It has been almost 27 years since Safwan Dahoul completed his first Dream. Since 1987, he has painted the same woman in the same muted monochromatic colours on what he assumes has been more than 1,000 canvases (although he never kept count). Every time, he titled it Dream.
Long before he gained international recognition and became one of the highest-grossing Middle Eastern artists, Dahoul was dedicated to this figure who, conversely, has little to do with his night-time reveries.
“The first time I painted her I called it Dream because I didn’t want to have to explain it,” he says. “I didn’t know then that it was going to be part of a series or that she would stay with me for the rest of my life.”
He lets out a small chuckle as he talks about her and his gaze often returns to an unfinished canvas on the wall in his Dubai studio as if she is part of the conversation, too.
He still dislikes giving explanations, but when pressed, he reveals that when he started painting her, she was based on a real woman – someone he had “an impossible love story with” while he was still a young man. But as time went on, she became something else: the narrator of his life, a symbol through which he passed his thoughts and reflections and who perhaps at times he used to talk to God. He says he has recently started to see his late wife in the work (she passed away six years ago). But in the end, there is no fixed answer to the question of her identity.
“Sometimes in life, you think you have a story that you need to tell but then you realise you have made up the story,” Dahoul muses.
“The face you see in my work is the narrator. She is the person who writes my daily journal and when I come to paint her I don’t know what she is going to say, we just sit there and have a debate.”
So, the shadowy faces with large eyes, like the Eye of Horus, and pools of expression in the gradients of grey, white and black in a variety of different scenes, actually tell the story of Dahoul’s life.
And on Wednesday, when a collection of new works opens in Ayyam Gallery in Dubai International Financial Centre, viewers will see the story of Dahoul’s homeland, Syria, which he was forced to leave because of the continuing conflict.
“All my recent work is about Syria whether you realise it or not,” says Dahoul. “It’s been a while now that I have been thinking about God and wondering what He is thinking right now with everything that is going on in Syria.”
The sense of melancholy that emanates from the paintings is Dahoul’s attempt, then, to convey the atrocity that is happening there and to connect the viewer with the pain of the people.
In Dream #71, the face is crumpled like a discarded piece of paper, the effect representing what would happen if you sucked all the oxygen out of the painting. In #67, a wide, shocked eye stares down on rows of bodies; in #68, the female figure is squeezed into a small box.
“Sometimes I think people feel more than I do from the paintings, which is why I don’t like to explain them too much,” he says.
Dahoul’s reluctance to talk about his work and his humility are endearing parts of his character and add another element of intrigue to his lifetime oeuvre. So, too, does his lack of attachment to his work.
He only started to give numbers to the paintings after Khaled Samawi, the co-founder of Ayyam Gallery, directed him to do so. And if it weren’t for the photographs his wife had taken, there would be no record of his previous work.
He gives a wry smile when talking about this subject. “For me, the important thing is the process. Once I am finished with a painting I don’t want to see it again. For me that conversation is over and I am looking forward to the next.”
• Safwan Dahoul’s Almost a Dream runs from Wednesday until March 13 at Ayyam Gallery, DIFC. For more information, visit www.ayyamgallery.com
aseaman@thenational.ae
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
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Tightening the screw on rogue recruiters
The UAE overhauled the procedure to recruit housemaids and domestic workers with a law in 2017 to protect low-income labour from being exploited.
Only recruitment companies authorised by the government are permitted as part of Tadbeer, a network of labour ministry-regulated centres.
A contract must be drawn up for domestic workers, the wages and job offer clearly stating the nature of work.
The contract stating the wages, work entailed and accommodation must be sent to the employee in their home country before they depart for the UAE.
The contract will be signed by the employer and employee when the domestic worker arrives in the UAE.
Only recruitment agencies registered with the ministry can undertake recruitment and employment applications for domestic workers.
Penalties for illegal recruitment in the UAE include fines of up to Dh100,000 and imprisonment
But agents not authorised by the government sidestep the law by illegally getting women into the country on visit visas.
A State of Passion
Directors: Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi
Stars: Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah
Rating: 4/5
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The Land between Two Rivers: Writing in an Age of Refugees
Tom Sleigh, Graywolf Press
Museum of the Future in numbers
- 78 metres is the height of the museum
- 30,000 square metres is its total area
- 17,000 square metres is the length of the stainless steel facade
- 14 kilometres is the length of LED lights used on the facade
- 1,024 individual pieces make up the exterior
- 7 floors in all, with one for administrative offices
- 2,400 diagonally intersecting steel members frame the torus shape
- 100 species of trees and plants dot the gardens
- Dh145 is the price of a ticket
The specs
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Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
LEAGUE CUP QUARTER-FINAL DRAW
Stoke City v Tottenham
Brentford v Newcastle United
Arsenal v Manchester City
Everton v Manchester United
All ties are to be played the week commencing December 21.
