NYUAD Spring Exhibition

NYUAD Spring Exhibition

The NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Art Gallery’s spring exhibition, the only constant, will open on February 22. Running until June 4, the show includes works by Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Patty Chang, Gil Heitor Cortesão, Sharon Lockhart, Taus Makhacheva, Haroon Mirza, Clifford Ross, Thomas Struth, and Vivek Vilasini.

Featuring 27 different works, the exhibition is curated by the Executive Director of The NYUAD Art Gallery and University Chief Curator, Maya Allison. This is part of Allison’s ongoing study of landscape in contemporary art.

For the only constant she explains: “The artists here confront contemporary landscape as a site of profound tension: we change the landscape, and it changes us.Even as we might long for an untouched paradise, humans build futuristic utopias. My concept for this exhibition grew out of Tarek Al-Ghoussein’s Al Sawaber series, through which runs a theme: utopia and paradise arrive, and then depart (change is the only constant). This tension is fundamental to questions we face as humans on this planet. Of course, those questions are part of the larger dialogue now underway in the UAE as we approach the COP28 convening this winter.”

The artists in this exhibition engage with landscape to transform looking into witnessing: to observe whorls of pollution recorded on delicate rice paper (Vivek Vilasini); washing an entire ship’s hull by hand, to acknowledge the loss of the Aral Sea (Patty Chang); or to closely examine each detail of a dense landscape, at night (Sharon Lockhart).

NYUAD Spring Exhibition

Location: Dubai – United Arab Emirates
Duration: 22 February – 4 June