi state as it curates a certain image for Western consumption. I analyze the musealization of an image that is multi-faceted. At times, the image celebrates an unknown but rediscovered past. For example, the minister of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage said that “We are almost at the beginning of discovering Arabia” (Salman 2010). At other times, however, the image emphasizes a vibrant landscape of contemporary art the patronage of which is in line with the propagated narrative of the Saudi government as a progressive one supportive of, and tolerant to, artistic expression.

An understudied effect of the Plan Abu Dhabi 2030 for a post-oil economy is investment in media production infrastructure and generous tax incentives for foreign film production in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Like neighboring Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the UAE also funds programs to educate youth on the importance of media literacy and skill in producing their own stories, and it finances features films by Emirati filmmakers, including Nawaf Al Janahi’s _Sea Shadow_ (2011), Ali F. Mostafa’s _From A to B_ (2014), and Majid Al Ansari’s _Zinzana_ (2015)—all of which are distributed in commercial DVD and streaming platforms. No other Gulf state has produced so many films, including Kuwait and Bahrain which have had much older film cultures. Unlike other Gulf states, the UAE also encourages foreigners to tell their stories in UAE. Hollywood films increasingly include Dubai and Abu Dhabi as part of their stories. _Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol_ (2011) and _Geostorm_ (2017) are set partly in Dubai. _Contagion_ (2011) makes explicit reference to Abu Dhabi, and _Furious Seven_ (2015) is partly set there. Much like taxi placards in New York and advertisements on CNN International, the films promote the UAE as western- and business-friendly like New York, London, Mumbai, Tokyo, and Singapore. With the wider distribution, these Hollywood films promote a rebranding of the Middle East through a reorienting of discourse from terrorism to tourism, from desert bedouins to urban cosmopolitans, and religious fundamentalism to neoliberal capitalism. A politics of film develops in a political economies of media through the construction of state-of-the-art production facilities and generous tax incentives to attract foreign film production and thus promote the UAE as business-friendly. The state simultaneously supports aspiring and emerging Emirati filmmakers and encourages their professional development through mentoring opportunities and workshops with foreign film professionals. This politics of film also develops through an element of discernment in the kinds of cinematic images of the UAE that foreigners can produce, thus marking a contrast from the sensationalizing orientalism of Hollywood films produced from the 1960s to the 1990s in Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, and, most egregiously, Israel. Cinematic representations frame the UAE as sharing common goals with western powers in defeating terrorism and promoting free trade, thus obfuscating complicity with western military and financial exploitation.