Favourite Works, Exhibitions, Events of 2021
Here’s a round up of my favourite exhibitions, art works and events of the year. I’ve been very selective with exhibitions and talks I attend this year. Amidst several mediocre and unchallenging exhibitions and events in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, there have a been a few good standouts. Sharjah Art Foundation on the other hand normally delivers when it comes to exhibitions. I also managed to visit a few exhibitions abroad too.
I’ll start with this photo by Shawn Triplett from his photos of the tornado destruction in Mayfield, Kentucky. It went viral a couple of weeks ago and Triplett set up a Go Fund Me page to raise money to get toys for the children that lost everything in tornado and make it a less sorrowful Christmas for them. I’m glad to see he reached his goals.
This tweet by Jason Read describes it perfectly.
“This picture from the aftermath of the Kentucky tornadoes has to be the picture of the year, or the last few years. It is as if the screen that shielded us from seeing so much brutality has been ripped off and we are forced to see what we have for so long avoided.”
These photos by O. Winston Link and Lisette Model from the American Photography exhibition at Albertina, Vienna.
Lisette Model, Fashion Show, Hotel Pierre, 1943
Growing Like A Tree
Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai
20 January - 01 August 2021
Curated by Sohrab Hura, the exhibition looks at “regional histories of image-making through a visual and sonic excavation of place, memory and culture”. A diaristic and intimate exhibition about collaborations and collectives with works that are in dialogue with one another. I was especially taken by the works of Nepal Picture Library and Sathish Kumar’s Town Boy series.
Lasting Impressions: Baya Mahieddine
Sharjah Art Musuem
25 February 2021 - 31 July 2021
A rare occasion of seeing 70+ works by Naya Mahieddine in one place, which included works from her early years till her very last unfinished painting, books about her works and a rare video interview.
The Sacred Space Oddity by Tanya Habjouqa
Gulf Photo Plus, Dubai
22 March - 30 June
An elegiac meditation on the interaction of the physical and psychological space encompassed in the loaded, often effacing, phrase 'Holy Land'.
Unsettled Objects
The Flying Saucer, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah
12 March - 15 June 2021
Curated by Omar Kholeif featuring works by more than 30 artists from Sharjah Art Foundation’s collection, the exhibition reflects on “how do we re-think the way objects of art are looked at and understood...while provoking a re-imagining of the ways in which history is narrated and explored.”
Hypervenezia
Palazzo Grassi, Venice
5 September 2021 - 9 January 2022 2
The exhibition name Hypervenezia made me think of a very hyper Dubai.
“HYPERVENEZIA”, an exhibition specifically dedicated to the city of Venice on the occasion of the 1600th anniversary of its foundation. It presents for the first time to the public the ambitious “Venice Urban Photo Project”, conceived and developed by Mario Peliti.
This immersive show unfolds on the first floor of Palazzo Grassi in three installations: a linear path of almost 400 photographs that mark out an ideal trail through the sestieri – neighbourhoods – of Venice, a sight-specific map of the city made of approximately 900 geolocalised images that offer a panoramic view and a video installation of over 3.000 shots that scroll accompanied by a soundtrack composed specifically for the show by musician and composer Nicolas Godin, members of the electronic music duo Air.
In 2006, Mario Peliti starts to photograph and systematically map the city with the aim to form an archive of images that is the widest and most organic ever created and to offer a unique representation of the entire urban fabric of Venice, in its complexity and continuity. This photography archive currently amounts to 12.000 images, all in black and white, taken under the same lighting conditions, without any shadows and, most of all, in the absence of any human presence.
“HYPERVENEZIA” offers to the visitor a radical visual experience: the Venice we know disappears to give way to a parallel Venice, an empty and timeless one. From the Serenissima presented in its pure materiality emerges this unsettling strangeness that characterises any city that has been emptied of its inhabitants.
Off Centre / On Stage
Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai
29 September 2021 - 21 March 2022
Off Centre / On Stage curated by Todd Reisz (who is also a very good friend) is an installation of photos taken by architects between 1976 to 1979 in Dubai that were never intended to exhibited in an art gallery space. The exhibition aims for a more expansive discussion about Dubai. The exhibition is accompanied by a book with the same title featuring the photos from the exhibition and text written by Todd Reisz.
Off Centre / On Stage captures a city lived in by people from different walks of life, all clearly living in the present but employed to create the future. Sixty photographs, together with other framings of Dubai in local and global media and in archival records, conjure a showroom floor of their city, which in itself was the model for something larger.
Reisz shares material collected over more than a decade – as he became a leading authority on Dubai’s 20th-century urban transformations. The exhibition is a chance for residents and visitors to explore up close some of the gathered evidence of the early ambition and toil that created today’s Dubai.
Juergen Teller + Harmony Korine | William Eggleston 414
Christine König Galerie, Vienna
8 October - 27 November 2021
Harmony Korine, William Eggleston and I had the idea to go on a roadtrip together from Memphis to Mississippi. Bill wanted to show us the house he grew up in and drive around in this empty vast land. We drove around for days. Miles and miles of dead barren cotton wool land, depressing countryside and abandoned towns. I asked Bill, ‘Where are we going? Where the fuck are you taking us?’ He replied laughing, ‘I wanted to show you nothing.’
quot. Juergen Teller
About ten years ago Juergen flew to Nashville. I picked him up at the airport. We drove to Memphis and got Eggleston. His son Winston also. We drove to Mississippi in the late night. The stars guided us through Tupelo and Jacksonville. We retraced some footsteps. We ate a Sonic Burger. We saw some dead deers hanging in the backyard. The booze was flowing. We had no real plans. No goals. Just followed the light. We drove like this for a few days. On the last night, Eggleston played us the piano. He was wearing black leather gloves. I think there was a pistol somewhere in the room. It was beautiful.
quot. Harmony Korine
One section of the exhibition had a reprint of a Hypebeast interview with Juergen Teller, Juergen Teller’s Wants You To Pay Attention had a printed display of the angry online reactions of his photos for this year’s W Magazine’s Best Performances issue. It was quite amusing.
My gallery visit was followed by an impromptu lunch invitation with Christine Koning which turned out to be utterly delightful.
Paul Flora Drawings
Albertina, Vienna
29 October 2021 - 30 January 2022.
I adored loved the drawings by Paul Flora (1922-2009), a retrospective including 130 works, spanning from the late 1930s to the early 2000s. They looked so delicate and melancholic.
What makes the drawings, which are executed in pen and ink or pencil, so captivating are their precise handling, reduced and accurately defined outlines, and meticulous hatching—characteristic stylistic features lending them a very special expressivity. The diverse selection reveals Flora’s outstanding talent as a draftsman and takes the viewer on an exciting journey through a fantastic and rich imagery.
Enchanted landscapes and mysterious figures are part of the artist’s repertoire of motifs, as are black ravens or bizarre human characters underlining the humorous aspect of his output. These works are complemented by mysterious depictions of the lagoon city of Venice, adding to his canon of resourceful themes.
Hrair Sarkissian: The Other Side of Silence
Gallery 3 & 4, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah Art Foundation
30 October 2021—30 January 2022
Hrair Sarkissian’s first mid-career survey helped me get a better understanding of his work seeing them in one exhibition, as I’d only seen some of his photography series separately in previous exhibitions. Although, I did feel some of the works needed more space to feel less cluttered or crowded.
My favourite series from this exhibition are Last Seen, a chilling display of 50 photos of places where missing people were last seen by their loved ones, and Last Scene, photographs of places in The Netherlands that were chosen by terminally ill patients to go and see as their last wish. I was especially moved by the photo of a movie theatre.
Anchoring the exhibition are two ambitious commissions: a photographic installation, Last Seen (2018–2021), commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation and Sweet and Sour (2022), commissioned by the Bonnefanten. The exhibition features the most extensive presentation of many of the artist’s most significant works produced since 2006, including archaeological re-imagining in Unfinished (2006) and a personal investigation into his Armenian heritage in In Between(2006). Two well-known works by the artist from the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection, Execution Squares (2008) and Final Flight(2017–2019) are also on view.
The collective threads throughout the show foster an inclusive emotional space. Constructing a sense of solidarity around collective traumas—Sarkissian argues for a form of social justice that compensates for the failures of official history, which too often, neglects to narrate the stories of the dispossessed.
I wasn’t in town when the opening happened which included a talk between the exhibition curator Omar Kholeif and Hrair Sarkissian, but glad it’s now available online.
Focal Point
The Flying Saucer and Bait Obaid Al Shamshi, Sharjah
9 - 11 December 2021
This year’s edition of Sharjah Art Foundation’s annual art book fair started with a very good series of talks about current and future publication projects. That afternoon I felt thankful for having organisations like Sharjah Art Foundation and The Africa Institute here in the UAE. They play a vital role in expanding and widening the understanding of art history, and not just for us here in the UAE, but beyond the region too.
Words like “homegrown” and “grassroots” gets thrown about a lot here within the art world, but Sharjah Art Foundation is an actual homegrown institution that makes me feel happy and proud of its existence.