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

The Dirty Post

Another couple of days with many subject matters to talk and write about. 

Burj Khalifa, Ali, Magdi and Deniz

On Sunday Ali, Magdi and I went to the Pavillion Downtown Dubai, very near to Burj Khalifa, to attend one of the education series of Art Dubai. Our journey to the pavillion was remarkable in terms of the juxtaposition of opposite architectural styles, the sophisticated ambiance of the old town intertwined with the vast amount of labourers occupying the area. 

The Pavillion Downtown is an amazing art space, similar to Tramway in Glasgow.  The seminar was very informative about three relatively young and very professional Dubai based contemporary art galleries called “The Third Line”,  “Lawrie Shabibi” and “thejamjar”. The founders of those galleries were all females who obviously had very good education abroad.  There was a very interesting fact that Magdi, Ali and I agreed about the spectators, when we first entered the room: Despite the minority of the female population in Dubai, a very big majority of the artists or art viewers in the seminar room were females. This was such an intruiging fact, when we consider the majority of Western art community until the late 60s, which was mainly composed of male artists. Then I found myself contemplating on the reason for this discrepancy in the gender distribution of the Emirati artists. At that very moment, Sunny Rahbar, the co-founder of The Third Line stated that two of her female Emirati artists she represented, gave up working with her and stopped producing work as soon as they got married. I was a little bit surprised, but upset and really frustrated after I heard a similar story at the opening I have been to, that night.  What was the main reason for this, despite the big support that girls get from their well-respected families? Was it considered as a temporary occupation that keeps the girls busy, contemporary and social until they start building up their own families? Khawla, a very strong character and a successful Emirati artist, fortunately is on my side with this issue, and she embraces her practice as the life she lives, rather than a habit or a hobby to give up when time arrives.

While my mind was engaged with all these subject matters, very good and curious questions raised from the spectators. Some of them were about how to promote Emirati artists, and some were about the importance of getting feedback and forming collectives. Artists were advised to get together more often to discuss their works and consider producing projects at a ‘non’ gallery venue such as a car park, or an unoccupied shop front. Overall, I was very pleased and impressed with the talks and looking forward to the next one.

After the talks, Zeinab was very kind to drive us to the Art Nights @ Gate Village. Everyone, including the speakers of the seminar was looking forward to this event. Nine galleries were having openings at the same time, at the same area. It was such a splendid night! I have never seen New York, but felt like I was invited to a Guggenheim opening! Not all the works were my cup of tea, but really enjoyed the show at The Empty Quarter. There were some retro futuristic photographs, videos, and other images where for the first time I was introduced with the Yugoslavian War Memorials, by Ali at The Empty Quarter.

Ali, Magdi, Khalil and Zeinab at the Art Nights @ Gate Village

Empty Quarter Gallery and Yugoslav War Memorials

Empty Quarter Gallery

These memorials were commissioned by Tito, a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman, in the 1960s and 70s dedicated to the World War II, and the concentration camps. After Tito's death, the monuments were popular visitor attractions in the 1980s as patriotic sites, and since the Yugoslav Wars and the dissolution of the country, the sites are abandoned and have become ghostly structures evoking ‘new’ but ‘old’ space stations. I think they are the most spectacular constructions I have seen in the last few years. You can see the images of some of the memorials from the link below: (They say Soviet for the monuments in the link, but it’s not correct.)

 http://www.cracktwo.com/2011/04/25-abandoned-soviet-monuments-that-look.html

Apart from those mentioned above, the majority of the works exhibited were especially Pop Art inspired paintings, photographs or other wall-based works. As far as I understand, most galleries are interested in ‘digital cleanliness’, demanding a finished and pure look.

Cleanliness, beauty and orderliness, not just in arts, but also as culture or civilization, relate to the idea of modernity. As an artist who favours works that do not have a pure or clean finish, I would like to introduce the idea of dirt, an excellent tool to blur the boundaries.

Order, according to Bauman is “defining and moreover enforcing a rule about how, when and where something is done in order to set people free from indecision and hesitance.” Beauty, purity, and order are thus powerful attributes, which we cannot abandon without regretting. People have to compensate to gain such benefits. As Bauman states, there is nothing congenital in human nature about preserving cleanliness, searching for beauty, or obeying routine rules. People have to be constrained to revere harmony, purity and regularity.

       

Purity is an ideal to be created and preserved from real or imaginary abnormalities. Otherwise, there would be no distinction between purity and impurity; in this way the concept of purity would have no meaning.

   

On the other hand, dirt and filth, the opposite of cleanliness, are things out of place. Namely, it is not their inner quality, which makes them “unclean” but their locations. Thus, in one context, impure things can become clean just because they were put in another place, and vice versa. For example, shoes can be considered clean in front of the door, whereas they are absolutely dirty when placed on the pillow. Consequently, if uncleanliness is matter out of place, we should approach it by means of order. Order ensures everything put in their exact places.

       

However, there are things, which never have a “right place” in any fragment of man-made order. Namely, these things are inappropriate everywhere the model of purity is valid. It is also inadequate to move these things to another place, because they control their own location. The problem with such objects is that they will cross boundaries whether invited or not. This kind of impurity and their transgression of boundaries are what I am very much interested in, during the process of making a work.

I met amazing Emirati artists here with a great potential, they are very ambitious and clever. My very first recommendation to them would be to get hands dirty. The demands of the galleries for a specific type of work should not be the strongest factor while shaping practices. More sculptures should be built, construction techniques should be taught. I think female artists should be directed to maybe more ‘hardware-based’ ways of producing work, and the types of artworks should be degendered. 

The most amazing Lebanese food we had at the end of that night.

Market of the World, of Deira, of an Art Gallery

Friday the 13th was rather a lucky day as opposed to its putative jinxes. On that lovely day, Ali, Magdi and I went to the Global Village in Dubailand, where you can travel to all the Asian countries at a single night! You can also walk in to a ‘summarised’ Europe and Africa. 

After seeing Mercato Shopping Mall, Global Village and learning about the plans for the World Islands and the reconstruction of the seven wonders of the world, I had a clearer opinion about the ‘Dubai Project’. The emirate itself is like a huge Appropriation Art project that properly adopts, borrows, recycles either the entire form or some sample aspects of man-made visual culture. The strategies of this method include "re-vision, re-evaluation, variation, version, interpretation, imitation, proximation, supplement, increment, improvisation, pastiche, paraphrase, parody, homage, mimicry, echo, allusion, and intertextuality.” (Wikipedia) However in a very unconventional way, these features rendered Dubai quite unique and original in its aesthetic, as the Emirates’ conserving culture inevitably ‘labeled’ these structures Arabic and Dubaiian.

At the Global Village, I had delicious food called Mamakeesh Lahm at the Lebanon pavilion (definitely my favourite cuisine), and saw amazing folk dance shows at the Palestinian pavilion. The best bazaar I reckon belongs to Pakistan and Afghanistan; tiny bit disappointed with the Turkish section though. Overall, I very much enjoyed like a child in this little constructed world in the middle of the desert.

Yesterday I had a little tour to the souks on both sides of the creek. They reminded me very much of the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar of Istanbul, in terms of the warm atmosphere of the market, intriguing shops and insistent sellers. I had a good deal for this giant brass bell that I fell in love with at first sight, and looking forward to use it for my Istanbul tower.

My beloved bell

Mobile homes for the market workers

This gold ring has the Guinness Record of being the heaviest of its kind: 58 kg; I weight the same with a ring!!!

In the evening, we went to the Traffic Gallery to see this amazing Lebanese film called “Teta, Alf Marra”, which means “Grandma, a Thousand Times”. It is a beautiful piece of work, and impossible not to be touched. The protagonist, the grandmother herself was a very distinctive character with a great sense of humour; a natural performer who carried the whole film on her shoulders. 

There was also a market event going on in the gallery, which I found quite similar to the collaborative project that Collective Gallery in Edinburgh actualised with Pist from Istanbul and Arrow Factory from Beijing. The objects for sale were a little bit pricy but it was lovely to flick through.

Yesterday was my very first night within Dubai art scene, and enjoyed my time observing the differences with my accustomed art scene in Glasgow. Contemporary art in Dubai as an emerging community is seemingly an upper class pursuit. Naturally this would affect the subject matters of the works produced. As a typical postindustrial city, Glasgow has a big working class population, which contains the contemporary art community as well. In order to survive we would do any job including cleaning, painting walls, plastering, etc, as labour is quite expensive in Britain. So artists are the desired cheap workforces for such needs. On the other hand, labour is rather cheap in Turkey and the Emirates. The minimum wage is very low, or even sometimes there is none. This is obviously influencing the distribution of occupations and interests, allocating everyone to their specified classes. I am feeling very lucky to be part of this progress that Dubai has been through, and looking forward to follow this process, and the changes awaiting Dubai in the following years. It is the fastest changing city and I can’t imagine how it will transform during one’s lifetime.

Two Villages: Pearl Divers and Great Dancers

I had such a lovely night yesterday, with Ali, Khawla and her sweet little cousin. We went to the Diving Village and the Heritage Village to see a folk dance performance. Very different than the other places we have been to, the majority of the crowd this time, was Emirati origined.  Meanwhile, I suppose it is worth to give a little bit of Wikipedia information about the population:

Deniz, Khawla and Ali

  

The modern emirate of Dubai was created after the UK left the area in 1971. At this time Dubai, together with Abu Dhabi and four other emirates, formed the United Arab Emirates. Then construction of the new nation, and the big transformation of the pure sand dunes to an urban jungle entailed quite a lot of work force to be imported:

“According to the census conducted by the Statistics Centre of Dubai, the population of the emirate was 1,771,000 as of 2009, which included 1,370,000 males and 401,000 females… As of 2005, 17% of the population of the emirate was made up of UAE nationals. Approximately 85% of the expatriate population (and 71% of the emirate's total population) was Asian, chiefly Indian (51%), Pakistani (16%), Bangladeshi (9%) and Filipino (3%) and a sizeable community of Somalis numbering around 30,000. A quarter of the population however reportedly traces their origins to Iran” (Wikipedia)

I suppose it wouldn’t be wrong to claim that Dubai is the most multicultural city in the world, with a remarkable superiority of the male population, over female.

I enjoyed so much at both of the villages. I witnessed great craftsmenship, tasted amazing traditional food and watched spectacular performances. I also bought some materials for my work as well. I have got two hand forged coffee mixers and a traditional chisel for palm trees. Khawla was again very hospitable as ever; she bought us little traditional treats and a burka for both Ali and me.

From left to right: sour pomegranate, sunflower seeds, beyaz leblebi, famous Oman chips, my beloved handmade chisel,  two hand forged coffee mixers, a tiny brass hatchet piece, dried cheese called Yıgat, Misvak to clean teeth, sour mango and burka

We also met the very first photographer of the emirate. Her name is Sheikha Al Suwaidi, whose daughter explained the stories of each photograph exhibited in the room. I met very friendly people there, and still cannot believe the level of English spoken in Dubai! 

 I also recorded some sound for my third tower. Great rhythm… I could hardly stop myself from dancing!