Art Jameel, an independent organisation that supports artists and creative communities, announces a dynamic roster for autumn/winter 2021-22 at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai’s contemporary art museum. The programme features significant new exhibitions including ‘The Distance From Here’, a group exhibition of 11 artists’ works drawn from the Art Jameel Collection plus new commissions; Off Centre / On Stage’, curated by eminent architect and writer Todd Reisz, featuring more than 60 never-before-seen photographs of Dubai’s architectural development in the late 1970s; the Middle East’s first solo exhibition by revered Filipina artist Pacita Abad titled ‘I Thought the Streets Were Paved with Gold’; and the latest Artist’s Room – a new interactive sound and video installation by Samson Young.

Alongside the exhibitions is a myriad of indoor and outdoor programmes, including the screening of The Jump, a new film by Shuruq Harb, winner of the collaborative Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award 2019; the latest iteration of Library Circles, featuring original research by food writer and filmmaker Salma Serry; and the debut of an annual series of installations this winter by UAE-based and international artists, commissioned for the Jaddaf Waterfront Sculpture Park, featuring Nahla Tabbaa and Trevor Yeung. All of the season’s exhibitions feature new, bilingual publications, published collaboratively by Art Jameel and available for purchase from Art Jameel Shop.

Exhibitions: ‘The Distance From Here’

  • Level 1, September 8, 2021 – January 22, 2022

Drawn from the Art Jameel Collection, plus loans and new commissions, ‘The Distance from Here’ is a major, timely group exhibition highlighting 11 artists’ personal responses to, and interactions with space and time. The show includes works by Mona Ayyash, Yto Berrada, Hicham Benohoud, Jason Dodge, Shilpa Gupta, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Hrair Sarkissian, Do Ho Suh, and Anup Mathew Thomas.

This group exhibition explores how our bodies become essential materials to navigating the day-to-day spaces in which we exist: through touch, language, movement and memory, exploring our lived experiences and connections to the individual and collective. Focusing on spaces of transition, both physical and non-physical, the exhibited works explore the ‘in-between’ spaces and exchanges that are often forgotten, overlooked or come to our attention during periods of prolonged reflection.

‘The Distance from Here’ is accompanied by a public programme of talks, workshops and tours; a film programme, screening in Gallery 9 from November 30, 2021, to January 2, 2022; and an exhibition catalogue published by Art Jameel and produced in collaboration with the Art Jameel Library, including essays by Dawn Ross, Nadine Ghandour and Mihir Wairkar.

Exhibitions: ‘Pacita Abad: I Thought the Streets Were Paved with Gold’

  • Ground floor, September 8, 2021 – February 13, 2022

‘I Thought the Streets Were Paved with Gold’ is the first solo exhibition in the Middle East of works by the revered, late Filipina artist Pacita Abad. The show brings together exuberant signature works – from her colourful trapunto embroideries to major paintings, with a focus on four main bodies of work including Masks and Spirits series (1979 – 1991), the Immigrant Experience (1983-1995), the Door to life series (1998-2003) and abstract works (1985-2002) – that together span abstraction to social realism, taking the exhibition visitor on a compelling journey from Manila to Hong Kong, via New York, Sanaa and beyond. The exhibition is accompanied by a public programme, publication and a range of free Tagalog resources online.

Exhibitions: ‘Off Centre / On Stage’, curated by Todd Reisz

  • Jameel Lobby, September 29, 2021 – February 19, 2022

‘Off Centre / On Stage’ presents around 60 photographs with documentation drawn from archives and newspapers in the ‘70s, collected by architect and writer Todd Reisz for more than a decade in the UAE and around the world. Supported by Barjeel Art Foundation, ‘Off Centre / On Stage’ captures a moment of early ambition for Dubai as the city started to strive for global stature –perhaps the origins of its role in hosting Expo 2020. The collection of photos, mainly taken by architects Stephen Finch and Mark Harris between 1976 and 1979, capture a city of people from many walks of life, living in the present but employed to create the future. Images, newspaper clippings and archival material trace the making of Dubai—all stacked, lit and displayed—rendering a showroom floor of a city that has been deliberately on display for 70 years.

Accompanying the exhibition is a new publication with an original essay by Reisz and never-before-published photographs beyond those featured in the show. The book, designed by Huda AbiFares, is a collaboration between Art Jameel and Khatt Books.

‘Artist’s Room: Samson Young’

  • Gallery 10, October 30, 2021 – May 7, 2022

Sound performance and installation artist Samson Young brings a new site-specific, interactive, sound and video installation commissioned by Art Jameel in collaboration with the Kochi-Muziris Biennale and Burger Collection. Titled TTC #1, the installation takes a Hong Kong urban legend as a starting point to look at nervousness, tension, and trust at a time of information overload. It presents a futuristic stage composed of computer-generated images, 3D-printed sculptures, and communication devices.

‘Artist’s Rooms: Samson Young’ is accompanied by a publication with an essay by Orianna Cacchione, Curator of Global Contemporary Art at Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. An iteration of TTC #1 will be shown at the next Kochi-Muziris Biennale.

Film Programme: The Jump by Shuruq Harb

  • Gallery 9, September 8, 2021 – November 27, 2021

Awarded through the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award, The Jump by Palestinian artist Shuruq Harb explores the psychological terrains of leaping into the void, its potential sense of cosmic freedom, physical thrill, suspension and definitive end.

Set within the tectonic rift of the Jordan Valley, the film’s narration guides us through dizzying shots of the landscape while speculating the conditions surrounding a Palestinian man’s jump into the Mediterranean. The Jump unfolds like a visual poem that suspends the viewer into an otherworldly space, equally hypnotising in its effects, alienating in its details and emotionally compelling in its reflection.

The work is presented across the five institutions that partner to jury and host the prize: in addition to Jameel Arts Centre – NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore; the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila; WIELS, Brussels; and the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona.

‘Library Circles: Salma Serry’

  • February 2, 2022 – August 3, 2022

In its autumn iteration of Library Circles, Jameel Library presents food writer and filmmaker Salma Serry’s research, exploring food as a site of confluence where history, knowledge, politics, economies, senses and semantics become interconnected elements, produced and reproduced continuously throughout time.

Salma’s research also links the Jameel Arts Centre’s programme with that of its new sister institution, Hayy Jameel in Jeddah, which opens this winter. Hayy Arts’ opening exhibition, ‘Staple: What’s on your plate?’ is co-curated with London-based partner Delfina Foundation and investigates what we eat and the entanglement of food with memory, ecology and place through the varied contributions of more than 30 artists, researchers, thinkers, performers, filmmakers and creative practitioners.

Installation: Composition for a Public Park by Hassan Khan

  • Jaddaf Waterfront Sculpture Park, from September 7, 2021

This autumn, artist Hassan Khan’s large-scale, multi-lingual musical artwork returns by popular demand to the Jaddaf Waterfront Sculpture Park for the third year. Designed to be experienced by moving through space, it features musical scores and spoken narrative, written in three movements and composed especially for a public park. At the heart of each movement is a narration of a text written by the artist and presented here in three languages; Arabic, Urdu and English.

Jameel Arts Centre is free and open to the public from10am to 8pm from Saturday to Thursday; 12pm to 8pm on Fridays, and closed on Tuesdays.

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