The Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris (IMA) will honour the victims of the terrorist attacks in the city last winter with poetry readings running throughout the night on 12 November. These will mark the events of 13 November last year, when simultaneous attacks orchestrated by Islamic extremists at the Bataclan theatre and at several restaurants in Paris killed 130 people.
Participants in the poetry night include the Lebanese artist Zeina Abirached, who will illustrate poems selected by the French-Lebanese writer Wissam Arbache; Abirached will draw images to accompany the verses on a screen during Arbache’s lecture. Breakfast is due to be served at 7am, accompanied by a reading and performance by the French artist Brigitte de Malau. “Poetry is a way of remembering,” the IMA said in a statement.
The IMA is a forum for talks and seminars exploring sensitive political and cultural issues linked to North Africa and the Middle East. Last month, it organised a conference in collaboration with the Paris-based, non-profit Roberto Cimetta Fund, focusing on the plight of artists in exile. The event aimed to increase “awareness of the current situation of Arab artists and cultural operators in exile, particularly among their European counterparts, in order to promote understanding, exchange and engagement”, the IMA said in a statement.
Ferdinand Richard, the chairman of the Roberto Cimetta Fund, who chaired the event, says: “There are so many images of terror on the television, and we have no idea what is really happening in countries such as Syria, where there are so many good artists.”
