They had been discussing the unveiling movement, and he had declared his support for the complete unveiling of both sexes, male and female, only to suddenly ask, 'Or, did you ask me about the Nude? Yes, I am one of its champions. The Nude in everything. The nudity of women; just as the nudity of this glass! The poet had even spoken about a series of encounters with a prostitute, whose veils he removed until she stood nude on the carpet, asserting, 'a woman who has a beautiful face and body is more precious than all Arab monarchies'. At stake in this exchange about the Nude, then, as Rihani understood, was a Gordian knot of Arab modernity: problems of gendered relations, access as power, beauty as resource, intoxication as poetry, desire as idealized and extramarital, all exacerbated by foreign Mandate rule. Curated by Octavian Esanu and Kirsten Scheid, this meticulously researched exhibition offers a revelatory chronicle of contested visuality in Mandate Lebanon primarily, but also Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Algeria. It demonstrates in dazzling detail how the naked body offered Arab intellectuals and artists a vast terrain of social and political activation. It could be mediated into flecks of oil paint, the ben-day dots of print media, or the cells of the moving image, become 'enflamed' or made to dance, be held captive, or even be killed either by the stifling mores of proper society, or by mortal wounds inflicted by persons suffering from its pathologies.

The Straits Times
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A video of a Danish photographer and an unknown woman scaling the Great Pyramid of Giza is being investigated by Egyptian authorities after it surfaced online. The pair also reportedly took a photo of themselves in the nude at the summit and posted it online. Andreas Hvid's actions sparked outrage among social media users in Egypt who said that he had disrespected their culture and society. The three-minute YouTube video, which was uploaded last Wednesday Dec 5 , shows a man and a woman climbing up the ancient structure at night. The woman's face was pixellated in the video. At the end of the video, the woman is seen taking off her shirt at the summit, with her back facing the camera.
The Artist as Awakener at AUB
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To those on the periphery of the culture, the idea of a group of Arab women allowing themselves to be photographed nude, in a hammam, or communal bath, in the Middle East seems unlikely. The stereotypical image of Arab women assumes they are devoutly practicing Muslims, wearing hijabs and long skirts and conducting themselves with religious modesty, exposing their bodies exclusively to their husbands, and perhaps to female relatives or friends behind the closed doors of a hammam. Would they allow themselves to be captured in such an environment by a boundary-pushing year-old American artist, for a gallery show?