Mohamad Hafeda's video 'Sewing Borders' (2017) shows new immigrants to Beirut marking out the routes they use to cross the city. Courtesy Eye Filmmuseum
Mohamad Hafeda's video 'Sewing Borders' (2017) shows new immigrants to Beirut marking out the routes they use to cross the city. Courtesy Eye Filmmuseum
Mohamad Hafeda's video 'Sewing Borders' (2017) shows new immigrants to Beirut marking out the routes they use to cross the city. Courtesy Eye Filmmuseum
Mohamad Hafeda's video 'Sewing Borders' (2017) shows new immigrants to Beirut marking out the routes they use to cross the city. Courtesy Eye Filmmuseum

Why Middle Eastern artists are using landscapes as a tool of societal critique


Melissa Gronlund
  • English
  • Arabic

Imaging technologies, such as photography, video and film, represent the visible, rendering an ostensibly identical picture of what we see before us.

However, when it comes to the Arab artists in Trembling Landscapes: Between Reality and Fiction, which is on view at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, the reality is a bit more complicated.

In a historical colonial context, photography was a key part of the colonising project; the landscapes produced by maps were used as methods of control. Work after work in this exhibition shows that photography, film and video are not to be trusted.

“The technologies of photography and filmmaking have been very important in colonial discourses,” says Nat Muller, the Amsterdam curator and scholar with long experience in the Middle East behind the exhibition.

“The region has been controlled from map-making to aerial surveillance, not just in the Sykes-Picot line, but also in the Orientalist image of the Middle East as a vast desert of emptiness, or as a place of ruin and war. The idea of landscape has itself been weaponised.”

These ideas hold together a show that draws on 11 prominent Arab artists, including Larissa Sansour, Wael Shawky, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme. Muller says she deliberately chose major artists from the region because of the lack of familiarity with Arab contemporary art in museums in the Netherlands.

As the title suggests, the works frame images of the land in both fiction and documentary modes, with special attention given to the latter.

In Jananne Al-Ani's Shadow Sites I (2010) and II (2011), for example, the Iraqi-born artist shows aerial footage of southern Jordan taken just before sunset, when the long shadows thrown by the low sun reveal usually occluded material – a technique known in the military as shadow tracing.

The idea of the work bringing to light invisible tensions also motivates the aerial maps of Lebanese artist Ali Cherri's Trembling Landscapes (2014-2016), from which the show adapted its title. Cherri notes the geological fault lines that lie beneath Algiers, Beirut, Damascus, Erbil, Makkah and Tehran: lines of instability that trespass the region's borders.

A lithograph from Heba Y Amin's 'The Earth is an Imperfect Ellipsoid' (2017), which tracks the routes taken through West Africa by migrants on their way to Europe. Eye Filmmuseum
A lithograph from Heba Y Amin's 'The Earth is an Imperfect Ellipsoid' (2017), which tracks the routes taken through West Africa by migrants on their way to Europe. Eye Filmmuseum

Other works draw upon informal knowledge, such as that shared by marginalised or migrant groups as they form their own maps of the region. Heba Y Amin's series of photographs, The Earth Is an Imperfect Ellipsoid (2016), compares an account of West African trade routes made by 11th century geographer Al-Bakri to the paths that contemporary migrants take into Europe. Amin followed the routes herself, documenting their geographical positions with Al-Bakri as her guide.

In Mohamed Hafeda's video Sewing Borders (2018), marginalised communities in the Lebanese capital sketch out the routes they take to avoid government checkpoints and other borders throughout the city, sewing these on to a map.

Contrasting with cartographic representations are works that focus on human narratives. Wael Shawky's magnetic Al Araba Al Madfuna II (2013), the second in a trilogy taking place in an Upper Egyptian village, is inspired by stories by Egyptian writer Mohamed Mustagab. One after another, residents of the village are struck dumb by a mysterious illness, and the inhabitants look to folk tales to try and assuage the jinn whom they believe afflicted them.

The story is acted by children, but voiced by adults, making it a series of disjunctions: the split between children and adults, the folkloric beliefs and the classical fusha that is spoken, the timelessness of the rural setting versus the years the story spans. All of them call into question who should be trusted with knowledge.

Jananne Al-Ani's 'Shadow Sites II' (2011) surveys an area in the Jordanian desert that borders Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Eye Filmmuseum
Jananne Al-Ani's 'Shadow Sites II' (2011) surveys an area in the Jordanian desert that borders Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Eye Filmmuseum

Armenian-Syrian artist Hrair Sarkissian's two-channel video Homesick (2014) performs his symbolical distance from his parents' home in Damascus. One screen shows the artist wielding hammer blows, and another the edifice crumbling, but his tool never makes physical contact with its object.

Works such as Shawky’s and Sarksissian’s help nuance the more clinical portrayal of landscape that dominates elsewhere, returning focus to the inhabitants of landscapes rather than their representations.

In a European context, landscapes emerged in the 17th century, as people left rural areas for cities. Once the land was no longer an entity to be lived and worked upon, it re-established itself as an object of desire. Despite the flat horizons of the Netherlands playing a key role in the genre, very little of this tradition shows up in the work of the Arab artists in the exhibition: no romantic view of craggy rocks, no vistas dominated by a landowning figure, no imagined hamlets alongside winding roads.

If we had to generalise, the relationship of these moving-image works with the land feels more vexed, attenuated, problematic, than such aggrandising depictions suggest.

Egyptian artist Wael Shawky tells strange and phantasmagorical tales of Upper Egypt in 'Al Araba Al Madfuna II' (2013). Courtesy Eye Filmmuseum
Egyptian artist Wael Shawky tells strange and phantasmagorical tales of Upper Egypt in 'Al Araba Al Madfuna II' (2013). Courtesy Eye Filmmuseum

If landscapes in the Dutch tradition were painted for a bourgeois audience, these artists understand their role as providing societal critique. And it’s hard to ask them to be sanguine: their subject matter, of wars, surveillance and hazardous migrant conditions, demands sobriety.

Indeed, the one work that hews closest to a conventional painterly "landscape" is Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige's Waiting for the Barbarians (2013), a four-minute composition of still photographs of Beirut's cityscape at night, stitched together to form a panorama, while a voiceover recites the Greek-Egyptian Cavafy's poem decrying the laziness and incompetence of political leaders.

The work has now taken on a second layer of importance: it bears witness to a port that has now been decimated, and Cavafy’s lines ring stingingly true. The Beirut port offers a beautiful vista, but there’s no romanticising what the work reveals.

Trembling Landscapes: Between Reality and Fiction is at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam until January 3

Global state-owned investor ranking by size

1.

United States

2.

China

3.

UAE

4.

Japan

5

Norway

6.

Canada

7.

Singapore

8.

Australia

9.

Saudi Arabia

10.

South Korea

MATCH INFO

Real Madrid 2 (Benzema 13', Kroos 28')
Barcelona 1 (Mingueza 60')

Red card: Casemiro (Real Madrid)

Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
  • Priority access to new homes from participating developers
  • Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
  • Flexible payment plans from developers
  • Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
  • DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
Dr Graham's three goals

Short term

Establish logistics and systems needed to globally deploy vaccines


Intermediate term

Build biomedical workforces in low- and middle-income nations


Long term

A prototype pathogen approach for pandemic preparedness  

Labour dispute

The insured employee may still file an ILOE claim even if a labour dispute is ongoing post termination, but the insurer may suspend or reject payment, until the courts resolve the dispute, especially if the reason for termination is contested. The outcome of the labour court proceedings can directly affect eligibility.


- Abdullah Ishnaneh, Partner, BSA Law 

Other ways to buy used products in the UAE

UAE insurance firm Al Wathba National Insurance Company (AWNIC) last year launched an e-commerce website with a facility enabling users to buy car wrecks.

Bidders and potential buyers register on the online salvage car auction portal to view vehicles, review condition reports, or arrange physical surveys, and then start bidding for motors they plan to restore or harvest for parts.

Physical salvage car auctions are a common method for insurers around the world to move on heavily damaged vehicles, but AWNIC is one of the few UAE insurers to offer such services online.

For cars and less sizeable items such as bicycles and furniture, Dubizzle is arguably the best-known marketplace for pre-loved.

Founded in 2005, in recent years it has been joined by a plethora of Facebook community pages for shifting used goods, including Abu Dhabi Marketplace, Flea Market UAE and Arabian Ranches Souq Market while sites such as The Luxury Closet and Riot deal largely in second-hand fashion.

At the high-end of the pre-used spectrum, resellers such as Timepiece360.ae, WatchBox Middle East and Watches Market Dubai deal in authenticated second-hand luxury timepieces from brands such as Rolex, Hublot and Tag Heuer, with a warranty.

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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Engine: four-litre V6 and 3.5-litre V6 twin-turbo

Transmission: six-speed and 10-speed

Power: 271 and 409 horsepower

Torque: 385 and 650Nm

Price: from Dh229,900 to Dh355,000

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Ferrari 12Cilindri specs

Engine: naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12

Power: 819hp

Torque: 678Nm at 7,250rpm

Price: From Dh1,700,000

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Traits of Chinese zodiac animals

Tiger:independent, successful, volatile
Rat:witty, creative, charming
Ox:diligent, perseverent, conservative
Rabbit:gracious, considerate, sensitive
Dragon:prosperous, brave, rash
Snake:calm, thoughtful, stubborn
Horse:faithful, energetic, carefree
Sheep:easy-going, peacemaker, curious
Monkey:family-orientated, clever, playful
Rooster:honest, confident, pompous
Dog:loyal, kind, perfectionist
Boar:loving, tolerant, indulgent   

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Fund-raising tips for start-ups

Develop an innovative business concept

Have the ability to differentiate yourself from competitors

Put in place a business continuity plan after Covid-19

Prepare for the worst-case scenario (further lockdowns, long wait for a vaccine, etc.) 

Have enough cash to stay afloat for the next 12 to 18 months

Be creative and innovative to reduce expenses

Be prepared to use Covid-19 as an opportunity for your business

* Tips from Jassim Al Marzooqi and Walid Hanna

Specs
Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE)
Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman)
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh190,000 (Countryman)
FIXTURES

Thursday
Dibba v Al Dhafra, Fujairah Stadium (5pm)
Al Wahda v Hatta, Al Nahyan Stadium (8pm)

Friday
Al Nasr v Ajman, Zabeel Stadium (5pm)
Al Jazria v Al Wasl, Mohammed Bin Zayed Stadium (8pm)

Saturday
Emirates v Al Ain, Emirates Club Stadium (5pm)
Sharjah v Shabab Al Ahli Dubai, Sharjah Stadium (8pm)

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Real estate tokenisation project

Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.

The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.

Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.

PROFILE OF STARZPLAY

Date started: 2014

Founders: Maaz Sheikh, Danny Bates

Based: Dubai, UAE

Sector: Entertainment/Streaming Video On Demand

Number of employees: 125

Investors/Investment amount: $125 million. Major investors include Starz/Lionsgate, State Street, SEQ and Delta Partners

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
yallacompare profile

Date of launch: 2014

Founder: Jon Richards, founder and chief executive; Samer Chebab, co-founder and chief operating officer, and Jonathan Rawlings, co-founder and chief financial officer

Based: Media City, Dubai 

Sector: Financial services

Size: 120 employees

Investors: 2014: $500,000 in a seed round led by Mulverhill Associates; 2015: $3m in Series A funding led by STC Ventures (managed by Iris Capital), Wamda and Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority; 2019: $8m in Series B funding with the same investors as Series A along with Precinct Partners, Saned and Argo Ventures (the VC arm of multinational insurer Argo Group)