Event Type : Agenda

The MAMC+ Saint-Étienne Métropole hosts the traveling retrospective exhibition of Hassan Sharif (1951-2016), bringing together in an exceptional way more than 150 of the Emirati artist’s works, rarely exhibited in France.

Hassan Sharif was born in Iran, studied in London, and lived in Dubaï, where he became a pioneer of Conceptual Art in the Middle East. As an artist, educator, and critic, he helped transform the artistic landscape of his country, leading it far beyond the realm of traditional calligraphy, and he remains one of the most influential artists in the Arab world.

Over a period of four decades, Hassan Sharif developed a significant body of work consisting of drawings, paintings, performances, sculptures, and installations. In contrast to this abundant production, the title of the exhibition (I am the single work artist) instead seems to suggest that this work should be seen as a single gesture that was repeated over time.

Hassan Sharif’s practice evolved in a social and economic context that was radically transformed by the discovery of oil in 1958, followed by the creation of the United Arab Emirates in 1971. His work is marked by the rapid transformation of a small land like Dubaï into a megalopolis of luxury. He criticised the forced march of modernisation through the caricatures he published until 1979, at which point he devoted himself entirely to his own artistic practice. His training in London exposed him to British constructivism, Minimal Art, and Fluxus, whose influences he adeptly channelled in his own oeuvre. His performances in the Hatta desert in the early 1980s represent some of the first manifestations of Conceptual Art in the Gulf, as he jumped, threw a stone, filmed rock formations, or disappeared over a dune. He used photographs, collages, and writings to document his actions in his own courtyard, in a taxi, or at a souk.

Through the subversive pop-up exhibitions that he organised with the collective Mureijah Art Atelier, he called viewers’ attentions to the everyday materials and objects he found in increasing amounts in local markets. A process of accumulating, cutting, weaving, and assembling led Sharif to develop a major current in his work, which he termed “urban archaeology”. Starting in the 2000s, as his installations became monumental in scale, he returned to painting, often incorporating these same everyday objects into his canvases. Their grotesque style and expressionist touch depict — with a sense of realism — the more shoddy and coarse aspects of consumer society.

At the same time that Hassan Sharif was completing these installations, he developed a more ascetic and graphic series of works that also made use of repetition: the “Semi-Systems”. He made mathematical calculations and established rules to generate geometric drawings that consisted of a quasi-infinite number of columns and segments of straight lines. He allowed fatigue and boredom to enter the equation and thereby introduce mistakes, which he left visible. Like much of Sharif’s work, the Semi-Systems depict a confrontation of authority, as well as the means of getting around it.

Hassan Sharif’s work is echoed in a number of Western artistic approaches from the late 1970s and 1980s. In continuation of the exhibition, two rooms have been devoted to the MAMC+’s own collections, featuring Minimal Art, Fluxus and Supports/Surfaces in particular.

This exhibition is originally organised by Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, U.A.E., and curated by Hoor Al Qasimi. The European tour of the exhibition has been organised by Sharjah Art Foundation in collaboration with KW Berlin, Malmö Konsthall and the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole.

Andakulova Gallery, Dubai, has the privilege of presenting the works of artist Saule Suleimenova from Kazakhstan with an inaugural on 09th March 2021. The exhibition will run till 09th October 2021.

Suleimenova is a visual artist who works with edge-of-the-art techniques and media, including recycled plastic, cellophane and polycarbonate. In a recent daring departure, she has been working with collages on plastic bags and creating cellophane painting. Her artwork is made of plastic bags glued on to polycarbonate sheets.

Pieces of colourful plastic bags are glued with melted silicon glue, on a cover of polycarbonate or plastic bags on polyethylene. Some of the bags are branded with names from boutiques, retail shops, supermarkets, or are just garbage bags.

Suleimenova’s new medium could definitely be food for thought for those who thought polycarbonate and cellophane are items used only in the manufacture of compact discs, DVDs, mobile phones, eyeglasses, or in food packing.

She grew up Soviet Kazakhstan, in Almaty, the then capital of the country. Therefore, decolonisation is a very strong feature in her works. Right at the beginning of her artistic career, she began experimenting with different techniques – water colour, wax-engraving and acrylic on canvas.

At the end of the 1980s, she joined the alternative underground art group Green Triangle, where she was deeply impacted by punk ideas. However, she graduated from an architectural academy. These trends are fundamental to her artistic development.

Post 2004, she turned to contemporary art and began using archive photo-documents of the Kazakh past, of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

“I was trying to express the real face of Kazakhstan, to find a balance neither complimentary nor derogatory. From this time, I started working with interactive photography and painting.

“It helped me discover the idea of how layers of reality and imagination, past and modernity, uncover postcolonial paradigms and reconcile with one’s own identity”, she says.

Madina Tlostanova, Professor of Postcolonial Feminisms at Linköping University, Sweden, has commented that “through decolonising visuality and particularly, notions of the beautiful, Suleimenova attempts to teach Kazakhs to unlearn their desire for those lacquered ersatz things they were taught to like and appreciate as beautiful, and as their own. She wants to decolonise their idea of Kazakhness …”

In short, Suleimenova tries to reconnect and reconcile traditional Kazakh culture and the aesthetics of revolt through modernist artistic devices. Her art language refers to archaic Kazakh culture, with every gesture a kind of sacral ritual, connecting Kazakh reality to other worlds. Through the poetics of everyday, the finds the pathos of eternity.

Her work has had a strong social impact in Kazakhstan and she takes part in educational, ecological and other social events. For example, she has involved people to bring her plastic bags.

Plastic pollutes and stays in the ground for decades and hardly dissolves. Thousands of tons of not dissolved trash lie in a huge territory of the Kazakh steppe.

Suleimenova started working with plastic bags in 2014. By using this reproducible and not decomposing material, she says she discovers new meanings.

Kelin was a 2015 project, partly collective, which involved gathering plastic bags. “People (were asked to) bring me the bags, so I could turn them to a material for creating artwork,” Suleimenova says.It was hung over the pedestrian street in Almaty. The artwork indicated continuous research into time, history and its place in contemporary practices. The practice took further steps from her studio or plein air paintings, as it dealt directly with the public in a site-specific environment.

Somewhere In The Great Steppe (2017, SIGS) included a series of artworks made of plastic bags, created non-traditionally, without paint or material such as canvas, brush, bronze “or anything institutional,” as Suleimenova puts it. They were exclusively plastic, with the bags collected by the public, assisted by AlaDalaArt (art of the colorful steppe). The programme was begun in 2016.

One Steppe Forward (2019) stems from Suleimenova’s experience of Qazaq Koktemi, which was a series of peaceful protests by Kazakh civil society, in 2019. During this time of social upheaval, thousands of Kazakhstanis protested against a fraudulent presidential election and the unlawful renaming of their capital city, accompanied by other troubling political events. The work reflects the dynamics of Kazakh protest: its faces, bodies and colours.

Plastic gradually became a quintessential expression of Suleimenova’s life and art experience. The material she uses comes from people from different countries, with different backgrounds and life stories. So, when she uses plastic, she recycles not only material artefacts, but also different social and cultural attitudes.

Her work is a mixture of the past and the present, of painting and photography, of steppe and urbanisation. It is a fusion of archetypes, where it is confusing as to what is artificial and what is real.

Her work has been commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation, sold in Christie’s auction in London, and exhibited at Self Festival of the 56th Venice Biennale, Manifesta 11 in Zürich, Second Moscow Biennale, East of Nowhere exhibition in Turin, Foundation 107, One Belt One Road exhibition of Hong Kong Women Federation and in many other local and international projects.

Courtesy of Andakulova Gallery

Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, The Architecture of Confinement is the second chapter of the exhibition trilogy “The Architecture of…”, conceived for BNKR in Munich. BNKR is housed in a former WWII air-raid bunker, and each of the three parts relates directly to different episodes in the evolving history of the exhibition building from 1940 until today. The first one, titled The Architecture of Deception, referenced the building’s external camouflage residential features, and was on view from March 2020 until April 2021. The trilogy will conclude with The Architecture of Transformation later this year, exploring the building’s current use as a mixed residential and exhibition space.

The Architecture of Confinement is the second chapter of this trilogy, and takes its conceptual cue from the building’s usage as an internment camp during the denazification policy period from 1945 to 1948. At the same time, it evokes the current global experience of isolation. Six artists relate to the exhibition concept through existing or commissioned works. A site-specific installation by Nadia Kaabi-Linke references the architecture of imprisonment. Özgür Kar‘s video installation shows the effects of isolation on the individual. In her photographic works, Joanna Piotrowska examines the complex relationship between the human body and its physical environment. A sculpture by Mona Hatoum playfully tackles the interdependence of two closely connected individuals. Ramzi Ben Sliman‘s film is a reflection on art as a means of transcending the confines of socio-economic boundaries. A new work by Annika Kahrs, specifically commissioned for this exhibition explores the connections between space and sound in a period of isolation.

A comprehensive archives wall, which is presented at the center of the exhibition, complements the featured artistic positions. It illustrates both the historical context of the original use of the building as a bunker during the Second World War, as well as its importance in the post-war period, and the conversion of the architecture into its current state. The exhibition is conceived as a dialogue between the featured artistic positions, the confined architecture of the exhibition space, and the history of the building. Through creating a holistic experience, the exhibition invites visitors to reflect on the effects of physical and social restrictions, and their impact on the individual.

Reflecting on the intimate role architecture plays in our lives, Remain Calm explores the work of notable Japanese architects and an artist who use traditional concepts to create physical spaces with both modern and contemporary resonance. Conventionally understood as a space of enclosure, architecture exists independent of the external world, and yet simultaneously in dialogue with its surrounding environment.

Remain Calm draws inspiration from the thirteenth century poet Kamo no Chōmei and looks to the hut, or hermitage, as a prototype that illustrates one of the underlying spiritual aspects of Japanese architecture. Having witnessed famine, natural disaster and war, Chōmei became a hermit and retreated to a tiny, collapsible hut that he moved along the banks of the Kamo River. This portable shelter offered Chōmei a place for quiet reflection, a space to remain calm—independent from the outside world while at the same time connected to the surrounding environment through sensory perception. The exhibition examines architectural projects that date from the thirteenth century to the present, from both historic and contemporary perspectives, through the lens of two key themes: solitude and connectivity.

The modern and contemporary projects presented in this exhibition have inherited simplicity, serenity—and autonomy from, yet connection with, the outside world—qualities integral to Japanese huts, tea ceremony rooms and traditional sukiya-zukuri residential architecture that originated in Zen culture. The exhibition introduces visitors to experiments in Japanese architecture that aesthetically, stylistically and methodologically demonstrate a similar clarity of construction.

Remain Calm features an expansive design, which includes sculptural models that explore abstract concepts, spatial and performative multi-media installations as well as drawings, photographs and scale models of architectural projects. A model of Sen no Rikyū’s Tai-an tea house serves as the starting point of this survey, which subsequently introduces the work of emergent and established architects Koji Fujii, Togo Murano, Sutemi Horiguchi, Toyo Ito, Kazuyo Sejima, Junya Ishigami, onishimaki + hyakudayuki architects, Shingo Masuda and Katsuhisa Otsubo, alongside an installation and a performance by artist Nile Koetting.

The third in a four-year series of exhibitions curated by Yuko Hasegawa for Sharjah Art Foundation, this exhibition explores ideas that resonate powerfully in these uncertain times when the pandemic has made staying at home the ‘new normal’, while disrupting individual connectivity to an outside world that feels fraught with challenges, risk and unknown possibilities. Remain Calm is a proposition for a place to contemplate the possibilities of new lifestyles and modes of human existence: to cultivate serenity infused with a richness of thought, to nurture ways of life that are both productive and intellectual, and to understand the choice between isolation, exclusion and connection as a process of negotiation.

This exhibition is supported by the Goethe institut.
Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation.

Jerusalem’s landscape, as we know it today, is merely a surface layer, a slice in a long tumultuous history that has witnessed a succession of takeovers by people and civilizations from the preceding ones. Yet, Jack Persekian presents in this project scenes from the city by superimposing an additional layer – a photograph taken today of the same location, shot from the same spot and angle, over that taken by a photographer some one hundred years ago. Moving between two distinct times, allows us to study and compare the changes that occurred over time. In this project, he examines the landscape and forces at play then, now and, possibly, in the future.

Persekian digs through accumulated layers of history carried in these photographs, unearthing the details of the city, and the lives of its people and places. In a reverse process, he reconstructs its history taking the past as a starting point as he navigates his way to the present. Persekian does not get rid of the present layer, as usually is the case in archaeological excavations, but rather preserves it as an essential layer and a point of return in the interpretations and analysis process.

Persekian deliberately selects images with details that expose the contradictions of the place. Each work in itself is a story that narrates the transformation of the Holy City over time. For example, the vast changes that have occurred around the gates of the old city – not only from an architectural perspective, but also from a political and social perspectives – are apparent. We can observe the erasure of entire neighborhoods as a result of plans enforced by the colonial powers and executed with bulldozers in sheer denial of the city’s history and reality (the Moroccan neighborhood, as an example).

The current and former occupiers of the city can be seen in the same composition, from different times but almost identical in appearance, and apparently applying similar policies of control and subjugation. It is also clear in certain locations that the architectural changes are a direct result of the colonial perception of the place as a biblical city reincarnated, detached in their minds from its reality.

Some scenes from the old city have not changed much, but looking carefully, one might find new elements here or there, such as an air conditioner installed on an old wall, a façade pierced by bullet, or tourists wandering around in the city. Persekian reminds us that we live in the same place that appears in the old photos even if the features have changed a bit, now. In some works, the lines and details overlap perfectly, and the two images become one. Sometimes, in certain collages it becomes difficult to distinguish between the old and the new images, which make us wonder if he’s alluding to the concept that history repeats itself! He obscures some details of the past with the present or vice versa. Nonetheless, it’s not so important to reveal all the details, as much as conveying a message or underlining a point. Persekian’s works present Jerusalem as a dynamic city adaptable to its ever-changing reality, yet, a city under occupation and full of contradictions. It is not the ideal, poetic, enchanting place that appears in the pictures of Orientalist photographers which tourists buy in the souks, and it is definitely not the place where time stops. Every layer of the past has been subjected to some form of destruction in favor of the conquerors and dominant powers. The layers in between the past and present clearly prevail in his works as well as the persistent attempts of the colonial powers to own the city and its history and to remove its people.

“Past Tense” adds value and dimension to the act of taking photographs in the Holy City, and at the same time strips old images of the oriental gaze that permeates not only in the minds of tourists, but sometimes in our minds as Palestinians. By juxtaposing photographs from the past and present, Persekian unloads those romantic, sentimental and nostalgic sentiments carried by the old photographs, and brings us back to our reality, yet better informed and bewitched.

Courtesy of Zawyeh Gallery

Known for her large scale, colorful ‘trapunto’ works, Pacita Abad (1946-2004) was a Philippine-American artist whose prolific oeuvre spanned continents and ranged from abstract forms to social realist depictions of everyday life in the U.S.A, the Philippines and elsewhere. Having lived and travelled widely across Asia and many parts of the world, Abad’s work is an amalgamation of techniques and subject matter drawn from her lived experiences and mostly worked in her signature trapunto technique of padding and stitching canvas before painting and layering it with textiles, printed objects and other materials such as jewelry, buttons, and shells.

This exhibition brings together a selection of her ‘trapunto’ paintings and is curated in collaboration with the Pacita Abad Art Estate and London based artist Pio Abad.

Born in the Philippines in 1946, Pacita Abad studied painting at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Arts Student League in New York.Her work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions including: Life in the Margins, Spike Island, Bristol (2020); Pacita Abad: A Million Things to Say, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila (2018); Circles in My Mind, Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore (2003); Exploring the Spirit, National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta (1996); The American Dream, National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. (1994); Masks from Six Continents, Metro Art Center, Washington D.C. (1990); Pacita Abad: A Painter Looks at the World, Museum of Philippine Art, Manila (1984) and Assaulting the Deep Sea, Ayala Museum, Manila (1983).She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including: Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning,13th Gwangju Biennial (2021); SWEAT, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2021); Whose Tradition?, Tate Liverpool (2021); The Crack Begins Within, 11th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2020); Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art, a travelling exhibition organised by the Asia Society, New York (1996); Beyond the Border: Art by Recent Immigrants, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (1994); La Segunda Bienal de la Habana (1986); and the 2nd Asian Art Show, Fukuoka Art Museum (1985).Her work can be found in the collections of Tate Modern, London; The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., M+ Museum, Hong Kong, Art Jameel, Dubai and the National Gallery of Singapore.

She died in Singapore in 2004.

In his latest show opening at Galerie Sfeir-Semler in Hamburg, Lebanese artist Rayyane Tabet tackles themes of cultural appropriation and original context through the lens of the arabesque, a stylised ornamental pattern found in all genres of art. The word itself originally meant “in the Arabic style” in Italian. Today, it still indicates an ornamental design consisting of intertwined flowing lines but interestingly, does not exist in the Arabic language.

Language is shaped by values, cultures and societies to express subjective points of view. Over centuries languages have changed, and words have been developed to name anything new or foreign: the term Arabesque was therefore a purely European concept, coined to describe designs thought to have been encountered throughout the Arab world. Although these designs were at the core of artistic expression -in a region where figurative representation was prohibited- they were henceforth largely perceived as patterned crafts.

The exhibition opens with Découpages, a frieze of 114 cut-out sheets from an original 19th century manuscript by Jules Bourgoin (1838-1908). The French scholar traveled through Egypt to study architectural ornaments and produced precise documentation drawings. His elaborate research was compiled in books such as Les Arts Arabes or Les Eléments de l’Art Arabe,two works that set the standards for what was considered « Arab Art » in Europe. Tabet cuts-out and recomposes individual pages from these publications, in an attempt to find different possible geometries hidden within the document.

Arabesques are usually used in repeating patterns and can be infinitely multiplied in order to cover a surface. In Assemblage -as in several works in the show- Tabet follows the repetition logic by stacking twenty original redwood corbels salvaged from Julia Morgan’s Saint John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. Morgan (1872–1957), who was a student of Bourgoin, was the first female architecture student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and went on to become a prolific representative of the Arts and Crafts movement taking the idea of the arabesque from Europe to North America.

Through these conceptual exercises, Tabet creates structures in which ornamental motifs reclaim some of their original purpose isolated from subjective interpretations, like in Rosettes, an installation made out of plaster and plastic ceiling medallion that are assembled on the floor into a reclining light fixture.

Completing the presentation on the ground floor are score sheets on music stands of Deux Arabesque by Claude Debussy (1862-1918), a composition that interpreted the arabesque motif into musical form. On each of the sheets, the artist has drawn one letter from the word Orientalism. The ink covers notes, creating voids and deconstructing the melody. The distorted composition is played back by a digital processor, revealing the blind spots of the initial European interpretation of the form.

The ground floor installation is mirrored in Moulages, where fragments of clay mouldings commonly used in interior decoration are composed into a mural that read like the score of the sound piece playing in the same room.

Rayyane Tabet’s exhibition Arabeske combines complex thoughts, historical facts, coincidental encounters and emotions. While reframing basic shapes and lines from their individual context, he maps out the migration of ideas across time and space that culminates in questions of heritage, appropriation, subjectivity and perception.

Courtesy of Sfeir-Semler Gallery

Tabari Artspace is delighted to announce The Cherry On Top, the solo exhibition of Jordanian painter, Khaldoun Hijazin to be exhibited at Tabari Artspace, Dubai, September 15 – October 31, 2021. The Cherry On Top comprises 10 oil on canvas and acrylic on canvas paintings as well as two large-scale objects produced in 2021.

Our societies have been marked by their quest for truth and transparency yet the body of work produced by Khaldoun Hijazin for The Cherry On Top exposes the complex network of control and manipulation that frames our existence. The artist exposes the current post-truth space where political and ideological discourses are largely accepted to be both staged and falsified. Through his explorations, Hijazin shatters and subverts thinly veiled illusions revealing the performative and inherited nature of our actions, our simultaneous awareness and acceptance of the theatre of leadership, and the fragility of grandeur.

Through dark humour and pastiche, Hijazin dissects and dissolves structures of power and dominance in realms from the political to the social. Hijazin understands his art to be an exploration that facilitates the flow of various ideas and concepts rather than a process of direct commentary or documentation. Influences from reading critical theory as well as Marxist and deconstructive discourse are evident in the artist’s practice, particularly in this series.

From the boardroom to the dining table Hijazin’s characters are lodged in social settings marked by haunting legacies of propaganda, capitalism and colonialism. The artist weaves together a complex constellation of signs and signifiers, lifted from various moments in time and social and cultural contexts. As such, his scenes, existing in the non-linear moment that he established, are difficult to place. Some fragments in his works Middle Feast, Cooky Jar, and The Cherry on Top – from which the exhibition takes its title – appear to have roots in early twentieth century Arab Bedouin communities while others such as Familiar Faces, Shattered Illusions and Mind the Gap spawn from mid-century Western lobbies alluding to colonial and hegemonic legacies. Hijazin is preoccupied with the notion of legacies – events of the past that continue to reoccur and inform the present. His compositions take on complex and multilayered meaning, the imposition of markers such as the broken chandelier in Shattered Illusions, denotes the collapse of the illusion of ‘true’ progress as claimed by the canon of neoliberalism, while the insertion of a black hole in Mind the Gap, materialises current debate surrounding political transparency and the deliberate disappearance of information.

Judith Butler’s notion of performativity and Guy Debord’s notion of the ‘society of the spectacle’ – where appearances supercede substance – are pronounced in the actions of Hijazin’s characters, particularly in their hand gestures.

The imposition of colour in order to obscure and transform the faces of his characters – often authoritative figures – also recurs throughout several works including Sincerest Masquerade, Familiar Faces, and Faithfully Yours. Hijazin contends that figures of authority and influence shift their colours like chameleons and ‘put on their face’ before their public performance.

Throughout history, scale has been used to assert the importance and power of the nobility. In this context, Hijazin’s use of large-scale both references and subverts this tradition. Despite the magnitude of the artist’s 3.5 meter long Shattered Illusions, the frame is cropped so that only the polished shoes of the elite are revealed. This close framing keeps the viewer guessing who and what might have been obscured; alluding to secret, high-level discussions taking place in a male-dominated space.

The two large-scale objects that complete this body of work – Fall From Grace, and Tower of Desire, – take the throne and the cake as superficial and inflated signifiers of success and celebration. Hijazin, investing these icons with cynicism, has left them tilted and imperfect, ready to topple down onto the gallery floor.

Courtesy of Tabari Artspace

Grey Noise gallery is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Galle based Sri Lankan artist Muhanned Cader at Grey Noise, Dubai.

I.

Darkness. Why is it so chilling, yet so alluring. We fear it yet escape into it. As he has done before, Muhanned Cader turns to the subject of darkness, in a new body of 12 paintings called Nightscapes 2019-2021. Rather than look at the night in these works, Muhanned looks into it. It’s a subtle difference that reminds me of a conversation I had years back with American artist James Turrell who said ‘night does not fall, it rises’. Between sunset to sunrise every 24 hours, when the sun moves below the horizon, a period of ambient darkness ascends. Night of course is defined in relation to the rotational position of the day. In the absence of daylight, nothing can be seen, at least not for humans. Our sense of sight is blighted. What we can’t see we fear. For Muhanned however, the obstruction of our sensory system to see in the night should not prevent us from looking into its velvety darkness. Painted from the vantage point of his 8th storey apartment, his new series of paintings look into the nighttime surroundings of his neighbourhood, Nugaduwa.

II.

Nugaduwa is situated on the outskirts of the southern city of Galle in Sri Lanka. It does not share the bright lights of the big city at night. Instead, it twinkles and shimmers as a result of the blazing street lamps that line the Southern Expressway. The Nugaduwa interchange which serves as the access point into the city of Galle, is also a stone’s throw from the artist’s apartment. In one of Muhanned’s twelve paintings, the highway appears as an abrupt arc of narrow, orange light. It darts across the lower part of the canvas before being extinguished by the dark. Other paintings in this series look out across vast vistas of night. Human habitation is suggested by clusters or strings of light; some areas appear more populated than others. From afar, the lights chart the proximity of buildings to one another amidst the rising topography of the landscape. A dense cluster indicates the city of Galle in the far distance, while smaller clusters locate dwellings in what seems like the middle of nowhere. When seen up close, however, these lights transform into nothing more than muddy crusts or dabs of raw paint. Dandelion, bumblebee, flaxen, oyster, cotton and parchment are just some of the colours that lie on the surface of the canvas. They join an otherwise dominant spectrum of black, blues and dawn grey swatches of paint. Looking into the night Muhanned unveils a kaleidoscope of hues lurking within an otherwise monochrome series of works.

III.

In the 1990s Muhanned Cader rented a studio on the edge of Bolgoda River, situated in a quiet suburb south of the capital Colombo. During this period he made a series of 40 paintings called ‘Nightscapes’(1999), which captured the views from his studio across the river after sunset. The paintings featured curved edges, a trait that has gone on to become a distinguishing characteristic of his drawings and paintings. Rather than paint the picturesque views of the river during the daytime, the artist opted to capture the view from his studio during nightfall. “I was not very into the daytime…there was something about those Koralawella nights that was perfect and mysterious, which made me want to paint it. And it worked perfectly with the politics of the time.”[1] Muhanned’s return to painting nightscapes comes not only with a change in location but a change in format. The curvilinear form of his initial series has been left behind and replaced with rectangular canvases. They are oriented in the format of traditional landscapes or turned vertically like stone tablets. Set within these rectangles however, the irregular edges of the painted surface continue. As in the previous series, they suggest that part of the night has been edited out. What is there to be seen has been concealed by the cover of night. We cannot see the full picture. We are not supposed t

IV.

The new series of paintings are shown alongside an accordion book, in which collaged photographic fragments have been arranged to form a unfolding landscape at night. The double-sided accordion book gives form to the night from the front and the back. It mimics the feeling of being surrounded by the darkness. Compared to the paintings, the photographs help us observe the light pollution of the city. They depict the misty indeterminacy of night into day as a ritual that invites the next revolution of a living planet. The images that make up the book are made by cutting out parts of the night. These cutouts correspond to the sections of night that have been removed from the edges of the paintings. In the book, Muhanned appears to present us with an archive of night’s remnants, filed for safekeeping. Titled, Let Sleeping Villages Sleep (2021), Muhanned suggests that we read past the contents of the book and instead, remain vigilant of what lurks beneath the surface, should the sleeping villages awaken. While the cover of night induces a state of slumber and quiet, it’s darkness also conceals all evils. Darkness. It is so chilling yet so alluring, for a reason. Such are the politics of our times.

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Sharmini Pereira
Chief Curator
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka
2021

Courtesy of GREY NOISE, Dubai

Moving to touch the ether with a tenderness gained from years of living softly, I become aware of the ethereal and understand my misty presence within it. Painting Time gently, I reaffirm my trust – limitless, endless and white. -Afaf Zurayk

I was born and grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, the third of four daughters in a closely knit, highly academic family. Always an introvert, I was introduced to art at a very early age. In painting, I discovered a language that gave expression to my thoughts and feelings and conveyed their inner dialogue beyond words. Preparing myself to paint, I spent time in nature, both in solitude and within community, and reveled in its mystery. This enabled me to see from within and to communicate in what connects rather than what separates us.
During the civil war in Lebanon, I experienced wrenching fear through the destruction of the life and the self that I knew. Yet, I was gifted with grace and love in the midst of overwhelming violence. In time, my belief in our intrinsic humanity deepened as I came to understand how to calibrate terror and grace—dark and light. I continued to paint from within as I charted an inner map of layered contradictions that illumined WHITE


Moving to touch the ether with a tenderness gained from years of living softly, I become aware of the ethereal and understand my misty presence within it. Painting Time gently, I reaffirm my trust – limitless, endless and white. -Afaf Zurayk

I was born and grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, the third of four daughters in a closely knit, highly academic family. Always an introvert, I was introduced to art at a very early age. In painting, I discovered a language that gave expression to my thoughts and feelings and conveyed their inner dialogue beyond words. Preparing myself to paint, I spent time in nature, both in solitude and within community, and reveled in its mystery. This enabled me to see from within and to communicate in what connects rather than what separates us.
During the civil war in Lebanon, I experienced wrenching fear through the destruction of the life and the self that I knew. Yet, I was gifted with grace and love in the midst of overwhelming violence. In time, my belief in our intrinsic humanity deepened as I came to understand how to calibrate terror and grace—dark and light. I continued to paint from within as I charted an inner map of layered contradictions that illumined my life for years to come.

With the war still raging, I left Lebanon for Washington, DC . There I built on my experiences and reflections of connection and disconnection, and honed my skills at transparency. I coupled painting with writing to express feelings of both agency and belonging. I shaped a new sense of self and began to appreciate meditative solitude as a way to till my ground creatively. The privilege of being in and with nature was restorative and generative. My poetry emerged from a wellspring of love, and I grew.

I now live in Beirut and remain quietly introspective despite so many political and social upheavals. I center my art in the riches of our essential humanity with respect for our ability to correspond with and imagine our inner truth. Painting and writing in loving awe, I remain within, crossing those passages that connect us in kindness, gently.

Vantage Point Sharjah 9 (VPS9) is the ninth iteration of Sharjah Art Foundation’s annual initiative dedicated to the medium of photography. The exhibition is on view from 18 September through 18 December at the Foundation’s off-site venue Al Hamriyah Studios.

For the first time, Vantage Point Sharjah introduces a cash prize of USD 1,500 for one winner from each of the following categories: Conceptual, Experimental, Photojournalism and Documentary and Staged Photography. This year, VPS9 also introduces a jury consisting of Ammar Al Attar (artist), Sham Enbashi (photographer and architect), M’hammed Kilito (photographer) and Alia Al Shamsi (author and artist), who selected the winners from each category. The selected winners will be announced on the exhibition’s opening day, September 18.

This year’s annual Open Call attracted over 500 applicants. From these applications 53 photographers from over 30 countries were selected for inclusion in the exhibition. Each photographer will be represented by a series of 1 to 6 images that were submitted in response to the Open Call. The wide range of work included demonstrates the unique, fascinating and infinite possibilities of photography as a medium. Through their lens, the photographers explore the world around them, drawing from personal experiences and narratives, as well as cultural, political or environmental conditions. Some reveal intimate portraits of family life and memories, others reflect on the often- troubled history and politics of their homeland. Together, the nearly 200 images on view present an evocative and inspiring insight into the life and concerns of individuals of all walks of life from around the world today.

Artists were selected for their work in the Open Call categories of Conceptual, Experimental, Photojournalism and Documentary, and Staged Photography.

Conceptual Photography:
Maha Alasaker, Kathy Anne Lim, Hayley Millar Baker, Aline Deschamps, Farheen Fatima, Gabriel Gauffre, Majid Hojati, Alaa Jaafar, Işık Kaya, Wendy Marijnissen, Sara Sallam, Hiro Tanaka and Han Shun Zhou.

Experimental Photography:
Sarah Al Ansary, Gabi Kaiser, Carolina Dutca and Valentin Sidorneko, Devashish Gaur, Sukanya Ghosh, Brian Kerrigan, Barbel Mollmann, Ziad Naitaddi, Yudha Kusama Putera, Tamara Saade, Mahmoud Talaat and Alexander Walmsley.

Photojournalism and Documentary Photography:
Reyad Abedin, Taha Ahmad, Nicola Chilton, Akash Joshi, Roger Moukarzel, Fajar Riyanto, Kristina Sergeeva, Javed Sultan and Jerzy Wierzbicki.

Staged Photography:
Khadija El Abyad, Dima Assad, Fatima Butt, Divya Cowasji, Soheila Esmaeili, Wiame Haddad, Babak Haghi, Khoula Hamad, Barry Iverson, Januario Jano, Jennifer Kisney, Sudip Maiti, Lakin Ogunbanwo, Martin T Raggio, Anja Ronacher, Oskar Schmidt, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Sandeep TK and Rob Voerman

VPS was first launched in the summer of 2013 with an open call for submissions from GCC-based photographers. Over the years the exhibition has focused on a variety of themes including ‘Self-Portraiture’, ‘Performance’ and ‘Architecture and Urban Landscape’ and has opened up submissions to photographers from around the world.

Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation

DISCOVER. CONNECT. COLLECT.

VOLTA Art Fair returns to Basel for its 16th edition during this year’s Basel Art Fair Week. 69 galleries from across five continents and 50 cities assemble at the renovated venue of Elsässerstrasse 215, showcasing compelling new projects from artists of over 40 nations for a real life fair experience. Directed by Kamiar Maleki, VOLTA fosters galleries in staging ambitious solo and group presentations, refining the experience to its essential elements: the artists and their work.

Connected via shuttle bus or tram between Art Basel, visitors may escape the Messe’s hectic pace and immerse within VOLTA’s focused booth curation. The fair extends viewing hours from Monday, September 20, through Sunday, September 26.

“We are more than excited to welcome you back to an in real life fair experience at our newly renovated venue. Basel has always been and always will be the true centre of art fairs, and while we have been extremely busy in the background — re-branding, strategizing, and developing our fair — we are ready to resume action and provide a platform for our galleries to showcase some amazing art.”, says VOLTA Director Kamiar Maleki. “Our vision is to position VOLTA as the leading satellite fair in the cities it exhibits in. A fair for grass root collectors. We aim to make art more accessible by showcasing positions from different regions but trying to remain focused on a local collector base. VOLTA is about discovering, connecting and ultimately about collecting.”

FEATURED PRESENTATIONS

One third of the participating galleries have elected to showcase solo or two artists in a dialogue presentation. First time exhibitor Saradipour Art International (Los Angeles/Mahshahr, established in 2018) presents two Iranian artists of the same generation. Abbas Nasle Shamloo and Mahdieh Abolhasan create physically and emotionally charged depictions of humanity’s complicated, and destructive, relationship with the environment. Retro Africa from Abuja curates a solo presentation by Nigerian artist Alimi Adewale under the theme Changing Faces: New Frontiers in Figurative Art for its inaugural participation in Basel.

Long-time exhibiting Gallery Kogure from Tokyo present new works by ceramic artist Yoca Muta, bringing together traditional Japanese Kutani-yaki, as well as elements of pop culture such as western drawings, and contemporary Japanese manga.

For this September edition, Léna Roselli Gallery (Budapest) stages a two-booth presentation with sculpture artist BOLDI and painter Mózes Incze about How Humans Relate to the World. For their second presentation Playful Nature the gallery brings together new works by Ivan Lardschneider and Daniel Tarcsi. Nuweland (Oosterzee-Buren, established in 2017) gathers three South African artists to engage with the underlying violence within beauty. Featuring Morné Visagie (printmaking), Sanell Aggenbach (deconstructed painting), and Pierre Fouché (woven and lacework). Bavan Gallery (Tehran, established 2018) unveils three individual approaches to contemporary life in Iran, linked with a broader international discourse, via Elham Etemadi, Payam Qelichy, and Keiman Mahabadi. Returning VOLTA New York exhibitor Abigail Ogilvy Gallery (Boston) introduces her emphasis on concept-driven artwork by showcasing new paintings by Austin Eddy and Natalia Wróbel for her inaugural participation in Switzerland. Among the fair’s patron galleries Galerie Thomas Fuchs (Stuttgart) will bring new works by Rainer Fetting, Sebastian Gumpinger, Jochen Hein, Ruprecht von Kaufmann, and Yongchul Kim to Basel. Charlie Smith London (London) curates their booth around an exploration of folk within contemporary painting, emphasizing notions of fable, mythology, fairytale, and narrative. Artists will include Sam Jackson, Simon Keenleyside, Melissa Kime, Concha Martinez Barreto, Richard Moon, and Dominic Shepherd.

CONNECTING TO ITS SWISS ROOTS

Founded in Basel in 2005, the fair is excited to welcome three Swiss galleries to their exhibitor roaster for the September edition. Basel and Fujisawa based Selene Art Media (Basel) introduces Japanese artists Souun Takeda and Kohei Kyomori. While ARTPOWHER Contemporary (Zurich) stages a solo presentation by British-Nigerian artist Sola Olulode.

VOLTA ENCOURAGES COLLABORATIONS BETWEEN GALLERIES

Zurich based Pythongallery and Von Fraunberg Art Gallery (Düsseldorf) collaborate on a shared presentation for Nature and Provocation: Pythongallery balances the real with the surreal via Willy Verginer’s figurative wood sculptures, which are lifelike yet somehow “wrong” and “strange” and are painted in swaths of flat acrylic. Photographer Georg Küttinger, whose imagery fragments to infinity behind layers of plexiglas. Von Fraunberg Art Gallery likewise engages with figuration and pure abstraction via Christoph Rode’s interiors and Maxim Wakultschik’s portraits, both of which hover at the lifelike/abstract border, segueing into the soft-focus color forms of Rita Rohlfing’s acrylic glass and paint reliefs.

London based Kahn Gallery and Nadia Arnold Ltd. collaborate in short surveys of their respective programs, featuring an international roster of emerging artists. Kahn will bring Edouard Merzouk, Gregory Watin, Anna Valverde, and Ulla-Stiner Wikander; complemented by Arnold’s selection of Adam Riches, Schalk van der Merwe, Felix Dolah, and Stefan Gunnesch.

One year after the August 4, 2020 explosion that devastated the port of Beirut, the Arab World Institute pays tribute to the vitality and resilience of the Lebanese art scene. With the exhibition Lumières du Liban. Art moderne et contemporain de 1950 à aujourd’hui (September 21-January 2, 2022), the IMA celebrates the prodigious creativity of modern and contemporary artists from Lebanon and its diasporas, from the day after its independence in 1943 to the present day, with works by Shafic Abboud, Etel Adnan, Saliba Douaihy, Paul Guiragossian, Hussein Madi, Assadour, Chaouki Choukini, Ayman Baalbaki, Zad Moultaka, Serwan Baran, Hala Matta, Hiba Kalache, Zena Assi and Tagreed Darghouth.

More than a hundred works by 55 artists are revealed for this occasion, they were selected from the collection of modern and contemporary Arab art of the IMA, the largest in Europe (with its collection of nearly 600 Lebanese works) since its merger with the major donation of Claude and France Lemand in 2018, constantly enriched donation since then. “With Lights of Lebanon, the Arab World Institute expresses its full solidarity with the Lebanese people, and its world of arts and culture,” said Jack Lang, president of the IMA. Claude Lemand adds: “This exhibition bears witness to the luminous face of another Lebanon, that of its artists and its creators. It shows how big this small country is, and how, despite its misfortunes, victims and crisis, it remains the human and cultural melting pot that it has always been ”.

Lumières du Liban recalls the unique place of the Lebanese visual arts scene since the country’s independence, and reflects the complexity and artistic, human, geographical, historical and cultural richness of Lebanon. Scarred by conflicts and crises ranging from the civil war (1975-1990) to the explosion of the port of Beirut in August 2020, this history, sometimes chaotic, should not obscure its role as a major cultural melting pot, always well alive today: A role played by this country since Antiquity, as evidenced by the exhibition Liban, l’autre rive presented at the IMA in 1998-1999. The exhibition retraces in filigree seven decades of art history punctuated by the effervescence after the independence of Lebanon in 1943 and after the Second World War, the tears of civil war and exile, the artistic bubbling of globalisation.

More info on the following link.
https://www.imarabe.org/en/expositions/lumieres-du-liban

Carbon 12 is pleased to announce the upcoming solo exhibition of Anthony Akinbola, Thanks A Million.

Anthony Akinbola is a Nigerian-American artist whose work is fundamentally built upon the philosophy of the readymade and investigation into his relationships with these same objects. Akinbola’s series of textile paintings focuses on the culturally and historically charged Du-rag; a garment used in the maintenance of African hair, as a primary means to explore and navigate a dialogue that is concerned with the intricacies and complexities of semiotics within American culture. Upon parsing the readymade object, Akinbola examines the intimate narrative of our individual and collective cultural associations to these objects, amplifying their seminal and perpetual role in the fragile construction of who we are.

Akinbola continues to dissect the multi-faceted aspect of the Du-rag, as observed in similar works from his previous exhibitions. Outside of its familiar usage as a tool manufactured for the preservation and care of African hair, in displacing the readymade object, Akinbola also subverts dynamics of power by situating it within a space that redefines its agency. Through this process, he uncovers its underlying ties to topics that concern the commodification of the African-American identity, and its vulnerability to structures of capitalism.

Upon emphasiSing its transition from mass produced good to art material, Akinbola simultaneously transforms not only the object but the entire environment with his large-scale paintings. The fabrics exist in a spectrum of hues; flayed and draped, stretched and strung tight, intuitively weaved across a wooden panel. Their bold compositions permeate the space, immersing the viewer in their multi-layered fabrication, an allusion to the complex fashioning of identity. The Camouflage series taps into a ready-made tradition and delves into themes of hybridity, consumerism and race, Akinbola sees each new exhibition as an opportunity to reexamine and contextualiSe the work through a new lens.

Though not separated from their conceptual genesis, Thanks A Million focuses less on a didactic framework and more towards an interior one. Akinbola shifts emphasis towards the idea of thanks and the paintings act as affirmations of gratitude as the artist reflects on all that’s happened in the midst of such a turbulent year.

“I’d like to use the exhibition as an opportunity to pause and simply say thank you, to everyone and everything, there’s so much to be grateful for.”

At the core of Anthony Akinbola’s overarching body of work, the Du-rag amplifies a conversation concentrated on belonging and selfhood; topics Akinbola illuminates provide audiences with a greater critical awareness – the most crucial upshot from his works. Akinbola’s work charts a clear trajectory across past and present to redefine the genre of what is considered contemporary African Art and African-American art, and in continuing to adopt a multifaceted approach, the paintings undergo various transformations to withstand the ever-evolving discussion on identity.

Courtesy of Carbon 12 gallery.

The Athens Biennale announces its seventh edition, titled ECLIPSE, co-curated by Omsk Social Club and Larry Ossei-Mensah under the artistic direction of Poka-Yio. ECLIPSE is planned to take place in Spring 2021 in various locations in Athens. The exhibition will feature artists based in North and South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe, many of whom will be exhibiting in Greece for the first time.

The exhibition title highlights the obscured perspective of reality caused by the constant state of flux we are experiencing in our society now. ECLIPSE engages the social, political and spiritual changes of today’s global construct and in Athens itself, as a rising metropolis located at the intersection of Europe, Asia and Africa both physically and historically. An eclipse is a phenomenon of filtering and shrouding as well as a cosmic event. The experience of the eclipse functions as a catalyst for reprocessing an unresolved past that can inform an unspoken present and ultimately shape our future. Thus, Athens serves as the appropriate vantage point for contemplating the nuances of time and space. Furthermore, examining the question; is the west in decline or in a moment of significant transformation?

ECLIPSE seeks to assess the implications of identity, history, and cultural complexity. The 7th Athens Biennale offers an arena to interrogate many of the ideas, queries, concerns, and desires that are frequently not platformed within a Biennial format. In an effort to activate a dynamic cross-cultural discourse, AB7 will highlight the works of artists from the African Diaspora in addition to other artistic voices that have historically been pushed to the periphery. This engagement will be articulated through the use of a “Black Lens” as one of the frameworks. This approach seeks to engage the varying perspectives and artistic practices percolating within the African diaspora. This dialogue will be situated alongside a complimentary framework of artistic interventions that use dynamic manifestations to compose unique practical narratives. Their aim is to strategically address the viewers imagination of potential parallel worlds and futures. Composing a set of spaces that platform ideas such as radical care, interspecies friendship and sonic viewing strategies, ECLIPSE presents a translocal chapter of contemporary thought on how to co-exist within a world differently.

Defying the prevalent politics of historical narratives, ECLIPSE proposes to challenge oppressive mechanisms and outdated idealism. By deploying various immersive techniques such as real game play, radical gossip, persuasive realities, “emotional hypnosis”, bodying, synthesis, and visualization, ECLIPSE activates narrative fabrication and orchestrates an experiential shift in art viewing opening an alternative future for contemplation.

Andakulova Gallery, Dubai, has the privilege of presenting the works of artist Saule Suleimenova from Kazakhstan with an inaugural on 09th March 2021. The exhibition will run till 09th October 2021.

Suleimenova is a visual artist who works with edge-of-the-art techniques and media, including recycled plastic, cellophane and polycarbonate. In a recent daring departure, she has been working with collages on plastic bags and creating cellophane painting. Her artwork is made of plastic bags glued on to polycarbonate sheets.

Pieces of colourful plastic bags are glued with melted silicon glue, on a cover of polycarbonate or plastic bags on polyethylene. Some of the bags are branded with names from boutiques, retail shops, supermarkets, or are just garbage bags.

Suleimenova’s new medium could definitely be food for thought for those who thought polycarbonate and cellophane are items used only in the manufacture of compact discs, DVDs, mobile phones, eyeglasses, or in food packing.

She grew up Soviet Kazakhstan, in Almaty, the then capital of the country. Therefore, decolonisation is a very strong feature in her works. Right at the beginning of her artistic career, she began experimenting with different techniques – water colour, wax-engraving and acrylic on canvas.

At the end of the 1980s, she joined the alternative underground art group Green Triangle, where she was deeply impacted by punk ideas. However, she graduated from an architectural academy. These trends are fundamental to her artistic development.

Post 2004, she turned to contemporary art and began using archive photo-documents of the Kazakh past, of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

“I was trying to express the real face of Kazakhstan, to find a balance neither complimentary nor derogatory. From this time, I started working with interactive photography and painting.

“It helped me discover the idea of how layers of reality and imagination, past and modernity, uncover postcolonial paradigms and reconcile with one’s own identity”, she says.

Madina Tlostanova, Professor of Postcolonial Feminisms at Linköping University, Sweden, has commented that “through decolonising visuality and particularly, notions of the beautiful, Suleimenova attempts to teach Kazakhs to unlearn their desire for those lacquered ersatz things they were taught to like and appreciate as beautiful, and as their own. She wants to decolonise their idea of Kazakhness …”

In short, Suleimenova tries to reconnect and reconcile traditional Kazakh culture and the aesthetics of revolt through modernist artistic devices. Her art language refers to archaic Kazakh culture, with every gesture a kind of sacral ritual, connecting Kazakh reality to other worlds. Through the poetics of everyday, the finds the pathos of eternity.

Her work has had a strong social impact in Kazakhstan and she takes part in educational, ecological and other social events. For example, she has involved people to bring her plastic bags.

Plastic pollutes and stays in the ground for decades and hardly dissolves. Thousands of tons of not dissolved trash lie in a huge territory of the Kazakh steppe.

Suleimenova started working with plastic bags in 2014. By using this reproducible and not decomposing material, she says she discovers new meanings.

Kelin was a 2015 project, partly collective, which involved gathering plastic bags. “People (were asked to) bring me the bags, so I could turn them to a material for creating artwork,” Suleimenova says.It was hung over the pedestrian street in Almaty. The artwork indicated continuous research into time, history and its place in contemporary practices. The practice took further steps from her studio or plein air paintings, as it dealt directly with the public in a site-specific environment.

Somewhere In The Great Steppe (2017, SIGS) included a series of artworks made of plastic bags, created non-traditionally, without paint or material such as canvas, brush, bronze “or anything institutional,” as Suleimenova puts it. They were exclusively plastic, with the bags collected by the public, assisted by AlaDalaArt (art of the colorful steppe). The programme was begun in 2016.

One Steppe Forward (2019) stems from Suleimenova’s experience of Qazaq Koktemi, which was a series of peaceful protests by Kazakh civil society, in 2019. During this time of social upheaval, thousands of Kazakhstanis protested against a fraudulent presidential election and the unlawful renaming of their capital city, accompanied by other troubling political events. The work reflects the dynamics of Kazakh protest: its faces, bodies and colours.

Plastic gradually became a quintessential expression of Suleimenova’s life and art experience. The material she uses comes from people from different countries, with different backgrounds and life stories. So, when she uses plastic, she recycles not only material artefacts, but also different social and cultural attitudes.

Her work is a mixture of the past and the present, of painting and photography, of steppe and urbanisation. It is a fusion of archetypes, where it is confusing as to what is artificial and what is real.

Her work has been commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation, sold in Christie’s auction in London, and exhibited at Self Festival of the 56th Venice Biennale, Manifesta 11 in Zürich, Second Moscow Biennale, East of Nowhere exhibition in Turin, Foundation 107, One Belt One Road exhibition of Hong Kong Women Federation and in many other local and international projects.

Courtesy of Andakulova Gallery

Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, The Architecture of Confinement is the second chapter of the exhibition trilogy “The Architecture of…”, conceived for BNKR in Munich. BNKR is housed in a former WWII air-raid bunker, and each of the three parts relates directly to different episodes in the evolving history of the exhibition building from 1940 until today. The first one, titled The Architecture of Deception, referenced the building’s external camouflage residential features, and was on view from March 2020 until April 2021. The trilogy will conclude with The Architecture of Transformation later this year, exploring the building’s current use as a mixed residential and exhibition space.

The Architecture of Confinement is the second chapter of this trilogy, and takes its conceptual cue from the building’s usage as an internment camp during the denazification policy period from 1945 to 1948. At the same time, it evokes the current global experience of isolation. Six artists relate to the exhibition concept through existing or commissioned works. A site-specific installation by Nadia Kaabi-Linke references the architecture of imprisonment. Özgür Kar‘s video installation shows the effects of isolation on the individual. In her photographic works, Joanna Piotrowska examines the complex relationship between the human body and its physical environment. A sculpture by Mona Hatoum playfully tackles the interdependence of two closely connected individuals. Ramzi Ben Sliman‘s film is a reflection on art as a means of transcending the confines of socio-economic boundaries. A new work by Annika Kahrs, specifically commissioned for this exhibition explores the connections between space and sound in a period of isolation.

A comprehensive archives wall, which is presented at the center of the exhibition, complements the featured artistic positions. It illustrates both the historical context of the original use of the building as a bunker during the Second World War, as well as its importance in the post-war period, and the conversion of the architecture into its current state. The exhibition is conceived as a dialogue between the featured artistic positions, the confined architecture of the exhibition space, and the history of the building. Through creating a holistic experience, the exhibition invites visitors to reflect on the effects of physical and social restrictions, and their impact on the individual.

Reflecting on the intimate role architecture plays in our lives, Remain Calm explores the work of notable Japanese architects and an artist who use traditional concepts to create physical spaces with both modern and contemporary resonance. Conventionally understood as a space of enclosure, architecture exists independent of the external world, and yet simultaneously in dialogue with its surrounding environment.

Remain Calm draws inspiration from the thirteenth century poet Kamo no Chōmei and looks to the hut, or hermitage, as a prototype that illustrates one of the underlying spiritual aspects of Japanese architecture. Having witnessed famine, natural disaster and war, Chōmei became a hermit and retreated to a tiny, collapsible hut that he moved along the banks of the Kamo River. This portable shelter offered Chōmei a place for quiet reflection, a space to remain calm—independent from the outside world while at the same time connected to the surrounding environment through sensory perception. The exhibition examines architectural projects that date from the thirteenth century to the present, from both historic and contemporary perspectives, through the lens of two key themes: solitude and connectivity.

The modern and contemporary projects presented in this exhibition have inherited simplicity, serenity—and autonomy from, yet connection with, the outside world—qualities integral to Japanese huts, tea ceremony rooms and traditional sukiya-zukuri residential architecture that originated in Zen culture. The exhibition introduces visitors to experiments in Japanese architecture that aesthetically, stylistically and methodologically demonstrate a similar clarity of construction.

Remain Calm features an expansive design, which includes sculptural models that explore abstract concepts, spatial and performative multi-media installations as well as drawings, photographs and scale models of architectural projects. A model of Sen no Rikyū’s Tai-an tea house serves as the starting point of this survey, which subsequently introduces the work of emergent and established architects Koji Fujii, Togo Murano, Sutemi Horiguchi, Toyo Ito, Kazuyo Sejima, Junya Ishigami, onishimaki + hyakudayuki architects, Shingo Masuda and Katsuhisa Otsubo, alongside an installation and a performance by artist Nile Koetting.

The third in a four-year series of exhibitions curated by Yuko Hasegawa for Sharjah Art Foundation, this exhibition explores ideas that resonate powerfully in these uncertain times when the pandemic has made staying at home the ‘new normal’, while disrupting individual connectivity to an outside world that feels fraught with challenges, risk and unknown possibilities. Remain Calm is a proposition for a place to contemplate the possibilities of new lifestyles and modes of human existence: to cultivate serenity infused with a richness of thought, to nurture ways of life that are both productive and intellectual, and to understand the choice between isolation, exclusion and connection as a process of negotiation.

This exhibition is supported by the Goethe institut.
Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation.

Known for her large scale, colorful ‘trapunto’ works, Pacita Abad (1946-2004) was a Philippine-American artist whose prolific oeuvre spanned continents and ranged from abstract forms to social realist depictions of everyday life in the U.S.A, the Philippines and elsewhere. Having lived and travelled widely across Asia and many parts of the world, Abad’s work is an amalgamation of techniques and subject matter drawn from her lived experiences and mostly worked in her signature trapunto technique of padding and stitching canvas before painting and layering it with textiles, printed objects and other materials such as jewelry, buttons, and shells.

This exhibition brings together a selection of her ‘trapunto’ paintings and is curated in collaboration with the Pacita Abad Art Estate and London based artist Pio Abad.

Born in the Philippines in 1946, Pacita Abad studied painting at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Arts Student League in New York.Her work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions including: Life in the Margins, Spike Island, Bristol (2020); Pacita Abad: A Million Things to Say, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila (2018); Circles in My Mind, Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore (2003); Exploring the Spirit, National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta (1996); The American Dream, National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. (1994); Masks from Six Continents, Metro Art Center, Washington D.C. (1990); Pacita Abad: A Painter Looks at the World, Museum of Philippine Art, Manila (1984) and Assaulting the Deep Sea, Ayala Museum, Manila (1983).She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including: Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning,13th Gwangju Biennial (2021); SWEAT, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2021); Whose Tradition?, Tate Liverpool (2021); The Crack Begins Within, 11th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2020); Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art, a travelling exhibition organised by the Asia Society, New York (1996); Beyond the Border: Art by Recent Immigrants, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (1994); La Segunda Bienal de la Habana (1986); and the 2nd Asian Art Show, Fukuoka Art Museum (1985).Her work can be found in the collections of Tate Modern, London; The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., M+ Museum, Hong Kong, Art Jameel, Dubai and the National Gallery of Singapore.

She died in Singapore in 2004.

In his latest show opening at Galerie Sfeir-Semler in Hamburg, Lebanese artist Rayyane Tabet tackles themes of cultural appropriation and original context through the lens of the arabesque, a stylised ornamental pattern found in all genres of art. The word itself originally meant “in the Arabic style” in Italian. Today, it still indicates an ornamental design consisting of intertwined flowing lines but interestingly, does not exist in the Arabic language.

Language is shaped by values, cultures and societies to express subjective points of view. Over centuries languages have changed, and words have been developed to name anything new or foreign: the term Arabesque was therefore a purely European concept, coined to describe designs thought to have been encountered throughout the Arab world. Although these designs were at the core of artistic expression -in a region where figurative representation was prohibited- they were henceforth largely perceived as patterned crafts.

The exhibition opens with Découpages, a frieze of 114 cut-out sheets from an original 19th century manuscript by Jules Bourgoin (1838-1908). The French scholar traveled through Egypt to study architectural ornaments and produced precise documentation drawings. His elaborate research was compiled in books such as Les Arts Arabes or Les Eléments de l’Art Arabe,two works that set the standards for what was considered « Arab Art » in Europe. Tabet cuts-out and recomposes individual pages from these publications, in an attempt to find different possible geometries hidden within the document.

Arabesques are usually used in repeating patterns and can be infinitely multiplied in order to cover a surface. In Assemblage -as in several works in the show- Tabet follows the repetition logic by stacking twenty original redwood corbels salvaged from Julia Morgan’s Saint John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. Morgan (1872–1957), who was a student of Bourgoin, was the first female architecture student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and went on to become a prolific representative of the Arts and Crafts movement taking the idea of the arabesque from Europe to North America.

Through these conceptual exercises, Tabet creates structures in which ornamental motifs reclaim some of their original purpose isolated from subjective interpretations, like in Rosettes, an installation made out of plaster and plastic ceiling medallion that are assembled on the floor into a reclining light fixture.

Completing the presentation on the ground floor are score sheets on music stands of Deux Arabesque by Claude Debussy (1862-1918), a composition that interpreted the arabesque motif into musical form. On each of the sheets, the artist has drawn one letter from the word Orientalism. The ink covers notes, creating voids and deconstructing the melody. The distorted composition is played back by a digital processor, revealing the blind spots of the initial European interpretation of the form.

The ground floor installation is mirrored in Moulages, where fragments of clay mouldings commonly used in interior decoration are composed into a mural that read like the score of the sound piece playing in the same room.

Rayyane Tabet’s exhibition Arabeske combines complex thoughts, historical facts, coincidental encounters and emotions. While reframing basic shapes and lines from their individual context, he maps out the migration of ideas across time and space that culminates in questions of heritage, appropriation, subjectivity and perception.

Courtesy of Sfeir-Semler Gallery

Tabari Artspace is delighted to announce The Cherry On Top, the solo exhibition of Jordanian painter, Khaldoun Hijazin to be exhibited at Tabari Artspace, Dubai, September 15 – October 31, 2021. The Cherry On Top comprises 10 oil on canvas and acrylic on canvas paintings as well as two large-scale objects produced in 2021.

Our societies have been marked by their quest for truth and transparency yet the body of work produced by Khaldoun Hijazin for The Cherry On Top exposes the complex network of control and manipulation that frames our existence. The artist exposes the current post-truth space where political and ideological discourses are largely accepted to be both staged and falsified. Through his explorations, Hijazin shatters and subverts thinly veiled illusions revealing the performative and inherited nature of our actions, our simultaneous awareness and acceptance of the theatre of leadership, and the fragility of grandeur.

Through dark humour and pastiche, Hijazin dissects and dissolves structures of power and dominance in realms from the political to the social. Hijazin understands his art to be an exploration that facilitates the flow of various ideas and concepts rather than a process of direct commentary or documentation. Influences from reading critical theory as well as Marxist and deconstructive discourse are evident in the artist’s practice, particularly in this series.

From the boardroom to the dining table Hijazin’s characters are lodged in social settings marked by haunting legacies of propaganda, capitalism and colonialism. The artist weaves together a complex constellation of signs and signifiers, lifted from various moments in time and social and cultural contexts. As such, his scenes, existing in the non-linear moment that he established, are difficult to place. Some fragments in his works Middle Feast, Cooky Jar, and The Cherry on Top – from which the exhibition takes its title – appear to have roots in early twentieth century Arab Bedouin communities while others such as Familiar Faces, Shattered Illusions and Mind the Gap spawn from mid-century Western lobbies alluding to colonial and hegemonic legacies. Hijazin is preoccupied with the notion of legacies – events of the past that continue to reoccur and inform the present. His compositions take on complex and multilayered meaning, the imposition of markers such as the broken chandelier in Shattered Illusions, denotes the collapse of the illusion of ‘true’ progress as claimed by the canon of neoliberalism, while the insertion of a black hole in Mind the Gap, materialises current debate surrounding political transparency and the deliberate disappearance of information.

Judith Butler’s notion of performativity and Guy Debord’s notion of the ‘society of the spectacle’ – where appearances supercede substance – are pronounced in the actions of Hijazin’s characters, particularly in their hand gestures.

The imposition of colour in order to obscure and transform the faces of his characters – often authoritative figures – also recurs throughout several works including Sincerest Masquerade, Familiar Faces, and Faithfully Yours. Hijazin contends that figures of authority and influence shift their colours like chameleons and ‘put on their face’ before their public performance.

Throughout history, scale has been used to assert the importance and power of the nobility. In this context, Hijazin’s use of large-scale both references and subverts this tradition. Despite the magnitude of the artist’s 3.5 meter long Shattered Illusions, the frame is cropped so that only the polished shoes of the elite are revealed. This close framing keeps the viewer guessing who and what might have been obscured; alluding to secret, high-level discussions taking place in a male-dominated space.

The two large-scale objects that complete this body of work – Fall From Grace, and Tower of Desire, – take the throne and the cake as superficial and inflated signifiers of success and celebration. Hijazin, investing these icons with cynicism, has left them tilted and imperfect, ready to topple down onto the gallery floor.

Courtesy of Tabari Artspace

Grey Noise gallery is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Galle based Sri Lankan artist Muhanned Cader at Grey Noise, Dubai.

I.

Darkness. Why is it so chilling, yet so alluring. We fear it yet escape into it. As he has done before, Muhanned Cader turns to the subject of darkness, in a new body of 12 paintings called Nightscapes 2019-2021. Rather than look at the night in these works, Muhanned looks into it. It’s a subtle difference that reminds me of a conversation I had years back with American artist James Turrell who said ‘night does not fall, it rises’. Between sunset to sunrise every 24 hours, when the sun moves below the horizon, a period of ambient darkness ascends. Night of course is defined in relation to the rotational position of the day. In the absence of daylight, nothing can be seen, at least not for humans. Our sense of sight is blighted. What we can’t see we fear. For Muhanned however, the obstruction of our sensory system to see in the night should not prevent us from looking into its velvety darkness. Painted from the vantage point of his 8th storey apartment, his new series of paintings look into the nighttime surroundings of his neighbourhood, Nugaduwa.

II.

Nugaduwa is situated on the outskirts of the southern city of Galle in Sri Lanka. It does not share the bright lights of the big city at night. Instead, it twinkles and shimmers as a result of the blazing street lamps that line the Southern Expressway. The Nugaduwa interchange which serves as the access point into the city of Galle, is also a stone’s throw from the artist’s apartment. In one of Muhanned’s twelve paintings, the highway appears as an abrupt arc of narrow, orange light. It darts across the lower part of the canvas before being extinguished by the dark. Other paintings in this series look out across vast vistas of night. Human habitation is suggested by clusters or strings of light; some areas appear more populated than others. From afar, the lights chart the proximity of buildings to one another amidst the rising topography of the landscape. A dense cluster indicates the city of Galle in the far distance, while smaller clusters locate dwellings in what seems like the middle of nowhere. When seen up close, however, these lights transform into nothing more than muddy crusts or dabs of raw paint. Dandelion, bumblebee, flaxen, oyster, cotton and parchment are just some of the colours that lie on the surface of the canvas. They join an otherwise dominant spectrum of black, blues and dawn grey swatches of paint. Looking into the night Muhanned unveils a kaleidoscope of hues lurking within an otherwise monochrome series of works.

III.

In the 1990s Muhanned Cader rented a studio on the edge of Bolgoda River, situated in a quiet suburb south of the capital Colombo. During this period he made a series of 40 paintings called ‘Nightscapes’(1999), which captured the views from his studio across the river after sunset. The paintings featured curved edges, a trait that has gone on to become a distinguishing characteristic of his drawings and paintings. Rather than paint the picturesque views of the river during the daytime, the artist opted to capture the view from his studio during nightfall. “I was not very into the daytime…there was something about those Koralawella nights that was perfect and mysterious, which made me want to paint it. And it worked perfectly with the politics of the time.”[1] Muhanned’s return to painting nightscapes comes not only with a change in location but a change in format. The curvilinear form of his initial series has been left behind and replaced with rectangular canvases. They are oriented in the format of traditional landscapes or turned vertically like stone tablets. Set within these rectangles however, the irregular edges of the painted surface continue. As in the previous series, they suggest that part of the night has been edited out. What is there to be seen has been concealed by the cover of night. We cannot see the full picture. We are not supposed t

IV.

The new series of paintings are shown alongside an accordion book, in which collaged photographic fragments have been arranged to form a unfolding landscape at night. The double-sided accordion book gives form to the night from the front and the back. It mimics the feeling of being surrounded by the darkness. Compared to the paintings, the photographs help us observe the light pollution of the city. They depict the misty indeterminacy of night into day as a ritual that invites the next revolution of a living planet. The images that make up the book are made by cutting out parts of the night. These cutouts correspond to the sections of night that have been removed from the edges of the paintings. In the book, Muhanned appears to present us with an archive of night’s remnants, filed for safekeeping. Titled, Let Sleeping Villages Sleep (2021), Muhanned suggests that we read past the contents of the book and instead, remain vigilant of what lurks beneath the surface, should the sleeping villages awaken. While the cover of night induces a state of slumber and quiet, it’s darkness also conceals all evils. Darkness. It is so chilling yet so alluring, for a reason. Such are the politics of our times.

---

Sharmini Pereira
Chief Curator
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka
2021

Courtesy of GREY NOISE, Dubai

Moving to touch the ether with a tenderness gained from years of living softly, I become aware of the ethereal and understand my misty presence within it. Painting Time gently, I reaffirm my trust – limitless, endless and white. -Afaf Zurayk

I was born and grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, the third of four daughters in a closely knit, highly academic family. Always an introvert, I was introduced to art at a very early age. In painting, I discovered a language that gave expression to my thoughts and feelings and conveyed their inner dialogue beyond words. Preparing myself to paint, I spent time in nature, both in solitude and within community, and reveled in its mystery. This enabled me to see from within and to communicate in what connects rather than what separates us.
During the civil war in Lebanon, I experienced wrenching fear through the destruction of the life and the self that I knew. Yet, I was gifted with grace and love in the midst of overwhelming violence. In time, my belief in our intrinsic humanity deepened as I came to understand how to calibrate terror and grace—dark and light. I continued to paint from within as I charted an inner map of layered contradictions that illumined WHITE


Moving to touch the ether with a tenderness gained from years of living softly, I become aware of the ethereal and understand my misty presence within it. Painting Time gently, I reaffirm my trust – limitless, endless and white. -Afaf Zurayk

I was born and grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, the third of four daughters in a closely knit, highly academic family. Always an introvert, I was introduced to art at a very early age. In painting, I discovered a language that gave expression to my thoughts and feelings and conveyed their inner dialogue beyond words. Preparing myself to paint, I spent time in nature, both in solitude and within community, and reveled in its mystery. This enabled me to see from within and to communicate in what connects rather than what separates us.
During the civil war in Lebanon, I experienced wrenching fear through the destruction of the life and the self that I knew. Yet, I was gifted with grace and love in the midst of overwhelming violence. In time, my belief in our intrinsic humanity deepened as I came to understand how to calibrate terror and grace—dark and light. I continued to paint from within as I charted an inner map of layered contradictions that illumined my life for years to come.

With the war still raging, I left Lebanon for Washington, DC . There I built on my experiences and reflections of connection and disconnection, and honed my skills at transparency. I coupled painting with writing to express feelings of both agency and belonging. I shaped a new sense of self and began to appreciate meditative solitude as a way to till my ground creatively. The privilege of being in and with nature was restorative and generative. My poetry emerged from a wellspring of love, and I grew.

I now live in Beirut and remain quietly introspective despite so many political and social upheavals. I center my art in the riches of our essential humanity with respect for our ability to correspond with and imagine our inner truth. Painting and writing in loving awe, I remain within, crossing those passages that connect us in kindness, gently.

Vantage Point Sharjah 9 (VPS9) is the ninth iteration of Sharjah Art Foundation’s annual initiative dedicated to the medium of photography. The exhibition is on view from 18 September through 18 December at the Foundation’s off-site venue Al Hamriyah Studios.

For the first time, Vantage Point Sharjah introduces a cash prize of USD 1,500 for one winner from each of the following categories: Conceptual, Experimental, Photojournalism and Documentary and Staged Photography. This year, VPS9 also introduces a jury consisting of Ammar Al Attar (artist), Sham Enbashi (photographer and architect), M’hammed Kilito (photographer) and Alia Al Shamsi (author and artist), who selected the winners from each category. The selected winners will be announced on the exhibition’s opening day, September 18.

This year’s annual Open Call attracted over 500 applicants. From these applications 53 photographers from over 30 countries were selected for inclusion in the exhibition. Each photographer will be represented by a series of 1 to 6 images that were submitted in response to the Open Call. The wide range of work included demonstrates the unique, fascinating and infinite possibilities of photography as a medium. Through their lens, the photographers explore the world around them, drawing from personal experiences and narratives, as well as cultural, political or environmental conditions. Some reveal intimate portraits of family life and memories, others reflect on the often- troubled history and politics of their homeland. Together, the nearly 200 images on view present an evocative and inspiring insight into the life and concerns of individuals of all walks of life from around the world today.

Artists were selected for their work in the Open Call categories of Conceptual, Experimental, Photojournalism and Documentary, and Staged Photography.

Conceptual Photography:
Maha Alasaker, Kathy Anne Lim, Hayley Millar Baker, Aline Deschamps, Farheen Fatima, Gabriel Gauffre, Majid Hojati, Alaa Jaafar, Işık Kaya, Wendy Marijnissen, Sara Sallam, Hiro Tanaka and Han Shun Zhou.

Experimental Photography:
Sarah Al Ansary, Gabi Kaiser, Carolina Dutca and Valentin Sidorneko, Devashish Gaur, Sukanya Ghosh, Brian Kerrigan, Barbel Mollmann, Ziad Naitaddi, Yudha Kusama Putera, Tamara Saade, Mahmoud Talaat and Alexander Walmsley.

Photojournalism and Documentary Photography:
Reyad Abedin, Taha Ahmad, Nicola Chilton, Akash Joshi, Roger Moukarzel, Fajar Riyanto, Kristina Sergeeva, Javed Sultan and Jerzy Wierzbicki.

Staged Photography:
Khadija El Abyad, Dima Assad, Fatima Butt, Divya Cowasji, Soheila Esmaeili, Wiame Haddad, Babak Haghi, Khoula Hamad, Barry Iverson, Januario Jano, Jennifer Kisney, Sudip Maiti, Lakin Ogunbanwo, Martin T Raggio, Anja Ronacher, Oskar Schmidt, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Sandeep TK and Rob Voerman

VPS was first launched in the summer of 2013 with an open call for submissions from GCC-based photographers. Over the years the exhibition has focused on a variety of themes including ‘Self-Portraiture’, ‘Performance’ and ‘Architecture and Urban Landscape’ and has opened up submissions to photographers from around the world.

Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation

One year after the August 4, 2020 explosion that devastated the port of Beirut, the Arab World Institute pays tribute to the vitality and resilience of the Lebanese art scene. With the exhibition Lumières du Liban. Art moderne et contemporain de 1950 à aujourd’hui (September 21-January 2, 2022), the IMA celebrates the prodigious creativity of modern and contemporary artists from Lebanon and its diasporas, from the day after its independence in 1943 to the present day, with works by Shafic Abboud, Etel Adnan, Saliba Douaihy, Paul Guiragossian, Hussein Madi, Assadour, Chaouki Choukini, Ayman Baalbaki, Zad Moultaka, Serwan Baran, Hala Matta, Hiba Kalache, Zena Assi and Tagreed Darghouth.

More than a hundred works by 55 artists are revealed for this occasion, they were selected from the collection of modern and contemporary Arab art of the IMA, the largest in Europe (with its collection of nearly 600 Lebanese works) since its merger with the major donation of Claude and France Lemand in 2018, constantly enriched donation since then. “With Lights of Lebanon, the Arab World Institute expresses its full solidarity with the Lebanese people, and its world of arts and culture,” said Jack Lang, president of the IMA. Claude Lemand adds: “This exhibition bears witness to the luminous face of another Lebanon, that of its artists and its creators. It shows how big this small country is, and how, despite its misfortunes, victims and crisis, it remains the human and cultural melting pot that it has always been ”.

Lumières du Liban recalls the unique place of the Lebanese visual arts scene since the country’s independence, and reflects the complexity and artistic, human, geographical, historical and cultural richness of Lebanon. Scarred by conflicts and crises ranging from the civil war (1975-1990) to the explosion of the port of Beirut in August 2020, this history, sometimes chaotic, should not obscure its role as a major cultural melting pot, always well alive today: A role played by this country since Antiquity, as evidenced by the exhibition Liban, l’autre rive presented at the IMA in 1998-1999. The exhibition retraces in filigree seven decades of art history punctuated by the effervescence after the independence of Lebanon in 1943 and after the Second World War, the tears of civil war and exile, the artistic bubbling of globalisation.

More info on the following link.
https://www.imarabe.org/en/expositions/lumieres-du-liban

Carbon 12 is pleased to announce the upcoming solo exhibition of Anthony Akinbola, Thanks A Million.

Anthony Akinbola is a Nigerian-American artist whose work is fundamentally built upon the philosophy of the readymade and investigation into his relationships with these same objects. Akinbola’s series of textile paintings focuses on the culturally and historically charged Du-rag; a garment used in the maintenance of African hair, as a primary means to explore and navigate a dialogue that is concerned with the intricacies and complexities of semiotics within American culture. Upon parsing the readymade object, Akinbola examines the intimate narrative of our individual and collective cultural associations to these objects, amplifying their seminal and perpetual role in the fragile construction of who we are.

Akinbola continues to dissect the multi-faceted aspect of the Du-rag, as observed in similar works from his previous exhibitions. Outside of its familiar usage as a tool manufactured for the preservation and care of African hair, in displacing the readymade object, Akinbola also subverts dynamics of power by situating it within a space that redefines its agency. Through this process, he uncovers its underlying ties to topics that concern the commodification of the African-American identity, and its vulnerability to structures of capitalism.

Upon emphasiSing its transition from mass produced good to art material, Akinbola simultaneously transforms not only the object but the entire environment with his large-scale paintings. The fabrics exist in a spectrum of hues; flayed and draped, stretched and strung tight, intuitively weaved across a wooden panel. Their bold compositions permeate the space, immersing the viewer in their multi-layered fabrication, an allusion to the complex fashioning of identity. The Camouflage series taps into a ready-made tradition and delves into themes of hybridity, consumerism and race, Akinbola sees each new exhibition as an opportunity to reexamine and contextualiSe the work through a new lens.

Though not separated from their conceptual genesis, Thanks A Million focuses less on a didactic framework and more towards an interior one. Akinbola shifts emphasis towards the idea of thanks and the paintings act as affirmations of gratitude as the artist reflects on all that’s happened in the midst of such a turbulent year.

“I’d like to use the exhibition as an opportunity to pause and simply say thank you, to everyone and everything, there’s so much to be grateful for.”

At the core of Anthony Akinbola’s overarching body of work, the Du-rag amplifies a conversation concentrated on belonging and selfhood; topics Akinbola illuminates provide audiences with a greater critical awareness – the most crucial upshot from his works. Akinbola’s work charts a clear trajectory across past and present to redefine the genre of what is considered contemporary African Art and African-American art, and in continuing to adopt a multifaceted approach, the paintings undergo various transformations to withstand the ever-evolving discussion on identity.

Courtesy of Carbon 12 gallery.

The Athens Biennale announces its seventh edition, titled ECLIPSE, co-curated by Omsk Social Club and Larry Ossei-Mensah under the artistic direction of Poka-Yio. ECLIPSE is planned to take place in Spring 2021 in various locations in Athens. The exhibition will feature artists based in North and South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe, many of whom will be exhibiting in Greece for the first time.

The exhibition title highlights the obscured perspective of reality caused by the constant state of flux we are experiencing in our society now. ECLIPSE engages the social, political and spiritual changes of today’s global construct and in Athens itself, as a rising metropolis located at the intersection of Europe, Asia and Africa both physically and historically. An eclipse is a phenomenon of filtering and shrouding as well as a cosmic event. The experience of the eclipse functions as a catalyst for reprocessing an unresolved past that can inform an unspoken present and ultimately shape our future. Thus, Athens serves as the appropriate vantage point for contemplating the nuances of time and space. Furthermore, examining the question; is the west in decline or in a moment of significant transformation?

ECLIPSE seeks to assess the implications of identity, history, and cultural complexity. The 7th Athens Biennale offers an arena to interrogate many of the ideas, queries, concerns, and desires that are frequently not platformed within a Biennial format. In an effort to activate a dynamic cross-cultural discourse, AB7 will highlight the works of artists from the African Diaspora in addition to other artistic voices that have historically been pushed to the periphery. This engagement will be articulated through the use of a “Black Lens” as one of the frameworks. This approach seeks to engage the varying perspectives and artistic practices percolating within the African diaspora. This dialogue will be situated alongside a complimentary framework of artistic interventions that use dynamic manifestations to compose unique practical narratives. Their aim is to strategically address the viewers imagination of potential parallel worlds and futures. Composing a set of spaces that platform ideas such as radical care, interspecies friendship and sonic viewing strategies, ECLIPSE presents a translocal chapter of contemporary thought on how to co-exist within a world differently.

Defying the prevalent politics of historical narratives, ECLIPSE proposes to challenge oppressive mechanisms and outdated idealism. By deploying various immersive techniques such as real game play, radical gossip, persuasive realities, “emotional hypnosis”, bodying, synthesis, and visualization, ECLIPSE activates narrative fabrication and orchestrates an experiential shift in art viewing opening an alternative future for contemplation.

Known for her large scale, colorful ‘trapunto’ works, Pacita Abad (1946-2004) was a Philippine-American artist whose prolific oeuvre spanned continents and ranged from abstract forms to social realist depictions of everyday life in the U.S.A, the Philippines and elsewhere. Having lived and travelled widely across Asia and many parts of the world, Abad’s work is an amalgamation of techniques and subject matter drawn from her lived experiences and mostly worked in her signature trapunto technique of padding and stitching canvas before painting and layering it with textiles, printed objects and other materials such as jewelry, buttons, and shells.

This exhibition brings together a selection of her ‘trapunto’ paintings and is curated in collaboration with the Pacita Abad Art Estate and London based artist Pio Abad.

Born in the Philippines in 1946, Pacita Abad studied painting at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Arts Student League in New York.Her work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions including: Life in the Margins, Spike Island, Bristol (2020); Pacita Abad: A Million Things to Say, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila (2018); Circles in My Mind, Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore (2003); Exploring the Spirit, National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta (1996); The American Dream, National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. (1994); Masks from Six Continents, Metro Art Center, Washington D.C. (1990); Pacita Abad: A Painter Looks at the World, Museum of Philippine Art, Manila (1984) and Assaulting the Deep Sea, Ayala Museum, Manila (1983).She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including: Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning,13th Gwangju Biennial (2021); SWEAT, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2021); Whose Tradition?, Tate Liverpool (2021); The Crack Begins Within, 11th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2020); Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art, a travelling exhibition organised by the Asia Society, New York (1996); Beyond the Border: Art by Recent Immigrants, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (1994); La Segunda Bienal de la Habana (1986); and the 2nd Asian Art Show, Fukuoka Art Museum (1985).Her work can be found in the collections of Tate Modern, London; The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., M+ Museum, Hong Kong, Art Jameel, Dubai and the National Gallery of Singapore.

She died in Singapore in 2004.

Grey Noise gallery is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Galle based Sri Lankan artist Muhanned Cader at Grey Noise, Dubai.

I.

Darkness. Why is it so chilling, yet so alluring. We fear it yet escape into it. As he has done before, Muhanned Cader turns to the subject of darkness, in a new body of 12 paintings called Nightscapes 2019-2021. Rather than look at the night in these works, Muhanned looks into it. It’s a subtle difference that reminds me of a conversation I had years back with American artist James Turrell who said ‘night does not fall, it rises’. Between sunset to sunrise every 24 hours, when the sun moves below the horizon, a period of ambient darkness ascends. Night of course is defined in relation to the rotational position of the day. In the absence of daylight, nothing can be seen, at least not for humans. Our sense of sight is blighted. What we can’t see we fear. For Muhanned however, the obstruction of our sensory system to see in the night should not prevent us from looking into its velvety darkness. Painted from the vantage point of his 8th storey apartment, his new series of paintings look into the nighttime surroundings of his neighbourhood, Nugaduwa.

II.

Nugaduwa is situated on the outskirts of the southern city of Galle in Sri Lanka. It does not share the bright lights of the big city at night. Instead, it twinkles and shimmers as a result of the blazing street lamps that line the Southern Expressway. The Nugaduwa interchange which serves as the access point into the city of Galle, is also a stone’s throw from the artist’s apartment. In one of Muhanned’s twelve paintings, the highway appears as an abrupt arc of narrow, orange light. It darts across the lower part of the canvas before being extinguished by the dark. Other paintings in this series look out across vast vistas of night. Human habitation is suggested by clusters or strings of light; some areas appear more populated than others. From afar, the lights chart the proximity of buildings to one another amidst the rising topography of the landscape. A dense cluster indicates the city of Galle in the far distance, while smaller clusters locate dwellings in what seems like the middle of nowhere. When seen up close, however, these lights transform into nothing more than muddy crusts or dabs of raw paint. Dandelion, bumblebee, flaxen, oyster, cotton and parchment are just some of the colours that lie on the surface of the canvas. They join an otherwise dominant spectrum of black, blues and dawn grey swatches of paint. Looking into the night Muhanned unveils a kaleidoscope of hues lurking within an otherwise monochrome series of works.

III.

In the 1990s Muhanned Cader rented a studio on the edge of Bolgoda River, situated in a quiet suburb south of the capital Colombo. During this period he made a series of 40 paintings called ‘Nightscapes’(1999), which captured the views from his studio across the river after sunset. The paintings featured curved edges, a trait that has gone on to become a distinguishing characteristic of his drawings and paintings. Rather than paint the picturesque views of the river during the daytime, the artist opted to capture the view from his studio during nightfall. “I was not very into the daytime…there was something about those Koralawella nights that was perfect and mysterious, which made me want to paint it. And it worked perfectly with the politics of the time.”[1] Muhanned’s return to painting nightscapes comes not only with a change in location but a change in format. The curvilinear form of his initial series has been left behind and replaced with rectangular canvases. They are oriented in the format of traditional landscapes or turned vertically like stone tablets. Set within these rectangles however, the irregular edges of the painted surface continue. As in the previous series, they suggest that part of the night has been edited out. What is there to be seen has been concealed by the cover of night. We cannot see the full picture. We are not supposed t

IV.

The new series of paintings are shown alongside an accordion book, in which collaged photographic fragments have been arranged to form a unfolding landscape at night. The double-sided accordion book gives form to the night from the front and the back. It mimics the feeling of being surrounded by the darkness. Compared to the paintings, the photographs help us observe the light pollution of the city. They depict the misty indeterminacy of night into day as a ritual that invites the next revolution of a living planet. The images that make up the book are made by cutting out parts of the night. These cutouts correspond to the sections of night that have been removed from the edges of the paintings. In the book, Muhanned appears to present us with an archive of night’s remnants, filed for safekeeping. Titled, Let Sleeping Villages Sleep (2021), Muhanned suggests that we read past the contents of the book and instead, remain vigilant of what lurks beneath the surface, should the sleeping villages awaken. While the cover of night induces a state of slumber and quiet, it’s darkness also conceals all evils. Darkness. It is so chilling yet so alluring, for a reason. Such are the politics of our times.

---

Sharmini Pereira
Chief Curator
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka
2021

Courtesy of GREY NOISE, Dubai

Vantage Point Sharjah 9 (VPS9) is the ninth iteration of Sharjah Art Foundation’s annual initiative dedicated to the medium of photography. The exhibition is on view from 18 September through 18 December at the Foundation’s off-site venue Al Hamriyah Studios.

For the first time, Vantage Point Sharjah introduces a cash prize of USD 1,500 for one winner from each of the following categories: Conceptual, Experimental, Photojournalism and Documentary and Staged Photography. This year, VPS9 also introduces a jury consisting of Ammar Al Attar (artist), Sham Enbashi (photographer and architect), M’hammed Kilito (photographer) and Alia Al Shamsi (author and artist), who selected the winners from each category. The selected winners will be announced on the exhibition’s opening day, September 18.

This year’s annual Open Call attracted over 500 applicants. From these applications 53 photographers from over 30 countries were selected for inclusion in the exhibition. Each photographer will be represented by a series of 1 to 6 images that were submitted in response to the Open Call. The wide range of work included demonstrates the unique, fascinating and infinite possibilities of photography as a medium. Through their lens, the photographers explore the world around them, drawing from personal experiences and narratives, as well as cultural, political or environmental conditions. Some reveal intimate portraits of family life and memories, others reflect on the often- troubled history and politics of their homeland. Together, the nearly 200 images on view present an evocative and inspiring insight into the life and concerns of individuals of all walks of life from around the world today.

Artists were selected for their work in the Open Call categories of Conceptual, Experimental, Photojournalism and Documentary, and Staged Photography.

Conceptual Photography:
Maha Alasaker, Kathy Anne Lim, Hayley Millar Baker, Aline Deschamps, Farheen Fatima, Gabriel Gauffre, Majid Hojati, Alaa Jaafar, Işık Kaya, Wendy Marijnissen, Sara Sallam, Hiro Tanaka and Han Shun Zhou.

Experimental Photography:
Sarah Al Ansary, Gabi Kaiser, Carolina Dutca and Valentin Sidorneko, Devashish Gaur, Sukanya Ghosh, Brian Kerrigan, Barbel Mollmann, Ziad Naitaddi, Yudha Kusama Putera, Tamara Saade, Mahmoud Talaat and Alexander Walmsley.

Photojournalism and Documentary Photography:
Reyad Abedin, Taha Ahmad, Nicola Chilton, Akash Joshi, Roger Moukarzel, Fajar Riyanto, Kristina Sergeeva, Javed Sultan and Jerzy Wierzbicki.

Staged Photography:
Khadija El Abyad, Dima Assad, Fatima Butt, Divya Cowasji, Soheila Esmaeili, Wiame Haddad, Babak Haghi, Khoula Hamad, Barry Iverson, Januario Jano, Jennifer Kisney, Sudip Maiti, Lakin Ogunbanwo, Martin T Raggio, Anja Ronacher, Oskar Schmidt, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Sandeep TK and Rob Voerman

VPS was first launched in the summer of 2013 with an open call for submissions from GCC-based photographers. Over the years the exhibition has focused on a variety of themes including ‘Self-Portraiture’, ‘Performance’ and ‘Architecture and Urban Landscape’ and has opened up submissions to photographers from around the world.

Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation

One year after the August 4, 2020 explosion that devastated the port of Beirut, the Arab World Institute pays tribute to the vitality and resilience of the Lebanese art scene. With the exhibition Lumières du Liban. Art moderne et contemporain de 1950 à aujourd’hui (September 21-January 2, 2022), the IMA celebrates the prodigious creativity of modern and contemporary artists from Lebanon and its diasporas, from the day after its independence in 1943 to the present day, with works by Shafic Abboud, Etel Adnan, Saliba Douaihy, Paul Guiragossian, Hussein Madi, Assadour, Chaouki Choukini, Ayman Baalbaki, Zad Moultaka, Serwan Baran, Hala Matta, Hiba Kalache, Zena Assi and Tagreed Darghouth.

More than a hundred works by 55 artists are revealed for this occasion, they were selected from the collection of modern and contemporary Arab art of the IMA, the largest in Europe (with its collection of nearly 600 Lebanese works) since its merger with the major donation of Claude and France Lemand in 2018, constantly enriched donation since then. “With Lights of Lebanon, the Arab World Institute expresses its full solidarity with the Lebanese people, and its world of arts and culture,” said Jack Lang, president of the IMA. Claude Lemand adds: “This exhibition bears witness to the luminous face of another Lebanon, that of its artists and its creators. It shows how big this small country is, and how, despite its misfortunes, victims and crisis, it remains the human and cultural melting pot that it has always been ”.

Lumières du Liban recalls the unique place of the Lebanese visual arts scene since the country’s independence, and reflects the complexity and artistic, human, geographical, historical and cultural richness of Lebanon. Scarred by conflicts and crises ranging from the civil war (1975-1990) to the explosion of the port of Beirut in August 2020, this history, sometimes chaotic, should not obscure its role as a major cultural melting pot, always well alive today: A role played by this country since Antiquity, as evidenced by the exhibition Liban, l’autre rive presented at the IMA in 1998-1999. The exhibition retraces in filigree seven decades of art history punctuated by the effervescence after the independence of Lebanon in 1943 and after the Second World War, the tears of civil war and exile, the artistic bubbling of globalisation.

More info on the following link.
https://www.imarabe.org/en/expositions/lumieres-du-liban

Carbon 12 is pleased to announce the upcoming solo exhibition of Anthony Akinbola, Thanks A Million.

Anthony Akinbola is a Nigerian-American artist whose work is fundamentally built upon the philosophy of the readymade and investigation into his relationships with these same objects. Akinbola’s series of textile paintings focuses on the culturally and historically charged Du-rag; a garment used in the maintenance of African hair, as a primary means to explore and navigate a dialogue that is concerned with the intricacies and complexities of semiotics within American culture. Upon parsing the readymade object, Akinbola examines the intimate narrative of our individual and collective cultural associations to these objects, amplifying their seminal and perpetual role in the fragile construction of who we are.

Akinbola continues to dissect the multi-faceted aspect of the Du-rag, as observed in similar works from his previous exhibitions. Outside of its familiar usage as a tool manufactured for the preservation and care of African hair, in displacing the readymade object, Akinbola also subverts dynamics of power by situating it within a space that redefines its agency. Through this process, he uncovers its underlying ties to topics that concern the commodification of the African-American identity, and its vulnerability to structures of capitalism.

Upon emphasiSing its transition from mass produced good to art material, Akinbola simultaneously transforms not only the object but the entire environment with his large-scale paintings. The fabrics exist in a spectrum of hues; flayed and draped, stretched and strung tight, intuitively weaved across a wooden panel. Their bold compositions permeate the space, immersing the viewer in their multi-layered fabrication, an allusion to the complex fashioning of identity. The Camouflage series taps into a ready-made tradition and delves into themes of hybridity, consumerism and race, Akinbola sees each new exhibition as an opportunity to reexamine and contextualiSe the work through a new lens.

Though not separated from their conceptual genesis, Thanks A Million focuses less on a didactic framework and more towards an interior one. Akinbola shifts emphasis towards the idea of thanks and the paintings act as affirmations of gratitude as the artist reflects on all that’s happened in the midst of such a turbulent year.

“I’d like to use the exhibition as an opportunity to pause and simply say thank you, to everyone and everything, there’s so much to be grateful for.”

At the core of Anthony Akinbola’s overarching body of work, the Du-rag amplifies a conversation concentrated on belonging and selfhood; topics Akinbola illuminates provide audiences with a greater critical awareness – the most crucial upshot from his works. Akinbola’s work charts a clear trajectory across past and present to redefine the genre of what is considered contemporary African Art and African-American art, and in continuing to adopt a multifaceted approach, the paintings undergo various transformations to withstand the ever-evolving discussion on identity.

Courtesy of Carbon 12 gallery.

The Athens Biennale announces its seventh edition, titled ECLIPSE, co-curated by Omsk Social Club and Larry Ossei-Mensah under the artistic direction of Poka-Yio. ECLIPSE is planned to take place in Spring 2021 in various locations in Athens. The exhibition will feature artists based in North and South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe, many of whom will be exhibiting in Greece for the first time.

The exhibition title highlights the obscured perspective of reality caused by the constant state of flux we are experiencing in our society now. ECLIPSE engages the social, political and spiritual changes of today’s global construct and in Athens itself, as a rising metropolis located at the intersection of Europe, Asia and Africa both physically and historically. An eclipse is a phenomenon of filtering and shrouding as well as a cosmic event. The experience of the eclipse functions as a catalyst for reprocessing an unresolved past that can inform an unspoken present and ultimately shape our future. Thus, Athens serves as the appropriate vantage point for contemplating the nuances of time and space. Furthermore, examining the question; is the west in decline or in a moment of significant transformation?

ECLIPSE seeks to assess the implications of identity, history, and cultural complexity. The 7th Athens Biennale offers an arena to interrogate many of the ideas, queries, concerns, and desires that are frequently not platformed within a Biennial format. In an effort to activate a dynamic cross-cultural discourse, AB7 will highlight the works of artists from the African Diaspora in addition to other artistic voices that have historically been pushed to the periphery. This engagement will be articulated through the use of a “Black Lens” as one of the frameworks. This approach seeks to engage the varying perspectives and artistic practices percolating within the African diaspora. This dialogue will be situated alongside a complimentary framework of artistic interventions that use dynamic manifestations to compose unique practical narratives. Their aim is to strategically address the viewers imagination of potential parallel worlds and futures. Composing a set of spaces that platform ideas such as radical care, interspecies friendship and sonic viewing strategies, ECLIPSE presents a translocal chapter of contemporary thought on how to co-exist within a world differently.

Defying the prevalent politics of historical narratives, ECLIPSE proposes to challenge oppressive mechanisms and outdated idealism. By deploying various immersive techniques such as real game play, radical gossip, persuasive realities, “emotional hypnosis”, bodying, synthesis, and visualization, ECLIPSE activates narrative fabrication and orchestrates an experiential shift in art viewing opening an alternative future for contemplation.

Known for her large scale, colorful ‘trapunto’ works, Pacita Abad (1946-2004) was a Philippine-American artist whose prolific oeuvre spanned continents and ranged from abstract forms to social realist depictions of everyday life in the U.S.A, the Philippines and elsewhere. Having lived and travelled widely across Asia and many parts of the world, Abad’s work is an amalgamation of techniques and subject matter drawn from her lived experiences and mostly worked in her signature trapunto technique of padding and stitching canvas before painting and layering it with textiles, printed objects and other materials such as jewelry, buttons, and shells.

This exhibition brings together a selection of her ‘trapunto’ paintings and is curated in collaboration with the Pacita Abad Art Estate and London based artist Pio Abad.

Born in the Philippines in 1946, Pacita Abad studied painting at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Arts Student League in New York.Her work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions including: Life in the Margins, Spike Island, Bristol (2020); Pacita Abad: A Million Things to Say, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila (2018); Circles in My Mind, Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore (2003); Exploring the Spirit, National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta (1996); The American Dream, National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. (1994); Masks from Six Continents, Metro Art Center, Washington D.C. (1990); Pacita Abad: A Painter Looks at the World, Museum of Philippine Art, Manila (1984) and Assaulting the Deep Sea, Ayala Museum, Manila (1983).She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including: Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning,13th Gwangju Biennial (2021); SWEAT, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2021); Whose Tradition?, Tate Liverpool (2021); The Crack Begins Within, 11th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2020); Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art, a travelling exhibition organised by the Asia Society, New York (1996); Beyond the Border: Art by Recent Immigrants, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (1994); La Segunda Bienal de la Habana (1986); and the 2nd Asian Art Show, Fukuoka Art Museum (1985).Her work can be found in the collections of Tate Modern, London; The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., M+ Museum, Hong Kong, Art Jameel, Dubai and the National Gallery of Singapore.

She died in Singapore in 2004.

Vantage Point Sharjah 9 (VPS9) is the ninth iteration of Sharjah Art Foundation’s annual initiative dedicated to the medium of photography. The exhibition is on view from 18 Septem