Global Positioning System

An ambitious large-scale group exhibition dedicated to mapping and navigation systems, “telling stories of fast cars and donkeys, spinning globes and street barricades, cosmic highways and broken bridges … [it] delves into topographies, transit lines and simulated landscapes to engage critically with the infrastructure of movement and navigation”. Set against real and imagined geographies and landscapes, the exhibition asks questions about the infrastructures that enable transport and trade, the promises of speed and progress, the meaning of home, and what ‘navigation’ means when the destination is not a place but a memory …

The artists:

Bani Abidi
Madiha Aijaz
Fatma Al Ali
Mahmoud Alhaj
Lulua Alyahya
Ana Amorim
Nazgol Ansarinia
Fayçal Baghriche
Mirna Bamieh
Heman Chong
Angela Detanico & Rafael Lain
Harun Farocki
Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq
Devadeep Gupta
Hylozoic/Desires
Mohammed Kazem
Lawrence Lek
Dora Longo Bahia
Cinthia Marcelle
Seher Naveed
Şener Özmen & Erkan Özgen
Fazal Rizvi
Hassan Sharif
Vishwa Shroff
Dima Srouji
Do Ho Suh
T. Vinoja
Subas Tamang
Bo Wang
Tatyana Zambrano

That’s an impressive list, satisfyingly light on European names (for the purpose of making this point we’re assuming Türkiye to be non-European) and covering a wide range of artistic practices “from research-based engagements with infrastructure projects to conceptual works that question the very perception of distance”.

Global Positioning System, which is curated by Indranjan Banerjee and Lucas Morin (both exhibition curators at the Jameel), runs 9 May to 4 October, an impressive six-month stint that indicates how important the Jameel thinks it is; and this is actually a two-centre exhibition, with a second ‘chapter’ at Hayy Jameel in Jeddah from 20 May to 26 October featuring 22 artists – a third of whom are from the Dubai roster, with new names making up the balance.

Above: Subas Tamang, Study of History III (2017)