R
E
V N
E
X
T
Art Dubai—the major Middle East art fair around which the United Arab Emirates’ annual art week revolves—may have been indefinitely postponed due to Covid-19, but organizers are promising an engaging, if smaller, program of talks and gallery presentations focused on the local arts ecosystem to take place during the fair’s original run dates. With various exhibitions at art spaces and commercial galleries opening as planned, there will still be plenty for art aficionados to see in Dubai and nearby Sharjah this month.
Installation view of SHAIKHA AL MAZROU’s (left) Enlarge, 2018, wet coated steel, 115 × 114 cm; and (right) Engage, 2018, wet coated steel, diptych, 115 × 233 × 60 cm. Courtesy the artist and Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai.
Shaikha Al Mazrou’s newly commissioned sculptures and installations presented at her first UAE solo exhibition, “Rearranging the Riddle” at the Maraya Art Centre, taps into the intimate yet unlikely relationship between autobiography and the abstraction of materiality. Inspired by art historian Briony Fer’s book On Abstract Art (1997), the artist draws upon elements of previous art movements such as modernism and Bauhaus as well as the aesthetics of minimalism to portray a self-analysis of past conversations she had with others through her works.
Installation view of MICHAEL RAKOWITZ’s solo exhibition at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, 2020. Photo by Dani Bapista. Courtesy Jameel arts Centre.
Michael Rakowitz’s first solo show in the Middle East showcases eight installations over two levels of Jameel Arts Centre. Co-organized with Turin’s Castello di Rivoli and London’s Whitechapel Gallery, the exhibition features key works including The invisible enemy should not exist (2007– ), comprised of food packaging recreations of destroyed or looted Iraqi artefacts, the radio-series The Breakup (2010) which parallels the 1967 Arab-Israeli War with the Beatles, and public installations such as a reconstructed Assyrian deity sculpture originally destroyed by ISIS, lamassu (2019), commissioned for London’s Trafalgar Square.
ZARINA BHIMJI, Yellow Patch, 2011, still from single-channel video installation, 35mm color film transferred into HD with Dolby 5.1 surround sound: 29 min 43 sec. Copyright the artist, DACS/Artimage 2020. Courtesy Sharjah Art Foundation.
Zarina Bhimji’s mid-career survey curated by Sharjah Art Foundation director Hoor Al Qasimi features the artist’s films, photographs, and installations from the last three decades. The exhibition traces the trajectory of the artist’s heavily researched practice, from early examinations of knowledge that evade established systems to her later inquisition of human psychology. Some key works presented include films Out of Blue (2002), which confronts the 1972 expulsion of South Asians from Uganda, and Yellow Patch (2011), which investigates Bhimji’s father’s life in India before his emigration to Uganda.
MOHAMMED KAZEM, Sound of Angles No 13, 2020, scratches on inkjet print on Hahnemuhle paper, 42 × 29.6 cm. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai.
Mohammed Kazem’s solo presentation “Infinite Angles” at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde debuts new works that reveal both material and immaterial sensations, and at the same time explore the rapid modernization of the UAE. Some highlights which render transient waves like sound and light tangible include the painting series Sound of Light (2019–20), which illustrates the effect of light and sound in buildings under construction, and the interactive installation Sound of Angles (2020), featuring abrasions on a found door, marking its history of usage.
To read more of ArtAsiaPacific’s articles, visit our Digital Library.
