Returning to Art Dubai, The Third Line is participating alongside more than eighty leading regional and international galleries. Since its establishment in 2007, Art Dubai has come to be recognized as an important art fair in the centre of the Middle East's growing contemporary art community. The Third Line’s booth (A19) is exhibiting two solo presentations – opening with Farhad Moshiri and followed by Hayv Kahraman – showing new works by both the artists.
Over almost three decades of his career, Farhad Moshiri has earned a sound reputation as a key contemporary Iranian artist, working with neo-pop iconography that melds together eastern and western aesthetics. For his solo presentation at Art Dubai, Farhad expands upon his playful repertoire with intricate beadwork painstakingly hand-embroidered onto canvas. He uses traditional Iranian mediums and craftwork to produce images from mostly western popular culture, employing an ironical commentary on art history and the importance, or lack thereof, of image selection. The works seem visually unrelated – with subject matter shifting from women’s emancipation in The Great Escape to close-up shots of the moon’s surface in The Moon – but their haphazard selection is based on simple choices of what appeals to the artist at a certain time, defying labels and steering clear from the encumbrance of clichés.
Hayv Kahraman delves further into her engagement with the deconstruction of space, interconnected with what she sees as the commodification of the female body. She brings in her personal experiences as an Iraqi émigré to fuel her larger dialogue on how boundaries define spatiality in both physical and human terms. For her solo presentation, Hayv’s drawings on paper and wood panels provide aerial views of the floorplans of typical homes in Baghdad and across Iraq, which have clear demarcations to prevent gender intermixing. The patterned area in the drawings represents the courtyard, which acts as a semi public space where the male members of the family receive guests. While women might not be present in these areas, they are allowed to look-on through ornate mashrabiya screens, with both the observer and the observed aware of each other’s presence without actual physical contact.
MARKER
Artist Collective Slavs and Tatars are making their curatorial début with Marker at Art Dubai. For 2014, Marker turns its focus to Central Asia and the Caucasus through a series of themed exhibitions and educational initiatives, including gallery booth exhibitions, talks, research projects and commissioned artists’ projects.
Abraaj Group Art Prize
Abbas Akhavan is one of five recipients of the Abraaj Group Art Prize 2014. With the prize uniquely rewarding proposals rather than completed works of art, the winners are announced each autumn and go on to produce artworks, which are unveiled the following March. Abbas and the other five artists worked with curator Nada Raza, and their works will culminate in an exhibition at Art Dubai, supported by a publication.
