Favourite Artworks and Exhibitions of 2022
Before I get into my annual round up of favourite exhibitions and artworks of the year, I want to share some thoughts on the UAE art sector.
In February, Bhoomika Ghaghada published an essay titled Structural Issues & Responsibility in the UAE’s Art Scene, a sharp critique about gatekeeping, performative diversity, structural racism and institutions that shirk responsibility . I know none of this is unique to here, but shouldn’t we all strive to do better? Here are a few extracts, but I urge you to read the whole piece.
A public secret is that this city is ripe with people who have internalized colonial ideas about value. Everybody plays the game of highlighting institutional or city tags (often UK or US based) to signal credibility, or name-dropping their connection, on applications or in conversation.
Homegrown, after all, means acknowledging the existing value at home. I think this circuit emerges from a place of insecurity, of not being taken seriously because your mind, body and experience are not seen as inherently valuable (not limited to a specific nationality — as we all know, it’s a slightly complicated dynamic with wealth, accents, dress codes and passports).
We have no hope of changing at the institutional level if we, as individuals, don’t demand better. I cannot stress enough here the necessity of community — not just friends, but people who share your values, who elevate and celebrate you and champion your work, people who are honest with you when they disagree with you. They are the only way we survive.
Another must read for people working in museums and galleries is “A Word to Curators” by The White Pube. Although it is addressing UK art institutions, it can be applied and adapted around the world. It’s about the importance of making art spaces accessible, addressing issues like the lack of captions on video works, lack of (comfortable) seating. My personal pet peeve, backless benches to watch film/video. VERY UNCOMFORTABLE.
The more seating – the more comfort, the more help, the more space and time and anchorage – offered to me, the more energy I can use on actually engaging with art, which is what I have come all this way hoping to do.
No one wants to sit on a pile of bricks. When I say that I dream of cinema seats, that’s why. It hurts when I sit down in a gallery and I don’t want to hurt, I want to enjoy new aesthetic ideas.
Other issues I’ve noticed and experienced:
Performative acts of community. Community means caring, being curious and inclusive, and showing up. It’s not just about attending opening nights, gallery nights, art fairs or ‘art week’ or mostly turning up when a big name artist/curator is present.
Culture entities with poor communication, marketing and administrative skills. More time, effort and money goes on creating badly edited supercut videos with stock music for Instagram, and not enough time maintaining their own websites that are usually not up to date and/or without an archive of past events. Additionally, late announcement of events, open calls with short deadlines or press releases sent out a day or two before the event, if sent at all. Also, reaching out to artists last minute to take part in events or exhibitions, and not paying artists on time.
Sameness of artists, exhibition themes, workshops, and most recently even exhibition publications. Echoing my brother Khalid Mezaina in his end of year post, “i have been shocked by many practitioners and institutions this year, choosing to work with the same names and faces, and 'mentoring' artists towards practices that look like imitations of what already exists.”
Elevating the stature of certain young artists who have not put in the years to develop their practice, especially when given solo exhibitions at a very early stage of their careers and showing works that look underdeveloped.
Infantilizing some of the mid-career artists, made to feel they need mentoring as if their experience and works they’ve made so far do not count.
Tokenization of certain Emirati artists by institutions and media, reinforcing bias and hierarchies, and a disservice to the actual artists.
Commissioned public artwork that is mostly to serve social media, i.e. ‘Instagrammable art’, artist résumés and commercial galleries. Also, not enough locally based artists are invited to participate who would probably be in a better position to make site specific installations that engage with the surrounding space and community, compared to artists that don’t live here.
On a positive note, I was happy to see a couple of recent independent initiatives in Dubai that I hope will develop and grow.Hobb, a book store owned and run by Haifa Malhas with a focus on design and visual culture literature.
Bait Al Mamzar (formerly Bait Yado), a family home turned into an art space, akin to an artist run project space. Run by two brothers, Khalid and Gaith Abdulla, they offer studio spaces for artists and host exhibitions and talks.
Finally, here’s my list of favourite exhibitions/art works of the year, added in chronological order of visits. All photos by me except were credited.
Anna Kipervaser - The Order of Revelation
Islamic Arts Festival - Sharjah Art Museum
December 15 2021-January 23 2022
It’s rare to see works on 16mm projected in the UAE, so I was thrilled to hear the whirring of a 16mm projector when I was at the Islamic Arts Festival exhibition in Sharjah Art Museum. There was also a lightbox of 16mm film (pictured below) and I was happy to see a medium like this included in an exhibition about Islamic Art.
THE ORDER OF REVELATION is a long-form multipart silent 16mm experimental film translating the Quran from Arabic to Visual, in the order in which it was revealed rather than the order in which it was canonized. The film reclaims the Visual as a Language and challenges prioritization of semantic meaning in translation in favor of considerations such as form fidelity. The structure expands with each chapter, accounting for the development of language while adhering to the rules of the recitation of the Quran. Before the Quran was canonized, it was transmitted orally through recitation, thus, the medium of translation is Kodak 3378E, orthochromatic sound recording film. Much like several chapters of the Quran are often recited publicly - rather than the whole book, so too different sections of the film are screened separately and in various groupings. Anna Kipervaser
You can see excerpts of this project in these 3 links:
https://vimeo.com/152135714
https://vimeo.com/236188454
https://vimeo.com/236407121
Debbie Cornwall - Welcome to Camp America: Inside Guantánamo Bay
Xposure, Expo Centre, Sharjah
February 2022
I usually miss Xposure, a week long photo festival in Sharjah, because it takes place in February when I’m normally in Berlin attending the film festival. But since I wasn’t able to go this year, I managed to visit and met Debbie Cornwall. I was glad we were able to talk that afternoon and see her powerful photo series Welcome to Camp America: Inside Guantánamo Bay, which is also a book.
Based on the advertising I’ve seen in the past about Xposure, I associated this festival with wildlife and landscape photography a la National Georgraphic, so I was surprised and happy to see it included political works like this.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan - Shot Twice (With the Same Bullet)
Lawrence Abu Hamdan: The Sonic Image - Sharjah Art Foundation
March 4 - July 4 2022
Text via https://universes.art/en/art-destinations/sharjah/art-events/lawrence-abu-hamdan/shot-twice:
Shot Twice (With the Same Bullet) is an audiovisual installation comprised of eight lightboxes. Abi Chahine’s befores and afters are overlaid as still, translucent images onto the white, illuminated background of a television screen. This lightbox condition is then interceded by Abu Hamdan’s silhouette and narration. In these videos, the artist compares Beirut during wartime and peacetime, and elucidates that the observed differences document not crimes of war, but crimes of peace.
© Photos: Danko Stjepanovic. Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation
CAMP - 16 Bombay Tilts Down (2021), 7-screen 4K CCTV Video - 7 mins
CAMP: Passages through Passages - Sharjah Art Foundation
March 4 — July 4 2022
Wall text:
This material was filmed during the pandemic with a high-resolution CCTV camera, controlled remotely by people on the ground. It is part of a new CAMP film project in Parel and Worli, central Mumbai. These areas are in the old working-class heart of the city. Today, they are places where vertical, longitudinal movement has the same function as the naturalistic reveal of the horizontal pan, or panorama in film. We called these movements ‘descents into the ordinary’.
A few more things can be said:
These shots are composites of many repetitions, taken over time. It means that the scene is ‘painted over’ by video again and again. This density of the landscape is also historical.Many people in the footage seem to be aware of the camera’s presence, in a secret pact between the camera and people. Maybe everyone is an ‘actor’ here?
The song is Lok Shahir [people’s poet'] Vilas George and the Avahan Natya Manch’s 1982 ballad about working class exploitation in Bombay, from which, literally, this vertical landscape has emerged.
Aref El Rayess
Sharjah Art Foundation (Sharjah Art Museum)
February 26 —August 7, 2022
I was not familiar with the artist Aref El Rayess (1928-2005) before this exhibition.
A restless traveller, El Rayess’s oeuvre often reflects the places and times in which he lived and worked. From the early influences of his years spent between Lebanon and Senegal, his travels and studies through Europe and the United States, through his return to the Arab world, the artist captured the essence of the world around him in a body of work that is anchored in his deep inner-self.
While much of his work reflects the political struggles of his time—the Algerian War of Independence, the Lebanese civil war—the artist was also an active member of the engaged Lebanese art community, teaching, writing, organising and participating in conferences and exhibitions on politics and arts in the Arab World.
Thierry Mugler, Couturissime
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris
September 30, 2021 - April 24, 2022
When I was in Paris in March, my brother sent me a text message saying I shouldn’t miss the Thierry Mugler exhibition. It was very busy and difficult to pause and enjoy the works or take decent photos. This video will give you an idea of what it looked like.
John Akomfrah: Mimesis: African Soldier (2018)
Sharjah Art Foundation and The Africa Institute (Al Hamriya Studios)
March - June 2022
This three channel video is 73 min long and it was located in Al Hamriya Studios, Sharjah, which is a bit of trek from where I live in Dubai. But it was worth the drive, especially when I found the place all to myself.
Mimesis: African Soldier…takes root in Sharjah, where part of the work was filmed. The result, a historical montage film projected across three screens that recalls the lives of the millions of African women and men whose acts of valour and sacrifice during World War I are obscured in the official narrative.
Through choreographed scenes, a reanimated version of history materialises, one that is tranquilly commemorative. The colonial campaigns of countries such as Britain, France, the Netherlands and Germany in the African continent are reified here, from abstraction into the embodied figures on-screen.
Towards Time. Works by Zara Mahmood
Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah
May 30 - September 29 2022
Zara Mahmoud’s works in this exhibition is about time, light, surfaces and shadows, and it made me think about the pleasures of the ordinary and the ephemeral.
My photos don’t do the work justice, so please listen to Zara talk about her work in the video below.
Sohrab Hura - The Coast (2020, 17 min)
An Ocean in Every Drop - Jameel Arts Centre
September 22, 2022 - April 2, 2023
Walking through the exhibition An Ocean in Every Drop in Jameel Arts Centre, I found myself drawn to a sound that came from a video installation titled The Coast by Sohrab Hura. I was happy to see it was set up in a dark space with seating, and I was able to enjoy watching it alone. Hypnotising.
The physical coastline becomes a metaphor for a ruptured piece of skin barely holding together a volatile state of being ready to explode.
Filmed in the dark of the night during religious festivities in a village in South India, the margin between land and water becomes a point of release beyond which characters experience fear, surprise, anger, sadness, trust, anticipation, excitement, contempt but also rapture as they wash off the masquerade.
Text from https://sohrabhura.com/4-The-Coast
Fiona Tan - Mountain and Molehills
Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam
October 2, 2022 - January 8, 2023
I’ve been a fan of Fiona Tan ever since I saw her film Ascent at the London Film Festival in 2016 (a film I was happy to programme at Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2018). Tan’s work is about history, memories, landscapes and the role of images - by its makers and how they are viewed. She’s also interested in archives and the centrepiece of this exhibition is a 97 min film titled Footsteps, made up of documentary footage from Eye’s collection, footage of the Netherlands from more than a century ago and the early days of silent film.
The footage shows children at play and Dutch windmills, but above all people engaged in heavy physical labour in the countryside and in factories. In a fascinating juxtaposition she combines these images with excerpts from letters she received from her father just after she moved to the Netherlands in the late 1980s.
Through his education in Indonesia, Tan’s father knew a lot about the Netherlands without ever having visited the country. In the letters, he meanders seamlessly between personal news and world events, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.
Images from https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/programme/fiona-tan/751273.
Khaleej Modern: Pioneers and Collectives in the Arabian Peninsula
NYUD Art Gallery, Abu Dhabi
September 06 - December 11, 2022
Curated by Dr. Aisha Stoby, Khaleej Modern is based on her PhD research tracing the Arab Gulf’s pre-oil boom era up to 2007. It brings to light art movements and practices that has been (mostly) excluded from art history discourse and includes work that reflects the social and cultural changes in the region.
“Many of the works in this exhibition will be on view for the first time in decades…Khaleej Modern creates a space and offers resources for learning and re-understanding our own histories. More broadly, we hope the exhibition will contribute to wider regional and global understandings of modern visual art.
This project responds to emerging debates around recentering art narratives, toward a more nuanced and inclusive appreciation of global art histories.” Dr. Aisha Stoby
It’s an important exhibition and an eye opener for anyone not familiar with artists from this part of the world. You can read more about the exhibition in this interview with Dr Aisha Stoby.
Soza Collective - In Between Four Lines
Bayt Al Mamzar, Dubai
November 11, 2022 - January 8, 2023
The first solo exhibition by Soza Collective, founded by Zahra Jewanjee and Sophiya Khawaja, was born out of conversations between them about language, history and heritage, about what’s written and what isn’t, and what gets passed on from one generation to the next.
Extracts from wall text:
Language is the flag bearer of the people and the culture it belongs to, how then were we deciding which language to use at what time and for which words? When and how were we slipping back and forth from one culture to another without missing a beat?
To reframe historical words is to reassess history, to manipulate it, and where and when this happens, things are forgotten, and experiences are lost, creating gaps desperate to be filled.
The show challenges the notions of prescribed information and its dissemination. It unpacks how textbooks are the default to our understanding, and how we are conditioned, and steered to inhabit.
In the work, a line is drawn, a map is made, boundaries are demarcated, and thresholds and parameters are defined. It highlights the line’s politics and power, whether they are lines of action, lines of cartography, the lines that define social parameters, or the lines in a textbook. All the white, the sequences of the textbook run from right to left, left to right, dictating the narrative, wherever schooled or assimilated.
In Between Four Lines is an intimate exhibition layered with meanings and a happy way to end my year of exhibition visits.
Images from Soza Collective’s Instagram account.
Honorable Mention:
Sawalif Collective - Ybna Al3eid
September 2 - October 16
A group exhibition also at Bayt Al Mamzar, curated by Talal Al Najjar and Salem AlSuwaidi, two young curators showing works by young artists questioning and provoking cultural norms and roles.
“Ybna Al3eid” is a Gulf Arabic phrase roughly meaning taking the cake, or rather, bringing it in the first place. Translated literally as “we brought [the] Eid,” it is when actions turn into a foolish spectacle, humiliation, and/or dire consequences, i.e. partaking in activities uncustomary to Gulf cultures, hiding realities, or twisting familial mythologies.
It is a phrase indulging in the forbidden fruits of mischief and scandal–a humor-infused phrase, yet harboring a sinister undertone. Named after this colloquial term, this exhibition pokes fun at these ideas, engaging them critically and satirically.
While physical presentations of this counter-culture are lacking, the youth have predominantly turned towards virtual safe-ish spaces that they have self-cultivated, e.g. 'Arab Twitter'.
This exhibition expresses a frustration with the inability to develop lived experiences detached from the patriarchal, family-oriented and culturally-valued dependence on reputation and image, and a desire for an imagined space, defined by youth, that is not so imagined after-all. It is a collective secret ready to be shared.