Artist, researcher and curator, Ala Younis explores the formation of the modern Arab world through her multifaceted practice and research-based projects. Drachmas (2018) draws on early television stagecraft and architectural model making to consider the emergence of both Arab daytime television and the video cassette recorder in the 1960s. Through 40 small-scale models based on scenes from well-known TV dramas, Younis surveys the numerous genres—ranging from stories about the modern household, small village life and the Bedouin culture to depictions of the glory of Islamic history—that also served as foils for competing social and political agendas. The installation’s modular composition highlights flexibility and permutation as core qualities of the television studio, suggesting that its most significant contribution might have been its capacity to be a space where creative professionals could gather to produce works that reimagined modern life in a continuous dialogue with concerns of the moment. 

^{*Currently exhibited at NYUAD}