Alserkal Avenue – the hub for arts & creativity

A R T WE E K AT

A L S E R K A L AV E N U E
10 March – 29 April | 10am-7pm
Alserkal Avenue, Street 8, Al Quoz 1,
Sheikh Zayed: Exit 43, PO Box 390099 Dubai
http://alserkalavenue.ae/…/art-week-at-alserkal-avenue-1.php

ATASSI Foundation collection in Concrete

 SYRIA: INTO THE LIGHT 

Opening: 10 March 2017 | 10am- 7pm

works by over 40 artists illustrating the landscape of Syrian art

from 1924 to 2016

Curated by Mouna Atassi,

Alserkal Programming’s first season (Summer 2015 to Spring 2016) explored the notion of Dubai as home to transnational communities, through the works and ideas of an emerging generation of artists who are natives to this unstable terrain. For the second and current season (Summer 2016 to Spring 2017) we invite artists and others to interrogate the imperative of work, which serves as both the anchor and yard-stick of life in Dubai, and the transnational flows of labour and capital that shape the everyday.
We asked four UAE-based artists to respond to these concerns and to the surrounding neighbourhood of Al Quoz. The resulting commissioned projects examine work from different perspectives, considering, in turn, the informal centres of expatriate life in Dubai, the affective experiences of migration, the invisibility of artistic and domestic work, and the ways by which capitalism shapes our perspective and values.

AMMAR AL ATTAR
Plaza Cinema
10 MARCH – 29 APRIL 2017

Ammar Al Attar’s Plaza Cinema is a project that stems from the artist’s ongoing efforts to rescue and preserve the contents of decommissioned movie-houses in the UAE. In January, Al Attar recreated thirty movie posters originally produced in
the 1970s for Plaza Cinema, one of the first and most popular movie-houses in Dubai, which had recently been shuttered and demolished. In March, the artist presents an exhibition of materials he recovered from the site, including filmstrips, glass slides and ephemera, reconstructing the cinema as an archive.
Although it mainly screened South-Asian films, Plaza Cinema was an important landmark for many different people who grew up in Dubai, an informal centre of expatriate life. Al Attar’s exhibition, amidst a lack of official memorialisation, reflects the accelerating speed and short-term memory of development, and the desires of an emerging generation of artists to preserve and articulate a more expansive and intricate cultural narrative of the city.
Born in 1981, Ammar Al Attar lives in Ajman in the UAE. Completely self-taught, Al Attar’s practice as a photographer and mixed-media artist, seeks to not only document and translate but also methodically research and examine aspects of Emirati ritual, material culture, and geographic orientation that are increasingly illusive in this rapidly globalising society.
Warehouse 58 & Back Lane
KARIM SULTAN
Different Air
10 MARCH – 29 APRIL Performance: 13 MARCH | 8PM
Different Air is a three-part commission that explores notions of movement, migration, and the physical experience and trauma of deterioration and loss of memory. This third iteration will be presented in March, concluding a trilogy of performances that examine the increasing distance between an individual who leaves home and the di culties they face retaining memories accurately and performing them meaningfully as they drift further and further away, geographically and chronologically.
Born in Kuwait and now based in Dubai, Karim Sultan is an artist and curator. A graduate of York University in Toronto, Karim creates experimental electronica-based sound art that is imbued with Arab and regional in uences. The work acts as a kind of travelogue that narrates his journeys, both physically and metaphorically.
Warehouse 47
FARAH AL QASIMI
It’s Not Easy Being Seen
10 MARCH – 29 APRIL
It’s Not Easy Being Seen is a two-part commission that explores the invisible labour of women in the cycle of creation and consumption, through the mediums of photography, performance and video. The first element presented in November 2016 was a billboard in The Yard, and this second element includes a series of short videos that explore the effects of capitalism on the female body, and reference the intimate relation between artistic labour and creative production.
Born in Abu Dhabi and now based between New Haven Connecticut and Abu Dhabi, Farah Al Qasimi is an artist and musician. Al Qasimi studied photography and music at Yale University, Connecticut, and is currently an MFA candidate in the Photography programme at Yale School of Art.
In front of Nadi Al Quoz

RAJA’A KHALID
Change Your Life
10 MARCH – 29 APRIL

Performances:
13 MARCH | 11AM – 2PM | 6PM – 10PM

15 & 16 MARCH | 11AM – 2PM
17 MARCH | 5PM – 7PM
18 MARCH | 3PM – 5PM
Change Your Life critiques a fashionable practice of performative masculinity (i.e. working out) and places it as a contemporary motif of religiosity. A moving tableau, Change Your Life consists of a gym which will be open during the commission’s five weeks to pre-selected young, male fitness professionals where they will participate in a workout regimen. The installation looks carefully at Alserkal Avenue’s proximity to an increasing number of fitness centres within the framework theorised by Peter Sloterdijk in his 2013 book You Must Change Your Life in which the German philosopher tracks the history and philosophy of practice and discipline. By making their connections more explicit, Khalid’s commission exposes the blurring between the potentially aesthetic, ascetic and athletic demands of contemporary life in the Gulf.
Born in Saudi Arabia in 1984, Raja’a Khalid is a Dubai-based artist. She received her MFA in Fine Art from Cornell University, where she was also the recipient of the Cornell Council for the Arts Grant in 2013. Her practice is concerned with the Arabian Gulf region and its narratives of class, ultra luxury and consumer culture.
The paints and powder-coatings used in the making of this commission have been generously provided by Jotun.
Warehouse 83

Galleries Night
13 March 2107 | 6pm – 10pm
https://www.facebook.com/events/627278250791717/

CARBON 12
Sara Rahbar Salvation
opening: Monday, 13 March 2017 | 7 – 9 pm
13 MARCH – 25 APRIL
Warehouse 37
https://www.carbon12dubai.com

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