National Pavilion UAE announces its upcoming exhibition at the Biennale Arte 2022
The National Pavilion UAE announces its upcoming exhibition at the Biennale Arte 2022 (Venice Biennale) titled Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim: Between Sunrise and Sunset. The exhibition will present a new body of work created for the National Pavilion UAE by Emirati artist Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, a veteran of the experimental art community in the UAE. Curated by Maya Allison, Executive Director of The New York University Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, Between Sunrise and Sunset is an installation of human-sized, abstract and organic sculptural forms. The work draws from Ibrahim’s deep connection to the local environment of his hometown, Khor Fakkan – a city harbouring the rocky Al Hajar mountains on the east coast of the Emirate of Sharjah in the UAE.
This exhibition marks the National Pavilion UAE’s seventh participation at the Biennale Arte, along with its move towards an artist-led approach whereby Ibrahim nominated Allison to curate the exhibition. The 59th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2022 (Biennale Arte 2022) will open to the public between 23 April – 27 November 2022.
The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia is curated by New York based Italian curator and artistic director Cecilia Alemani under the theme The Milk of Dreams, which questions the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses, and the connection between bodies and earth. In resonance with this theme, Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim’s biomorphic sculptures cluster in undulating colour and movement – suggesting bodies, mutation, and metamorphosis. These forms arrive from his physical dialogue with the materials of the work: accretions of papier-mâché are built up over loose skeleton structures that shift and settle into their final position as he works. Often incorporating actual earth, leaves, tea, coffee, and tobacco, the texture of the forms derives from his raw materials.
Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim said: “Between Sunrise and Sunset highlights the connection I have with the nature of Khor Fakkan – my hometown and the place I continue to live in. The exhibition demonstrates the tension between Khor Fakkan’s colorful bright mornings, when the sun rises over the ocean, and the disappearance of colors in mid-afternoon, when the sun drops behind the mountains that loom over my hometown. We can never see the sunset in Khor Fakkan, but we can imagine it on the other side of the UAE. I am looking forward to showing my new installation, working alongside Maya Allison and the National Pavilion UAE, to represent my country in our upcoming presentation at the Venice Biennale in 2022.”
Curator Maya Allison said, “Over the years, I have closely observed Ibrahim’s work process and its intense and intimate relationship with each environment he encounters, whether that be the rocky mountainous landscape of his lifelong home, or the landscapes of his residencies in Holland, France, India, and beyond. Even after almost 4 decades of art-making, the artist continues to evolve and deepen his practice, with a stubbornly persistent exuberance, nourished by his connection to his work and his artist community. For many years he worked against the odds of location and access, and I’m gratified to see the exposure and recognition of this artist by the wider art world. This is a watershed moment for the work of the institutions that are supporting this project.”
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Institutional exhibition of The Otolith Group opens at Sharjah Art Foundation
Xenogenesis, presented by Sharjah Art Foundation from 13 November 2021 to 5 February 2022, brings together a selection of key works by The Otolith Group, the London-based art collective consisting of Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, founded in 2002.
Featuring a cross-section of works produced by the collective between 2011 and 2018, the exhibition reflects the artists’ ongoing commitment to creating what they call ‘a science fiction of the present’ through images, voices, sounds and performance.
Suspended between fiction, poetry, documentary and theory, The Otolith Group’s post-cinematic films, high-definition videos and multiple screen installations address contemporary social issues and themes inherited from colonialism, the way in which humans have impacted the earth, and the influence of new media on human activities.
The title of the exhibition references the African American science fiction novelist Octavia Butler’s legendary Xenogenesis trilogy. Butler’s ideas inform Eshun and Sagar’s longstanding preoccupation with the promise and threat of the idea of ‘alien becoming’, or ‘becoming alien’.
The most recent work in the exhibition is O Horizon (2018). The term O Horizon is used by soil scientists to refer to the surface layer of organic matter continually altered by human existence.
Sagar and Eshun adopted this agronomic term for their study of Santinketan, West Bengal, India, where the poet, dramatist, essayist, composer, artist, educator, social reformer, and Nobel Prize-winning novelist Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) founded the Visva Bharati University in 1921.
In its portrait of recitals, performances, choreography, and discussion situated within an ongoing environmental struggle to preserve the health of soil against the attrition of global warming, O Horizon suggests the outlines of a Tagorean ethos for the 21st century.
Another prominent work in the exhibition is The Third Part of the Third Measure (2017), co-commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation for Sharjah Biennial 13 (SB13), and part of the Foundation’s Collection.
The Third Part of the Third Measure emerges from The Otolith Group’s longstanding engagement with the work of the African American composer Julius Eastman (1940–1990).
Filmed and recorded in six takes with three cameras at RAK Studios in St John’s Wood, North London, on 12 and 13 February 2017, The Third Part of the Third Measure returns to the moment of 16 January 1980 when Eastman led three pianists in a performance of his controversial compositions.
Several works in the exhibition explore the impact of new media on humans, including Anathema (2011). By descending beneath the LCD screens of advertisements for smartphones, laptops and flat screen televisions, Anathema envisions the material substrate of liquid crystal technology as a sentient entity.
From this perspective, liquid crystal is reimagined as an entity that possesses consumers for its own occult objectives. Anathema exemplifies Eshun and Sagar’s enduring preoccupation with science fiction as a diagnosis of the present rather than the future. In From Left to Night (2015), the biomorphically geometric digital abstractions that pass across the multiple screens bring viewers into a sustained encounter with the material substrate of liquid crystals beneath the screens of smartphones, laptops, and flat screen televisions.
From Left to Night envisions the hidden technology of the liquid crystal as an abstract landscape that estranges the forms of mimetic rivalry produced by the active screens of social media.
In Statecraft: An Incomplete Timeline of Independence (2014-2019), commemorative stamps provide The Otolith Group with a rich iconography for narrating the political imaginary of African independence, as mass-manufactured designs issued to memorialise significant national events.
By sequencing the births and military coups d’etat of Africa’s new nation states in a historical timeline, Statecraft brings viewers face to face with the dissimulative aesthetics of national unity.
Xenogenesis was first shown at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven in May 2019 and was curated by Annie Fletcher. Its presentation in Sharjah is organised by Van Abbemuseum and Sharjah Art Foundation and co-curated by Annie Fletcher, Director, Irish Museum of Modern Art and Hoor Al Qasimi, Director, Sharjah Art Foundation. Original exhibition architecture designed by Diogo Passarinho Studio.
Xenogenesis was on view at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Richmond, Virginia (2020), Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge (2020), and Buxton Contemporary, Melbourne (2020). Following its presentation in Sharjah, the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana in 2022 and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, in 2022.
The publication Xenogenesis, a polyphonic exploration of the work of The Otolith Group, will be officially launched in conjunction with the exhibition opening at Sharjah Art Foundation.
Presenting all bodies of work contained in the exhibition, the publication presents materials and graphics from the artists’ broader practice and brings together important thinkers, scholars, art historians and writers from disparate fields including Denise Ferreira da Silva, Annie Fletcher, Anselm Franke, Shanay Jhaveri, George E. Lewis, Mahan Moalemi, Fred Moten, Grant Watson, Vivian Ziherl and the late Mark Fisher. Edited by The Otolith Group and Megs Morley, and designed by Luca Frei, Xenogenesis will be available in the UAE exclusively at Sharjah Art Foundation shops alongside the exhibition opening on 13 November 2021.
Xenogenesis is published by Irish Museum of Modern Art and Archive books, with the generous support of the international partners and tour venues, Buxton Contemporary, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Institute of Contemporary Art, Virginia, Sharjah Art Foundation, Southern Alberta Art Gallery and Van Abbemuseum.
The exhibition opening on 13 November will be accompanied by a Talks Programme which includes two conversations: ‘Visions of the Future, Speculations on the Present: Thinking with Octavia Butler’ with Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, and ‘Xenogenesis: A Conversation with The Otolith Group’ that includes Anjalika Sagar, Kodwo Eshun, Annie Fletcher and Ciarán Finlayson.
The conversations will be followed by the official launch and signing of the monograph Xenogenesis: The Otolith Group.
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5 reasons to visit the AlUla Design Exhibition at Dubai Design Week 2021
This year marks the first time Royal Commission for AlUla has taken part in Dubai Design Week, the annual week-long festival celebrating design and creativity in the UAE and beyond taking place 8-13 November 2021. Here are five reasons you should visit the AlUla Design Exhibition this week:
1. The AlUla Design exhibition gives insight to the design community on how master planning and architecture can integrate deep history, culture heritage and nature into new living environments
2. Understand what the future of Sustainable Tourism would look like!
3. An opportunity to explore AlUla, one of the world’s emerging design cities through images and videos.
4. Be a part of AlUla Design Talks by Samantha Cotterell, the Royal Commission for AlUla’s (RCU) Executive Director of Design and other architects who have contributed to AlUla design.
5. Get a chance to meet the designers and architects who are developing one of the world’s most extraordinary heritage destinations.
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in5 goes to Dubai Design Week with exhibition and specialised workshops
in5, an enabling hub for design, tech and media start-ups, has confirmed its participation at Dubai Design Week, both as an exhibitor and through a series of workshops.
Between November 8 and 13, the incubator will be showcasing its emerging design practices in a multidisciplinary exhibition that will include a variety of thought processes highlighting new innovative practices, products with technology-driven design, as well as user-centric design paradigms.
Underscore: in5 Design Exhibition
The exhibition explores the role played by technology in many of the approaches adopted by design start-ups, whether through using 3D printing or aerospace technology to create more efficient, smarter, and innovative products and designs.
Majed Al Suwaidi, Managing Director of Dubai Media City, said: “in5 aims to be an incubator ecosystem that provides entrepreneurs and start-ups the optimal conditions for growth. We have come to Dubai Design Week to showcase some fascinating projects and concepts that are being worked on in the design space.”
A broad range of concepts will be examined through these projects, ranging from culture, craft, sustainability, spirituality and wellness.
KDSV will be showcasing Gateway To Heaven, a stainless steel canopy that uses columns and a water curtain to create the illusion of a waterfall pouring from sky to earth, and Boostpod, an urban device that aims to redefine the balance of work and life through providing an app-accessible private, soundproofed environment in public places.
Another project by in5 start-up NYXO Visionary Design is Urban Fossils, an urban cooling system that relies on a porous, fossil-inspired structure to lower technologies through a combination of algorithm-driven design and sand 3D printing.
Other participants in the exhibition include CODE, Neo Architecture, Shatha Essa, Seen Meem Interior Design, Uche by Amber and Stelyx. The latter will be showcasing innovative folding methods adapted from the aerospace industry at the exhibition. Stelyx’s T-Bench, for example, is a bench that adjusts its length automatically to maintain social distancing, while Gravity Tree Rack will dry clothes while saving space and time through a design that takes cues from the branches of a tree.
in5 workshops
In collaboration with its partners, in5 Design will also be hosting a series of workshops during Dubai Design Week.
The sessions cover a broad range of topics. Some will be based around practical demonstration and hands-on work, such as the uses of CNC for laser cutting and robotic milling – the newest addition to in5’s prototyping lab – while others will be more theory-based, such as Pantone’s talk on the role of color in brand recognition and foundation of color psychology by colour theorist Fatima Al Shirawi.
Sustainability is also featured in the workshops, especially in the fashion space through sessions covering zero-waste design for garments as well as the sourcing of sustainable fabrics and an introduction to sustainable design.
“These workshops not only provide participants with valuable insights into a range of design technology subjects but also offer a platform for our partners to showcase their solutions to a wider audience,” said Al Suwaidi.
“Participants will also have a chance to explore our state-of-the-art facilities and see for themselves how the prototyping and fashion labs can help entrepreneurs and start-ups.”
in5 is an enabling platform for entrepreneurs and start-ups, fostering innovation and helping new ideas reach the marketplace. It offers five key benefits, which comprise a robust business set-up framework, training and mentorship, networking, investment opportunities, and cutting-edge prototyping labs, studios and creative workspaces.
In October 2021, in5 announced a new milestone as its start-ups crossed the AED 1.4 billion investment mark, reaffirming Dubai’s leading position as an attractive destination for talent and entrepreneurship. The direct investments came through venture capital and angel investors.
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Iwan Maktabi and cc-tapis present Women in Design exhibition
On occassion of Downtown Design Dubai, Iwan Maktabi’s Research and Experimentation platform “Iwan Maktabi Lab” is taking over Warehouse 32 at Alserkal Avenue with a series of exhibitions and cultural events. Throughout the month of November, the Iwan Maktabi Lab will honor women in design. “Women in Design” is an exhibition showcasing an array of cc-tapis collections honouring avante-garde designers, an exhibition which puts to the forefront the research and ideas which are shaping the world of interiors. Designers who question traditional craftsmanship, and cultural production techniques, merging them with contemporary ideas.
Patricia Urquiola, Mae Engelgeer, Faye Toogood, Sabine Marcelis, Cristina Celestino, and Bethan Laura Wood’s latest works designed for cc-tapis will be on display. Collections such as Paysage, Stroke, and Patcha as exhibited in Milan Design Week will be displayed for the first time in the Middle East. Allowing guests from all over the world to see, touch, and experience each piece.
“Just as my father encouraged me and my sisters in the start of our careers, I strongly encourage every woman to pursue her calling. Because at the end of the day, you find your strength and empowerment in what you do and what you give to your community.” Says Mona Maktabi, co-founder of Iwan Maktabi.
Design Talk
Nadine Kanso and Bethan Laura Wood
moderated by Alya AlShaibani
As part of Iwan Maktabi Lab’s devotion to fostering appreciation for the arts, the collections will be presented alongside a conversation between designers Sabine Marcelis and Bethan Laura Wood moderated by Alya AlShaibani, Manager of the Women’s Pavilion and Country Manager at Expo 2020 Dubai.
The moderated talk will take place on Monday November 8th, discussing the ideas that are shaping the world of design.
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Dubai Festival City Mall launches an exclusive art exhibition
To celebrate the holy month, Dubai Festival City Mall is bringing a unique, one-of-a-kind art exhibition for its visitors throughout Ramadan. The 15 art display stands will showcase the 99 names of Allah in a beautiful exhibition located in various places around the mall. Furthermore, the first one hundred visitors to the exhibition each day will receive an art collector book to take home to extend the experience.
The mall will also host a live painting demonstration where a specially selected artist will produce exceptional pieces of art to create a mural across a space on the first floor of the mall. Customers can catch the show on weekdays from 4pm-10pm and weekends from 5pm-11pm.
In line with the Ramadan tradition of helping others, Dubai Festival City Mall will be giving back to both its customers and the Al Jalila Foundation throughout the holy month. Customers that spend AED200 at any of Dubai Festival City Mall Restaurants and cafes will get a chance to play the memory game on Festival Rewards app and win a Festival City Mall gift card worth AED50. For everyone that plays the special game hosted on the app, Dubai Festival City Mall will donate AED 10 to the Al Jalila Foundation.
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Dubai Design District launches a week-long Rethink Art exhibition
Dubai Design District (d3) has announced a new global campaign for the post-pandemic world: Rethink the Regular.
To rebuild and revitalise communities, promote growth and stimulate the UAE’s knowledge and innovation-based economy, the campaign encourages the world’s most brilliant minds to come together and see design in a new light.
The international initiative will promote Dubai as global destination for the creative industries that offers opportunities for students, startups, entrepreneurs and multinational corporations alike.
To kick it off, d3 has today launched a week-long Rethink Art exhibition. His Highness Sheikh Zayed’s official Range Rover, an original Dodge Challenger from The Dukes of Hazzard and a 1962 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud are among 15 classic cars have raced into the business district for the event, running from March 28- April 3, 2021.
Eye-catching installations, art exhibitions, fashion pop-ups, and mouth-watering special food menus celebrating global cuisine will also be available to the community and wider public, with a series of free workshops from Tashkeel, the Dubai-based multidisciplinary art and design organisation, also taking place. Three restaurants – Emirati eatery Smat, Italian street food destination Vicolo, and the wellness-inspired Anamoia Café – have created special discounted menus for Rethink Art.
The week-long event encouraging people to see design from a new perspective aims to celebrate the diversity of talent in the region’s largest creative hub. It comes after contemporary US street artist Shepard Fairey – the man behind the iconic Barack Obama ‘Hope’ poster – unveiled two new murals in d3, further reinforcing Dubai’s position as a global destination for art and design.
Khadija Al Bastaki, Executive Director of d3, said: “Since d3 was established in 2013, it has served as the region’s go-to destination for creativity. As the world continues to face unprecedented changes, it is important to stay ahead of the game – by rethinking what has been done before, we will be able to conceptualise and build more robust economies that can withstand the test of time. This will help Dubai become one of the best cities in the world. Design plays a critical role in this new vision as it transcends all boundaries, it holds to key to innovation and humanises technology. Through our Rethink the Regular campaign, we aim to inspire people and businesses to create new ideas and concepts in Dubai that move the world forward. We are excited to kick off this global campaign with our inaugural exhibition celebrating the diversity of d3’s talent by bringing new artistic and culinary experiences to Dubai that reflects our rich heritage and pioneering vision for the future.”
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Swiss exhibition showcases innovative designs at Dubai Design Week 2020
Switzerland is running an exhibition titled ‘Reflections of Swiss innovation’, at the ongoing Dubai Design Week (Nov 9-14) at Dubai Design District (D3), building 7, plot 10. This exhibition is curated by the Embassy of Switzerland in the UAE & Bahrain, in cooperation with partners FREITAG, HyperAktiv, Pro Helvetia Cairo, and the Swiss Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai.
The exhibition highlights Swiss know-how and excellence in cutting-edge and innovative design. The centrepiece of the exhibition is an interactive installation referring to the Swiss Pavilion at the upcoming World Expo and sheds the light on a selection of iconic Swiss design elements.
Manuel Salchli, Commissioner General of the Swiss Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, said: “Our presence at Dubai Design Week is a great opportunity for visitors to immerse in a unique Swiss experience bringing together the best of Swiss creativity. We are looking forward to this event that will bring people closer to Switzerland through art”.
Iconic Swiss brand and upcycling pioneer FREITAG will make its debut in the Gulf region. Known for its functional, water-repellent and robust bags made from used truck tarpaulins, it will present the ‘From Truck Till Bag’ production process.
On a topical note, the ‘Bring your own mask’ (BYOM) project by Swiss design agency HyperAktiv gives young Swiss designers a platform to reconsider protective masks not only as an item that now accompanies our daily lives but also as a fashion statement.
As a display of Swiss design, the Swiss Pavilion will offer visitors an interactive experience, who will be able to get a first glimpse of the Swiss Pavilion ‘Reflections’ at Expo 2020 Dubai and discover some iconic and surprising Swiss design elements.