Emerarti

Today is the opening of Dubai Next - a new exhibition on the culture of Dubai curated by Rem Koolhaas & Jack Persekian as part of Art Basel.

I’ve been in Dubai for the past few weeks making a publication for it. That comes out today too - available at the Vitra Museum (Fire station campus) for those in the neighborhood and as a supplement to Gulf News for those in the UAE. Here’s a pic of the cover…

The show features the work of my girls Charlie & Reineke, two European photographers who over three weeks took something like 16000 photos of Dubai in all its multi-culti, shimmer and sand glory. Both of them have very nice display techniques for their exhibits so I’m going to wait til I get proper photos from the museum to show their stuff.

UPDATE: Here are some pics from the opening…

For now though, here is a group discussion with four of the Emerati artists featured in the exhibition about life and art in Dubai. I had to edit it pretty drastically in the print version, so here is the fuller, more interesting edit….

Here’s an example of each artist’s contribution to the exhibition:

Jalal Abuthina

Lamya Gargash

Mohammed Kazem

Reem Al Ghaith

What I noticed first about your pieces is the emphasis on solitude and isolation. All of the images have very quiet quality, which goes against the common perception of Dubai as a kind of free trade adventureland. What do think this shared perspective says about life here?

Jalal Abuthina: What a lot of the work has in common is some sort of conflict with the surroundings - a new environment that’s opposed to the old. A struggle between the new surrounding and what was before.

Lamya Gargash: There’s a sense of loss in all of them.

Reem Al Ghaith: They all relate to the surroundings. So that’s a question: why are we saying this about Dubai - why are we talking about the struggle of stepping into this new environment? Because all five of us are saying the same thing.

Mohammed Kazem: We are living in a very horizontal culture in the UAE. If you go through the streets, you can see people of different nationalities, different kinds of buildings, different foods, you can smell different things - none of these elements have been part of the UAE for a long time. So it’s affected the people here, including the artists… But not all artists use art to criticize politics or ideology, because art doesn’t solve problems of politics or economics. Art has its own policy. So I use many elements from the society, but sometimes I am not provoking anything. Many times artists here are criticizing themselves to find out new things. In this case, they’re not focusing on what’s happening in the society.

LG: I think there’s a sense of confusion, at least on my part. Because, as Mohammed said, there is such a new culture coming together: there are so many things integrating, so many things clashing. For my generation at least, I’m very confused at lot of the time. Because I’m a local, but I’m part of a very small minority amidst a bigger population. So my work is about extinction, because I feel like I’m becoming extinct in a way. That sounds weird, but you’re so submerged into everything around you that you end up being confused. It’s total chaos, I guess. And to me, it’s like, will I ever see Dubai without construction? That’s what I keep telling everyone: I just want to drive by and not have to see construction, and actually sit one day and take it all in and be able to think of Dubai without all this.

JA: That’s the thing - you can’t take it all in, because it’s constantly changing. You can’t adapt to one state that is on pause, because it’s just changing, changing, changing, and you’re constantly changing along with it.

RAG: And when it’s changing, it kind of changes you at the same time, because things change behind you. The society is changing, and you’re changing too. In my piece, I’m struggling to step into this new environment. It’s like, OK, I’m traditional, I’m local, I’m Emerati, I’m born here, so as the change is happening, I should change too. But I don’t want to change.

What I find amazing about Dubai as an outsider is how difficult it is to locate a local culture here, and I think one of the keys to the exhibition is understanding the experience of the people who were here before the boom - before everyone started coming here and reshaping its culture.

MK: Yes, but the boom you’re talking about is a boom in architecture, not a boom in the mentality of the people. The mentality doesn’t move in parallel to the architecture. For example, people are still confused about what has happened in visual arts in the last century. There’s no education for visual arts, there’s no publications about art, there’s no museums. Up until now they haven’t published one book about the first generation of UAE [contemporary] artists. So all these things create a gap between the audience and the artist. For example, I was one of the curators of the Sharjah Biennale, and we spent about 1 million [Dirhams] to present good quality work, but the audience was shocked. They couldn’t accept the work. They think that visual art is painting and sculpture.

JA: What do you mean they don’t accept the work?

MK: They don’t accept contemporary art. They like art, but they don’t accept contemporary art. So, the artists here are not only making art: they are writing and publishing and teaching art in order to fill in this gap.

LG: I think it’s unfortunate that the first generation of [UAE contemporary] artists is not really credible. You see this new generation booming, booming, booming, and there’s a sense that there’s no past to it. When people ask me about local artists, I’m very hesitant, because I don’t know so much. You’re always fed all this information about international artists and Western artists, and you wish that you had a more solid foundation to work with. But, at the same time, I think the younger generation appeals to the West. When I present my work, it’s, “Oh, Dubai!” That strikes them even harder than the work. “Ah a female! Dubai! I wonder what she has to say…” That creates more interest than the work itself. You sometimes worry if it’s you that they like, or it’s your work, or….

Yeah, that’s another issue I’m curious about. Since the art scene in the West in so tired at the moment, many curators and collectors are hungrily searching the globe for new identities that they can draw energy from. And this is especially important for us, because Art Basel is one of the main platforms for this mentality. What’s been your experience of Dubai’s sudden notoriety in the art world?

LG: There are no steps to it. You just jump there. Now you’ve got the Guggenheim and Louvre and everything else, and you think, “Woah, everything is happening too soon.” Even with schooling, you take in a lot of Western points of view. I’ve tried so hard for the past few years to attain a bigger collection of art books from this region, and so far I’ve only been successful with Morocco and Iran. You don’t really have such a solid regional foundation for art. Everything just happens so quick.

RAG: I studied with Lamya, but we have 2 years, 3 years difference?

LG: Yeah.

RAG: And, although it’s a very small gap, I feel like Lamya has graduated a long time ago. There’s a very big gap between me and her, and I feel like it’s too much. But it’s not actually.

LG: In the span of 25 years, I’ve seen so much. I feel like I’ve seen so much change that it’s stressful to remember things. I went away to study for two years, and every time I came back something was gone. And now people are moving to newer houses, and there’s this feeling to let go of everything old. Our concept of “old” is very different from Europe’s. In Europe, if you say, “Oh, I’m moving out of my house. It’s fifteen years old,” that’s insane. But here everything is moving so fast.

MK: Yes, but my point is that there is no harmony in the city. You can see it in the architecture, because many buildings belong to their owners. [The designs] don’t go through advisors to the government. So if you walk along the street, you see very modern and very traditional, and there’s no harmony. It is the same with public art. You cannot call it art, but still it affects the mentality of the people. It is very dangerous, and I think it should go through advisors or curators in the government.

LG: You’ve got the camels along the…

MK: Camels! Camels along the road. This is not art.

JA: It’s touristic art.

MK: Even the banks and other places where they have art I think should go through the government.

JA: But a lot of times the government is in support of it, because Dubai is very tourist-based. And, from what I see, when people come here they want to see camels. They want to go take a picture with a camel.

MK: But those people are playing with mentality of the government. They are saying to them, “This is your heritage.” And nobody can steal your heritage in this way. I cannot steal your heritage.

JA: I get what your saying, but the majority of the people - especially my friends, okay? - when they walk into an art store, they buy art based purely on aesthetics. If it matches their furniture, if it fits the surroundings where they expect to put it.

MK: But this has to do with the policy of education. Fifteen years ago, the [education] ministry said no theater in the school. No art, no music, nothing. No philosophy. They stopped all these things fifteen years ago. They killed this generation completely… Maybe sometimes they would give you a piece of paper and for 45 minutes you have to draw camels or a fish or something.

LG: [Laughing] Oh yeah…

MK: That’s why we’ve been doing social work. During the summer I teach young artists, so that at least some them can reach a biennale. Because every two years they have a new curator and it’s too difficult to participate, but now through the workshop more have a chance to participate. This year we had the Sao Paulo Biennale and the Singapore Biennale select artists from our workshop. So then those young artists start to write and translate articles. I think in the future the [Dubai Arts & Culture] Authority should continue this job. Art is also part of the development here. It’s not only construction, it’s how to educate the people also. Actually it is construction.

RAG: It’s the way that we’re educated… we’re always educated to work in a marketplace here in the UAE. Most of our colleagues end up in a design firm, and for the next five years they’re just producing design work, so their creativity ends. There are lot of people out there who can do what we do, but they just haven’t got the opportunity.

JA, LG: That’s true.

RAG: So that’s a matter of society itself and the way things happen here.

That’s not so different from the West though, but perhaps here it’s more drastic. I guess it makes sense that, in a city that established itself through trade and tourism, most things would be viewed through a market lens, and if you can’t provide a financial justification for what you’re doing, it is considered lacking value.

RAG: Especially with families. The first questions parents ask you is: “Where are you gonna get employed? Which company are you gonna be in?” You have to get a job, you can’t stay at home and just do your own work. Then [they think] your university diploma is just nothing. You’ve been studying all these years and you’re just sitting at home. We’re artists, we’re designers, and they just don’t understand this connection.

LG: And the need for space and the need for things. Or how come you’re sitting there for three hours doing “nothing,” and because we’re a very tightknit family, you really have no privacy a lot of the time. Then you’re out and there’s traffic. Especially for me as a girl, I go around everywhere in my car, but I’ve had so many problems with the traffic and sometimes being in certain places as a female alone, I get a lot negative attention from the police, I get stopped… And then when I’m working at home I get the social intervention, which is like, “Are you gonna leave your room ever?” For me, my parents think that art is credible, but there’s always that sense of, “You need to get a job, you’ve studied for so long…”

MK: Regarding getting permission to shoot photographs here, the project that I’m going to show in the exhibition took me three years. Everyday I was going to the owner of the building and discussing with them that I am an artist, showing them the concept, and many catalogues…

JA: You had to get permission to do it?

MK: Everyday I was sending [documents] from the Fine Arts Society, from the Ministry…

JA: I’m in trouble. [Laughs]

MK: There were a lot of problems, because I was shooting buildings, so [they ask], “For what reason are you shooting buildings?” It took me three years.

LG: Wow.

RAG: I had troubles with mine too, because my concept is basically two photographs taken at the same time: so I actually took a photo with another set up then I printed the images on canvas and that’s an actual 3×4 frame placed in the landscape. So it was a big fuss to move a frame from a landscape to another one, and everyone was questioning, “Why are you doing this? Why is the girl in a frame?…” So it was very hard for me. Most of the questions I got were from labor workers and Indians, who said, “Which company are you working for? Are you spying for another company?”

JA: Yeah. “No photographs!”

RAG: “No photographs! Are you from the news?” They are not exposed to such things, so it’s very hard.

LG: In my case, it was interiors, because I did a study of spaces that show the concept of change and how we identify ourselves through spaces. In terms of culture, we talk about the old culture, but then there is a culture that’s in between that no one is talking about, and this is the culture that I came from - the ’80s and ’90s. So, in my case, a lot of the spaces were abandoned and some were semi-abandoned, so there are still issues of privacy, even if no one is in it. People still aren’t comfortable with you trespassing and getting into their private space. They get excited when they see the photographs, then they just kind of laugh about it, but, like Mohammed said, there’s still no real understanding of the concept. But I think it’s getting there.

MK: Even photographers don’t know. I’ve had meetings with many photographers, and they don’t know that artists sometimes use photographic elements. A photograph is like a material, like a color. They don’t know that, they think you only have to go shoot sunsets or flowers.

LG: [Laughs] Right. That’s the first thing we were told not to do in school. No teddy bears.

MK: So they are criticizing us: “You are a painter, you should not be shooting photographs. You are not a photographer.” They don’t know what has changed in the visual arts since the 1950s I think. Artists use photographs to conceptualize or to document a performance.

But doesn’t that resistance also inspire you?

LG: Yeah, very much.

RAG: It pushes you to do things. It challenges you. It’s like: I want to be out there, I want to make a statement.

To finish up, I’m going to ask a dumb question. Since this exhibition will be shown in Basel where most of audience will have never visited Dubai, what would you most like explain about your city to those who aren’t familiar?

LG: There’s so much more to Dubai than just the commercial part of it, which everyone sees on TV. There’s so much more than Burj Al Arab, than the Palm. That’s what everyone sees, but I think there’s a lot of intimacy. Among the people themselves, even though we’re very different people and come from very different backgrounds, we all connect in some way. You don’t feel like you’re so foreign when you’re here, because of the diversity of the people. The commercial side of Dubai is just as exciting to us as to the foreigners, and there’s so much more for people to discover.

RAG: Also that the people are not commercial. They think that Dubai is commercial and the people living here are commercial - they have the latest cars, the latest phones, the latest clothes, and… OK, we do have that, but we also have other sources of of interest. We have design and art and statements to make. Especially female artists, and that’s another point, because there are a lot of perceptions of religion and Islam. So that is a point I would also say.

JA: Yeah, and there is beauty in the chaos.

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