Artists transport the Emirates to Europe
Portrait of a Nation opens at Berlin Art Week Melissa Gronlund reports
“Berlin is filled with underdogs and rebels who are unapologetic about showing their art. This is also an unapologetic show,” says Sarah Al Agroobi, whose artwork is appearing in Portrait of a Nation, the exhibition of UAE artists that opens today at the me Collectors Room Berlin. “The idea that the UAE doesn’t have a history – it’s really turning that on its head.”
Portrait of a Nation was organised last year by the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation (ADMAF) to commemorate its 20th anniversary. Installed at Emirates Palace hotel, it collected together the work of more than 50 UAE artists from different generations and media. Well-established artists such as Mohammed Kazem and Ebtisam Abdulaziz, who exhibited throughout the 1990s in Sharjah and Dubai, showed work alongside the younger artists for whom they helped pave the way.
Now this exhibition has travelled to Berlin, where it is taking part in the turbo-charged Berlin Art Week. For the next four days, the city’s galleries and institutions are hosting a series of events to showcase the artists’ work. In its sixth year, Berlin Art Week has more than 150 events and last year welcomed 100,000 visitors.
Berlin is the undisputed capital of the European art world, with artists, curators and writers producing and showing work in the former East German city.
A large number of galleries – more than 100 – take part, many with both exhibitions at their gallery sites and at the art fair, art berlin, that also runs during the period.
The city’s numerous foundations and museums also use the high-visibility week to launch major exhibitions. This year the Schering Stiftung, for example, hosts an exhibition of the UK/United States filmmaker Daria Martin, whose work draws on dance and Modernism, while the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein will look at the oeuvre of Harun Farocki, the important political essay-filmmaker who died in 2014.
Portrait of a Nation is housed at the me Collectors Room, the exhibition site of the non-profit Olbricht Foundation in Mitte, Berlin’s prime gallery district.
Julia Rust, me Collectors Room director, says: “We are so happy to have work from more than 50 artists from the UAE. Having this exhibition as our guest fulfills one of the original ideas of the Olbricht Foundation, along the theme of collecting, which is to make the art of other cultures visible in Berlin.”
Rust explains that the collaboration came about on the invitation of ADMAF, who wanted the show to have more international exposure. For Rust, the collaboration between Germany and the UAE shows the potential of “exchange in a globalised world”.
For Al Agroobi and other artists who are participating in the exhibition, it is a chance not only to show their work in the vibrant capital of Berlin, but also for Berlin to see the range of work made in the UAE and the richness of its history. “This show challenges so many stereotypes,” she says. “It’s art about the UAE made by UAE artists themselves.”
More than 100 galleries take part in Berlin Art Week, which last year welcomed 100,000 visitors