Bidoun is a non-profit organization focused on art and culture from the Middle East and its diasporas. Bidoun was founded as a print publication and magazine in 2004 by Lisa Farjam, eventually expanding to online publishing and curatorial projects.[1][2] The print edition of the magazine was in publication from spring 2004 until spring 2013.
Magazine
The word "bidoun" in both Arabic and Persian means “without” in English. It is commonly mispronounced and confused with the word Bedouin.[2]
Bidoun was a finalist for the 2009 National Magazine Award for General Excellence (circulation category less than 100k).[3] It has won three Utne Independent Press Awards, for Social/Cultural Coverage and Design.[4]
As of 2024, the editors of Bidoun are Negar Azimi, Michael C. Vazquez, Tiffany Malakooti, and Anna Della Subin. Babak Radboy is Bidoun's longtime Creative Director. The contributing editors of Bidoun are Alexander Provan, Anand Balakrishnan, Aram Moshayedi, Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, Shumon Basar, Zain Khalid, Sohrab Mohebbi, Sophia Al Maria, Yasmine El Rashidi, Sukhdev Sandhu, Yasmine Seale, and Elizabeth Wiet.[citation needed]
Curatorial Projects
The Bidoun Library Project is an itinerant exhibition that “documents the innumerable ways that people have depicted and defined — that is, slandered, celebrated, obfuscated, hyperbolized, ventriloquized, photographed, surveyed, and/or exhumed — the vast, vexed, nefarious construct known as ‘the Middle East.’"[5] The Bidoun Library, which consists of roughly 3,000 books and periodicals, has been exhibited in Pittsburgh at the Carnegie International,[6] in New York at the New Museum,[7] in London at the Serpentine Galleries, in Cyprus at the Point Centre for Contemporary Art, in Beirut at 98weeks,[8] in Cairo at The Townhouse Gallery, in Stockholm at the Tensta Konsthall,[9] in Abu Dhabi at Abu Dhabi Art, and in Dubai at Art Dubai.[2][5]
In 2009, Bidoun organized the group exhibition 'NOISE' at Sfeir–Semler gallery in Beirut featuring Vartan Avakian, Steven Baldi, Walead Beshty, Haris Epaminonda, Media Farzin, Marwan, Yoshua Okon, Babak Radboy, Bassam Ramlawi, Mounira Al Solh, Andree Sfeir, Rayyane Tabet, Lawrence Weiner, and Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck.[10] That same year Bidoun initiated a collaboration with the web-based archive UbuWeb in order to make available rare video and sound pieces from in and around the Middle East.[11]
'Forms of Compensation' was a 2010 exhibition of a series of 21 reproductions of iconic modern and contemporary artworks produced in Cairo by craftspeople and auto mechanics in the neighborhood around the Townhouse Gallery, commissioned by Babak Radboy and overseen by Ayman Ramadan.[12]
In 2015, Bidoun occupied a booth at the Frieze Art Fair in New York where it exhibited and sold insignificant objects from artists. Inspired by the celebrity collectibles market, where a Justin Bieber hairball sold at auction for $40,668, Bidoun extended this covetous logic to the rarified realm of art, proffering such miscellanies as Jeremy Deller's iPod Mini, Lawrence Weiner's gold tooth, Hans-Ulrich Obrist’s abused passport, and a 1638 edition of Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy defaced by Orhan Pamuk. Other items included Tony Shafrazi’s prescription drugs, a rock signed by Robert Smithson, Douglas Gordon’s house keys, Yto Barrada’s third grade report card, Hal Foster’s breath mints, Cindy Sherman’s eyeliner, Tala Madani’s body lotion, Wade Guyton’s Nikes, Anicka Yi’s brain, Julie Mehretu’s golf ball, Bjarne Melgaard’s Christmas card from a serial killer, Laura Owens’ bus pass, Shirin Neshat’s kohl, a stuffed animal once owned by the great Iranian modernist Bahman Mohasses, and Darren Bader’s junk mail.[13][14][15][16][17]
Bidoun has staged exhibitions around the life and work of the late avant-garde theater director Reza Abdoh at MoMA PS1 in 2018 and KW Institute of Contemporary Art in 2019. These were co-organized by Klaus Biesenbach, Director, MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large, The Museum of Modern Art; Kirst Gruijthuijsen, Director, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and Negar Azimi, Tiffany Malakooti, and Babak Radboy for Bidoun.
In 2023, Negar Azimi and Edwin Nasr organized the exhibition Nicolas Moufarrege: Mutant International at CCA Berlin that ran from February 9 to March 25.
Publications
Books
Bidoun has edited, published and co-published several books including:
Meriem Bennani: Life on the CAPS, Edited by Negar Azimi, Tiffany Malakooti (The Renaissance Society/Bidoun, 2023) ISBN9780941548878
Issues and themes
Issue 00: We Are You
Issue 01: We Are Spatial
Issue 02: We Are Old
Issue 03: Hair
Issue 04: Emirates Now
Issue 05: Icons
Issue 06: Envy
Issue 07: Tourism
Issue 08: Interviews
Issue 09: Rumor
Issue 10: Technology
Issue 11: Failure
Issue 12: Projects
Issue 13: Glory
Issue 14: Objects
Issue 15: Pulp
Issue 16: Kids
Issue 17: Flowers
Issue 18: Interviews
Issue 19: Noise
Issue 20: Bazaar
Issue 21: Bazaar II
Issue 22: Library
Issue 23: Squares
Issue 24: Sports
Issue 25: Egypt
Issue 26: Soft Power
Issue 27: Diaspora
Issue 28: Interviews
Quotes
"Bidoun emerged at just the right time as the world looked at the Middle East through the singular lens of failure. The magazine is smart and irreverent in all the right ways." —Ahdaf Soueif[27]
"Bidoun’s editorial voice might be described as a combination of Artforum and Harper's, its audience comprising artists, academics, and intellectually curious readers who enjoy a magazine that manages to dissect Edward Said and Michael Jackson in the same issue." —Print magazine[27]