Whose “Divas”? Exhibition, Gender, and the International Circulation of a Contemporary “Arab” Artistic Memory

Abstract How are gender, nostalgia, and memory intertwined? How does displaying non-Western artistic references in Western cultural institutions produce practices of othering entangled with the national context where exhibitions are designed? How does the use of women’s bodies to narrate the artistic memory of the other reveal a complex relationship with colonialism? To answer these questions, this article takes the “Arab divas” exhibition (2021–2024) as a departure point to reflect on exhibitions as sites where national and international politics are entangled. It does so by focusing on the politics of nostalgia, their representations, and their experiences in exhibitions. The article explains the role of exhibitions in Western cultural institutions in producing colonial nostalgia. It argues that colonial nostalgia becomes gendered when these institutions use women as instrument to celebrate a selected past labeled as “Golden age.” The article is divided into five sections. In the first section, it questions “whose divas,” and explores how the exhibition defines it. Then, it explains how the exhibition homogenizes Arab artistic memory and produces processes of othering. After this, it links the exhibition to national and international contexts where it was designed and first displayed (Arab World Institute in Paris). In the final part, it focuses on the gendered colonial nostalgia.