In September 2002 I, with three other UK artists, set out on a one year, artistic expedition across the Middle East. We travelled and worked in Iran, Iraq, U.A.E., Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories.

In answer to many people’s first question: at no time did I feel in any real danger. As an artist, local people soon recognised that I didn’t have a political agenda. I was able to communicate through pictures, beyond the difficulty of language and local people were proud that I, as an Englishman, was so interested in their ‘normal’ lives. I wanted to communicate aspects of Middle Eastern life that a western audience would not normally hear about: a street level portrait so different from the media picture being presented to audiences across the world.

In Aden, where I stayed at the now disused British Consulate, I drew an old, sinking -but still operational- Fish and Chip Van, the last of a fleet of 15 which used to serve the colonial population in the 1960s. This picture never fails to surprise British audiences and especially school children.

We worked out of the back of our mobile studio, a British registration Toyota Hilux and our mission was simply to record life as we saw it. And everywhere we went we worked with local artists. From the Iranian border with Northern Iraq, which we entered on Christmas Day 2002, “as the snow and wind made a wild landscape wilder” to the cityscapes of Saudi Arabia where I noted in my diary that “everything sparkles apart from me” we found artists to work with and it was these artists that often became our window onto the world through which we were travelling.
 
In Iran, Oman, Yemen and Saudi Arabia in particular I worked with an exciting new generation of artists including Mehraneh Attashi (Iran), Hassan Meer (Oman), Abdulla Al Ameen and Fuad Al-Futaih (Yemen) and Ahmed Mater Al-Ziad Aseeri (Saudi Arabia). On a practical level these artists were the best guides, directing us to hidden locations and helping me to communicate through images where language was a barrier.
 
I first visited Sana’a in March 2003. I had flown in from the ‘future shock’ of Dubai and immediately felt more at home losing myself in the ant’s nest of the souk, where handsome, stylish and fiercely kind Yemenis go about their daily life. Later that year I returned and travelled through the Hadramawt valley to the breathtaking cities of Shibam, Seyoun and Tarim. In the ruined city of Marib I photographed a stunning young girl, called Attica, and her friend. The resulting artwork later became the cover of our book, Offscreen, four Young Artists in the Middle East.

Alongside my work with the British Museum, I will be inviting Fuad Al-Futaih, Amnah Al-Nasiri, Abdulla Al Ameen and other Yemeni artists to exhibit at an exhibition I am curating at the Brunei Gallery in central London from July –September 2007. Working with the British Council and Arabia Felix magazine we hope to fly some of the artists over and involve them in workshops and schools events. Giving young people the chance to engage with artists from the Middle East is at the heart of what I do.
 
My work in the Middle East continues, with its mission to reach as many people as possible with alternative images from the region. Due to an unprecedented cultural focus on the Middle East and Arab World over the next two years, it is now more important than ever to link the artists’ voices in the Middle East to a western audience.  
by Steven Sapleton

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For More Information
British artist Stephen Stapleton now works for the British Museum and runs the Offscreen Education Programme promoting cultural understanding between the Arab world and the UK.

For more information on Stephen’s work on the Offscreen project please visit: www.offscreenthebook.com or www.offscreened.com
 
Word into Art runs until the 3rd of September. Admission Free is free. For more information please visit: www.britishmuseum.ac.uk
 
For more information on the Festival of Muslim Cultures please visit;  http://www.muslimcultures.org