A STUDENT SHOW WITH A POWERFUL MESSAGE
Why were the images chosen and what do they mean? Melissa Gronlund unravels a novel exhibition idea
Aweek or so ago, 25 paintings and works on paper were taken from the Al Ain residence of Zaki Nusseibeh, Minister of State. Canvases were lifted from the walls of the living room, bedrooms, even the bathroom, leaving gaping white spots where they used to hang.
It wasn’t some highbrow art heist: it was the students in NYU Abu Dhabi’s curating course, run by professor Salwa Mikdadi. Nusseibeh had allowed the students to make use of his collection of modern and contemporary Arab works in order to create their show, which is now up at Manarat Al Saadiyat. “I believe art is to be shared,” says Nusseibeh. “Art is not for individual pleasure.”
Nusseibeh regularly invites guests to Al Ain to see his collection, but this is the first time it will be shown publicly outside his home. The NYUAD students devised a theme after viewing the works; they picked up on the curious fact that many of the portraits he owns have obscured or altered facial features. They used this as a wider metaphor for how Arab artists of the past 50 years have approached the idea of the self, and specifically the disconnections between interior and exterior personhood.
The show, Within/Without, is a small jewel of contemporary and modern Arab artworks, focusing in the main on portraits. There are, as one might expect, works by Marwan, the great Syrian scholar of the face, in whose hands the visage assumes landscape-like properties – ravines and peaks and troughs. Prints from Lebanese sculptor Mona Saudi’s Petra
Tablets series approach the face as a monumental icon, and bear her steadfast interest in ancient cultures, in these works, of the Nabateans. Saudi’s works made a nice connection to Ismail Fattah’s duotone image of a face, which likewise begs to be read symbolically, as a cipher for the violence in his native Iraq. Indeed there is politics throughout: as in the monstrous faces in Mozambican artist Ernesto Shikhani’s work, which, the material about the exhibition notes, reacted to the Portuguese colonial regime.
Mikdadi explains that she split the nine students up into three groups, each tackling the steps of putting an exhibition together: those who were concerned with the theme, those who wrote the exhibition material, and those who co-ordinated the logistics of loaning and exhibiting works. They built a 3D model showing where each painting would hang, presented justification for each of the works’ inclusion, and liaised with estates and galleries to draw up loan agreements and condition reports to insure and value the works.
The students, from the BA course, came from different majors: literature, law, political science, for example. Curating courses have become more popular internationally over the past 15 years, reflecting the increased importance of curating in the art world’s production of meaning. This is the second year NYUAD is holding a curating course, but the first time the final show is exhibited off campus. “I think they were terrified,” admits Mikdadi, about when she told them the show would be at Manarat Al Saadiyat. “But they did it.”
Within/Without also affords a chance for the public to see Nusseibeh’s collection. Nusseibeh, who is Palestinian, was the translator for Sheikh Zayed, the Founding Father, and has become an important figure in supporting art and culture in the Emirates. Most recently he has established the Office of Cultural Diplomacy, based out of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which strategically directs the use of art abroad as a tool of soft diplomacy for the UAE. He began assembling his own collection while still a student at university, when he bought Orientalist art “when it was not expensive”, he says. “I then sold the Orientalist works and started buying modern and contemporary art for the region.” His collection, though he insists it is modest, has examples by major Arab artists, and he has also put together a library of resources on Arab art that is also open for scholars to visit.
“I am impressed by the choices of the students,” he says. “And even more so by their professional work.”