Another mainstay of Dubai’s arts festival circuit is back with a bang – Alserkal Art Week. After keeping us busy with Quoz Arts Fest in January, Alserkal Avenue is breaking out some eyeball-grabbing exhibitions, screenings, community workshops and open studios and walkthroughs from April 13-20. We’ve put together a handy guide of everything you should check out at this weeklong arts event. Entry is free.
1. Exhibitions
Alserkal Art Week will set the stage for 16 exhibitions by artists from the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. Touching upon themes of displacement, identity and resilience, these artworks will be displayed in galleries around the Avenue.
Leading the charge is ‘Vanishing Points’ by Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi. Using Indo-Persian miniature painting, video, photography, and installation, Qureshi views the cityscapes of South Asia, with its Mughal and Sikh architecture, as compressed and flattened versions where distances are reduced. This multi-media exhibit will be showcased at The Concrete.
‘Maydan: A Living Agora‘, curated by Behrang Samadzadegan, showcases art that explores the function of a maydan – open public spaces for communal gatherings in South Asia and the Middle East at Leila Heller Gallery.
Discover Cuban artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons’ work I Am Soil. My Tears Are Water at Efie Gallery. It reflects how colonisation across Latin America, Africa and the Middle East has shaped migration ancestral memory and nature. At Zawyeh Gallery, British-Palestinian artist Bashir Makhoul’s The Promise uses petals to symbolise displacement and renewal.
Gulf Photo Plus is hosting ‘A Memorial in Fragments’ featuring the late Saudi artist Majd Arandas’ posthumous work on photography’s role in documenting Gaza. Emirati talent shines through at the Gallery Isabelle, where conceptual artist Hassan Sharif’s Object series questions materiality and storytelling.
Aisha Alabbar Gallery’s group show, A Radical Intimacy of Hanging Out, featuring Asma Khoory, Taqwa Al Naqbi, and Sultan Al Remeithi, is a topical exhibit questioning Gulf urbanism and the obsession with productivity.
2. Art installations
As always, public art commissions will pepper the lanes of Alserkal. This year’s edition features photographic interpretations of poet Nujoom El Ghanem‘s poetry titled Between a Beach and Slope and Shilpa Gupta‘s interactive light-text sculptures called Still They Know Not What I Dream.
You can find these projects that highlight Dubai’s changing landscape and themes of nature and identity located in Alserkal Avenue’s corner facade and the yard. Don’t miss talks by the artists and curator, live block-printing workshops, and a film screening.
3. Talks and panel discussions
The staple Majlis Talks event returns this year, too, but don’t expect straightforward conversation. A tricked-out performative debate structured like a sports tournament is the form it takes! Participants will critique and discuss unrealistic questions and impossible takes about the UAE art scene. This experimental version is a collaboration featuring Crit Club, a performance project by Cem A. of @freeze_magazine.
4. Performance art
Mexican artist Héctor Zamora will have a site-specific installation called ‘Existence-Emitting Movements’ at Alserkal Avenue that’s connected to his new series of performances and sculptural interventions at Art Dubai. Performers will engage with terracotta objects and clay vessels, exploring symbolism through them as they break and smash these objects ritualistically.
Find Alserkal Art Week full programme here