Dubai Foundation allies with London gallery. Is This Tomorrow?
SHARJAH: Alserkal Arts Foundation, Dubai, has announced a collaboration with UK’S Whitechapel Gallery to bring the exhibition ‘Is This Tomorrow?’ to Dubai in November. The show features four experiential collaborations between leading artists and architects investigating visions of the future, including a site specific commission by Rana Begum and Marina Tabassum Architects. Tabassum is the winner of the 2016 Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
To run November 6 – 23, the exhibition is curated by Whitechapel Gallery chief curator Lydia Yee and responds to timely contemporary issues by offering speculative visions of the future through four pairings between leading artists and architects.
The interdisciplinary installations, environments and pavilions by Amalia Pica and 6a, Cao Fei and mono office, Mariana Castillo Deball and Tatiana Bilbao Estudio and Begum and Tabassum Architects, will reveal the expansive potential of collaboration between art and architecture, in line with the wider November in Alserkal Avenue programme.
‘Is This Tomorrow?’ will take place in and around Concrete, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture-designed building shortlisted for the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal, Founder of Alserkal, says: “Alserkal Arts Foundation is delighted to partner with Whitechapel to share such an important and groundbreaking exhibition with our audiences in Dubai and the UAE. Our presentation of ‘Is This Tomorrow?’ not only furthers our mission of championing collaborative, socially engaged and multi-disciplinary practices, but also reinforces Dubai’s position as an epicentre for a broader dialogue on the role of architecture in the region.”
Yee said that “it is an honour for Whitechapel Gallery to work in partnership with Alserkal Arts Foundation to present a version of the exhibition ‘Is This Tomorrow?’ This is a fiting context for an exhibition that explores the potential of artists and architects to collaborate on their vision of the future, and one that will reach a dynamic and diverse new audience for the project in the UAE.”
‘Is This Tomorrow?’ was first shown at Whitechapel Gallery, London (Feb. 14 – May 12, 2019). For the Dubai iteration of the exhibition, the artists and architects will investigate universal topics including borders, privacy, living space and our relationship with technology.
Visual artist Begum (Bangladesh) and architect Tabassum (Bangladesh) will collaborate on a new edition of Phoenix Will Rise, originally presented at Whitechapel, that will be created specifically for The Yard, Alserkal Avenue.
Tabassum says: “It is a place of refuge - a space for reflection - contemplation. The highlight of the installation is Rana Begum’s beautiful art piece around the central oculus that catches light and frames the sky. The architecture builds around it to create a setting and atmosphere of repose, all the while appropriating the context Alserkal Avenue.”
Begum, who is represented by The Third Line in Alserkal Avenue, says: “We live in a world where the boundaries between disciplines are increasingly blurred and where technology enables us to connect with each other wherever we are. This collaboration is exciting because it pushes boundaries in a playful way, while simultaneously inviting the viewer to consider space in relation to location and existing elements. I have found it interesting to engage with Marina Tabassum’s vision and experience of space, form, colour and light.”
6a architects (UK) collaborate with artist Amalia Pica (Argentina) to explore the way architecture proscribes our relationship with animals through a mazelike environment made of an enclosure, blurring the boundaries between human and animal.
Exploring another relationship, the one between people and technology, mono office (China) and Cao Fei (China) conceive a prototype for a machine that dispenses objects and emotions to represent and imagine possible futures.
Mariana Castillo Deball’s (Mexico) sculptural work relating to the Mesoamerican calendar, Tonalpohualli, is brought together with Tatiana Bilbao’s (Mexico) architectural exploration of the human need to be isolated — yet communally connected.
‘Is This Tomorrow?’ is based on the seminal exhibition ‘This is Tomorrow’ which took place at Whitechapel Gallery in 1956. Envisioned by architect and critic Theo Crosby, the exhibition brought 38 artists and architects together into 12 groups, including Eduardo Paolozzi, Erno Goldfinger, Richard Hamilton, James Stirling and Alison and Peter Smithson. It is now widely considered a watershed of post-war British Art.
‘Is This Tomorrow?’ expands on the vision of the original exhibition by showcasing the works of international practitioners, all of whom were born ater the original exhibition took place.
Vilma Jurkute, Director of Alserkal, said: “Is This Tomorrow? will be the cornerstone of our November programming, much of which will explore the confluence of art and architecture as a reflection and celebration of Concrete having been shortlisted for the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture. This exhibition raises important questions about how art and architecture can work together and reveals new realms of potential that can be achieved when practitioners collaborate – questions and ideas we’ll further explore through related programmes throughout Alserkal Avenue.”
For over a century, Whitechapel Gallery has premiered world class artists from modern masters such as Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Frida Kahlo to contemporaries such as Sophie Calle, Lucian Freud, Gilbert & George and Mark Wallinger.