Decolonizing the Page sheds light on the design and visual culture of Arabic books from the 1950s through the 1980s, a momentous era of decolonisation in the Arab world. During this time, publishing and book arts were central to the decolonisation of knowledge, language, imagination and aesthetic sensibilities. These collaborative intellectual and artistic efforts addressed a growing Arabic readership and broader networks of transnational solidarity.

Curated as an online platform, the exhibition brings together, for the first time, a digitised collection of around 250 books, offering illustrative samples of a beguiling, yet neglected, archive. It uncovers the overlooked creative labour of designing, illustrating and sometimes co-authoring Arabic books and centres the aesthetic preoccupations and political contestations of Arab artists and designers involved in their making. The displays invite new modes of viewing postcolonial Arabic books beyond their textual imprints, offering multiple approaches to explore their visual aspects.

Through this emphatically visual lens on Arabic books, Decolonizing the Page enables us to recover forgotten cultural histories of decolonisation; its thwarted projects and unfinished legacies resonate in renewed decolonial endeavours and solidarity projects today.