Following the success of the interfaith Caravan Festival of the Arts held at the historic St. John's Church in Maadi/Cairo over the last two years, a new and broader artistic Festival with the theme of "My Neighbor" will open on Feb. 3 2011, reports Jeremy Reynalds, Senior Correspondent for ASSIST News Service. According to a news release from the organization, the goal of the upcoming Caravan Festival of the Arts is to build bridges between East and West, Muslim and Christian, through the visual arts, literature, film and music. The initiative over the last two years has generated a lot of attention from the international media and art world and succeeded all expectations. The Caravan Festival of the Arts comes out of a vision that the arts can be one of the most effective mediums to enhance understanding and deepen respect between the Middle East and the West. Organizers said in a news release the objective of this Caravan Festival is to use the arts as a bridge for intercultural (East/West) and inter-religious (Muslim/Christian) interchange. Through this exhibition, the goal will be to highlight how the arts can serve to encourage friendship and encourage sharing between the Arab world and the West. According to the news release the exhibition and festival will be officially opened by the Grand Imam of Al Azhar in Cairo, Sheikh Ahmed el Tayeb. Forty five premier Middle Eastern and Western visual artists will come together for the selling exhibition which will be held inside the church, with each submitting one piece of reflecting the theme, “My Neighbor.” The exhibition will have a diverse range of artists ranging from one of Egypt's leading contemporary artists, Mohammed Abla, to rising star Reda Abdel Rahman, to expatriate artists Britt Boutros Ghali and Roland Prime. Thousands are expected to attend, with considerable Arab and Western media coverage. Organizers said in the news release special participating guests in this year’s Caravan Festival are Reza Aslan, the New York Times bestselling Iranian-American author (No god but God, Beyond Fundamentalism, Tablet and Pen), Khalid Abdalla, British-Egyptian film actor (star of The Kite Runner, United 93, and Green Zone with Matt Damon), and Mohammed Antar, world renowned Ney (Middle Eastern Flute) player. “Our experience has shown,” said Rev. Canon Paul-Gordon Chandler, author and the American rector/minister of St. John's Church and founder of the Festival speaking in a news release, “that art is a universal language that has the ability to dissolve the petty differences that divide us.” He added, “The words of Anish Kappour, the contemporary Indian sculptor illustrate our objective; ‘We live in a fractured world. I've always seen it as my role as an artist to attempt to make wholeness.’” “Our desire through this third exhibition,” says Roland Prime, exhibition curator and a participating British artist speaking in the news release, “is that we will see how much we all have in common and how we can enhance and deepen each other's lives.” Admission is free, but 20 percent of all art sales go to Middle Eastern charities assisting the poor.
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