A billboard that recently went up at University Avenue and Vandalia Street in St. Paul features a hairy-chested man posing with vegetables and asks: “Have you been integrated like these fruits and vegetables?”

Huh?

The billboard is from artist Raed Yassin and titled “Self Portraits with Foreign Fruits and Vegetables.” It’s connected to an exhibit at the Minnesota Museum of American Art (The M) in downtown St. Paul. A smaller version of Yassin’s self-portraits with produce is part of “History Is Not Here: Art and the Arab Imaginary.”

The exhibit features work by 17 artists from around the world — including right here in the Twin Cities — looking at life, culture, society and history connected to the Arab world, a region that covers 22 countries. The M partnered with Mizna, a St. Paul-based Arab arts organization on the exhibit, which coincides with the 20th anniversary of Mizna’s literary magazine. The artists in the exhibit have been featured in the magazine.

The billboard, between the Raymond and Fairview avenues Green Line stations, is part of a public art component of “History is Not Here,” explained Nailah Taman, outreach coordinator for Mizna. There’s also a mural on the side of the Wycliff Building, 2327 Wycliff St., created by the artist Fadlabi during the recent Chroma Zone mural fest in that area of St. Paul. And this week, a sculpture titled “Alien Technology II” by Monira Al Qadiri was placed on the west side of Universe Building, 670 Vandalia St.

If Kuwaiti artist Qadiri’s sculpture looks familiar, it was part of the 2017 summer nighttime arts festival Northern Spark and was showcased in The Commons next to U.S. Bank Stadium in downtown Minneapolis. The 10-foot-tall piece is described as an out-of-proportion oil drilling bit that is Qadiri’s second piece about the Gulf, her family’s pearl-diving past and the massive oil industry that displaced it.

‘History Is Not Here: Art and the Arab Imaginary’