Book Arts as Archives of Decolonisation: The Design and Visuality of Arabic Books (1950s–1980s)

This article sheds light on a remarkable, yet hitherto overlooked, period in which Arabic book arts flourished, spanning from the 1950s to the 1980s. It argues that the thriving visual culture of books during this era mirrored the artistic, political, and intellectual ferment of decolonisation in the Arab world. As everyday sites of political and creative imaginings, the visuality of books was integral to decolonisation struggles. It helped shape new aesthetic sensibilities, articulate political imaginaries, and mobilise cross-border anticolonial solidarities. The study uncovers the creative labour of designing and illustrating Arabic books, while centring on the aesthetic and political preoccupations of Arab artists-graphic designers involved in their making. It proposes a methodology and analysis of the various ways visuality came to reshape the book’s economy, narrative, politics and pedagogy. This article’s examination of book arts as archives of decolonisation is significant not only for understanding how the political and aesthetic endeavours of this era have transformed Arabic books, but also — crucially — for contributing to a historical and epistemological restitution of what “decolonising” meant for artists–graphic designers grappling with modernism in the global South.