Known as the godfather of conceptual art in the Gulf, Hassan Sharif shaped a community of artists, poets and filmmakers in the UAE for generations. When the Emirati artist died in 2016, his studio was donated to the Sharjah Art Foundation, which then presented a major survey of his work in November 2017, titled I Am The Single Work Artist.
The blockbuster exhibition has now travelled to KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, marking the artist's first retrospective in Europe. It was meant to travel to Turin's Castello di Rivoli in 2019, but that was not realised. Curated by the foundation's president Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi and KW Institute director Krist Gruijthuijsen, the show, features 150 of the 350 works that were first presented in Sharjah.
"It's a walk-through of someone's practice over the past 40 years. There's something hysterical, megalomanic and neurotic within the work of Sharif that can be captured with certain essential pieces," says Gruijthuijsen. Much like the show in Sharjah, the KW iteration traces the artist's career from 1973 to 2016, highlighting various shifts in Sharif's concepts and materials.
The exhibition opens with Sharif's comics and series of self-portraits, then leads into his geometric paintings and eventually his large-scale sculptures and installations of everyday objects. This includes his 1981 mixed media work Dictionary, a hanging sculpture made of torn-out pages alongside photographs.
Born in the 1950s, Sharif witnessed the transformation of the Emirates after the discovery of oil and the unification of the country. He left in 1979 to study at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London, then returned in 1984 and began setting up contemporary art exhibitions in Sharjah. "To have this knowledge and bring it back into a context where nothing was developed on that level and introduce these mechanisms of conceptual and minimal art from a western point of view … that, for me, made him an interesting character," says Gruijthuijsen.
Though he was influenced by his time abroad, Sharif forged his own artistic vision coloured by his environment. He also worked closely with his contemporaries at the Emirates Fine Arts Society, such as Mohammed Kazem, Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim and Hussain Sharif, together building the foundation for the UAE's art history.
His assemblages and sculptural installations – usually made with cheap and common materials such as plastic combs, slippers, zippers and brooms, and mixed with papier mache – reveal a playful, experimental nature to his practice and his creation of “systems” with use of repetition and colour.
After Berlin, the exhibition will travel to Malmo Konsthall in Sweden in the autumn.
I Am The Single Work Artist is at KW Institute for Contemporary Art until Sunday, May 3. More information is at www.kw-berlin.de
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What is the FNC?
The Federal National Council is one of five federal authorities established by the UAE constitution. It held its first session on December 2, 1972, a year to the day after Federation.
It has 40 members, eight of whom are women. The members represent the UAE population through each of the emirates. Abu Dhabi and Dubai have eight members each, Sharjah and Ras al Khaimah six, and Ajman, Fujairah and Umm Al Quwain have four.
They bring Emirati issues to the council for debate and put those concerns to ministers summoned for questioning.
The FNC’s main functions include passing, amending or rejecting federal draft laws, discussing international treaties and agreements, and offering recommendations on general subjects raised during sessions.
Federal draft laws must first pass through the FNC for recommendations when members can amend the laws to suit the needs of citizens. The draft laws are then forwarded to the Cabinet for consideration and approval.
Since 2006, half of the members have been elected by UAE citizens to serve four-year terms and the other half are appointed by the Ruler’s Courts of the seven emirates.
In the 2015 elections, 78 of the 252 candidates were women. Women also represented 48 per cent of all voters and 67 per cent of the voters were under the age of 40.
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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