In 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon, a young mathematician-turned-journalist named Rose Issa was living in Paris, having just finished her MA in history and literature in the Arab world. The Lebanese-Iranian was troubled by the misrepresentations of her compatriots during the ensuing media melee across Europe; it served as a wake up call.’That was the first time I noticed a lot of Europeans didn’t know much about the Arab world or about the filmmakers and artists I considered as our representatives.’ Within two weeks, she had organised the very first Arab Film Festival in Paris, themed on occupation and resistance. And so it began.

Nearly three decades later, Rose Issa is considered the doyenne of Arab and Iranian art and film. She is responsible for introducing many of today’s luminaries to Western audiences – Abbas Kiarostami, Farhad Moshiri and Rachid Koraïchi among them. Her private project space in London is arguably both the locus and focus of much of today’s interest in contemporary regional art. Issa is, however, careful not to acquiesce to the media’s obsession with young emergent artists. She cites the example of Monir Farmanfarmaian, an 86-year- old Iranian mixed-media artist unknown outside her own country until Issa met her ten years ago. ‘It can be somebody in their 20s or somebody in their 80s, it doesn’t matter. If their work is good and needs to be out, my job is to make it, and to be the catalyst. I’m a catalyst, that’s what I am.’

Following the success of the Arab Film Festival, Issa spent a few years advising the Cannes Film Festival on Arab and Iranian film. She then founded the Kufa Gallery in London, with Iraqi architect Mohamed Makiya – it was the first gallery of contemporary art from the Middle East in the British capital. However, disheartened by the lack of support from local authorities, Issa quickly moved on to freelance for a string of venerable institutions including the Zamana Gallery, Barbican, British Museum, and Leighton House Museum. ‘I thought it was important to put the artists in public institutions rather than a private gallery,’ she explains.

Film festivals all over Europe also sought her expertise, and, over the course of the next 20 years she was brought in for advisory roles at London Film Festival and at festivals in both Rotterdam and Berlin. ‘I always tried to promote visual art and film in Europe, and give another image of the Arab world or Iran, in a time where there were very few representations,’ she says.

Walid Siti’s Beauty Spot, 2011, colour print, video projection on wood panel

However, after years of working with public institutions she decided to set up on her own, explaining that she could not wait for sponsorship or permission to promote the ideas, the artists or the concerns she liked. So, in 2008, Rose Issa Projects – a sleek, former terraced house in London’s rather posh Kensington district – was born. Its exterior, squeezed between a pizzeria and a royal-warranted dry cleaning service, is grey, brick, and could be easily missed by passers-by, and the interior office space was initially used to receive and store work from her stable of artists. But today it serves as the home base for her operations, hosting bi-monthly exhibitions throughout the year. They include solo shows and group photography exhibitions, along with seasonal displays in summer and winter. Currently showing is The River Ze, a show by Walid Siti, a 57-year-old Iraqi artist who resides and works in the UK.

As the project space began to flourish, Issa continued her dedication to Middle Eastern art, not only as a curator, but as an author, editor and art critic. Her publishing arm, Beyond Art Productions, produced many key texts on contemporary art and cinema from Iran and the Arab world. Recently she collaborated with the Beirut Exhibition Centre for two shows; September’s ‘Arabicity’, with eight artists from the Arab world making their Lebanese debuts and April’s ‘Zendagi’, featuring 12 Iranian artists who, bereft of museum, library and book access as a result of censorship, draw their inspirations from everyday life. Building these connections between her two homelands continues to hold special importance to Issa, who says many Lebanese associate Iran with Hizbollah, money and politicians and that Iranian artists do not get enough exposure in Arab countries – with the exception of Dubai. Visas and financial costs similarly collude to limit communication and creative exchange between regional artists, she adds.

Her mission remains today as it was back in the 1980s, to promote authentic voices from within the region. ‘I’m interested in showing the concerns of our region. I like to promote artists’ voices, rather than the official voices the media in the West wants to promote, or the curators who know nothing about our countries, or the politicians who lie on both sides. I am not interested in something that is simply good, or colourful and abstract art. It’s very valid, but life is short and you have to decide what you want to represent.’ Future projects will focus around cultivating the kind of voracious creative community she finds in Lebanon. The global cultural hubs are shifting away from London, Paris and New York, she says, and she talks of promising new developments within the regional art scene.

‘At the Venice Biennale there are pan-Arab exhibitions and new Arab Pavilions,’ she notes, ‘so if they don’t meet at Art Dubai or in Abu Dhabi, [the Pavilions] are the places where they meet. The centre of meeting for these artists is changing constantly which is wonderful, and it’s expanding. Now everybody is a nomad; we’re all nomads. Whether it’s artists or curators or the public institutions, everybody’s travelling and meeting halfway, in a space where something happens.’

While noting that the old European cultural anchors – among them the British Museum, V&A, and the Electric Museum – have been acquiring regional art for decades, she now observes they have been superseded by the market as the primary driving force. As austerity measures in the West begin to erode arts funding, attention is turning towards the region, with Doha’s Mathaf, and Abu Dhabi’s Louvre and Guggenheim clear examples of this. ‘The Tate [Modern] happened only eleven years ago, you know. Britain didn’t have a contemporary art museum not such a long time ago, so we’re catching up. and it’s going to happen, a little by little,’ she says. Issa is also hopeful that the recent regional turmoil will result in more funding of public institutions for the artists and for the art scene and, hopefully, more subsidised production of artwork. Perhaps, like the war in Lebanon did nearly 30 years ago, the current Arab Spring might inspire the next generation of artists, or even serve as a catalyst for the next Rose Issa.

Thanks to Rose Issa Projects and Walid Siti for the images