Zouina Ait Slimani

Zouina Ait Slimani (1985, Algeria) is an art historian specializing in modern and contemporary art from the Arab world, with a particular interest in Iraq, artistic exchanges between the Mashreq and the Maghreb, and the historiographical challenges associated with writing art history from Arab perspectives. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Geneva with a dissertation on art criticism in Iraq (1922–1972), she has been teaching modern art from Arab countries at the Université Catholique de l’Ouest in Angers since 2015 and serves on the editorial board of Manazir. She is the author of*Jamil Hamoudi: Baghdad-Paris-Baghdad* (FAGE / Fondation Giacometti, 2026). Since 2025, she has been the director of research at the Nja Mahdaoui Foundation.

Between 1908 and 1970, several hundred Arab artists stayed in Italy to study, exhibit, and create. Still fragmented into national studies, the history of these movements leaves in the shadows the conditions that made Italy a hub for artistic training. This project offers the first transnational analysis of these exchanges, drawing on six contexts (Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Morocco) and cross-referencing Italian and Arab archives at three levels: individual trajectories, mediating institutions, and the Mediterranean region as a zone of contact. Rome acts as a mirror, catalyst, or foil for Arab modernities.