Contemporary Middle Eastern social reality into global art in Singapore Biennale

The purpose of this research was to investigate the artworks of contemporary Middle Eastern artists in Singapore Biennale regarding to the social reality issues. The subjects within the research context were the role of Middle Eastern artists in responding to the issues of social reality and the uniqueness of their artistic representations. The research also looked at the contribution of the artworks within the concept of glocalization that challenged the stereotypical representations of social issues. The methodology used in this research was qualitative content analysis, which categorized the phenomenon of social reality into a coding framework and interpreted their symbolisms according to the Iconography and Iconology theory. The research samples were 11 artworks as well as the documents analysis method. The research revealed that the contemporary Middle Eastern artists focused their criticized mainstream social representations regarding gender role, cultural identity, political conflicts, and diaspora. The research explained the thematic connections between social issues and Singapore Biennale where the artworks significantly combined the themes and contributed to the global art, through an authentic representation of social issues while criticizing the stereotypical images in media. The overall interpretations indicated that the Middle Eastern art appears in manifest and latent manners depending on the seriousness of political situation. This research portrayed the impact of contemporary art on the critical representation towards the act of stereotyping social issues. This research contributed to existing knowledge by perceiving the social representations in the Middle Eastern contemporary arts in reality phenomena.