Jun 15 2022 21:52
Sharjah (Union)
Sharjah Art Foundation will continue to present its Spring 2022 exhibitions, until next July 4, as it hosts a series of solo exhibitions that highlight the influential experiences of artists from the region who left a special mark through their unique contemporary artistic work.
The Spring Program was launched with the retrospective exhibition of the work of the prominent Lebanese artist Aref El Rayes (1928 – 2005), which is organized by the Foundation in cooperation with the Sharjah Museums Authority, and with the support of those in charge of the legacy of the artist Aref El Rayes and Gallery Sfeir-Zemler, Beirut / Hamburg.
The exhibition presents a large collection of unknown works by the president, including paintings, drawings, paperwork, sculptures and wall tapestries, highlighting the richness and depth of his artistic practice. In Italy, his direct political paintings inspired by the Algerian War of Independence, stories of liberation movements in the “Third World” and African-American struggles, in addition to the Lebanese war, and scenes of deserts he painted.
Comrade before the road
While the exhibition “The Companion Before the Road”, which is held in Bait Al Serkal, presents an in-depth panoramic space that reflects spatial, technical and cultural perceptions of the works of the “Camp” art group in Mumbai, as it meets at a time when the world needs to develop a new perception in light of the spread of the Corona pandemic and the spread of nationalist tendencies. Globally at the expense of receding paths and horizons. For more than a decade, the collaboration between the Camp Art Group and the Sharjah Art Foundation has taken many forms, through their collaboration as artists and speakers on various projects, and their engagement with the residents, workers and visitors of the Emirate of Sharjah.
The group’s journey with the Foundation began through the quayside project (Leaving Sharjah), which was commissioned by the 9th Sharjah Biennial (2009), and involved years of research on maritime trade that traveled by sailing boats from Sharjah to multiple destinations such as India, Pakistan, Somalia and Iran, resulting in a group A wealth of works that inspired a two-part project that participated in the Biennale. The project consisted of a book entitled “The Dock”, tracking maritime trade with Somalia through the port’s records, and the “Radio Harbor” project, which included a four-night radio broadcast in Hindustani of songs, comments and conversations with sailors, port workers and shopkeepers from the “radio station” in the port. Sharjah.
In 2010, the group received a Sharjah Art Foundation production grant for Bay to Bay to Bay, a feature film that traces the voyage of a lone ship built in Gujarat, and captures the daily working lives of a group of seafarers through mobile phone photographs. . The work was carried out in collaboration with seafarers, and was shown after dark for the duration of Sharjah Biennial 11 in the open air near the port, attracting a host of visiting seafarers, port workers and residents of the area.
These two notable works are featured in this exhibition, which in turn brings together many of the group’s work between 2006 and 2021, including video, audio and archive works, and is based on the unique research and artistic methods of the group founded by Shayna Anand and Ashok Shukumaran in 2007, as a studio Art brings together artists, their ideas, and their energies around binaries such as art and laven.
alternative narratives
As for the exhibition “Khalil Rabah: Between”, it includes detailed works in Rabah’s artistic career, through which he explores the methodology of the work of cultural institutions, evaluative practice, museum discourses, and critical knowledge, in light of displacement and emergency situations imposed for long periods of time.
The ongoing investigations and research that Rabah relies on in producing his work allow us to identify alternative histories and narratives, but which are rooted in the artist’s deep personal experiences in Palestine, and intrinsically linked to broader examinations taking place around the world today of the roles and responsibilities of artistic institutions.
“Between Between” focuses on an anthology of Rabah’s most notable projects that have continued and developed since the 1990s. In the Air, commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation, imagines a collaboration between two extended projects for the artist, the Palestinian Museum of Nature and Human History (1995-2025). and Riwaq Biennale (2006 – to date), which are also included in the exhibition.
The Palestinian Museum of the History of Nature and Man is a multi-platform investigation that examines and presents the geography and history of Palestine within the framework of museum studies. A depiction of taxonomic activities based on traditional natural history classifications.
In the 1990s, Rabah began working extensively on the olive tree, which is a Palestinian symbol, and dismantled parts of it to see how each part reveals its own story related to the history and geology of the land and its people. To her, referring to a relationship that extends beyond humans and lives between things. As for the work “I Want to Be With You” shows a similar link between him and his mother, as he re-enacts his deep memories of her, especially while hearing the sound of his mother pressing olives in the kitchen.
Visible sounds
The spring program also includes the exhibition “Visible Voices” by the artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan, in which he searches for the meaning of “sonication of images”, and can we deal with an image that behaves similar to the sound itself – an image that swings between the ear and the eye – and it can only exist by collecting my senses Hearing and sight? Through a distinguished practice of visual expression, the artist draws an aesthetic atlas that expresses how we see sound and how we deal with the leakage of unobstructed materials, whether by a state, person, body or device.
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