Photo of artist Augustine Paredes, courtesy Darah Ghanem at Daftar Asfar booth at Art Dubai, 2019.
About Daftar Asfar
Daftar Asfar is a collaborative publishing platform that focuses on creative collaboration and thoughtful artistic development. Founded in the Middle East, Daftar Asfar has published six publications, and has been awarded support from The Andy Warhol Foundation, The Arab Fund for Art & Culture (AFAC), and Art Dubai.
As a concept and approach, Daftar Asfar explores intersectionalities, employing collaboration as a playful and experimental tool to explore and develop one’s creative practice. Through this, Daftar Asfar highlights the importance of the ephemeral, of sketching and developing works in progress, and showcasing the thought-processes and perspectives of each creative practitioner.
Moving forward, we will develop educational programmes and curriculums around the sketchbook and its practice, to engage diverse local communities through impact-driven workshops, talks and collaborative practices, and to continue to produce both digital and physical sketchbooks across various mediums, in collaboration and engagement with curators, artists and writers.
We believe in highlighting the importance of documentation in creative practice, and see sketchbooks as a tool to process and reflect on our lives and interactions and connections with others.