Dubai Festival City hosts Art Noor’s Spiritfest99 till end of Ramadan
DUBAI: As Ramadan arrives, so does the news of Art Noor’s special events, usually with a few surprises. For two years in a row, it was the LED show at Burj Khalifa, comprising of his paintings of 99 Names of Allah. This year, Aslam Noor — popularly known as Art Noor — has set a gigantic 10m x 2m canvas at Dubai Festival City Mall, and undertaken to live paint not only one, but four of them, during the month of Ramadan. It is not a mural, since it is a large painting on canvas which can be installed in other locations, while a mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, and is usually meant for the space that it is painted in. Besides, Art
Noor will be changing canvases, since he is scheduled to do four canvases the same size. They will then be available for exhibition at other spots. Live painting at a public venue is not easy and has numerous challenges. But Noor says that “it’s the difficulty of doing a project that excites me, and gets my creative juices flowing.”
The event is part of Art Noor’s Spritfest99, a month-long programme planned and implemented by Dubai Festival City. An exhibition of
Noor’s 99 paintings of the 99 Names of Allah, showcases his new works of the subject his name has been linked with. Spiritfest99 was conceived when it was scheduled to be held during Ramadan 2020. But then the Corona lockdown happened and it was put on hold. Dubai Festival City is also giving the iconic “99 Names of Allah” art book to 3,000 lucky visitors, who have to just walk up to the customer service desk and request it. They will get a copy, if the quota of the day is not exhausted.
Most of work which is now displayed was created or initiated during the lockdown, when Noor says he was “in total isolation from any worldly event or distraction.” “The lockdown period was very intense for me, spiritually, and also regenerating in many ways. Most of my small works, which are displayed on paper, manifested during this time, as a solution for the paucity of materials. Even though it was a variation from the large scale works I usually do.”
Art Noor’s Spiritfest99 is unique by way of the variation of the scale and media that it showcases on one subject. In sizes that range from 30 cm x 40 cm up to 2 m x 10 m for a single artwork, the exhibition lives up to its name by celebrating diversity of style, scale and mediums, while staying focused on the divine atributes. Noor moved out from his studio located in SAIF Zone to Dubai last year, ater the Covid lockdown ended. He is now in the process of the seting up a new one with a gallery as well, in the coming months.
“Ater quite a while, I am in fluid state, moving from area to the other, while painting at various locations all over the UAE. The next spot in schedule is Fujairah for a week, for which arrangements are being made.” He says he had organised a live painting day with a few dozen artist friends during the recent Ras al Khaimah Fine Arts Festival and would like to promote collaborative art events, if logistics of time and space allow. Noor arrived in the UAE in 2002, as a sabbatical from a successful career in advertising. He decided it to leave it behind and follow a passion for painting.
Ater struggling to learn the crat for two years, and ater taking part in many group exhibitions under the auspices of Sharjah Art Foundation, his first solo art exhibition was organised by the Directorate of Art, Sharjah.
It was on Asma ul Husna, the Arabic name for the 99 beautiful Names of Allah. He has stayed on course with the same subject for almost two decades.
With more than a dozen solo exhibitions at high profile venues, usually during the month of Ramadan, he has exhibited more than a thousand works on the subject till date. On being asked why he has not experimented with other subjects, he said: “There is an inseparable connection between art and spirituality. The source of ultimate creation is divine, and infinite. I feel many lifetimes is too litle time for any artist to even comprehend the extent of infinite possibilities that exist.
“Personally, it’s not just art practice for me. It stimulates my spiritual, intellectual and artistic faculties. Newer paths and avenues keep opening up and I keep walking on.”
Candid spontaneity appears to be main force in Noor’s paintings. He paints as though thinking on the canvas - most times unpredictably — defying the norms of structure, style and genre. He has also done works on Rumi’s verses of love, in a series called Ruminiscence. “What next is the question that is difficult to answer”, he says. “Even ater two decades in art, I feel I have just begun. I will continue to paint and write books. “Yes, online exhibitions and events are a good way to integrate art practice with. NFTS are another interesting development in the art world. Let’s see where the challenges of life take us.”