Save these dates - Art Month in Dubai

Image via Art Dubai's Facebook page

It's March which means the art and culture crowd in Dubai is gearing itself for a very busy month.

I usually refer to March in Dubai as a month of art and culture on steroids, and all I can hope for is that I have the time and energy to attend everything I want.

Expect detailed posts for each event during the coming week. In the meantime, save these dates if you want to check out the art scene in Dubai (and Sharjah) this month. It's going to be hectic, but I am sure it will be fun. 

13th March-13 May 2013 - Sharjah Biennial 11 

The 11th edition of Sharjah Biennial will start on 13th March and will run till 13th May 2013. The opening week will feature an exciting line up of events including film screenings, performances, talks and tours. You can find more details here.

14th-24th March 2013 - SIKKA

This year's edition of SIKKA will see work by over 70 UAE-based artists, 14 multidisciplinary initiatives and collectives, plus an array of special projects, panel discussions, live music, performances and film screenings, taking over Bastakiya, recently renamed to Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood.

I am happy and excited to say that The Culturist is one of the initiatives at this year's SIKKA, so expect a separate post about this.  

18th-21st March 2013 - Design Days Dubai 

Mutant Bench by Claudio Colucci, 2010, Wood, foam, polyurethane coated, 64 cm x 72 cm 146 cm

After a very successful debut last year, Design Days Dubai is back with a fair that will showcase collectible and limited edition furniture and design objects. There will also be some talks, film screenings and performances.  

18th March 2013 - Art Night in Alserkal Avenue and DIFC

Image via Alserkal Avenue's Facebook page

The galleries in DIFC and Alserkal Avenue will host gallery openings on this night. It's a shame both venues are doing this at the same night, as it will be difficult to check out the galleries properly between 6pm-10pm in both venues.

I wish this Art Night would go on later than 10pm to give us enough time to visit the two venues. I for one will probably end up spending more time in Alserkal Avenue. The atmosphere is usually a lot more relaxed there. 

20th-23rd March 2013 - Art Dubai

"Head" Series (No. 6) by Taiye Idahor, 2012 - Newspaper, film cartridge and acrylic paint on wood, 61x61cm. Courtesy of the artist.

The seventh edition of Art Dubai is packed with an extensive programme that includes commissioned projects and performances, artists' and curators' residencies, educational workshops, the unveiling of works by the winners of the annual Abraaj Capital Art Prize and the critically acclaimed Global Art Forum.

I really enjoyed last year's edition of Art Dubai, especially the Global Art Forum , so I can't wait for this year's edition. 

www.sharjahart.org/biennial/sharjah-biennial-11
www.sikka.ae 
www.designdaysdubai.ae
www.alserkalavenue.com
www.difc.ae/community-blog 
www.artdubai.ae
www.abraajcapitalartprize.com
www.artdubai.ae/global-art-forum 

Film Screening: AiR Dubai 2012

 
AiR (Artist in Residence) is an annual artist residency programme launched by Art Dubai, Delfina Foundation, Dubai Culture and Arts Authority and Tashkeel. For this year's addition of the residency, which happened between January and March, Tashkeel commissioned Mahmoud Kaabour to direct the documentary called AiR Dubai 2012 which followed the artists and their work during the residency programme in Dubai. 

The documentary will be screened on Tuesday, 19th June at Satellite in Al Serkal Avenue. There will be a panel discussion and a Q&A session after the screening. The panel will incude some of the artists from the residency, Art Dubai, Dubai Culture and Arts Authority and Tashkeel and Mahmoud Kaabour.  

This 30-minute documentary opens a window to the imagination of six artists selected to participate in the Artist in Residency (AiR) Dubai 2012 program. Over a period of three months, three emerging UAE artists and their international counterparts created personal works in the lead up to Art Dubai and Sikka Art Fair while based in Dubai's old quarter, Al Bastakiya.

Award-winning filmmaker Mahmoud Kaabour followed Deniz Üster, Fayçal Baghriche, Magdi Mostafa, Hadeyeh Badri, Nasir Nasrallah and Zeinab Alhashemi, together with resident curator, Alexandra MacGilp, through the last weeks of the residency as they reflected on their inspirations, impressions of Dubai, and their personal processes of creating art.

Event details
Date: Tuesday, 19th June at 7.30pm
Venue: Satellite, Al Serkal Avenue, Warehouse C-16, Al Quoz, Dubai (location map) 
Free entry. 

www.artdubai.ae/residencies

Art Dubai 2012

Akram Zaatari, Bodybuilders no. 8, 2011 (Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery Hamburg / Beirut
)Eko Nugroho, Happy Army, 2011 (Courtesy of the artist and Lombard Freid Projects, NY)

The sixth edition of Art Dubai is back this week from 21st-24th March at the Madinat Jumeirah. This year's fair will feature 74 galleries from 31 countries across Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Australia, Asia and Africa.

But for me what makes Art Dubai an event I look forward to are the commissioned projects, talks and performances that happen alongside the fair.

Here are my top picks (the schedule is very extensive this year and I've added the relevant links at the end of this post):

The Hatch
An ordinary stairwell is transformed into an intimate space for film, video and artists’ talks. A rolling programme features archival documentaries curated by Bidoun Projects, videos by Radio for Example, and artists’ films presented in collaboration with galleries participating in Art Dubai.
To see the complete schedule, visit artdubai.ae/thehatch.

Carlos Celdran: LIVIN' LA VIDA IMELDA: ARTS AND CULTURE, DISCO, TRUE STORY

Carlos Celdran is a cultural activist and a performing artist from the Philippines. He's been commissioned to perform seven acts in seven different parts of the fair which will be performed on every night of the fair. The selected locations will trigger an entertaining and engaging narrative, at the intersection of where geopolitics meets contemporary art. You can book a place on the tour at any of the information desks at Art Dubai.
  
Schedule:
Wednesday 21 March 18.00 - 19.00
Thrusday 22 March 18.00 - 19.00
Friday March 23  18.00 - 19.00
Saturday March 24 16.30 - 17.30

Forum-Forum
The Forum-Forum is a new multi-media repository, located in the Ballroom Foyer of Madinat Jumeirah, that assembles an alphabet of chairs and tables with an array of content. These include commissioned publications, curated projects, and new research, as well as art-works shown in Dubai for the first time. Each element paints its own idiosyncratic portrait of ‘The Medium of Media.’

A bit of shameless self promotion here, in Forum-Forum you will see a video I was commissioned to put togeter from the private library and archives of Aqeel Al Showab who has amassed 10,000-hour VHS/Betamax archive of Emirati TV from the 1970s to the 1990s (I wrote about him on this blog two years ago).

Visit artdubai.ae/forumforum6 to see the complete list of things you can see in Forum-Forum.

Global Art Forum from 21st-24th March on the Fort Island in Madinat Jumeirah
The Global Art Forum brings together is  protagonists of the art world for a week of conversations, with a particular emphasis on issues prevalent in the Middle East and Asia. This year's edition is directed by the estimable Shumon Basar.

The theme this year is The Medium of Media and features commissioned projects and research, as well as live debates and presentations. I'm happy to say I'm part of the Global Art Forum this year and will be making a presentation "Mass Medium: Emirati TV on Home Video" on Saturday, 24th March (details below).

Visit artdubai.ae/gafschedule to see the complete schedule, but here are the talks I recommend you don't miss. Yes, including mine ~_~

MARSHALL, MEDIA & ME (Wednesday 21st March, 14.05-1500)
Novelist and artist Douglas Coupland (Generation X, Microserfs and JPod) explains how we ‘know nothing’ of the work of Canadian media-theorist Marshall McLuhan, who, in the 1960s, coined the phrases ‘the medium is the message’ and ‘the global village’. Coupland discusses the unknown nuances of McLuhan’s legacy with Serpentine Gallery Co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Programmes Hans Ulrich Obrist and Shumon Basar.

CABARET CRUSADES: HISTORY THROUGH THE EYES OF FILM AND LITERATURE (Wednesday 21st March, 15.15-16.15)
Hans Ulrich Obrist talks with Egyptian artist Wael Shawky (and also one of this year's Abraaj Capital Art Prize-winner) about his recent project, which translated Amin Maalouf's 1983 book 'The Crusades Through Arab Eyes' into film-form.  Maalouf responds, via video, to questions about history and ambiguity, while Shawky shares his unique experience of working with a cast of Italian marionettes.

ARABIC ART GLOSSARY PROJECT (Wednesday 21st March, 16.30-17.00)
Curator Lara Khaldi leads a new collaboration between Art Dubai and Mathaf: an interactive Arabic Art Glossary platform. Over the course of a year, a database of art terms and definitions in Arabic will be built up, providing arts practitioners, institutions, students and translators with an unparalleled resource.

ARSHAFA E3LAMIYA: MIDDLE EAST NEWS ARCHIVE (Friday 23rd March, 14.00-15.00)
In this archive of the present, writer and researcher Mariam Wissam Al Dabbagh collects, compares and critiques the different way in which current events in the Arab world are narrated by Arabic and English speaking news media. It will also available to browse in the Forum-Forum (located in the Ballroom Foyer).

THE GCC: GULF COLLOQUY COMPENDIUM (Friday 23rd March, 16.00-16.15)
Writer and filmmaker Sophia Al Maria has written a ‘lexicon’ of the Gulf, a ‘vernacular digest of new words from the past and archaic phrases from the future’. It will be also available to read in the Forum-Forum (located in the Ballroom Foyer).

MASS MEDIUM: EMIRATI TV ON HOME VIDEO (Saturday 24 March, 15.00-15.30)
Blogger Hind Mezaina presents highlights from Aqeel al Showab’s 10,000-hour VHS/Betamax archive of Emirati TV from the 1970s to the 1990s. A private individual’s passion becomes de facto national archive. You will be able to see excerpts in the Forum-Forum (located in the Ballroom Foyer).

ART WORLD CARTOGRAPHY (Saturday 24 March, 16.00-16.30)
Brusselssprouts have produced a dynamic, cartographic visual exploration of the Dubai art world, distilling more than 2500 entries spanning from galleries, exhibitions, fairs, artists, curators, patrons and any art event produced in U.A.E. since 2005. They explain to Shumon Basar how the map came about and what it reveals. Also displayed in the Forum-Forum (located in the Ballroom Foyer).

I leave you with some highlights from Art Dubai 2011. I strongly suggest you free up a day or two or four to attend this fair and the events listed above. I plan to be there everyday, so if you are around, come and say hello.

www.artdubai.ae
www.artdubai.ae/programme
www.artdubai.ae/performances
www.artdubai.ae/forumforum6
www.artdubai.ae/globalartforum

Art Dubai 2011

It's here folks, a week of art talks, events, exhibitions is upon us. Besides the 81 galleries from 34 countries taking part in Art Dubai, there's an extensive schedule of talks and events happening at the same time. If like me, you are more interested in the talks, events (and even the parties), don't miss out on the following:

 

Bidoun Projects' Art Park

Art Park is an underground (literally) project space for film, video and talks curated by Bidoun. This year's theme is Sports -  looking at competition, stardom, the parody of sports as labor or labor as sports, the art of losing, and sports per se.

The program also includes retrospectives of the work of two pivotal Egyptian artists, Sherif El-Azma and Wael Shawky, curated by Bidoun’s Kaelen Wilson-Goldie and Sarah Rifky of the Townhouse Gallery, respectively, as well as a sports-themed video programme featuring a variety of artists including Ziad Antar, Mahmoud Hojeij, Van Leo, and Marwa and Mirene Arsenios.

A big hit from last year, The Bidoun Library returns this year, featuring ‘The Natural Order,’ a new section specially curated for Art Dubai that focuses on printed material on the Gulf from the past five decades. It will include corporate and state publications, as well as magazines and lay-ethnography on the Gulf published in the mid 20th century, when the region was mostly unfamiliar in the West and was becoming a source of great interest with the discovery of oil. One of the talks related to the Bidoun Library that I'm looking forward to is the brilliantly titled "The Natural Order: How to find and read bad books about the Gulf and beyond" by Babak Radboy, Bidoun's Art Director.

Another great title in the Art Park program is a performance called "Going Over: The Social Dimensions of Men's Hair-Styling in Kuwait and Beyond" a lecture presented by Fatima Al Qadiri and Khalid Al Gharaballi, commissioned by DIS magazine and Bidoun Projects

A personal favourite from last year, the collective Slavs and Tatars  will also make a special appearance with a new project and publication dedicated to Molla Nasreddin.

Monobrow Manifesto - Slavs and Tatars

The Big Idea co-presentd by yours truly along with Bidoun Projects' Alia Al Sabi will feature presentations by UAE-based artists and designers, speakers include:

1. Promise of a Generation: The Accidental Majlis
2. Butheina Kathem: Re-imagining media: On the role of media in the Arab world
3. Khalid Mezaina: A Krossbreed Experience: On the journey of creating a contemporary, culturally infused design brand with an unconventional flare.
4. Clint McLean: The Girl Who Married a Snake
5. Reem Falaknaz: Community Narratives
6. Aya Atou: We Got Away With All of It: An exploration of site-specific city and public art in Dubai
7. Olivier Auroy: “bq”- hip and pious: the first burqa-inspired sunglasses made in the Gulf
8. Tima Ouzden: DXB Store at Art Dubai
9. Silvia Natale: Theory of Knowledge in Art

More details about the Art Park program can be found here and the detailed schedule can be found here. 

Gulf Art Forum
The Global Art Forum focuses on key issues that bring together the arts scenes of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia region with the rest of the world. Celebrating its 5th edition in 2011, the forum is put together by a curatorial committee that is chaired by Shumon Basar and includes Tirdad Zolghadr, Antonia Carver and Claudia Cellini, and focuses broadly on the theme of Changing Audiences. Specific strands – explored through keynotes, panels, workshops, conversations and performances – look at the mutual sympathies between fashion and art, and how artists see their role in relation to new audiences. 

Detailed information and schedule can be found here.

DXB Store 
DXB Store is a pop-up concept store is a new addition to this year's fair. A not-for-profit space featuring a collection of limited edition products and artist's multiples that are designed, made and sold in the UAE. Highlighting the innovative work of UAE-based artists and designers the collection will include newly commissioned objects as well as existing ranges, most unavailable commercially.

I'm glad (and honored) to say I'm one of the commissioned artists (I have a set of limited edition of postcard books on sale), along with with the following artists and designers: Alia Al Shamsi, Lamya Gargash, Diana Hawatmeh, Raad Haider, Maisoon Al Saleh, The Khatt Foundation, Fadi Sareddine & LOCAL, Khalid Mezaina, Aljoud Lootah, Manabu Ozawa, FN, Loreta Bilinskaite-Monie, OTT, Dinz, Khawla Darwish, Tima Ouzden, Leena Saoub, Rami Farook and Essa.

 Around Dubai by Hind Mezaina (yay!)


www.artdubai.ae

March - a month of art and culture on steroids

Art Dubai 2010

It's March, which means a month of art and culture on steroids in Dubai (and in nearby Sharjah). So if you are hungry for some art, this is the month to step out and find out what's make discover what is on offer.

Here's a brief rundown of what's coming up this month and look out for detailed posts over the next few days for some of the events I'm really looking forward to.

07-12 March - Gulf Photo Plus
08-12 March - Emirates Airline Festival of Literature
13-15 March - Sharjah Art Foundation's March Meeting
16-19 March - Art Dubai
16 March till 16 May - Sharjah Biennial
... and lots of exhibition openings in galleries across Dubai.

Art in the City is a great resource that lists all art related events in the UAE, so have a look if you want detailed information to mark your calendars.

For now, I leave you with this collage of photos I took from last year's Art Dubai and hope to see you around at one or several of the events listed above. 

The Social Seen by Hatty Pedder

Deira by Hatty Pedder

Mojo Gallery's upcoming exhibition is The Social Seen by Hatty Pedder, from 6th-30th October. I love that her name is Hatty and I love these illustrations that capture the varied lifestyles in Dubai.

Hatty Pedder was born in the UK in 1969, but spent the majority of her childhood abroad, including a number of years in Dubai during the 1980s.

From an early age, Hatty developed a deep love for figurative art – particularly the Pre-Raphaelite movement - and in 1989 she won a place at Central St. Martin’s College of Art & Design in London where she began to develop her unique style. Her narrative, observational work may not betray an overt Pre-Raphaelite link, but the influence of Aubrey Beardsley’s beguiling black line figures is unmistakable.

Wedding Show by Hatty Pedder

At the start of her career Hatty was commissioned by a number of UK publications, including Tatler, to illustrate stories and articles, and in 1994 she moved back to Dubai with her husband and new-born daughter.

Always comfortable moving between various genres and working in different mediums, Hatty took on many artistic and commercial art commissions in the UAE which included producing a wide scope of photographic, illustrative and montage work. During this time her art was also exhibited at the New Orientalists Exhibition at the Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation, and at The Majlis and XVA Galleries in Dubai.

 

Art Dubai by Hatty Pedder

In the last few years Hatty has returned to her first love, painting – quietly absorbing and studying the goings-on at the many events in the Emirates, and building up the body of work that forms the basis of The Social Seen.

Garden Centre by Hatty Pedder

Hatty Pedder's human subjects are bird-like, out-of-shape, vain, pasty, camp, hairy, snobby, pretentious, over-confident, over-dressed, oblivious, bewildered and absurd. Every character in her work is infused with exaggerated life. Hatty’s pen is always searching, exploring every nook and cranny of her subject – inventing slow- burning subplots that make her paintings a never-ending discovery.

Exhibition details
Dates: 6th-30th October 2010
Location: Mojo Gallery,Unit 33 Al Serkal Avenue, Street 8, Al Quoz 1, Dubai
Phone: +9714 347 7388
Opening hours: Saturday to Thursday, 10:00am – 7:00pm

www.themojogallery.com
www.hattypedder.com