Rare architectural photographs of Dubai, the return of the Artist’s Room and a major group show are among Jameel Arts Centre’s autumn/winter 2021-2022 programme, which begins in September.
In addition, the centre will present the first exhibition of late Filipina artist Pacita Abad in the Middle East and debut a sound and video installation by artist Samson Young.
The highlight of the programme is the exhibition Off Centre / On Stage, curated by architect and writer Todd Reisz. It traces Dubai’s aspirations of becoming a global city through architectural photographs from the 1970s.
About 60 photographs will be exhibited as part of the show, along with documentation gleaned by Reisz over a decade from archives and newspapers of the time. Most of the images relate to Reisz's architectural interests, with photographs by architects Stephen Finch and Mark Harris included in the show.
Taken between 1976 and 1979, their photographs capture the materialisation of the city and its then-inhabitants, workers who would build Dubai’s future. Reisz has also recently edited a book with Sultan Al Qassemi about Sharjah’s architectural history, and Al Qassemi’s Barjeel Art Foundation is supporting the show. It opens at Jameel Arts Centre on Wednesday, September 29.
Opening before that, on Wednesday, September 8, is the group exhibition The Distance From Here. It includes works from the collection of Art Jameel, the organisation behind Jameel Arts Centre, as well as loans and new commissions. Themed on the idea of the body as a vessel, a tool and material that houses our experiences, lives and memories, the show will be accompanied by talks, workshops, tours and film screenings that will continue until January 2022.
The show includes works by 11 artists, namely Yto Barrada, Hrair Sarkissian, Shilpa Gupta, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Do Ho Suh, Anup Mathew Thomas, Mona Ayyash, Jason Dodge, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.
A solo show by Pacita Abad will open in the same week. Titled I Thought the Streets Were Paved with Gold, it includes a number of the artist’s major works, including Abad's vibrant trapunto tapestries and significant paintings from various periods in her career.
Born in the Philippines in the 1946, Abad moved to the US in the late 1960s. Her work was tied to issues of social justice, including the immigrant experience in America, as well as the Cambodian humanitarian crisis in the 1980s and 1990s.
Art Jameel director Antonia Carver calls the show a “landmark in local and regional exhibition histories”, considering it is the first survey of Abad’s work in the Middle East and South Asia.
She says the show is part of the organisation’s aims to present diverse practices to local audiences. “We’re particularly interested in tracking and illuminating artists’ networks through history and across geographies, and in dwelling on the UAE as a dynamic site of city-making through the exchange and confluence of multiple ideas and experiences."
I Thought the Streets Were Paved with Gold is also the first solo show by a Filipino artist in the Gulf.
Also this season, Jameel Arts Centre’s film programme will screen The Jump by Palestinian artist Shuruq Harb. Set in the Jordan Valley, the film is constructed as a “visual poem” filled with unique landscape shots and a narrative centered on “a Palestinian man's jump into the Mediterranean.”
Part of an international collaboration with institutions in Singapore, the Philippines, Spain and Belgium, the work will be presented across five cities in the same period.
In October, Jameel Arts Centre’s Artist’s Room will return with a new site-specific, interactive sound and video installation by Hong Kong artist Samson Young. Its previous Artist’s Room exhibition, which ended in January, featured Turner Prize winner Lawrence Abu Hamdan.
Titled TTC #1, the commissioned piece by Young comprises a stage built with 3D-printed sculptures, smartphones and other communication devices, as well as computer-generated imagery, reflecting our information-saturated world.
An iteration of the work will be presented at the next Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
More information on Jameel Arts Centre’s 2021-2022 programme is available at jameelartscentre.org
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
India cancels school-leaving examinations
The major Hashd factions linked to Iran:
Badr Organisation: Seen as the most militarily capable faction in the Hashd. Iraqi Shiite exiles opposed to Saddam Hussein set up the group in Tehran in the early 1980s as the Badr Corps under the supervision of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The militia exalts Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei but intermittently cooperated with the US military.
Saraya Al Salam (Peace Brigade): Comprised of former members of the officially defunct Mahdi Army, a militia that was commanded by Iraqi cleric Moqtada Al Sadr and fought US and Iraqi government and other forces between 2004 and 2008. As part of a political overhaul aimed as casting Mr Al Sadr as a more nationalist and less sectarian figure, the cleric formed Saraya Al Salam in 2014. The group’s relations with Iran has been volatile.
Kataeb Hezbollah: The group, which is fighting on behalf of the Bashar Al Assad government in Syria, traces its origins to attacks on US forces in Iraq in 2004 and adopts a tough stance against Washington, calling the United States “the enemy of humanity”.
Asaeb Ahl Al Haq: An offshoot of the Mahdi Army active in Syria. Asaeb Ahl Al Haq’s leader Qais al Khazali was a student of Mr Al Moqtada’s late father Mohammed Sadeq Al Sadr, a prominent Shiite cleric who was killed during Saddam Hussein’s rule.
Harakat Hezbollah Al Nujaba: Formed in 2013 to fight alongside Mr Al Assad’s loyalists in Syria before joining the Hashd. The group is seen as among the most ideological and sectarian-driven Hashd militias in Syria and is the major recruiter of foreign fighters to Syria.
Saraya Al Khorasani: The ICRG formed Saraya Al Khorasani in the mid-1990s and the group is seen as the most ideologically attached to Iran among Tehran’s satellites in Iraq.
(Source: The Wilson Centre, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation)
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Red flags
- Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
- Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
- Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
- Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
- Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.
Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Where to buy art books in the UAE
There are a number of speciality art bookshops in the UAE.
In Dubai, The Lighthouse at Dubai Design District has a wonderfully curated selection of art and design books. Alserkal Avenue runs a pop-up shop at their A4 space, and host the art-book fair Fully Booked during Art Week in March. The Third Line, also in Alserkal Avenue, has a strong book-publishing arm and sells copies at its gallery. Kinokuniya, at Dubai Mall, has some good offerings within its broad selection, and you never know what you will find at the House of Prose in Jumeirah. Finally, all of Gulf Photo Plus’s photo books are available for sale at their show.
In Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi has a beautiful selection of catalogues and art books, and Magrudy’s – across the Emirates, but particularly at their NYU Abu Dhabi site – has a great selection in art, fiction and cultural theory.
In Sharjah, the Sharjah Art Museum sells catalogues and art books at its museum shop, and the Sharjah Art Foundation has a bookshop that offers reads on art, theory and cultural history.
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Shoplifters (Japan)
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