Lennart Lehmann (Berlin, Germany), 18 August 2003

On the exhibition, "Life Under the Crescent Moon: Home Decor in the Arabic World", at the Vitra Design Museum in Berlin

(click here to read the Qantara.de article about the exhibition)

Let's imagine an exhibition were to take place in an outer suburb of Cairo, under the title, "Home Decor in Europe". We might be shown rustic farmhouse parlours, picturesque Black Forest chateaus, dirndls and beer steins. A European visitor would shake his head and send home a postcard joking about the experience.

The exhibition in the Vitra Design Museum in no way represents contemporary "home decor under the Crescent Moon from Syria to Morocco", even if it is attempting to do so. What we're shown instead is a collection of artefacts from ways of life and household styles that are currently heading for extinction: nomads' tents, the famous "hi-rise" buildings of Sanaa in Yemen, Iraqi houses thatched with reeds and Moroccan dwellings made of clay.

"Ah yes - cultural identity…", sighs the visitor. But somehow it all seems terribly familiar; we're probably recalling the delightful illustrations in some old copy of "The Arabian Nights". Sad to say, it seems that (yet again) no-one's managed to take a peek at the bedrooms of the wealthy upper crust. Things get a little more elaborate when we come to the ladies' cosmetics-and-personal-hygiene department. But let nobody be deceived: contemporary female inhabitants of the Casbah are unlikely to use clay lipsticks, preferring instead to buy Chinese products that are practically indistinguishable from those of the West. Nowadays, children no longer play with wooden toys, but with flashing plastic weapons and rubber footballs. Why pluck the strings of an Oriental lute when you have a cassette recorder? Rather than sitting round a hand-carved folding table, sipping tea from porcelain bowls, today's clan prefers to face the TV (an object one seeks in vain in the Vitra Museum's nomad tent, along with the satellite receiver). And very few people live in the kind of villas documented in this exhibition, which belong to famous Arab architects who attempt to combine the modern with the traditional. Most people between Syria and Morocco live in multi-storey concrete blocks. (They beat their carpets on the balcony.)

Yours sincerely,

Lennart Lehmann