Launched in March 2020 when the world went into lockdown, Art Dubai’s Planetary Feed gathers special reports, interviews, insights and personal impressions from the extended Art Dubai community, including past and present participants, contributors, partners and friends. Planetary Feed aims to give individual and collective voices a space to contribute to the unpredictable universal story currently unfolding across the world.
Watch curator Munira Al Sayegh in conversation with the founder and contributors of Unootha, an independent digital platform for Middle Eastern and North African womxn. The all-womxn panel discusses the platform’s role in creating and engaging with different communities across the region and redefining the spaces in which these communities interact.
Following the initial months of the global coronavirus pandemic and not being able to produce any work at his studio, Pune-based artist Prabhakar Pachpute has shifted to working on new, smaller-scaled works, exploring new mediums while continuing to survey ideas around industry, land and labour. He reflects on how the pandemic has taught him to expand his imagination, the shifts in his thinking towards what is of importance, and how this is expressed in his practice. Pachpute is represented by Experimenter Gallery in Kolkata, India.
Launched in Palestine at the very beginning of worldwide lockdowns in March 2020, online radio station Radio Alhara provides a platform for discussion, listening, and community-building. The name, which translates to ‘the neighborhood radio’, is reflective of the nature of the station itself: a close-knit community emerging from the margins, yet open and accessible to the world, bridging boundaries and geographic obstacles. Read our interview with the co-founders, and listen to the playlist they made for Art Dubai.
Multi-medium artist Charwei Tsai has been busy at work in her Taipei studio over the past months, having completed a video work commissioned by the Green Island Human Rights Art Festival, and continuing her exploration of organic material and the human experience through her works on paper series. Dive into her recent projects, as well as the changes and shifts in her practice through our latest post.
A look at Sri Lanka’s interdisciplinary arts festival COLOMBOSCOPE with Artistic Director Natasha Ginwala and 2021 festival Curator Anushka Rajendran where they discuss the upcoming festival’s premise, as well as the organisation’s year-round engagement programmes for the community. View highlights of COLOMBOSCOPE’s online series, #HeldApartTogether, developed as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, providing a window into the artistic community’s present struggles and endeavors in communal resilience.
Sharjah Art Foundation Director of Collections and Senior Curator Omar Kholeif dives into the foundation’s newest exhibition, Art in the Age of Anxiety, the curatorial vision and research that drove the show, as well as the resulting output from the exploration of our individual and collective relationships with the digital and technological spheres.
Watch collector and Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation Director Basel Dalloul discuss the Foundation, its mission and remit. View highlights from the Foundation’s collection, tour the DAF space, and discover the newly launched archives and resources.
Delve into Dubai’s Non-Profit Ishara Art Foundation newest initiative, Alt+Shift+Studio which explores a redefinition of the ‘artist’s studio’ in the 21st century beyond an isolated physical space of production. View highlights from the four featured artists: Rajyashri Goody, Umber Majeed, Randhir Singh, and Abdul Halik Azeez and an interview with Sabih Ahmed, Ishara’s Associate Director and Curator, and Laura Metzler, Operations, Programmes and Production Manager, who co-conceived the project.
A special word from Director General of the Palestinian Museum, Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, PhD, discussing the history and mission of the Museum, and its preparedness to react to the current lockdown as part of its structural positioning within an occupied space. The feature is accompanied by an in-depth guided tour of the Museum’s latest exhibition, exploring representations of Palestinian land and natural geography through an array of political posters.
Watch Samdani Art Foundation Director Nadia Samdani discuss the Foundation’s new initiative Art Around the Table, which engages with literal and figurative tables across Bangladesh and globally via contributions by artists, curators and writers including Rana Begum, Habiba Nowros and Gidree Bawlee.
BAIT 15 is an artist-run studio and exhibition space housed in a residential home in downtown Abu Dhabi, founded in late 2017 by Afra Al Dhaheri, Hashel Al Lamki, and Maitha Abdalla. BAIT (meaning home in Arabic) 15’s co-founders join independent curator and Gulf Now organiser Munira Al Sayegh in conversation to discuss their three-year journey so far, highlights from their residency and exhibition programmes, as well as thoughts on what the future holds for BAIT 15 and the artist-run ecology of the UAE.
Bahrain-based artist-run platform Too Far has delved into the history and cultural impact of Khaleeji (Arabian Gulf) pop music through an interactive lecture. Selected by independent curator Munira Al Sayegh as an ongoing focus on non-profit artist-run platforms operating in the Gulf, the online lecture provides perspective on the roots of Khaleeji pop, its evolution throughout the decades, and its impact on musical production and cultural identity in the region.
La Vitrine, a project space on the ground floor of Rue Pasteur in the popular Beirut neighborhood Gemmayze, presents site-specific artist interventions in a four by two metre, high-ceilinged room, with only a glass door separating it from the sidewalk and passersby. In a time with widespread lockdowns and physical distancing, this project allows us to examine what happens when we alter the conventional art presentation model with one that increases the physical distance between the viewer and the artwork.
Amman-based MMAG Foundation has developed a series of care packages filled with intangibles; collections of memes, thoughts, films, photographs, songs and videos that lend a sense of comfort, entertainment, thought, or visual delight as forms of care. Co-imagined with Sarah Rifky – writer, curator and co-founder of Beirut (2012–15), an art institution in Cairo – and in collaboration with independent Egyptian news platform, Mada Masr, these care packages each have a different theme and contain a unique set of materials for the viewer to unravel. Currently featuring packages by The Rocca Family Project, Zach Blas and Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez.
Devi Art Foundation was established as a not-for-profit organisation in 2005 to facilitate the viewership of creative expressions and artistic practices that exist in India.
As uncertainty and need for hope/action grips us and we turn to arts of different kinds to cope – we look back at an exhibition Devi Art Foundation did in 2011 – HOME SPUN. The exhibition was curated by independent writer and curator, Girish Shahane.
News from Nowhere compiles snippets from global news reports through video montage. The video aims to highlight issues that may quickly be forgotten, or remain unnoticed during chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Comprised of clips featured on social media channels, and other found footage, do nothing club is a fleeting summary of our collective response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the coping mechanisms that have arisen from it.
As gamification invades real life, Worlding for Real is a true story about pixels, gameworlds, multiplayer networks and systems of play today. Part 1 explores the beginnings and ends of pixels, and the transfers of power at the edges of what is seen and computational invisibility.
Part manifesto, part video essay, Clean Hands is a summarised riposte to the vapid, selfish acts and behaviours one witnesses as a mere bystander to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Music for Homes was composed in quarantine and is meant to be both calming and energizing. It’s also an homage to Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, as well as composers Laurie Spiegel and Haruomi Hosono.
Part manifesto, part video essay, Clean Hands is a summarised riposte to the vapid, selfish acts and behaviours one witnesses as a mere bystander to the Covid-19 pandemic.
A Special Report on Art & Philanthropy models across South Asia, in partnership with ArtTactic, is now available to download. The report aims to better understand the funding eco-system for the visual arts sector, and to map and present innovative and sustainable philanthropic activities in the region.
