(BEIRUT, LEBANON) — Lebanese video artist Akram Zaatari was listed number 94 on ArtReview’s influential Power 100 list.
Zaatari, who is included for the first time, stands as the sole Lebanese figure and one of only three Arabs on the annual list of the most powerful people in the contemporary art world.
The Power 100 is selected by a committee of 26 art critics, museum directors, and artists from around the world.
According to the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Mark Rappolt, there are four basic criteria that determine who makes the cut: Selected figures must have an influence on the kind of art that is being produced, have been active in the past 12 months, have an international influence and have an influence over the public perception of what constitutes art.
Art Review wrote:
Zaatari, whose work involves a self-reflective examination of photography and documentary, has been busier than ever these past 12 months. His use of archival research and history as both subject and material, with a deft nod to the longstanding political turmoil of the Middle East, has won him curatorial fans far beyond his base in Beirut. Besides 2014 shows at Salt, Istanbul, and the Power Plant, Toronto, he had a survey at Wiels, Brussels, centring on the artist’s recurring motif of the letter. Last November he had a well-received exhibition of photographs and multimedia installations at Thomas Dane, London. That show included the 38-minute film On Photography People and Modern Times (2010), which, in part, is a portrait of the Arab Image Foundation, an expanding collection of over 600,000 vernacular and studio photographs from the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab diaspora, which the artist cofounded in 1997.