‘Daydreams’ is Fahd Burki’s first survey exhibition, bringing together works spanning the last fifteen years of the artist’s practice. Burki’s paintings, drawings and sculptures are inspired by a wide range of influences including architecture, nature and various strands of contemporary popular culture. The selection of works range from his figurative work, through to abstraction, and a selection of commissioned reliefs.

The early figurative works are playfully executed using flat graphic colours, symbols and shapes. Over the years, his practice has evolved through slight variations and reductions resulting in more minimalist abstract compositions consisting of grids, lines and blank spaces; created using subtle materials to make barely visible marks and light washes.

In his more recent works, Burki explores the space between painting and sculpture, through a new series of commissioned reliefs. He reduces the work to its most essential elements, focusing on materiality, with an emphasis on weight and form.
A publication featuring commissioned texts by Murtaza Vali, Saira Ansari and Dawn Ross will accompany the exhibition.

Courtesy of Jameel Arts Centre

Feature image: Fahd Burki, Untitled, 1100×500 cm

“The drawings of Ania Soliman constitute a complex body of research into how the switch from theory to practice, from world-views to worlds, or from epistemology to ontology, unveils many dilemmas. […] Soliman’s work deals with much more than lines and forms and colors and compositions. There is a reason why much of her work takes a large scale: it needs a battleground on which to address belief – the way it shapes the self, how the self relates to the “I”, and the “I” to all the others”. Chus Martinez1

Sfeir-Semler Gallery is happy to announce the first solo exhibition of Ania Soliman in the Middle East, opening in our Beirut space on Thursday August 25, 2022, from 6 to 9 PM.

Centering around the idea of the Terraform, or the artificial reproduction of earth ecologies, the painting and drawing exhibition delves into the realms of the multi-layered connections, intersections and mergers between nature, technology, and humans. Soliman is a conceptual artist whose research-based practice often results in monochromic large-scale works on paper. After a month spent in Beirut, she produced works on canvas for the first time, using spray-paint, artificial and natural plants as well as pieces from dismantled obsolete machinery to leave organic shapes, poetic arabesques, or rough spontaneous streaks of paint on the fabric. The seriality and scale of these canvases that carry in their making both mechanical planning as well as natural impulses, underline the feeling of urgency and anxiety in our relationship to nature, to the point of acquiring sculptural attributes and becoming curtain-like objects hung in an engulfing loose rectangle.

While the spray-painted canvases are produced through performative action-painting, with quick bold moves that fill the space, the works on paper in Phtalo green follow a methodical process foregrounded by the artist and that allows her to identify the background from the objects that she draws using pigments, wax, and encaustic. The annotation system, revolving around the figure-ground relationship, becomes in turn part of the work, and results in surfaces that completely ignore central perspective. The four-paneled work on paper Terraform depicts a rainforest and turns a computer screensaver into an immersive experience, prompting the viewer to look for the tree, the leaves or the tiger concealed by the landscape. This specific color is used in a whole series that refers to our visual technologies and their addictive circuits: the toxic green works stem from the encounter with a culture that humans can no longer control.

The bamboo plants in fluorescent yellow use that annotation system to mimic technical drawings designed by humans to mass-produce artificial bamboos in plastic or cloth. The artificial plants represent the kind of irrational and manic overproduction that threatens the earth, yet they also reflect our desire for nature even in its most alienated manifestations.

Interestingly, some of the works titles are created in collaboration with a random word generator algorithm, while for others, Soliman uses machine mistranslations from Arabic, such as Chemical Emotions (kahraba) , Resurrecting Light (kahraba), Shaking the Nerves of Animals (kahraba) etc…

Ania Soliman’s Beirut diary includes insomnia drawings, banknotes and exploding galaxies, and is presented with a group of barrels, recuperated in the gallery neighborhood of Karantina, and constituting a “diwan” made of seats from recycled former oil containers. Ultimately, the exhibition doesn’t tackle technologies as such, but rather investigates how we feel, talk, and think about them: the core conceptual element of each work culminates in an overwhelming burst of colors.

Ania Soliman is an Egyptian, Polish, and American artist who grew up in Baghdad, and currently lives in Paris. She makes large scale drawings based on digitized imagery and archival material, while also working with text, performance, video and installation.

Her research-based practice focuses on processes of translation between different cultures and their representations. She is especially interested in how this determines our relationships, both real and imaginary, between nature and technology.

Through processes of tracing, desaturating, smudging, coloring, and embellishing, she transforms source materials into layered drawings that often repeat a motif since they represent the action of conflicting ideas working themselves out. Her works function as icons for unconscious negotiations between our bodies and the culturally determined languages that occupy our minds.

Ania Soliman’s work has been exhibited at Kunsthaus Bregenz (2020), the Drawing Center in New York (2020), Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2018), the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg (2016), the Museum of Contemporary Art at Antwerp (2015), the Whitney Biennial (2010), the 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015), the Museum der Kulturen in Basel (2014), among other venues, and she has recently done lecture-performances at the Global Art Forum in Dubai and Singapore. She attended Harvard College and Columbia University before participating in the Whitney Independent Study Program. In 2010 she was awarded the Laurenz-Haus residency in Basel, Switzerland.

Courtesy of Sfeir Semler Gallery

Feature Caption: Ania Soliman, Terraform 1 (everyone-zoospore, recovery-whew), 2022, colored pencil, encaustic, acrylic ink on paper, 4 panels of 280 x 115 cm each.

“Glass, a special material and a part of our daily life, bears witness to joy, anxiety and worry in our reality. In its presence we reflect upon the relationships between life and death, and between tradition and reality.” – Ai Weiwei.

A solo show featuring a new glass series by Ai Weiwei on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice.

Works to be exhibited include the world’s largest Murano glass sculpture alongside a network of weaving roots, unexpected LEGO pieces and a selection of iconic works.

Contextualised within Venice’s spectacular Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, the exhibition will explore themes in Ai Weiwei’s practice: nature, spirituality, and the continual fascinations of the contemporary world.

A solo exhibition by Nevine Boueiz 

Art direction by Clémence Cottard Hachem

Nevine Boueiz
Following her Master’s degree in Fine Arts at the Oxford School of Design, Nevine Bouez delved into a wide array of artistic mediums over the years. Art is an integrative part of her life, and her journey has evolved from painting, etching, interior decoration, and intricate porcelain design, to her passion for hand built ceramics. Her relentless hands strive to express the transformative and healing ability of mother earth as well as human nature alike.

In the 2017 Salon D’Automne, she won the Audience Choice Award at the Sursock Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Beirut for her two towering ceramic sculptures.
In 2018, the Janine Rubeiz gallery presented Boueiz‘s ceramic sculptures and wall hangings in a solo exhibition titled ‘Echoes of Earth‘ as well as at the Abu Dhabi Art Fair.
Boueiz also participated in the Beirut Design Fair exhibiting her series “From Mud to Gold” in 2018 and “Tarbouch” in 2019.

Boueiz has recently participated in several fundraising events. She has donated two works to benefit the Elisa Sednaoui foundation, as part of the contemporary curated sale at Sotheby’s London. She has also participated in  LIFE  “Beyond – Modern and Contemporary Lebanese Art and Design”  at Phillips London by donating two large ceramic sculptures.
In 2020, the artist participated in Sotheby’s London fundraising auction “To Beirut with Love” by donating a large ceramic sculpture.

Her creations have found beautiful homes in cities like London. Cairo, Dubai, Paris, Beirut, and New York.

Khaleej Modern

Pioneers and Collectives in the Arabian Peninsula

Curated by Dr. Aisha Stoby

Exhibition of Rare Works from Key GCC Institutions Chronicles Nearly a Century of Visual Art in the Arabian Peninsula

● The exhibition, Khaleej Modern: Pioneers and Collectives in the Arabian Peninsula, is curated by Dr. Aisha Stoby, who helmed the inaugural Oman Pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year.
● Prominent art organizations from across the GCC have collaborated on this project, including ADMAF, Bahrain National Museum, Barjeel Art Foundation, Hafez Gallery, Mathaf: Arab Museum for Modern Art, Sharjah Art Foundation, Stal Gallery & Studio, and The Sultan Gallery.
● 57 artworks in this show were loaned from across the GCC, from early and mid-20th century through 2007, many of which have not been shown in decades, and rarely in the context of a history of modern art in the Gulf.

MARC STRAUS is pleased to present its first solo exhibition with Abdulnasser Gharem.

Abdulnasser Gharem (b. 1973) lives and works in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In Hospitable Thoughts, his first solo gallery exhibition in New York, he engages with themes of control and authority, as well as a desire to preserve and respect the history upon which traditional art is built.

In his country, Gharem has paved the way for the past twenty years with his unwavering commitment to social and political change through his artistic practice, and to the propagation of his studio school’s ongoing effort to foster truth, teach compassion, and develop ideas that break boundaries.

“Living and working in Saudi Arabia for almost a decade, I’ve had the unique experience of being immersed in two paramount revolutions at once: one social, the other cultural. Gharem has been a catalyst for the tremendous development of the Contemporary Art landscape we now see burgeoning in the region. The rigor of his work, his beautiful and powerful narratives has led to his recognition as a leading artistic figure in Saudi Arabia and beyond.”
—Christina Lessa

Gharem invites us to look more closely at the ideological and physical barriers we’ve created that separate people on this planet. By seeing and listening, we have the possibility of understanding that different ideas, cultures, and beliefs have currency.

His perspective as an artist is very much informed by his experience as a military officer in Saudi Arabia for most of his adult life. As a military man he says, “I was instilled with repetition. Orders were issued to us and then we repetitively reissued them to others. I felt the harshness of repetition.”

In this exhibit Gharem has produced several barriers, whose shape and meaning are universally recognized. In Concrete Wall II, a monumental work, the barrier functions to separate people, while the smaller barrier, Concrete Block V, suggests rerouting traffic and blocking vehicles from entering. What makes these works so compelling and beautiful are their surfaces, covered with tiny rubber print letters from both the Arabic and the Latin alphabet. These letters are put on in the reverse, as one does with a printing press, conveying essential thoughts and observations on our contemporary societies.

The repetition re-appears in the painstaking work of adorning the surfaces with tens of thousands of letters. The content is opaque, perhaps reminiscent of the text paintings of American artist, Glenn Ligon, whose text comes from literature from major Black authors. Gharem’s writing in Arabic and in English, if decipherable, requires a mirrored reading by the viewer. Once decoded, the messages speak to challenges shared by millions around the world.

Gharem reminds us that while repetition may be beautiful, as in prayer, social structures such as governments and organized religion often use it to create predictable responses, to bind us towards a desired goal or viewpoint, and to ultimately foster the notion of separation.

War has been a constant presence in our history: small and large wars still rage today. The largest and most defining one at present is against all living species, a changing climate wrought from man’s carelessness and obsession with consumption ─ a “hysterical violence,” as Gharem calls it. In the end most wars are about the market and the means and ownership of production, especially in this 21st century when the disparity between the haves and have-nots has reached a new apex.

What’s changed in this century is the immediacy of virtual information. It opens the doors to communication and discourse for all, though there are governments that would suppress such access in an attempt to limit information.

Gharem points out that there is an increasing expansion of the algorithmic mind, the overlapping of human life with the lives of computer processors. Yet, despite its threat digitization holds promise; the democracy of technology is difficult to stifle.

The barriers can be broken.

Abdulnasser Gharem graduated from the King Abdulaziz Academy in 1992. He later attended The Leader Institute in Riyadh, and in 2003 he studied at the influential Al-Meftaha Arts Village in Abha. Gharem had his first museum solo exhibition in the United States in 2017 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). He has participated in one-person and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia, the Gulf and the USA, including the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; Chalet Saqqarah, Gstaad, Switzerland; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK; Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Italy; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; the Station Museum, Houston, TX; Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, ME; Utah Museum of Contemporary Art Salt Lake City, UT; Art Museum of the University of Memphis, Memphis, TN; among others. Additionally, Gharem participated in the 53rd and 54th editions of the Venice Biennale (La Biennale di Venezia).

His work is in private and public collections including The British Museum, London, UK; V&A Museum, London, UK; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, USA; Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Italy; Greenbox Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture & Information, Saudi Arabia; BASMOCA: Basma Al Sulaiman Museum of Contemporary Art, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; The Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE; among others.

An opening reception will be held on Wednesday, September 7th from 4 to 8 PM at the gallery. The artist will be present.

Viewing hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11:00 to 6:00 PM. For visuals and additional press information please contact kelsey@marcstraus.com or at +1 (212) 510-7646.

Navjot Altaf’s practice stands at the intersection of art and activism. With a career spanning over five decades, she is among the leading voices of her generation to regard art as a medium of social change. Formerly based in Bombay, Navjot relocated to Bastar in the rural districts of Central India during the late 1990’s to work with indigenous artists and communities that have borne witness to the enormous scale of deforestation, mining, pollution and displacement. Through collaborations with artists, activists, workers and organisations, her projects trace the complex connections between human exploitation and environmental crises that lie at the heart of climate change today.

Pattern presents works by Navjot created since 2015, the year of the United Nations Climate Change Conference and the Paris Climate Accords. These events marked a watershed moment in announcing a global agreement towards the mitigation of carbon emission levels among nearly 200 countries. Since then, there has been a dramatic enhancement of visual representation of climate change in mainstream media, using new technologies and real-time data. Navjot’s exhibition at Ishara juxtaposes the new and traditional forms of representing environmental crises to critically reflect on the way we think about the future of the planet and society.

Consisting of 6 notable bodies of work, the viewer is first confronted by ‘How Perfect Perfection Can Be’, an immersive presentation of multi-layered works comprising prints, watercolour drawings and PVC transfers that reveal the paradox between the great accomplishments of modern architecture and their adverse impact on the planet. With intricate details of building facades of mega-cities such as New York superimposed with abstract graphs intimating the corresponding ecological destruction, the works question the value of human achievement and visual splendour that are simultaneously symbols of society’s collective failure towards the environment.

The adjoining wall amplifies the statistical information seen in the previous work into bold lines that track seven indices of ecological disasters collected from 2011 onwards in the work titled ‘Seriousness of Issues’. First presented in 2015 in the wake of the Paris Accords, the ongoing work is updated with each iteration using new data released by major scientific organisations. Dwarfed by the scale of the mural, the viewer encounters a new metaphor for the horizon in the 21st century through jagged lines mapping the shortage of fresh-water, rise in air and water pollution and depletion of natural resources. According to Navjot, this abstract representation of the environment has dehumanized our approach to fully grasp the magnitude of devastation and displacement of several species caused by excessive industrialization over many decades.

‘Lost Text’ is a series of 36 layered digital prints that explore the visual aesthetics of antiquated scripts in the digital age. Creating a dialogue between archaeology and new techniques of data-mining, photographs of ancient hieroglyphs are juxtaposed with digital encryptions generated from a corrupt computer hard-drive containing documentation from Navjot’s Bastar diaries. The work foregrounds the vulnerability of analogue and digital sources of knowledge and the human perseverance to decipher.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is an installation titled eponymously with the show, ‘Pattern’, made out of unmilled red rice. Displayed on the floor, the work is modelled on an indigenous pattern produced from sophisticated techniques of weaving, separating threads on a loom. The use of rice and the invocation of textiles symbolise the interconnectedness of artistic expression, occupation and livelihood and the dependence on the earth among farmers that have lost their land to mining companies.

‘Soul Breath Wind’ is a multi-channel video based on the artist’s comprehensive research and first-hand observation of how the political, economic and development policies have led to deep geological impact in Chhattisgarh in Central India. The video presents the testimonies of local inhabitants, several of whom include women speaking against the monopolisation of land, rapid industrialisation, and the extreme conditions of displacement and deforestation brought on by coal and bauxite mining. The video extends into the final work in the exhibition titled ‘Patterns Which Connect’, a collection of 24 fossil-like sculptures embodying the diverse ecosystem that is under threat due to the continuously changing landscape.

Navjot creates works over long durations of time, exploring new and old knowledge systems, traditions and personal experiences to offer a new approach to environmental philosophy. The exhibition at Ishara highlights the multiple dimensions of her practice through her artworks along with a reading space on the mezzanine that presents books, field notes, and posters of various social movements she has been part of over the years.

Navjot Altaf: Pattern is curated by Sabih Ahmed, Associate Director and Curator at the Ishara Art Foundation. The exhibition will be accompanied by the launch of her new two-volume book titled ‘Navjot at Work’ and ‘Artist’s Notes’; physical and virtual tours; educational and public programmes; a newly commissioned text by Zasha Colah and artist conversations over the duration of the exhibit.

Smita Prabhakar, Founder and Chairperson of Ishara Art Foundation, comments: “Once again Ishara presents a contemporary artist from South Asia not seen before in the region. Navjot is a feminist and has great belief in the intrinsic values of equality and non-discrimination against minorities. Her work with tribals in the Bastar region in Central India and focus on sustainability are at the forefront of discussions in the world today. With this exhibition Ishara will showcase our commitment to issues that impact us as world citizens and share a practice which is impactful and forceful in its message.”

The 16th Lyon Biennale: manifesto of fragility positions fragility at the heart of a generative form of resistance that is emboldened by the past, responsive to the present and primed for the future. In acknowledging fragility as one of few universally felt truths in our divided world, the Biennale assembles a host of creative practices and objects spanning two millennia that variously speak to the vulnerabilities of people and places, past and present, near and far. Conceived as a collective statement authored through word, image, sound and movement by 200 artists and creatives, it calls on a community of resilient voices to draft a manifesto for a world that is blamelessly fragile. The Biennale is structured around three distinct yet inter-connected layers, where fragility and resistance are explored through the lens of the individual, the city, and the world respectively.

Furla Series.
Andrea Bowers. Moving In Space Without Asking Permission
Curated By Bruna Roccasalva

Fondazione Furla and GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna of Milan are proud to present Moving in Space without Asking Permission, an Andrea Bowers exhibition curated by Bruna Roccasalva.

Andrea Bowers’s first solo show in an Italian institution, Moving in Space without Asking Permission offers an immersive experience within the work of the artist and her commitment to the struggle for gender equality and women’s emancipation.

Andrea Bowers is an American artist and activist whose research combines aesthetic practices and political engagement from a feminist perspective. For almost thirty years, the artist has investigated fundamental issues such as gender equality, women’s and workers’ rights, immigration, and environmentalism through a formal approach connoted by a strong visual impact. She makes use of a variety of media, from drawing to video to neon installations, rendering complex topics through an accessible and direct vocabulary. Her work is a perfect example of how art can convey socially relevant messages through the aesthetic power of its language.

The exhibition Moving in Space without Asking Permission is part of a broader reflection on feminism that Bowers has been developing for some time, and focuses in particular on the relationship between feminism and bodily autonomy, amplifying issues from the present and the past. Each of Bowers’s projects begins with in-depth research into the context in which she operates and an encounter with its social fabric. In this case, Moving in Space without Asking Permission takes its starting point from the artist’s confrontation with some of today’s Italian feminist experiences, in particular the work of the philosopher and activist Alessandra Chiricosta, who studies and teaches the practice of martial arts as a form of bodily self-awareness, thus offering a break with gender stereotypes. The project was also created in response to the specific nature of the GAM exhibition context: a museum whose collection refers to the historical period around the turn of the 20^th century, when the women’s emancipation movement in Italy was in its infancy.

Through a show that combines iconic works and ambitious new productions that, among other things, testify to the artist’s great versatility of artistic language, the exhibition highlights the importance of her research in which political activism and artistic practice are inextricably linked.

Furla Series – Andrea Bowers. Moving in Space without Asking Permission is the fourth edition of the Furla Series project, and is the upshot of collaboration between Fondazione Furla and GAM: a partnership undertaken in 2021 with the exhibition by Nairy Baghramian and recently renewed for the staging of the upcoming events in the cycle.

Furla Series is the project cycle that since 2017 has engaged Fondazione Furla in the creation of exhibitions in collaboration with major Italian art institutions, with an all-female program designed to valorize and showcase women’s fundamental contribution to contemporary culture.

Every story starts somewhere, as an idea in a protagonist’s mind, a narrative composed of a series of incidents, or a place like no other.

In this exhibition, artists take the role of the narrator, recalling both shared and personal experiences to communicate ideas fundamental to the modern world. These stories demonstrate how individual, social and cultural dialogues intersect, providing a framework for the exhibition, which explores three main themes: character, spaces and places, and the narratives that inspire creative concepts.

In preparing work for the show, each artist delved into a world of their own, deriving inspiration from a variety of sources, including memories, dreams, daily life encounters, folk tales, nature, cities and architecture. The selected works interact with each other through the exploration of material, form and colour. They are also connected by the artists’ collective experience of living in Qatar and being part of its unique community.
This exhibition features works by 36 artists, emerging and mid-career, who took part in the Artist in Residence programme at the Fire Station in the years 2015–2021. Each piece acts as a metaphor (majaz) for the artist’s journey and evolving artistic practice, capturing a moment or an idea that represents their experience in the past years.

With projects ranging from painting, drawing, prints, sculpture, new media and installations, Majaz: Contemporary Art Qatar shares a thorough exploration of the process of storytelling, both real and imaginary.

The 17th Istanbul Biennial, organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and supported by Koç Holding, the Biennial Sponsor since 2007, opens to the public on Saturday, 17 September 2022 and can be visited free of charge until 20 November 2022.

Curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Amar Kanwar and David Teh, this edition brings together people and processes in a gathering of more than 50 projects, each the fruit of long-term research and collaboration. Embracing various encounters in a myriad of forms, from a musical composition for water buffalos and giant puppet shows across the city, to a dumpling food festival, research projects on the archives of feminist movements, dialogues with birds, and a poetry channel inviting 15 poets to write a new poem every month for a year, this Biennial is above all an invitation to spend time together, thinking, talking, reading, viewing and listening in public, an invitation to ask questions, and question answers.
With its focus on process and participation, the 17th Istanbul Biennial involves over 500 artists, thinkers, writers, poets, puppeteers, researchers, environmentalists, architects, radio hosts, fishermen, buffalo herders, activists, stand-up comedians, conductors, ethnomusicologists, ornithologists and many others, have contributed to the biennial individually or through collective work with local communities across Istanbul and other parts of Turkey.

Acting as a host across the city, the 17th Istanbul Biennial spans 12 exhibition venues that are diverse in nature in the Zeytinburnu, Kadıköy, Fatih and Beyoğlu districts, as well as over 50 bookstores, second-hand booksellers, hospitals, cafes, metro stops, disseminating the ideas around which its projects are shaped. For global audiences, Radyo Bienal has been engaging Turkish-speaking communities with a 25-episode weekly programme hosted by Açık Radyo (Open Radio), an independent and egalitarian terrestrial radio channel, as well as featuring an English podcast series that can be listened to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts, with new episodes, added every Tuesday.

Oscar Murillo: “A Storm Is Blowing From Paradise” opens its doors to the public on the evening of Friday 16 September, offering the chance to be among the first to view the artist’s most extensive exhibition in Italy to date, set in the historic Scuola Grande della Misericordia, Venice. Highlights of the show will include new paintings by Murillo, alongside an interactive presentation of Frequencies, his long-term collaborative project with school students.

Frequencies is a global art project conceived by Oscar Murillo in 2013. The artist and his collaborators visited schools worldwide, fixing raw canvas to classroom desks with the sole requirement that they remain there for a school term, inviting students aged 10-16 to freely mark, draw, scribble or write on them. Over the past nine years, Frequencies has grown to become a vast global project involving more than 350 schools in over 30 countries, including Brazil, China, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Nepal, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey, UK, USA and many others. To date, over 100,000 school children have contributed to the project.

Viewed en masse, the canvases convey the conscious and unconscious energy of young minds at their most absorbent, optimistic and conflicted. Often contributed to by several students, the canvases are densely layered with drawings, slogans, messages and motifs. The canvases feature universally recognized words and images alongside culturally specific expressions – the result of a project that is both a local and global endeavor.

The project has brought together a huge, multi-layered volume of material over almost a decade from locations across the world. Murillo has been working in recent years to develop new ways to open up this archive internationally and to create new opportunities for its rich content to be experienced, through means including digital interactions and material manifestations. “A Storm Is Blowing From Paradise” will be the first opportunity for the wider public to experience some of these new interventions first-hand.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition, titled Black on display recent works by the artist revealing the human face and body in various states of heightened expression all painted with varying amounts of black paint. The figures, often forlorn and melancholic, sometime with facial features and sometimes without, seemingly contemplate with awe, surprise, sadness and even shock, the various rapid effects of change that are affecting the world around them. Besides his subjects’ expressive positions as they ponder and at times writhe through their questioning of the state of things around them.

While some carry expressions of astonishment, other figures appear locked within their own inner world—somehow protecting them from the chaotic changes outside. Notable is the shape of the eyes for each subject. With their wide oval shape, they are reminiscent of the Arab world’s ancient civilizations, such as found on Sumerian sculptures where the size of the eyes signified a person’s socio-economic status. Here, in Kiwan’s work, these eyes, while reflective of the region’s ancient origins, are emblematic of the vast transformations taking place at a societal, environmental, and cultural level.

Each work is made from a mix of canvas, collage, and various media. The painting, explains Kiwan, is made of various surfaces using fabrics on top of the canvas or on different parts of the human figure that he paints beforehand. “I create my art by searching through various materials, including different paints, fabrics and canvas, to achieve a form that contains an aesthetic and intellectual content derived from my life experience, my relationship with objects, people and my visual memory.”

In so doing, Kiwan creates palimpsests of different materials and subject matter by using techniques of collage and installation. While the different material Kiwan uses is important, the human figure or face is still the protagonist. He creates his men and women in black on a raw surface and then adds bits of color heightening their emotional and figurative sense of expression.

We are delighted to announce Perspectives, the first solo show by Wangari Mathenge in Italy.

The Kenya-born artist creates powerful paintings confronting issues regarding the visibility of the black female in the context of both the traditional African patriarchal society and the Diaspora.

In her work, Mathenge uses loose, expressive, bright saturated brushstrokes to present intimate images of figures in domestic spaces. Her subjects, mostly women, are surrounded by everyday objects that act as markers of time, location and culture. The canvases display images of the artist herself and relatives in poses of relax or contemplation, evoking a sense of leisure and yet also defiance: they are captured in ordinary moments, often gazing at the viewer with great self-possession, sprawled across the sofa and lost in thought. Family pictures pinpoint individual narratives, while the brightly patterned East African Kanga fabric and the recurring statuette of a Masai celebrate a wider inheritance.

Mathenge’s works privilege introspection and a visceral cohabitation with her subjects. The exhibition displays twelve works and each one extends a very private conversation into a public sphere, all the while maintaining a deeply intimate connection. The artist’s dialogue is one of personal strength, humility, and majesty. Each of her figures are characters for whom the experience of being alive is a fabulous tapestry of possibility, yet the traces of struggle are evident in their body language and expression.

The show is titled Perspectives and refers to a series of works that deal with two divergent meanings associated with the word. Perspective can refer to one’s point of view, suggesting that the subjects bring with them experiences and ideas shaped by their environment and conditioning the way they see things or meanings they are capable of attributing to experiences. Alternatively, “perspective” can also refer to the angle in which the viewer witnesses a scene due to their vantage point. The broader context points to the fact that the viewer contributes to their experiencing of a scene. Moreover a scene captured within a frame necessarily omits what lies beyond it and this act can either be intentional or unintentional – limits are placed on what the physical eye or a camera can perceive and what it is attracted to in a given moment.

Wangari Mathenge (*Nairobi, Kenya 1973) grew up in London and Nairobi, then moved to the USA to study law. She holds degrees from Howard University and Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, IL (2021).

Mathenge’s first solo project, Aura of Quiet, was presented at Roberts Projects, Los Angeles in 2019. Other recent exhibitions include: You are here at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2021) The Expats Studies: Impressions on Paper at The Sacristy Gallery, Chicago (2021) as well as Witness: Afro Perspectives from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, El Espacio 23, Miami (2020 – 21) and Stretching the Body at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, in the Fall of 2021.

Mathenge was commissioned by The New York Times Style Magazine to make work for their 2021 Culture issue. She has also been featured in publications including Artforum, The Financial Times and Artsy. Collections include Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, The Rubell Family Collection, Miami and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. Mathenge lives and works in Chicago.

*Siamo lieti di annunciare Perspectives, prima personale in Italia della pittrice Wangari Mathenge. Nata in Kenya, cresciuta tra Nairobi e Londra e poi trasferita per motivi di studio negli Stati Uniti, Mathenge interpreta e rivela nelle sue potenti tele di grandi dimensioni la molteplicità della sua identità e della sua memoria a partire dalla tradizione e cultura africana e della diaspora.

Nelle sue opere, Mathenge utilizza pennellate fluide, espressive e luminose, colori audaci e motivi vivaci per presentare istantanee intime di figure in spazi e momenti domestici e familiari. I protagonisti dei suoi quadri – soprattutto donne – sono spesso circondati da oggetti personali e quotidiani, simboli e marchi del tempo, del luogo e della sua cultura.

Perspectives comprende una serie di opere con le quali Mathenge riflette su questo termine mettendo al centro se stessa: le sue mani, il volto, il corpo, il suo giardino, gli abiti che indossa, le piccole cose di ogni giorno: “prospettiva” dalla parte dei soggetti ritratti, del loro ambiente e della loro tradizione ma, anche, come punto di vista dello spettatore, in un dialogo condiviso e aperto che mette in discussione persino la “prospettiva” della stessa artista. Scorci, dettagli, movenze, abbandoni privati e intimi che invitano sempre all’introspezione e alla riflessione aprendosi all’incontro con l’altro.

Wangari Mathenge (1973) è nata a Nairobi, in Kenya, ha abitato per un periodo a Londra con la famiglia d’origine e attualmente vive a Chicago. Per studiare diritto si è trasferita negli Stati Uniti, dove si è laureata al Georgetown University Law Center di Washington DC per poi lavorare in campo giuridico. In seguito ha deciso di abbandonare la professione e dedicarsi completamente all’arte e alla pittura che ha studiato e perfezionato; nel 2021 ha conseguito un MFA in Pittura e Disegno presso l’Art Institute di Chicago.

Il primo progetto personale di Mathenge, Aura of Quiet, è stato presentato presso Roberts Projects a Los Angeles nel 2019. Altre mostre recenti: You are here alla Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, Londra (2021); The Expats Studies: Impressions on Paper presso The Sacristy Gallery, Chicago (2021); Gaabo Motho, Sakhile & Me, Francoforte (2021) e Witness: Afro Perspectives from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, El Espacio 23, Miami (2020 – 21). In Italia, con una sua opera ha partecipato alla mostra collettiva Stretching the Body, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino (2021 – 22).

The Expats e The Ascendants sono le due serie di opere che finora hanno costituito il nucleo della sua pratica. The Expats nasce da una considerazione dell’artista: l’uso della denominazione “espatriati” di solito si riferisce esclusivamente ai cittadini bianchi che vivono all’estero, mentre tutti gli altri vengono denominati “migranti”. Per sottolineare ed attaccare questo diverso standard, Mathenge è partita dall’esperienza di vita della sua famiglia nel Regno Unito negli anni Settanta, dove il padre ha lavorato per conto del Segretariato del Commonwealth. The Ascendants esamina cosa significhi vivere in relazione con la cultura africana e con l’eredità del colonialismo.

Nel 2021 Mathenge è stata incaricata dal New York Times Style Magazine di realizzare un’opera per il numero speciale dedicato alla cultura. Il suo lavoro è stato recensito in pubblicazioni come Artforum, The Financial Times, The Sunday Times e Artsy. Tra le collezioni figurano il Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis), la Rubell Family Collection (Miami) e la Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo di Torino.

Sasan is an incredibly exciting visual artist; Broadly interested in playing with the tension between two opposing primordial elements of order and chaos and a master of painting, print, digital work and installations – we could not be more thrilled to represent his beautiful, calligraphic creations here in Dubai.Between 5pm-8pm on Saturday 8th October, Mestaria Gallery is offering the opportunity for you to join the Exhibition Launch in the gallery.

Advanced access is strictly for invitations only so please sign up for advanced Exhibition Entry to receive your invitation.

Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation Supports Emirati Artist Maitha Abdalla’s Solo Exhibition in London

As part of its mission to support the talents and ambitions of promising Emirati artists, the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation (ADMAF) is supporting the upcoming solo art exhibition by Maitha Abdalla, the first Emirati artist to participate in the An Effort Art Residency programme in London. The new exhibition, titled ‘INT. The Body – Sunrise’, is set to take place between 11-16 October 2022 at Cromwell Place, London.

The exhibition marks the culmination of Abdalla’s three-month An Effort residency in London’s Soho district, supported by ADMAF. An Effort supports artists who, either through their messaging or their process, seek to connect and engage with their audience and wider community in a unique way.

H.E. Huda Alkhamis-Kanoo, Founder of ADMAF, Founder and Artistic Director of Abu Dhabi Festival, said: “The Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation is committed to investing in the talent and creative potential of Emirati artists and empowering them to realise their dreams and ambitions. We are pleased to support Maitha Abdalla as the first Emirati to be invited to the residency programme at London’s An Effort Art and to nurture and develop the passion she has shown for the arts from an early age. Maitha’s solo exhibition is an exceptional opportunity to introduce London audiences to her unique practice and foster cross-cultural understanding by giving insight into the UAE’s thriving art scene.”

With unique artworks that feature cultural narratives and nostalgia-inducing reminiscence, Maitha Abdalla explores aspects of social and cultural identity, often inspired by folk tales from her childhood.

On her time spent during the An Effort residency Maitha Abdalla said: “The first few weeks brought me back to basics. I spent hours sketching out my characters, focusing on construction to better understand movement and form. I found myself fixated upon the rooster. In local culture the call of the rooster signals that angels are close by, my grandmother would tell me this as a child and the rooster – as an embodiment of spirituality – preoccupied me for years. It became a regular motif in my output that I have taken the time to really unpack and develop during this three-month period of immersion; you’ll notice that the rooster recurs in the paintings that will be exhibited at Cromwell Place as well as its counterpart – the donkey which is said to perceive demons.”

Renowned for her work which oscillates between the diaphanous, vibrant and surreal, and is always marked by an atmosphere of reminiscence and nostalgia, Maitha’s work has appeared in various exhibitions, including Abu Dhabi Festival 2022’s Portrait of a Nation II: Beyond Narratives which featured her work, ‘The Dancing and the Animal’. The landmark exhibition was held as part of the 19th edition of Abu Dhabi Festival, under the theme ‘Crafting the Emirates State of Mind: Creation, Innovation and Joy.’

For over 25 years, Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation (ADMAF) has supported the innovation and creativity of talented individuals, aiming to create distinguished competencies and promote cultural movement locally and internationally.

The Exhibition will run from 11 October to 16 October 2022 at Cromwell Place, London,

Nadine Majdalani Begdache

has the pleasure to invite you to the opening of

Inside My Broken Forest
by Alain Vassoyan

Inside My Broken Forest

« Des corps qui se brisent puis se reconstruisent »
« Des forêts qui brûlent et qui se régénèrent »

Dans un décor post-apocalyptique, Inside My Broken Forest met en scène le rouge et le noir, l’humour et le drame, la colère et la contemplation!

Alain Vassoyan

About the artist

Born in 1966, Alain Vassoyan is a Lebanese-Canadian artist based in Beirut. He studied Sculpture at the Ecole de Ceramique Bonsecours in Montreal and Art History at Montreal University. He’s currently teaching sculpting at the Academie Libanaise des Beaux Arts (ALBA) and the Saint Joseph University of Beirut.

Vassoyan’s work has been showcased in collective and individual exhibitions around the world. He held a solo exhibition at “Salle du Gesu” in Montreal, Canada in 1995, and three solo shows at Galerie Janine Rubeiz in Beirut: “Djoudou City” (2009), “Labyrinthe d’Oiseaux” (2011), and “Reconstruire Venus” (2017).

His artworks were part of several collective exhibitions: “Constantin Brancusi Cultural Center” in Montreal, Canada (1995), “Goethe Institute” in Beirut, Lebanon (2005); “Sursock Museum” in Beirut, Lebanon (2006 and 2018); “Beirut Art Fair” (2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015); “Art 14” in London, UK (2014); “Abu Dhabi Art” in the UAE (2014); “Break all Frames” at Beit Beirut, Lebanon (2014); and “Beirut 2020” at Galerie Janine Rubeiz. In 2005, one of his works was selected in an international contest by the Hyogo Prefectural Museum in Kobe, Japan.

Vassoyan is renowned for his three-dimensional sculptural installations, and his work is permanently exhibited with Galerie Janine Rubeiz.

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Friday, 10am until 6pm
Saturday 10am until 2pm
Closed on Sunday and Monday

Fann A Porter in collaboration with Zaat are pleased to present “We The People”, a collective exhibition featuring the works of artist Abd Kasha, Abdallah Murad, Ahmad Kasha, Arda Aslanian, Basma Al Nimri, Dana Barqawi, Fadi Attoura, Fadi Balhawan, Fayek Dahdouh, Hasan Jouni, Houssam Ballan, Ibrahim Jalal, Jaber Alwan, Karam Matouk, Maath Alousi, Majd Kurdieh, Mayar Obeido, Mona Trad Dabaji, Rabee Kiwan, Wajih Wahba, Youssef Youssef, and Zena Assi.

حن الناس
محمد العبدالله

شوارع المدينة مش لحدا
شوارع المدينة لكل الناس
رصيف البحر مش لحدا
رصيف البحر لكل الناس
نحنا الناس
نحنا شجر الشوارع
نحنا حكايا الرصيف
نحنا الربيع
نحنا الشتي
نحنا الصيف
و نحنا الخريف
نحنا الناس

Inspired by the poetry of Mohamed AlAbdallah, We The People, celebrates the everyday person and the human aspect that gives life to cities and streets.

In turn, this exhibition chooses to highlight the figure, whether it is anonymous or a distinct portrait, abstract or expressive. The figure reminds us of ourselves, someone we know, strangers we meet, or even simply, the body in which we inhabit.

The exhibition will be open from 18 Oct – 3 November 2022 at Fann À Porter, gallery space located at The Workshop Dubai, located at Villa 45 – St. 23b – Al Wasl Rd opposite Box Park – Jumeirah 2, Dubai, U.A.E.

Saleh Barakat Gallery Presents

Mahmoud Obaidi’s exhibition

“Organs of the Outlandish” 

The trouble with Vital, accessory, and auxiliary organs begins the moment they make themselves felt. Only through the disavowal of organs as internal or external objects can the masters of their prosthetics exploit them. No figure other than the prosthetic master encapsulates the unsteady compound of anxiety and hubris, loss and compensation, narcissistic wounds, and phallic fantasies. The trouble with the magnificence of the organ happens as it quickly turns awry once it founders or reveals its exteriority. Like the fetish, the organ-turned-intruder enslaves its subject.

Mahmoud Obaidi’s Hidden Messages and Make War Not Love estrange the histories of exploitation and dispassion with the advent of colonial industrial capitalism. These works reveal inklings of primal scenes that are short-circuited. Human body parts drop in and out in favor of phallic organs, orifices, accessory organs, prostheses, tanks, weapons and machines.

Mahmoud Obaidi is an Iraqi-Canadian artist practicing in Beirut, Qatar and Canada. His works have been exhibited in museums and galleries across the globe, including MoMA Ps1, British Museum and Mathaf amongst numerous others.

Opening: Friday 21 October, 2022 5:00-8:00pm (till 3 December, 2022)
Venue: Saleh Barakat Gallery, Clemenceau, Justinian Street, Beirut, Lebanon

Dušan is someone who likes expressive expression. He is a painter who addresses the surface of the canvas in a harmony of colours with ease and panache. The expressive approach of painting has been one of the significant artistic trends in the Czech Republic since the 1990’s. But dark themes have dominated this current over the last few years, about interpersonal relationships, burnout, societal disasters.

However, Dušan is also a romantic. In his painting, as in the paintings of 19th century European painters, the sea mirrors reflected clouds and horizons are hidden in fog. For the last two years, he has been focusing his attention on the themes of the sea, water and dramatic lighting in the garden. His paintings are not dark, they are dramatic, expressive and romantic at the same time.