An Installation view of Afra Al Dhaheri’s work Collective Exhaustion.

Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer

‘Between the Tides: A Gulf Quinquennial’, the first in a series of art exhibitions surveying visual production in the GCC and offering a glimpse into the region’s contemporary artistic practice, is now open to the public at the New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Art Gallery. Running till December 8, it features 21 artists, architects, designers and collectives from the UAE, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, capturing key moments in the GCC’s cultural scene over the past five years, since 2019. The show is co-curated by Executive Director of NYUAD Art Gallery Maya Allison and Art Gallery Curator and Research Assistant Professor, Duygu Demir. Allison and Demir developed the theme with researchers and practitioners from the region, four of whom served as “curatorial interlocutors”. They are: Abdullah Al Mutairi, Aseel AlYaqoub, Ali Ismael Karimi, and Ayman Zedani.

‘Between the Tides: A Gulf Quinquennial’ offers the opportunity to explore contemporary visual production in the Gulf region. It presents a wide range of practices and themes that are critical today, such as societal shifts, ecological challenges, urban development, and the importance of preserving heritage, among others. Allison said that “in the past decade, we have witnessed a proliferation of arts initiatives across the GCC that have transformed the cultural landscape. During that time, in collaboration with curators from within the region, the NYUAD Art Gallery has played an ongoing role in highlighting and documenting the region’s art history and contemporary developments.

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“‘Between the Tides: A Gulf Quinquennial’ formalises our commitment to continue this work now and in the future. As we celebrate and reflect on the Gallery’s 10th anniversary this fall, our hope is that this quinquennial will become a regular feature in the decades to come, capturing snapshots of the region’s dynamic creative practices.” Featured in the exhibition are works by Alia Ahmad, Abdulrahim Alkendi, Mohammad AlFaraj, Noor Al-Fayez, Afra Al Dhaheri, Mohamed Almubarak, Sophia Al Maria, Mariam M. Alnoaimi, Christopher Joshua Benton, Sarah Brahim, Vikram Divecha, Faissal El-Malak, Hazem Harb, Aziz Motawa, Mohammad Sharaf, Shaima Al Tamimi, Ayman Zedani, and Bu Yousuf, as well as collaborative work, including by Civil Architecture (Hamed Bukhamseen and Ali Ismail Karimi); Aseel AlYaqoub, Asaiel Al Saeed, Saphiya Abu Al-Maati, and Yousef Awaad Hussein; and Camille Zakharia and Ali Ismail Karimi.

 Works on view at the exhibition.

Demir pointed out that though the works hail from a diverse array of interests and methodologies, they find points of convergence. “Zedani’s tracing of ancient fig trees; the heat as captured by AlFaraj; Al-Fayed’s resuscitation of regional weather vocabularies; AlYaqoub, Hussein, Al Saeed and Al-Maati’s research into Kuwait’s desert hinterland; Motawa’s investigation into contaminated mudlands; Ahmad’s rendering of land seen as landscape; Al Tamini, Divecha, Almubarak, El-Malak, Bu Yousuf and Benton’s tracing a person, personal story or a dream, touching on something larger than the individual; Al-Maria’s participation with two works in the ecological and individual fields; Harb, Al Dhaheri and Brahim letting the human body speak for itself, loudly or quiety; and Zakharia and Karimi’s joy in bringing people together to pose for portraits,” enables the connections come through, either physically or in the mind’s eye.  

“Rather than presenting a coherent “picture” or illustrating a curatorial imposition,” she adds, “together, these projects attest to the multifariousness of cultural practices of the Gulf.” Established in 2014, the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery is among the only university galleries in the region with a programme of scholarly and experimental museum exhibitions. While supporting other arts institutions in the UAE, the Gallery and the projects it assists serve the local arts community as a testing ground for new and innovative curatorial approaches. The aim is to nourish exhibition practice in the Gulf.

Gallery programmes are recognised for mapping new territories and ideas and presenting exhibitions by internationally established artists, curators, and scholars. A regular book publication schedule is a part of the curatorial frame. In addition, the Gallery’s auxiliary venue, Project Space, is an exhibition laboratory for UAE-based artists and curators. Situated inside the NYU Abu Dhabi campus, whose community hails from over 125 countries, the Art Gallery, the Project Space, and the Art Gallery’s Reading Room collectively open up numerous artistic opportunities while promoting regional and global dialogue.

NYU Abu Dhabi is the first comprehensive liberal arts and research campus in the Middle East to be operated abroad by a major American research university. Times Higher Education ranks it among the top 30 universities in the world, making NYU Abu Dhabi the highest-ranked university in the UAE and MENA region. NYU Abu Dhabi has integrated a selective undergraduate curriculum across disciplines with a world centre for advanced research and scholarship. This enables its students in the sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, and arts to succeed in an interdependent world and advance cooperation and progress.

NYU Abu Dhabi’s students come from over 120 countries and speak over 100 languages. Together, NYU’s campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, form the backbone of the global university. With its international locations, it provides the faculty and students opportunities to experience varied learning environments and immersion in other cultures, at one or more of the numerous study-abroad sites NYU also maintains on six continents.