Bayt AlMamzar launches Patrons’ Circle initiative for empowering local artists

Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer

Bayt AlMamzar, one of the UAE’s community spaces for artists, has announced the launch of its Patrons’ Circle. The yearly initiative was set in motion by long-term UAE residents and collectors Ekaterina Plastinina, Polina Pristinskaya and Salvatore Lavallo. They are joined by curator Salem AlSuwaidi and other young professionals, who prefer remaining anonymous. The Bayt AlMamzar Patrons’ Circle approaches the initiative as an active part of its mission. It is one in which patrons play a vital part in supporting artistic development through mentorship and guidance, alongside providing financial assistance to local artists. The Circle will function as an annual membership offered to individuals who want to support and take an active role in shaping Bayt AlMamzar’s activities.

The enterprise is aimed to have a significant impact on the art space’s ability to provide opportunities for artists and curators to develop their practice and engage with the broader community, and allow a young generation of artists and art practitioners focus on experimental and critical artistic development. For the first iteration, funds will be used to support an Exhibition Development Fellowship. It is an open call for small production grants and structural improvements to Bayt AlMamzar’s gallery. The Fellowship will provide early career artists and curators the opportunity to research, conceptualise, develop and produce exhibitions. The iteration will run twice a year and result in two exhibitions hosted at Bayt AlMamzar. Its goal is to work with a series of external collaborators including artists, curators, gallerists, researchers and other cultural/creative practitioners and mentors.

The Fellowship intends to develop the necessary skills and mindset in early career practitioners towards efficacy in exhibition making, understanding the impact and value of exhibitions during their run, and in terms of their legacies. The Circle will implement further programmes and initiatives that align with the values present in the trusteeship of grassroots collectivity, alongside the Bayt’s mission to promote experimental creative production and foster community building. The initiative hopes to have a constructive and transformative impact on Bayt AlMamzar and the wider creative community and enable it to continue working on a popular level and provide artists and curators with the support and resources they need to develop their practice.

A room at Bayt AlMamzar.

Bayt AlMamzar was a domestic space since 1983. In a continuation of this history, Gaith and Khalid Abdulla, brothers and co-owners of the space, revived their family home to welcome a wider audience connected through arts and culture. Bayt AlMamzar now houses art studios, exhibitions, residencies, public programmes, and a specialised library. Meant as an evolving zone that answers the needs of the UAE’s contemporary arts and creative community, it invites experimentation and encourages multidisciplinary collaboration.

Plastinina said that “having spent eight years building my career in art, I was thinking of different ways of support that can actually work, apart from assisting young artists through acquiring their works - we all hope our initiative will serve as an example for others to follow and lend a hand to the ever growing UAE arts community without expecting anything in return. In the bigger picture, we would love to see more young individuals be inspired by this and join us in this cause.” Lavallo observed that “Bayt AlMamzar is an important art community pillar that supports young collectors and artists and importantly focuses on building relationships between them. I’m excited that the expanding Exhibition Development Fellowship will further enable this community development as it’s a foundational aspect of the UAE’s quickly growing art’s ecosystem.”

AlSuwaidi remarked that “Bayt AlMamzar fills your spirit and soul with so much care and compassion. It is very important for spaces like BAM to exist, for independent, grassroot and grass-fed initiatives to be supported and elevated. Only then can cultural, academic and artistic practitioners genuinely get to expand their boundaries and test their ideas.” Pristinskaya added that “Bayt AlMamzar is a unique space that supports, encourages and nurtures young artistic talent. It is my hope that our initiative will bring more support and opportunities to the blossoming art community of UAE.”

Bayt AlMamzar, view from the outside.

House No. 2, 26 Street, Al Mamzar, is a familiar place for art lovers.  In 2018, when their grandmother moved homes, Gaith and Khalid Abdulla decided to turn it into Bayt AlMamzar, an art and culture oasis. It is a single storey structure next to Mamzar beach and opened in 2021 as the go-to place for arts in the area. Khalid and Gaith’s father, Dr Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, had raised the building in 1983 and as a house, it had bedrooms, majlis, a living room, garage, garden and even an enclosure for goats. The new design has taken care to incorporate old features, such as the carved wooden front door. The bedrooms are now studios where artists work out their ideas. A library calls for attention, while there is a majlis which allows brainstorming.

Patronage of the arts has been as important as the making of art in history. The latter cannot perhaps exist without the former and art patronage is known in greatest detail in reference to mediaeval and Renaissance Europe, feudal Japan and traditional Southeast Asian kingdoms. With the rise of the capitalist system in Europe, patronage evolved to a publicly supported system of museums and artists backed by corporates. Providing grants and programming commissioned artworks, are some of the ways in which art patronage is offered in contemporary times.