{"id":57190,"date":"2024-09-03T11:33:56","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T07:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/?p=57190"},"modified":"2024-09-03T11:33:58","modified_gmt":"2024-09-03T07:33:58","slug":"10-for-10-ten-key-shows-in-ten-years-of-the-nyuad-art-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/10-for-10-ten-key-shows-in-ten-years-of-the-nyuad-art-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"10 for 10: ten key shows in ten years of the NYUAD Art Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWhat is a university gallery?\u201d asks Maya Allison, Chief Curator and founder of the NYUAD Art Gallery, in one of the essays in The NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery 2014-2020<\/em>, a book with a commendably explicit title that explains the gallery\u2019s genesis and progress through its early years. The answer to the rhetorical question is that a university gallery is \u201cdriven by pedagogy, not commerce \u2026 the university gallery’s goal is the study and experience of all that art and material culture can convey\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She does amplify this by a rather good analogy, likening the university gallery \u2013 at least the one at NYUAD \u2013 to a teaching hospital. The faculty of a medical school and the leaders of the gallery are experts in their field, connected to a wider international community of research and knowledge, applying that in the work they do. \u201cLikewise, our art galleries serve the curriculum, faculty research, and the public, simultaneously: to do one is to do all three\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice this places considerable emphasis on the choice of exhibitions, the curating, and any associated research, publications and actual teaching. So what kind of exhibitions would work in the context of a fast-growing contemporary arts scene in the UAE and the emerging cultural landscape of Saadiyat?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The good news is that the last ten years have seen a stream of exhibitions that tick all the boxes \u2013 interesting, stimulating, clever, imaginative, worthy of research, memorable. From the visitor\u2019s point of view, there have been absolutely no duds in terms either of content or of presentation \u2013 which is unusual, to say the least. Here are ten shows that magpie thinks worthy signposts in the NYUAD Art Gallery\u2019s first ten years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diana Al-Hadid: Phantom Limb<\/a><\/h1>
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March-May 2016<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The Art Gallery really hit its stride early with its third exhibition, a major solo show of work by the noted sculptor Diana Al-Hadid. She transforms Renaissance and classical imagery into contemporary sculptural forms that appear to be decaying or resurfacing, often in an apparently melting cascade of white gypsum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theme of memory and its physical manifestations in art and architecture runs throughout Al-Hadid\u2019s work; this exhibition took its title from a central work with the same title, Phantom Limb, which captures the character of much of Al-Hadid’s work through a visceral, materially-focused working technique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time Diana Al-Hadid said: \u201cIt’s an absolute privilege to work with Maya and the NYU Abu Dhabi gallery staff. They have a deep respect for artists’ needs and a tremendous depth of appreciation for the work itself \u2026” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s an interesting discussion here<\/a> between Maya Allison and Diana Al-Hadid where the artist discusses her work and practice \u2013 well worth catching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Invisible Threads: Technology and its Discontents<\/a><\/h1>
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September 2016 \u2013 January 2017<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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By contrast with the vision of a single artist and a single curator, this show inaugurated one of NYUAD Art Gallery\u2019s unique programming strategies: inviting academics to guest-curate a major exhibition. In this case it was Scott Fitzgerald, a media artist who heads the Interactive Media program at NYUAD, who co-curated an exhibition of works by 15 international artists with Bana Kattan, then assis\u00adtant curator at the NYUAD Art Gallery. As Fitzgerald put it: \u201cThe ways we treat and use technology are central to my practice and teaching. This show is an exciting opportunity for me to work through these ideas in a new context \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhibition itself considered the \u201cinvisible threads\u201d that bind us to the technologies that have become all-pervasive, inviting us to contemplate the nuanced relationship between man and machine and especially the dichotomy between aspiration (technology makes the world better!) and anxiety (how does it do that? What else is happening? Who controls the technology, and what else might they do with it?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kattan and Fitzgerald assembled works by 15 international artists that investigate \u201cthe invisible networks and structures we do not understand and cannot see but upon which contemporary communication technologies, and life as we know it, now relies\u201d. All the exhibits posed questions, from Michael Joaquin Grey\u2019s lifesize replica of Sputnik \u2013 an historical object, but also a potent metaphor \u2013 to Monira Al Qadiri\u2019s iridescent replicas of oil drilling bits, en route to becoming exhibits in museums of the future. Ai Wei Wei\u2019s digitally printed wallpaper (above) looks fabulous but is made up of Twitter icons, surveillance cameras and handcuffs. There was more reference to surveillance in Taysir Batniji\u2019s apparently pixelated (but actually pencil-drawn) profile portraits of five blindfolded men. And the highlight of the show for us was Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s 3D renderings of faces created from DNA extracted from items collected in public places \u2013 strands of hair, chewing gum, cigarette butts. The biological materials that make us unique are no longer our own …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artists: Ai Weiwei (above), Jamie Allen, Aram Bartholl, Taysir Batniji, Wafaa Bilal, Liu Bolin, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Michael Joaquin Grey, Monira Al Qadiri, Evan Roth, Phillip Stearns, Siebren Versteeg, Addie Wagenknecht, Kenny Wong<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But We Cannot See Them: Tracing a UAE Art Community, 1988-2008<\/a><\/h1>
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March-August 2017<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this key exhibition, key to establishing the role (as well as the reputation) of the NYUAD Art Gallery. Many contemporary artists from the Emirates have achieved success and some even fame, with galleries and collectors beyond the region recognising their value. Several have shown together, or have been part of larger group exhibitions (notably at the Sharjah Biennials and the UAE’s Venice pavilions). But rarely have they been gathered together with this kind of spotlight; there had never before been such a comprehensive, articulate exposition of what turned out to be a burgeoning community, showing how individuals were linked (or what they got from each other) and how they relate to a wider art ecosystem (or where they looked inward for their practice). \u201cThe trajectory from a small community of unknown experimental practitioners to a group of well-established figures in the UAE arts scene happened in only a few decades \u2026 Their path, as well as what they have produced, also serves as an inspiration for emerging artists in the UAE, a kind of root structure for the cultural development of the Emirates.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The basis of the show (curated by Maya Allison) was solid research, notably in depth interviews with the artists. And as with all the Art Gallery exhibitions, this show was accompanied by a substantial monograph that reproduced those interviews with accompanying essays. This has become a seminal sourcebook for the art of the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artists: Abdullah Al Saadi, Ebtisam Abdulaziz, Hassan Sharif, Hussein Sharif, Jos Clevers, Mohammed Kazem, Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim (above), Vivek Vilasini<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ways of Seeing<\/a><\/h1>
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September 2018 \u2013 January 2019<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Yet another approach to programming came with an invitation to the highly rated curatorial team of Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath. They had already shown a couple of versions of this show elsewhere, but it was reconfigured with a number of new artists and artworks for Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhibition references John Berger\u2019s seminal 1972 text on visual culture, Ways of Seeing<\/em>, in which he consciously shifted the language and practice of art criticism away from the conventional European concept of the art expert. Bardaouil and Fellrath invited the viewer to actively engage with the artwork: \u201cthere is no one \u2018correct\u2019 way to look at art, and our wish is that our audiences should both be aware of and embrace their individual reactions and points of view, as these are borne of unique personal experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In total there were 41 artworks, a satisfyingly eclectic mix in a variety of media \u2013 painting and sculpture, but also photography, sound, film, and installation \u2013 from 26 artists and collectives. They included Mona Hatoum, Lateefa bint Maktoum, Hassan Sharif, Cindy Sherman, Grayson Perry, James Turrell, and Thomans Struth. Eclectic, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artists: Ghada Amer (above), Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Borgella, James Casebere, David Claerbout, Salvador Dal\u00ed, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Andreas Gursky, Mona Hatoum, Paul and Marlene Kos, Alicja Kwade, Lateefa bint Maktoum, Gustav Metzger, Shana Moulton, Vik Muniz, Grayson Perry, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Fred Sandback, Markus Schinwald, Hassan Sharif, Cindy Sherman, Jojakim Cortis and Adrian Sonderegger, John Speed, Thomas Struth, Kim Tschang-Yeul, James Turrell, James Webb<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speculative Landscapes<\/a><\/p><\/h1>

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September-December 2019<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Maya Allison curated this exhibition of installations by four UAE-based artists \u2013 Areej Kaoud, Ayman Zedani (above), Jumairy, Raja\u2019a Khalid \u2013 that explore \u2018environment\u2019 generally and \u2018landscape\u2019 in particular. Allison listed the physical landscape but also social media and the landscape of our well-being: \u201ceach installation offers an imaginary journey derived from the artists\u2019 real-world observations of
everyday life\u201d, as the press release put it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor me, these artists capture something unique in their perspectives, both in how they respond to our surroundings, and how they connect to the unusual art scene here,\u201d said Allison, who sees a connection between the speedy rise of contemporary art in the UAE and the increasingly
cosmopolitan nature of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put like that, Speculative Landscapes felt like a natural follow-on to But We Cannot See Them<\/em>. That show presented existing artworks, bringing them together in what was essentially a record of a historical moment; for this show the artists made new work, never seen before \u2013 and that approach represents a very different kind of curatorial challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

not in, of, along, or relating to a line<\/a><\/h1>
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January-July 2021<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The pandemic necessarily persuaded many of us to remodel the way we live, work and socialise. One of the obvious changes is the increased focus on online communication \u2013 Covid-safe, free from geographical or horological constraints. In the art ecosystem this resulted in a rash of online viewing rooms and digital-only auctions; the NYUAD Art Gallery came up with a genuinely novel response, a digital-only exhibition that\u2019s viewed on your phone rather than in a physical gallery. It was a purpose-built website navigated via a branching pathway, \u201ca decentralised network diagram\u201d, that is actually represented as a line. \u201cI love the idea that we are operating the exhibition when we visit it, instead of being led through it by its architecture\u201d Maya Allison told us at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Co-curated by Maya Allison and Heather Dewey-Hagborg (see above), nine artists and art collectives figured in stops along the way where they could riff on our relationship with technology for \u201cself-expression and self-fashioning\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artists: Addie Wagenknecht, Cao Fei, Eva and Franco Mattes, Lee Blalock (above), Maryam Al Hamra, micha c\u00e1rdenas, Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian, Sophia Al-Maria, Zach Blas<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modernisms \u2013 Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU\u2019s Abby Weed Grey Collection<\/a><\/h1>
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November 2021 \u2013 February 2022<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Another contrasting approach to exhibitions, this show featured over a hundred works from the collection donated to NYU by the eponymous Ms Grey, a millionaire widow who spent her later years travelling in the Middle East and India, meeting and befriending artists, and amassing one of the most impressive collections of modern art from Iran, Turkey and India. \u201cThese regions each had their own engagement with key issues of \u2018modernity\u2019,\u201d notes Maya Allison, \u201cand as art historians have begun to establish, there have been many \u2018modernisms\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abby Weed Grey particularly embraced the Saqqakhaneh school \u2013 Parviz Tanavoli, Faramarz Pilaram, Charles-Hossein Zenderoudi, and their peers who sought to reinterpret Iran\u2019s rich traditions of calligraphy, architecture, ornamentation and Shiite iconography in contemporary idioms. She also acquired many works by members of the influential Progressive Artists Group, which broke away from the traditional Indian nationalist art movement to form an avant-garde collective that looked outward to other cultures \u2013 Francis Newton Souza, Maqbool Fida Husain, Prabhakar Barwe and more. And visiting Turkey in the 1960s resulted in a lifelong fascination with Turkish modernism; ultimately she purchased nearly 110 works from Istanbul\u2019s modernist visionaries, artists such as Abindin Eldergolu, Fahrelnissa Zeid and Bedri Rahmi Ey\u00fcbo\u011flu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Khaleej Modern \u2013 Pioneers and Collectives in the Arabian Peninsula<\/a><\/h1>
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September-December 2022<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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This was another landmark survey of modern art in the region, curated by Aisha Stoby and based on her PhD research tracing the region\u2019s \u2018pre-boom era\u2019 of the twentieth century (through to 2008, which for some marked the \u2018post-boom\u2019) and examining the evolution of visual art movements as the discovery of oil began to transform the region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Stoby had clearly curated the show as something of a corrective, both to give some exposure to an internationally neglected region and to challenge a traditional, probably European, understanding of what \u2018modernism\u2019 is and how it interpreted. It featured 60 works by 38 artists from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the UAE, and they had been loaned by 24 different institutions, galleries, private collections and other sources \u2013 an impressive bit of curatorial detective work in its own right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artists: Abdul Karim Al Bosta, Abdul Karim Al-Orrayed, Abdul Qader Al Rais, Abdulhalim Radwi, Abdullah Al Qassar, Abdullah Al Saadi, Abdullah Al Shaikh, Abdulrahman Alsoliman, Ahmed Qassim Al Sunni, Ali Mohamed Al Mahmeed, Anwar Sonya, Budoor Al Riyami, Ebtisam Abdulaziz, Hassan Meer, Hassan Sharif, Hussain Qassim Al Sunni, Ibrahim Ismail, Issa Saqer Al Khalaf, Khalid Albudoor, Khalifa Qattan, Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, Mohammed Ahmed Rasim, Mohammed Al Saleem, Mohammed Kazem, Mojib Al Dosari, Moosa Omar, Mounirah Mosly, Munira Al Kazi (above), Najat Makki, Nasser Al-Yousif, Nujoom Alghanem, Rashid Abdul Rahman Al Balushi, Rashid Al Oraifi, Safeya Binzagr, Sami Mohammed, Thuraya Al-Baqsami, Yousef Ahmad, Yousef Khalil<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blane De St. Croix: Horizon<\/a><\/h1>
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October 2023 \u2013 January 2024<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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For COP28 and the Year of Sustainability, the Art Gallery went back to a conventional format, a major show of 3D work by a single artist, but managed to tweak the mix by inviting the artist to collaborate with a member of the NYUAD faculty. Blane De St Croix, who has developed a practice that involves extended periods of field research to document and question the relationship between humans and the contemporary landscape, was commssioned to produce four major new works; they resulted from an extended residency, the artist having spent some months in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results are characteristically realised as large collages or immersive sculptural installations. The major project was Salt Lake Excerpt <\/em>(above), developed with theatre director and NYUAD Theater Professor Joanna Settle. It\u2019s a huge sculptural installation inspired by the sabkhas and shallow estuaries of the UAE; the sculpture is made of PET flakes, the product of recycling around 50,000 plastic water bottles, which undulate gently with light and sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Real Time<\/a><\/h1>
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October 2023 \u2013 January 2024<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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This year\u2019s Spring show was yet another approach to the Art Gallery\u2019s remit. Most art exhibitions are by their nature static; you go an look at work that has already been created. The active element is the visitor and their reaction to the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But with In Real Time<\/em>, some of the art didn\u2019t exist at all when the show opened. Some of the artists joined during the run. Some of the art was performative, featuring music and dance. Some of the works were amended and accreted during the run, in a couple of cases with the audience\u2019s involvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maya Allison had been thinking about street-art murals for this show, with in situ creation. But \u201cI realised that what I really liked about the idea was not so much the murals themselves, but the idea that the artist was in the space and that we got to be a part of the birth of the artwork. So even if we see it after it\u2019s finished, you can feel that the artist was only recently there \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the event, most of the eight artists originally invited did install something prior to the opening; but some artists kept adding all the way through the run, and others were invited to take part actually during the run. Says Allison: \u201cI think it was resoundingly positive that some people were willing to take a leap of faith on the project.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artists: Nujoom Alghanem, Moza Almatrooshi, Rana Begum, Chafa Ghaddar, Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, with Julie Becton Gillum and Kiori Kawai, G\u00f6zde \u0130lkin (above), Sol LeWitt, Cristiana de Marchi, Haleh Redjaian<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWhat is a university gallery?\u201d asks Maya Allison, Chief Curator and founder of the NYUAD Art Gallery, in one of the essays in The NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery 2014-2020, a book with a commendably explicit title that explains the [… more]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art","category-exhibitions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magpie.ae\/staging4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}