Any visitor could be forgiven for thinking that Dubai is a city without a soul, a place of no culture and little visible past. It is, after all, a city that prides itself on bling and artifice, a fantastical skyline of blinking towers springing out of the flat desert and islands confected in the form of palm trees and maps of the world. Almost everything is imported, including its predominantly immigrant population.
Until now, one would have been tempted to have listed fine art among the commodities brought to the city rather than created within it. But Emirati art and Dubai, it seems, is coming of age.
In the past, the number of artists working in the United Arab Emirates was relatively small, not least because art was considered more of a hobby than a viable profession. Teaching was run on a mentoring system, and the work that was produced had little public exposure. All that is changing fast. The past few years have seen an extraordinary growth in a wide range of contemporary art practices. This comes as a result of changing educational possibilities – the return of artists who studied overseas plus new courses on offer by the likes of the American University of Sharjah and Dubai’s Zayed University – and to the Gulf’s sudden, dramatic exposure to international modern and contemporary art.
According to Hassan Sharif, the British-trained “father” of conceptual art in the Emirates, it was the 2003 Sharjah Biennial that “changed the artistic landscape of the UAE”. That year the directorship of the show was taken over by Sheikha Hoor Al-Qasimi, the daughter of the Ruler of Sharjah, who had studied at London’s Royal College of Art. With the help of curator Peter Lewis, she set a new agenda, not only by bringing in artists from all over the world but new media too – video, installation, digital and performance art – and organised a symposium focusing on globalisation and these new practices.
www.tashkeel.org
www.artdubai.ae
www.sharjahbiennial.org
www.artsabudhabi.com
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