7 August 2009
Until the beginning of Ramadan, the gallery’s permanent collection is on display, featuring a selection of local, regional and international contemporary artworks.
Alia Al Farsi, Fatema Al Mazrouei, Hassan Sharif, Benoit Rondard, Mohammed Al Mazrouei and Arman Stepanian are among the dozen artists featured in the exhibition.
“We are a contemporary art gallery, dedicated to promote Emirati artists, but also regional and international ones. We work a lot with young talented artists, for whom we conduct several educational projects,” says Salwa Zeidan, the gallery owner and an internationally recognised artist herself. “Our goal is to see these Emirati artists one day exhibiting in major galleries in New York, Paris or London,” adds Charles Tongue, special projects curator at the gallery. Some of the paintings on display in the gallery now would not be out of place in art environments as prestigious as Guggenheim or Pompidou.
Right at the entrance of the gallery there is a simple, yet striking portrait of an Arab woman by Omani artist Alia Al Farsi. The untitled portrait is of a faceless woman, instantly recognisable as an Arab from the patterns and colours of her attire. The featureless face could be a symbol of the veiled woman, only recognisable from certain, but often elusive, details.
The fact that much of the portrait is “dressed” in rich golden colours suggests that she is a woman of stature or perhaps a bride. As Tongue explains, this kind of painting is all about “how much you can take away, but still keep the character.” Another inspiring artist, who shows consistently good work, is UAE’s own Fatema Al Mazrouei. Two very different artworks technically, but part of the same concept are displayed in the exhibition here. One of them is the eye-catching “Hijab in Turkey”, an Arabic text written on a dark green board, with a long female hair wig and a headscarf attached to it.
As both the hair and the scarf have the same length and almost the same shape, the first question that comes to mind is what really is the difference? Or perhaps Fatema suggests that wigs could be an alternative to scarf.
Her second art piece is a mixed media collage, “Woman is simply woman.” Using cut-out pictures, paintings and Arabic writing, this time Fatema tells the story of Emirati women’s fashion, from the traditional past of full cover to modern present day, when the veil is more of a fashion accessory rather than a cover-up.
