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# Professor Charles Tripp on Art and the Arab Uprisings (Event Recording)
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/professor-charles-tripp-on-art-and-arab-uprisings-event-recording/
- Published: 2012-05-13T23:05:54.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-23T01:00:50.000Z
- Description: In the third and final event in Arab Awakening's 'Tahrir Square Meme' series, Charles Tripp, professor of middle east politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, provided a feast for the mind and the eye in his exploration of the power of art in the Arab Spring.
- Author: Arab Awakening
- Tags: Conflict & security, #Migrated, Cultural politics, Politics & activism, revolution, culture, Democracy and government, ideas, Civil Society, Social innovation, The Tahrir Square meme: Event series at the University of East London, conflict, #en, #Import 2026-04-09 17:19, #appended-excerpt

In the third and final event co-hosted by the [University of East London](http://www.uel.ac.uk/?ref=opendemocracy.net) and [Arab Awakening](https://www.opendemocracy.net/freeform-tags/arab-awakening), Professor Charless Tripp argued that 2011 was not, as is often taken for granted, "year zero for Arab creativity". Rather, he argued, the Arab spring represented a more focused concentration of well-established dissident art, pointing to the defacement of a picture of Saddam Hussein by defeated Iraqi soldiers in 1991 as a powerful smashing of the symbolic power of the dictator's face.

Art is a reaction against oppression, and the danger for any observer, particularly in the west, would be to separate the art from its context. There is a risk of imposing a western interpretation, or embracing only the most "western-friendly" face of Middle Eastern Art that western commentators like ourselves have to guard against. Near the end of his talk, Tripp related a story of Banksy painting on the controversial West Bank wall. An elderly Palestinian told him it looked beautiful, before adding: "We don't want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall. Go home."

Special thanks are due to **Alice Wagstaffe** and **Mazen Zoabi** who went to great lengths to record the event and to edit the video.

In the third andfinal event in [Arab Awakening](https://www.opendemocracy.net/freeform-tags/arab-awakening)'s 'Tahrir Square Meme' series, Charles Tripp, professor of middle east politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, provided a feast for the mind and the eye in his exploration of the power of art in the Arab Spring.