Circles of self: Ammar Al Attar steps into his own frame in first solo exhibition

Emirati artist's show Silent Residues took a year to bring to fruition

Ammar Al Attar reflects upon the daily cycles of routine in his latest body of work. Photo: Iris Projects

Dressed in a kandura and riding a bicycle, Ammar Al Attar seems to be going nowhere. His tyre tracks have drawn wide circles in the dirt, or rather a single large circle emboldened by numerous overlapping ones. Yet, Al Attar isn’t slowing down. His camera captures him in a blur, persevering steadily towards the circle ahead.

The monochrome photograph – showcased in the Emirati artist’s solo exhibition at Iris Projects in MiZa, Abu Dhabi – has been overlaid with paint. Smaller circles have been dotted in an ochre hue along the tyre tracks. A blue circle has been painted in the centre, a streak of acrylic dripping from it.

Circles are ubiquitous in the exhibition. Al Attar, known for his performative approach to photography, is presenting a range of work that accentuates the shape’s association with the cycles of daily life and routine.

Ammar Al Attar and Maryam Al Falasi. Photo: Iris Projects

Running until November 26, Silent Residues is Al Attar’s first solo exhibition. For the uninitiated, it is a wonderful entry point into his practice, showing how it forms a key part of the contemporary avant-garde scene in the UAE. For those already familiar with his work, the exhibition shows an artist expanding his horizons, embracing the performative and autobiographical while also experimenting with sound, printmaking and sculpture.

“The exhibition has been a very interesting journey,” says Maryam Al Falasi, founder of Iris Projects. “We met a very long time ago, before the gallery. I’d been following his career for some time.”

Al Falasi says she was captivated by the way Al Attar documented and engaged with peripheral sites across the UAE, including construction sites, temporary masjids, as well as old cinemas and souqs.

“He was exploring performance but not as in-depth,” Al Falasi says. “He’d photograph old people playing chess or dominoes at the souq, or visit demolished sites.”

Silent Residues marks a departure for the artist as he turns his lens on to himself. An artist known for his meticulous documentation of marginal spaces, Al Attar now embeds himself within them with a flair that teeters between poetry, theatre and documentary photography.

Coloured cement blocks by Ammar Al Attar. Photo: Iris Projects

Works on display show Al Attar trying to keep his balance on a precarious cable spool, draping a tree with fabric or leaping from a wall of concrete blocks. Every work has been superimposed with circles that add colour, motion and playfulness to the black-and-white images. The circles also bring a singular quality to each photograph, a characteristic often lost in a medium that allows multiple printing.

“He was fixated on dots for the way they represent routine,” Al Falasi says. “He started embedding these dots on top of the paintings and earlier this year, he began painting the circles at the sites, on the concrete. All of this comes from the actions he does in his performances.”

Ammar Al Attar is a key figure in the UAE's contemporary avante-garde scene. Photo: Iris Projects

The works, Al Falasi notes, were not conceived in isolation. They came about as a result of regular conversations and site visits with the exhibition’s curator Nasser Abdullah, who has long worked with the artist. Bringing in different curators to work with exhibiting artists has been a hallmark of Iris Projects since it opened last year, and having Abdullah collaborate with Al Attar for Silent Residues, Al Falasi says, was an obvious decision.

“I think the person who knows Ammar the most is Nasser,” Al Falasi says. “If we see Ammar’s brain, the left side of it is Nasser. They have a very beautiful friendship.”

The show, Al Falasi says, took a year to bring to fruition. Initially, she says, she was taken back by the breadth and detail of Al Attar’s archive and was unsure which aspect of his work to exhibit. Finally, they decided to exhibit the artist himself – the man who has a full-time job at Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority and has made it an almost-daily exercise to explore peripheral spaces in the UAE after work.

The photographs on display are composed with theatrical flair, but they sincerely reflect the daily life of the artist.

“That's why most of the pieces, you'll see him in them,” Al Falasi says. “He's always been credited as a great artist, but behind the lens.

“We wanted to bring him to the fore. I think this is what drew a lot of people who came to this exhibition. It’s understanding not just one medium, but different sides of this artist. I’m happy that Nasser was curating this show because he highlighted those different areas.”

Silent Residues is running at Iris Projects until November 26