Saturday 21 November 2015

Art in the Capital


It was a busy weekend. Two venues came alive in the capital - Art Abu Dhabi opened at Manarat Al Saadiyat on Wednesday and Warehouse 421, the new art district by the waters at Mina Zayed, previewed on Thursday night.

After closely looking at all artists living, born and/or gone from the UAE... I realise I am a fan of two true gems of visual art who currently nourish the local scene by their pure ceative opulence. I feel fortunate to have met both of them during my life here! The two amazing artists am speaking of are both born and raised in the UAE - hugely popular Abdul Qader Al Rais and soon-to-be-very-popular-mind-you Saif Mhaisen. Al Rais popular for his monumental art works in palaces and distinguished public spaces [but I love his very vibrant recent abstract works more... scroll down to see!] and Saif for his super-real portraits [down below].

Saif's is one of the chosen few artists for the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship - a part of the Warehouse 421 project. Saif will soon be on a scholarship MFA programme in the States and is spoilt for choice - making up his mind whether Rhodes will be his new home. Lucky!! And well deserved!

The fellowship gives much importance to the art process. The process was walked through by another artist who is also a part of this programme - talented and warm-hearted Hamdan Buti Al Shamsi - who carefully collects nostalgia from his childhood in Al Ain. "Everything is in our childhood. The way we grew up plays all the part into all our expressions. And of course art," says Shamsi. His collected/found objects on display shows how art around him changed with time. "The individuality of the local convenience shop names/sign boards have disappeared with the advent of black and green 'Baqala' neon signage, as per municipality's uniformity/standardising norms," laments the artist.



The best parts of this venue are that it is by the beautiful waters of Mina and is open until 11pm... and you can take your children too! It is true that it reminds one of D3 in Dubai also Al Serkal Avenue a bit! Is it fashionable to reuse containers to showcase art? It doesn't quiet fancy me. May be because am claustrophobic. Art meant to be 'out of the box' must not ideally be locked in, if you ask me. Btw I spoke to one of the participants who was dragging an air cooler into one container-converted-gallery here just before closing, and he said "yeah! we have to keep the fan on all night - it is wood and delicate art - cannot leave it to nature". Of course!
Naqsh Collective showcases unique inlay art forms that can make your interiors sophisticated and artsy at the same time! They are showing at the new art space Warehouse 421 in Abu Dhabi.
Naqsh explores language of embroidery, unifying this important element of Jordanian culture with minimal yet functional structures. Naqsh design house also supports the women’s community within the Palestinian refugee camps in Amman, Jordan.

 Jordanian artists Nisreen Abu Dail & Nermeen Abu Dail of Naqsh

Lot of people think that steel mountain behind me is Louvre! Hell no! It is the UAE Pavilion under construction... just opposite Manarat Al Saadiyat
You CAN make art from an empty can... just put a wig on it and tada! This was found in this edition of Art Abu Dhabi
This recycled piece of art stole my heart! The Japanese art of kintsugi, which means “golden joinery,” is all about turning ugly breaks into beautiful fixes. This artist has welded ceramic pieces from the trash using 24ct gold... to perhaps silently say that broken is better than new! And there far behind, can you see Subodh Gupta's 'Grapes from Heaven'?


Loving the works of Saif Mhaisen... Here the artist poses next to his alter ego/oil self at Warehouse 421 on its opening night on Thursday.
Boy looks at 'Contemporary Terracotta warriors' by Beijing-based Yue Minjun at Manarat Al Saadiyat. By his signature - facial expression frozen in a wide-toothed laughter - Yue Minjun uses humour to express a turbulent period in modern China. In his words - ‘I paint people laughing, whether it is a big laugh, a restrained laugh, a crazy-laugh, a near-death laugh or simply laughter about our society: laughter can be about anything. Laughter is a moment when our mind refuses to reason. When we are puzzled by certain things, our mind simply doesn’t want to struggle, or perhaps we don’t know how to think, therefore we just want to forget it. in Chinese tradition you can’t say things directly. You have to show something else for the  real meaning. I wanted to show a happy smile and show that behind it is something sad,  and even dangerous.'

This in the name of fine art may look simple or silly but don't underestimate Ai Weiwei please! His childlike vandalism of ancient pots contains a potent political message. In 1994, the renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei decorated a Han Dynasty urn with the red Coca-Cola logo; the following year he had himself photographed dropping and smashing another.  Coloured Vases (2009-10), which feature in the show, continue in the same spirit of protestation.

"The particles are in perpetual movement. . . They remind me of the Lebanese people who are constantly on the move," says Hanibal Srouji, who's work Healing Bands was displayed at Art Abu Dhabi 2015

Indian-British sculptor Anish Kapoor's signature bold and far from being detailed and minimalistic piece of work from this edition of Art Abu Dhabi

Abdul Qader Al Rais' work on display at Art Abu Dhabi 2015
Shukran by Iranian artist Farhard Moshiri... is a a large artwork with knives stabbed into plaster to read 'shukran', that means 'thank you' in Arabic. The artist exposes the hypocrisy of world politics where people say thank you with a smile and actually go behind your back and stab! Ouch!

Closeup - Ouch! again.

Like every story, art has three sides. The side you see, the side you don't see and the bluvian side [of course!] :)

Wednesday 4 November 2015

Eastern Wind... an Unusual Intersection of Art and Politics

This art event is on my mind since last Thursday when I saw the works but it took me a while to get the right words to start talking about it. And believe me the subject takes one beyond art that meets the eye. It was a unique inward journey to just connect with this artist's process of producing these works full of vibrant influences cast in the backdrop of an endless migration... of man, matter and meaning.

For many artists, their migrations and those of their ancestors are important in shaping both their personal identities and the art they produce. The name of the painting here is Semurg_oil on canvas_90x118_2010 by Ramazan Useinov. Semurg is a miracle bird from an old Uzbek folklore. 25 selected works by this artist is currently showing at the N2N Gallery in Nation Towers Abu Dhabi
Why do we humans endlessly divide each other despite knowing that the consequence is only suffering? Is it lack of insight that breeds intolerance. Why do wars become decisive for a certain clan/community who is forced to leave their motherland? This is not news. It is history. We have seen this forever... across the globe. Forced deportation, immigration and resultant human crisis may have many reasons but most importantly it exposes lack of empathy or in other words a maimed leadership. Artists tell the same story differently. They are honest in their telling because it is their story. They live on to tell this over and again... as it is their artistic process superimposed with their life's journey. Artist Ramazan Useinov visually extracts thoughts and influences that dates before his birth to the present... and offers everything he can't comprehend in words alone in 25 brilliant artworks, now showing in Abu Dhabi.

'Eastern Wind' may be the title of Ramazan Useinov's solo art show currently running in the capital until November 19, 2016... but it is that which blows between Crimea and Uzbekistan and back for for the artist - a Crimean who was born in Uzbekistan on July 2, 1949. He saw the consequences of the dramatic episode of ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tartars, the politics that pushed them out of their own mother land, deported them to as far as Siberia and beyond the Ural Mountains, suffocating a culturally vibrant group of people with the hidden melancholy of turmoil gripped with unrest for the rest of their lives.

Ramazan does not like to speak about himself or his creative process. If you ask him a question it is replied with a smile.

"Everything has been said by the paintings."
- Ramazan Useinov

And that is the truth.

The world seems divided between various labels and tags including religion and ethnicity even today in the 20th century. It is an utter shame but a reigning fact. This art show comes at a time when the news of Syrian refugee crisis continue to shock our integrity and humanness as the migration continues to expose episodes from the history - each time as a consequence when politics outweighed humanity. Ramazan's canvas may have a distinct Crimean hue but not without this crisis that shrieks out of each frame.

Ramazan dips his brush into those days of constant travel that his parents would have endured. And travel was not easy then because you did that with young and old, humans and livestock, sick and wounded... as well as delicate newborns... perched on mules and donkeys... crossing rivers and mountains... in search of hope and acceptance... trying to forget wounds of rejection from ones own birthplace.

A Lady with a Buggy_Oil on canvas_60x80cm_2014_Ramazan Useinov
Foundation and Technique

In most of Ramazan’s paintings we find travellers, buskers, wanderers with poor carts, covered with bright rags. They carry submissively not only all their belongings, but their entire world. It is a loss that is terribly inexplicable even when the artist's imagination deconstructs migration to a cosmic composition of 'search for truth'.

“Oriental dresses are very colourful and bright. Even after so many years of living in Crimea, Samarkand’s colours don’t leave me. They follow me in most of my paintings," says the artist.

All the pain and discomfort is cast in vibrant colours - and hence brilliantly magnificent. Why does Ramazan choose only a bright palette? This is arguable. The artist and some academicians say it is the influence of brilliant colours and motif's originally of his ethnic people. I wonder if it is his sub-conscious effort to enhance each frame with his own journey of life through his certain belief in art as a mode of deeper exploration and expression?

The laconic palette explodes occasionally with bright shiny happy colours, a feature of his Samarkand memories and his life back in Uzbekistan.

Golden Bird_Oil on canvas_60x80cm_2009_Ramazan Useinov

The exhibition Eastern Wind is a journey determined by Ramazan’s endless love towards his motherland, and will remind you of the masters of the 20th century who struggled to bring back the perfect harmony between man and nature. Respecting his roots, Ramazan’s paintings cherish the rich Islamic culture. For this reason, his works always display vibrant oriental details and Islamic motives.

Ramazan's story

Ramazan Useinov is an artist whose journey began long before his birth.

The event is on until November 19. Let yourself be carried away by the same 'Eastern Wind' that blows between Crimea and Uzbekistan and back, shaping a magic universe, where honesty, purity and hope were never lost.
Coming from a family who faced war and deportation, forced to abandon their homeland, Crimea, the artist was born in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, far away from his beloved Crimea.

In Uzbekistan he grew up between vineyards, as his father was a winegrower and winemaker who dreamt for his son to take over the family’s small business. Instead, Ramazan dreamt of becoming an artist. In 1967, after a long and big confrontation with his family, he finally became a student at the Republican College of Arts P.P. Benkov in Tashkent. After graduation, in 1972, Ramazan returned to Samarkand where he started to work at the Art Foundation.

Years of great inspiration followed, as in the 80’s art was flourishing in Uzbekistan. Ramazan Useinov would not miss a single solo or group exhibition, working day and night and dreaming of his art to be special, to be recognised.

Then one day, in the early 90’s, carried away by the Eastern Wind, Ramazan Useinov felt he had to go back, he had to return to the land of his parents. He returned to Crimea and his artworks acquired a more somber, melancholy mood than his earlier paintings.

Ramazan Useinov

His wish is to allow his viewers to look at his works and to find something there by themselves, something very private and unique.

As Svetlana Khromchenko (The State Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow) says, "Ramazan Useinov’s Eastern Wind will certainly make you wonder: “is it from the past or from the future, or maybe from eternal?”

Ethnic Cleansing of Crimean Tartars 

The forcible deportation of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea was ordered by Joseph Stalin as a form of collective punishment for alleged collaboration with the Nazi occupation regime in Taurida Subdistrict during 1942-1943. The state-organised removal is known as the Sürgünlik in Crimean Tatar. A total of more than 230,000 people were deported, mostly to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. This included the entire ethnic Crimean Tatar population, at the time about a fifth of the total population of the Crimean Peninsula, besides smaller number of ethnic Greeks and Bulgarians.

A large number of deportees (more than 100,000 according to a 1960s survey by Crimean Tatar activists) died from starvation or disease as a direct result of deportation. It is considered to be a case of ethnic cleansing. Tatars and Soviet dissidents consider it to be genocide.

During destalinisation the deportation was denounced by the Soviet government, nevertheless the Crimean Tatars were denied the right of return up until late perestroika times - a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s, widely associated with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost (meaning "openness") policy reform. The literal meaning of perestroika is "restructuring", referring to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system.