Meeting Two ADs: Art Dubai and Abu Dhabi

Yesterday was the start of my ‘early mornings’ in Bastakiya. After completing our gang with Fayçal’s arrival a day before, we headed to the venue where the Art Dubai will take place. It was such a pleasure to meet Antonia there, and Ghada was as lovely as always. I will not talk about the venue at the moment, as I want to keep this as a secret until March. 

Emirates Towers

Before lunch, we were introduced by the Art Dubai team, who was full of energy and sincerety. Farah Atoui, whom I was looking forward to meet, and Ghada took us to this amazing Labanese Restaurant after our visit to their office at the Gates. I was showing of with my Turkish food culture in Glasgow, but this was the moment I deflated like a baloon; Labanese food was fabulous!

Khawla with her work, at the Sheikha Manal Young Artist Award exhibition

We had cardamoned arabic coffee afterwards, with the other artists of the residency; and had a lovely, joyful chat together. Khawla joined us later on; who is showing her work and competing for The Sheikha Manal Young Artist Award. We decided a leaving time for our Abu Dhabi journey to see the Emirati Expressionists Show that Hadeyah, the lovely spirit, is in.

Hadeyah and I drinking our delicious and bitter Arabic coffee

Fayçal, Hadiyah, cool Magdi and Ali

Ali

Today started with another early morning. After waking Khawla up by a wake-up call, Ali and I prepared our water and snacks for this two-houred desert journey. Lovely Khawla as always was looking after us with good food, taking us to informative journeys and wouldn’t withold anything from us that she reserved for herself. Listening to joyful Arabic music, watching constructions for new industrial areas on the desert, having some girly chat; the journey itself was such a pleasure!

JR's giant photo booth

We arrived at the Saadiyat Cultural District in Abu Dhabi after two hours. The Emirati Expressionists exhibition grasped my attention right away when we entered the space. I will now sound really cheesy and maybe not professional at all, but WHAT AN EXHIBITION! IT REALLY ROCKS!! I’m so sorry for this moment of over excitement and jouissance; as both the works exhibited and the curation of the show was  remarkably good. 

I would love to write a review about all the artists exhibiting individually, however neither my time nor my brain and fingers would let me do it.

Hadeyah Badri, also one of the residency artists that I will be working with in Bastakiya, Afra Bin Dhaher, and Tarek Al-Ghoussein were the artists with whom I believe I share similar contextual and aesthetic concerns with; and thus I favour the works of, at the Emirati Expressionists exhibition.

Hadeyah is a Dubai-based artist, carrying an unusual dual heritage of Tehran and Dubai. Her work daringly -but subtly- reveals the co-occurrence of mainly untouchable Emirati and Islamic iconography with the “almost appears invisible” daily life objects. The hierarchy of these iconic representations ceaselessly interchange with the unimportant, in Hadeyah’s photographs. The figure and the background shuffles across, and enables Hadeyah to create degendered works that I was talking about in my previous post. Her work is definitely not dealing with beauty or the orderliness, but juxtaposition, negotiation and scuffle. She also playfully investigates the act of double representing, and the inevitable feeling of “getting used to” within the visual culture. 

I’m also immensely taken by Afra Bin Dhaher’s work who utilises the language of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Persian miniatures to create a narrative. Both of these depiction styles are produced to be “read” rather than to be “looked at”, thus carrying an informative text quality. In Afra’s ‘almost written’ images, she depicts herself in traditional Emirati outfits that are to be worn at home, with bodily positions to be taken at a home-related environment. In her photos, as though different layers are flattened, time stopped, and dimensions reduced to none. I admire her work, and hoping to meet her one day during my stay in Dubai.

Among all, I think I found Tarek Al-Ghoussein’s work the most similar to my practice, in terms of producing almost unwordly landscapes. He utilises industrial artefacts and man-made but also natural habitats, coinciding with the inevitable grandness of the dessert that evokes the feeling of ‘being swallowed by’.  

The horizon is always apparent in Tarek’s photographs, sustaining the unworldly scenery. It also gives a ‘drawing’ quality to the work. On the other hand, this is a clear depiction of an Emirati  landscape, almost no depth of field; which also gives a surreal feeling that prevents me to believe the reality of the photographs. One can easily convince me that this is a very realistic painting, rather than a photography project. Thank you very much Tarek for presenting such effective work.

I also really liked Maitha Demithan’s work called Manara; the work that she reconstructed a figure through joining her parts after a flatbed scanning process. I loved the way she strives to capture one to one reality with directly scanning the objects/subjects of the work, but immediately afterwards distorting this reality with subtle changes to the size of the feet, or other limbs, etc. Like Afra Bin, she translates or better to say flattens the figure and pushes it back to the thin surface of the paper. When the image is supposed to look beyond real with the flatbed scanning process , it rather possesses an illustration quality.

The simplicity and the modesty of Mira Al Qaseer’s photographs were notably good. The grainy quality of the works not only emphasises on the distance between the lens and the targeted image, but also the spacing, the relation that goes back to the other direction; towards the author which we can accept as a considered performative relation with this old camera that she was not familiar with. Mira documents almost two histories, one being written at the moment of shooting, and one excavated.

After the Emirati Expressionists show, Khawla took us to the room, where they exhibit the works from the UAE pavillion in Venice Biennale. I did not know before I came here that UAE pavillion was curated by Vasıf Kortun this year. Everyone loves him in Dubai, and I’m hoping to see him at Art Dubai this year.

At the end, we watched an introduction film for Saadiyat Island Project, which is another big and surreal Emirati project, this time for an art island. The biggest Guggenheim Museum of the world and Louvre Abu Dhabi together with other cultural and art related constructions will take place on the island. All these plans are making me feel dizzy, they are difficult to follow; but it is not at all difficult to actualise for Emiratis. I really respect their dreams, patience and ambition. You need all these three to create a world from “0”. Oh, and some money of course.

Khawla documenting parts of our journey

I would like to thank Khawla once more for her fantastic hospitality and her company through our journey and our stay in Dubai. She even took us to the 7 star hotel called Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi. When will I see a 7 star hotel again in my life!?

At the Emirates Palace, the 7 star Hotel in Abu Dhabi