Google Doodle celebrates the life of Palestinian artist Maliheh Afnan
Afnan’s used mixed media in her “written paintings” and works
She explores themes of exile and displacement alongside Middle Eastern conflicts and her own cultural heritage
Updated 04 January 2023
Arab News
DUBAI: Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the life of Maliheh Afnan, considered by many as one of the most important Middle Eastern artists of the 20th century.
Afnan’s used mixed media in her “written paintings” and works, which are mostly inspired by archaeological scrolls.
Maliheh Afnan. (Wikipedia)
She explores themes of exile and displacement alongside Middle Eastern conflicts and her own cultural heritage.
The artist was born in 1935 in Haifa, Palestine, to Persian parents. Afnan and her parents later moved to Beirut, where she attended high school and received her Bachelors of Art at the American University in Beirut.
She moved to Washington DC in 1956, where she received her Masters of Arts in Fine Arts at the Corcoran School of Art in 1962.
During her studies, she used Arabic and Persian scripts in her assignments, which prompted her teacher to introduce her to American calligraphy artist Mark Tobey.
Afnan lived in Kuwait between 1963 and 1966, and later moved to Beirut where she stayed until the civil war forced her to leave in 1974. She spent the next 23 years in Paris and had numerous exhibitions before moving to London in 1997.
Afnan’s interest in written language developed when she was a child as she used to scribble imaginary text and numbers on pages, developing a distinct style of abstract calligraphy.
Her works are featured in various galleries throughout the Middle East, several European museums and in the renown New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
LONDON: Few cultural imports have crossed borders as unexpectedly, or as powerfully, as Grendizer, the Japanese giant robot that half a century ago became a childhood hero across the Arab world, nowhere more so than in Saudi Arabia.
Created in Japan in the mid-1970s by manga artist Go Nagai, Grendizer was part of the “mecha” tradition of giant robots. The genre was shaped by Japan’s experience during the Second World War, and explored themes of invasion, resistance and loss through the medium of science fiction.
But while the series enjoyed moderate success in Japan, its true legacy was established thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. (Supplied)
The anime “UFO Robot Grendizer” arrived on television in the region in 1979, dubbed into Arabic and initially broadcast in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. The story it told of the heroic Duke Fleed, a displaced prince whose planet had been destroyed by alien invaders, struck a chord with children growing up amid regional conflict and occupation by Israel.
Its themes of defending one’s homeland, standing up to aggression and protecting the innocent were painfully relevant in the region, transforming the series from mere entertainment into a kind of emotional refuge.
Much of the show’s impact came from its successful Arabization. The powerful Arabic dubbing and emotionally charged voice-acting, especially by Lebanese actor Jihad El-Atrash as Duke Fleed, lent the show a moral gravity unmatched by other cartoons of the era.
While the series enjoyed moderate success in Japan, its true legacy was established thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East. (Supplied)
The theme song for the series, performed by Sami Clark, became an anthem that the Lebanese singer continued to perform at concerts and festivals right up until his death in 2022.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. For many, it was not only their first exposure to anime, it also delivered lessons on values such as justice and honor.
Grendizer was so influential in the region that it became the subject of scholarly research, which in addition to recognizing the ways in which the plight of the show’s characters resonated with the audience in the Middle East, also linked the show’s popularity to generational memories of displacement, particularly the Palestinian Nakba.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. (Supplied)
Half a century later, “Grendizer” remains culturally alive and relevant in the region. In Saudi Arabia, which embraced the original version of the show wholeheartedly, Manga Productions is now introducing a new generation of fans to a modernized version of the character, through a video game, The Feast of The Wolves, which is available in Arabic and eight other languages on platforms including PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, and a new Arabic-language anime series, “Grendizer U,” which was broadcast last year.
Fifty years after the debut of the show, “Grendizer” is back — although to a generation of fans of the original series, their shelves still full of merchandise and memorabilia, it never really went away.
