ART DUBAI: EXPLORING THE COSMOS OF CONTEMPORARY ART IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Art Dubai: Exploring the Cosmos of Contemporary Art in the Middle East

The 17th edition of the pre-eminent Art Dubai, commenced on 1st March and continued till 3rd March at the breathtaking backdrop of Madinat Jumeirah. Spread across 40 countries, the Fair featured 120 exhibits, under the ambit of four sections: Contemporary, Bawwaba, Art Dubai Modern and Art Dubai Digital. The fair’s vision was to simulate a conversation around innovative commissioning models and immersive cultural infrastructure, responsive and conscious of changing ecological dynamics. The fair was conducted under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin, Vice President and Prime minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai.

Pablo del Val, Art Dubai’s Artistic Director explained, “Art fairs like Art Dubai have a responsibility to be far more than commercial platforms and we continue to play an important institutional role in this region’s cultural ecosystem, supporting artists, scholarship, thought-leadership and cultural education from an early age. Our programme this year reflects the increasingly diverse and multicultural communities of our home city, providing more opportunities than ever for artists from across the Global South.”

Below are some standout exhibitions at Art Dubai 2024, featuring galleries from India and around the world.

Chemould Prescott Road

The gallery exhibited the work of three women artists, Anju Dodiya, Dana Awartani and Mithu Sen. The theme of the exhibition explores and dabbles into Staining, Pricking, and Mending.

Winged Pauses, features 14 pairs of painted fabric mounts having digital prints. The work encompasses the artist’s personal family vacation pictures on the left side, juxtaposed with the artist’s previous works on the other side. The emphasis of this oeuvre is to look at the anticipation and state of angst that one faces during the creative process. Due to the constant bombardment of information, people face anxiety daily and on different levels. She tries to gatekeep her emotions that are in constant flux as she goes through her creative process.

Mithu Sen, A Prayer Unanswered, Chemould Prescott Road, Art Dubai, 2023
Courtesy: Chemould Prescott Road

Mithu Sen work titled ‘Unsettled Unrest’, delves into emotions in different ways. Her recent drawings themed “A Prayer Unanswered” employed the iconography of metallic and red dripping paint. The engraved pricks often form a silhouette of a wounded bird and other times a torso of a mutilated body and a prayer for a truce that’s hard to read. It adds to the visual vocabulary of grieving hands, which are a testimonial of her emotions.

Dana Awartani, Saudi-Palestinian artist, through her work, Let Me Mend Your Broken Bones tries to throw light on the ongoing escalation which has unleashed cultural destruction, recuperation, and sustainability. The series has been on display since 2019 and features the narratives of both loss and resilience. Awartani looks at archival sources and documents ravaged monuments during the Arab Spring spread across seven countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Tunisia. It also employs dyed silk from Kerala, infused with medicinal herbs. However, the cloth is also torn apart to depict the material destruction. Awartani’s motivation lies in not only showcasing destruction and drawing the world’s attention to it but in symbolising the resilience and courage of the civilians. This is accentuated by employing the craft of Retta or Rafugari, an ancient mending technique that is practised in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Egypt, among others.

Leila Heller Gallery

Renowned for its championing of several issues, Leila Heller Gallery has brought another interesting line-up of artists including Azza Al Qubaisi, Zeinab Al Hashemi, Melis Buyruk, Ali Cha’aban, Parinaz Eleish Gharagozlou, Darvish Fakhr, Naeemeh Kazemi, Aref Montazeri, Arash Nazari, Marwan Sahmarani, Behrang Samadzadegan.

Naeemeh Kazemi, essentially a sculptor, started her journey in painting when the world got hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Her inspirations were embedded in her lived experience of living in Iran and how it has shaped her activism. Kazemi employed classical style, quotidian objects, and natural imagery to portray her feminism, environmental and virus apprehensions, and ecological concerns. Her current work is titled “La La Land” and reflects the same anxiety surrounding the apocalyptic destruction of the environment and natural habitat around us. Kazemi tries to create a space haven, protecting everyone from all the dangers that surround us. She utilises lush green flora and fauna to show a utopian world, marred by uncertain and tense moments shown through hands floating and eyes hidden.

Melis Buyruk, a Turkish artist born in Golcuk, is known for her massive floral ceramic sculptures. In her work, The Blooming Nest, she delves into the nature of our interaction with our surroundings. The work depicts this relationship by incorporating pieces of plants and animals being merged with human body parts and showing creatures on strange ground. The porcelain “Habitats” is employed to perceive an alternate reality where humans and animals live in tandem with each other.

Efie Gallery

The gallery champions the vision of bringing African Art to the fore. Globally acclaimed artist El Anatsui, photographer Aïda Muluneh, sculptor Maggie Otieno, and multidisciplinary artist Yaw Owusu came together to showcase the intersectionality of generations.

Curated by Faridah Folawiyo, Elastic Visions, challenges Eurocentrism through the prism of African perspective. Faridah Folawiyo also pushes the envelope by interrogating the colonial framework of Orientalism and its critique by Edward Said. The exhibition tries to put forward a new episteme and relocate the impact of narrative, influence and output.

Faridah Folawiyo explains the motivations behind the exhibition, “Artists are constantly operating through hybrid lenses. This exhibition provokes viewers to stretch past imagination and preconceptions, and to be open to influence, wherever it comes from, rejecting the discourse of us vs them. The art historian Linda Nochlin wrote about how Orientalist art gave the impression of an absence of history in certain parts of the world – so we are looking in contrast at artists whose work stretches history, or at least our conception of it.”

Galerie Krinzinger

Prestigious Galerie Krinzinger also presented the exquisite works of their artist. The line-up included artists like Marina Abramović, Nevin Aladag, Monica Bonvicini, Thean Chie Chan, Angela de la Cruz, Ramin Haerizadeh / Rokni Haerizadeh / Hesam Rahmanian, Hanakam & Schuller, Secundino Hernández, Martha Jungwirth, Waqas Khan, Radhika Khimji, Brigitte Kowanz, Angelika Krinzinger, William Mackrell, Maha Malluh, Hans Opde Beeck, Eva Schlegel, Erik Schmidt, Mithu Sen, Alfred Tarazi, Jannis Varelas, Zhang Wei.

Benedetta Ghione, Executive Director of Art Dubai enumerated regarding growing recognition of Art Dubai, “The Art Dubai Group is committed to laying the foundations for a thriving cultural and creative ecosystem, inspired by and responding to our home city of Dubai. The cultural scene here is maturing rapidly. We are proud of our role in engaging and inspiring audiences of all ages and backgrounds and in supporting the next generation of cultural professionals. Our year-round education, scholarship, and thought-leadership programs, developed alongside our long-term partners, create significant opportunities for people worldwide to build careers in the creative industries in Dubai.”

Text by: Shalini Passi

Image Courtesy: Art Dubai, Chemould Prescott Road, Leila Heller Gallery, Efie Gallery, Galerie Krinzinger

Find more about Art Dubai:

https://www.artdubai.ae/

https://www.gallerychemould.com/

http://www.leilahellergallery.com/

https://efiegallery.com/

https://www.galerie-krinzinger.at/

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