Dubai Art Season: piecing it all together

Art Week is officially in full swing. Initiated by the Art Dubai Group and supported by Dubai Culture and Arts Authority, the event has several initiatives under its banner. From three art fairs to an internationally prominent biennial, Art Week goes far beyond the borders of Dubai and brings in happenings all over the UAE. With the emirate awash with international art connoisseurs and prospective buyers, Art Week is also an opportunity for most regionally-based galleries to showcase their best offerings . With so much on offer, we take a look at some of the best exhibitions of the current season.

Rashid Rana: Scatter in Time

Rashid Rana is considered the leading Pakistani artist of his generation and has worked with multiple media. He is interested in how culture and identity cross time frames and culture, and although his work might take some thinking to fully comprehend, this is a very good reason to go and see his newest offering.

For Scatter in Time, Rana has spliced and stitched together photographs of canonical historical art and contemporary imagery to create a final grid resembling a pixelated and codified puzzle.

In the other hall of Leila Heller Gallery is Bill Viola’s video work that explores life and death though desert and water scenes.

Two treats under one roof.

• Rashid Rana, Scatter in Time, and Bill Viola, The Vast: Mirrors of the Mind, run at Leila Heller Gallery, Alserkal Avenue until April 22. Don't miss Rashid Rana in conversation with Glenn Lowry, director of MoMA at 5pm on March 13.

Khaled Ben Slimane: Ya Latif

Tunisian Khaled Ben Slimane is part of the Hurufiyya movement, dedicated to the form and exploration of the Arabic letter. El Marsa Gallery, the UAE’s dedicated space to North African art, is presenting his first solo exhibition in the UAE, and Rose Issa, a prominent London-based gallerist, has curated it.

These are two excellent reasons to pay a visit: Ya Latif continues the artist's exploration of spirituality in which he invokes Sufism through his repetition of calligraphic forms. The combination of graffiti-like scrawl, Japanese-influenced calligraphy and slashes of colour come together to create an effect that transcends barriers between the spiritual and everyday worlds.

• Ya Latif runs at El Marsa Gallery, Alserkal Avenue until April 8. Don't miss Rose Issa giving her curator's tour from 12.30pm, today.

Sohrab Sepehri

A member of the Saqqakhaneh school of art in Iran, Sohrab Sepehri is one of his country’s foremost Modernist painters and poets. Meem Gallery is showing a rare collection of his pieces from the early-1960s that were completed after Sepehri travelled around Europe, Africa and Asia and worked as a printmaking apprentice in Tokyo.

It is not often that galleries take time to show the work of mid-century artists, and it can be illuminating as it opens a window into the development of contemporary art. In these works on paper and paintings, Sepehri’s strokes show his versatility of form and mastery of colour, as well as a fascination with Japanese Zen art. Absolutely worth taking the time to go and see.

• Sepehri runs until May 20, Meem Gallery, Al Quoz.

Artist Run New York: the Seventies

In 1970s New York, contemporary art was transformed because its very essence was questioned. Artists broke the traditional art world boundaries by engaging with the city’s architecture, culture, politics and people. They questioned all previous definitions of art – from what constitutes an artwork to what defines an art space, to the role of an artist in society.

This exhibition of works from the collection of Jean-Paul Najar, presents groundbreaking works from this period and also their context. The exhibition includes work by Nancy Holt, Joan Jonas, Gordon Matta-Clark and many more important names across a variety of media.

This is a history lesson and a visual delight.

• Artist Run New York: the Seventies, curated by Jessamyn Fiore, runs until June 30 at the Jean-Paul Najar Foundation, Alserkal Avenue.

Samia Halaby

To explore some regional history, Samia Halaby, a New York-based Palestinian abstract artist, often uses her work to raise awareness about her nation’s plight.

Ayyam Gallery is running two concurrent shows, with the first, Illuminated Space, highlighting the artist's latest experiments in abstraction. Documentary Drawings of the Kafr Qasem Massacre is a selection of drawings that depict the murder of 49 Palestinian civilians by Israeli border guards in 1956.

As research, Halaby interviewed survivors and the relatives of victims, translated historical documents and gathered images that she used as reference when composing her scenes.

• Illuminated Space runs until June 17. Documentary Drawings of the Kafr Qasem Massacre runs until April 27, both at Ayyam Gallery, Alserkal Avenue.

Sleepless Constellations

For a break away from it all, this group exhibition is commendable in its intentions to offer some calmness and space for reflection.

In an era when we are bombarded by images that depict pain and struggle, it is hard to reach a place of spiritual peace.

This is what this exhibition is trying to deliver, with a selection of works from artists from the subcontinent.

Curator Salima Hashmi, who has taught at several high-profile institutions in Pakistan for many years, has collected the pieces in light of the artists’ attempts to inspire us enough to reach the limitless cosmos with its sleepless constellations.

Highlights include Naiza Khan's video piece, The Conservatory.

• Sleepless Constellations runs until April 30 at 1x1 Art Gallery, Alserkal Avenue.

Mounir Fatmi: Inside the Fire Circle

New to the roster of artists at Lawrie Shabibi, this is the first solo exhibition for Fatmi, a Moroccan artist who lives in Paris. One fascinating part of this multifaceted show is that the artist examines the life of John Howard Griffin (1920 – 1980), an author from the United States who wrote about racial equality.

Griffin conducted an experiment where he had UV treatments and took medications to turn his skin black, and then passed as a black man through the Deep South in 1959 to witness life under segregation. The exhibition contains photo montages inspired by photographs of Griffin, as well as several installations exploring the idea of the circle.

• Mounir Fatmi: Inside the Fire Circle runs until April 27 at Lawrie Shabibi Gallery, Alserkal Avenue.

Once Upon A Time: Hadiqat Al Umma

No Dubai Art Season is complete without a trip to Sharjah, and this exhibition at the Maraya Art Centre is unmissable. Iraqi artist Sadik Kwaish Alfraji has created a multimedia installation, commissioned by the Barjeel Art Foundation, that revives his childhood experiences in one of Baghdad’s parks, Hadiqat Al Umma. Full of plants, fountains and playgrounds, it was a sanctuary for the artist as a child and remains vivid in his mind.

The hypnotic images and accompanying soundtrack in the panoramic video is enchanting, and Alfraji’s recreation of the collective experience of this park in the 1970s belongs to his larger exploration of the loss, fragmentation and lapses in time that underline a life in exile.

• Once Upon A Time: Hadiqat Al Umma runs from until May 6 at Maraya Art Centre, Al Qasba, Sharjah.

aseaman@thenational.ae