BY HERMOINE MACURA-NOBLE
SPECIAL TO THE TIMES KUWAIT
With Expo 2020 Dubai opening its doors to the world on October 1st, organisers say visitors can look forward to the biggest cultural gathering in the world, including unique art installations by GCC artists. Four Emirati artists from different generations are just some of the artists whose installations will be a part of their permanent public artworks on the Expo site, as part of Expo 2020’s Public Art Programme.
The artworks by Afra Al Dhaheri, Abdallah Al Saadi, Asma Belhamar and Shaikha Al Mazrou will be exhibited alongside other works by leading colleagues from the region and the world, creating an unprecedented space for creativity across the Expo site, not only during the six-month duration of one of the world’s most anticipated events, but also for many years to come.
The Public Art Programme is curated by Tarek Abou El Fetouh and designed in alignment with the ambitious urban plans that will transform the Expo 2020 site into the future city of District 2020. The programme is curated as a platform for contemporary art in the neighborhood, with 11 permanent substantial public artworks interwoven within its urban fabric and offering the possibility for many more artworks in the future.
Abdullah Al Saadi’s work, Terhal, is a permanent public intervention in a seating area, and embodies the result of his immersion in the unique natural surroundings of Wadi Tayyibah in the emirate of Fujairah. In this work, the artist’s map-like paintings are inspired by different orientations on stones from the Wadi Tayyibah region. The stones are organised according to his own symbolic code, in an invitation to discover a kind of poetic archaeological language.
The Plinth by Shaikha Al Mazrou embodies her aesthetic language, which diverts materiality and creates dynamic forms with an interplay of tension and balance, demonstrating the artist’s intuitive, keenly felt understanding of materials and their physical properties. The work conceptually and formally references plinths, and its form allows the possibility of other artists to create artworks that can be exhibited in relation to it. Al Mazrou intends the sculpture to function as a tool for future dialogue with other artists, whom she might not know or meet.
One work is a large-scale marble sculpture by artist Afra Al Dhaheri entitled Pillow Fort, which is inspired by the tikkay, traditional Emirati floor pillows, revisiting childhood moments of impromptu play when building a pillow tower or a fort with them. These childhood forts existed within our rooms within our homes, as a space within a space within a space.
All 11 artworks are interwoven within the urban fabric of the city of Dubai, forming lasting landmarks along a path across the site of Expo 2020 Dubai. The conceptual framework of the Public Art Programme of Expo 2020 Dubai is inspired by the famous Arab mathematician, astronomer, and physicist Ibn al Haytham’s seminal work, Book of Optics.
The concept of the programme provides a prism to view contemporary artworks and a context that allows an exploration of the philosophical aspect of Ibn al-Haytham’s theories on visual perception, including his definitions of vision, recognition and the impossibility of envisioning a full picture of reality within oneself without the power of imagination.
Expo 2020 will run from 1 October 2021 to 31 March 2022, inviting visitors from every corner of the globe to discover a wide range of cultural and artistic initiatives dedicated to broadening horizons and bringing people, communities and nations together. Expo 2020 is the first World Expo to take place in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA) region.
By Hermoine Macura-Noble
The first Australian English speaking News Anchor in the Middle East. She is also the Author of Faces of the Middle East and Founder of US-based 501c3 charity – The House of Rest which helps to ease the suffering of victims of war. For more from our Contributing Editor, you can follow her on Instagram, here.
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