A staple in Dubai’s cultural calendar, Alserkal Art Week is a marker of the city’s art season, signalling a renewed slate of art exhibitions, films, performances and activities.
Held at Alserkal Avenue twice a year, the week-long event is currently taking place until November 23. It is running under the title Uprooted. The theme alludes to the condition of being pulled away from familiar ground and into uncertainty. It reflects upon a world marked by instability and disruption, where people, ecosystems and ideas are continually dislodged and required to adapt.
Here are a few things to look out for during this season of Alserkal Art Week.
Exhibitions
The title of Art Week reflects the themes and concerns surrounding many of the exhibitions. The 20th anniversary exhibition at The Third Line, extended until December 28, traces landmark local and international moments across the past two decades through the lens of its artists.
Ishara Art Foundation, meanwhile, is presenting Storm. The exhibition spotlights the 12 photographers shortlisted for the 11th Prix Pictet, an international photography award with a focus on sustainability and environmental issues.
The Shape of Things to Come at Efie Gallery is a group exhibition that features artists El Anatsui, Carrie Mae Weems, Abdoulaye Konate, Yinka Shonibare, Iman Issa and Adam Pen. Their work reflects upon the drastic and at times rapid transformation that define modern life. These include political upheavals, technological and cultural impact, as well as environmental crises. The works exemplify how art addresses these changes, but also anticipates them.
Another group exhibition at Lawrie Shabibi, meanwhile, is tracing parallels in non-figurative practices between South Africa and the Middle East. It shows how abstraction, rather than being a dismissal of representation, is a gestural form through which memory, lineage and lived experience is preserved. By the Movement of All Things features works by artists Igshaan Adams, Hamra Abbas, Diana Al-Hadid, James Webb, Bronwyn Katz, Timo Nasseri and Moshekwa Langa.
Ayyam Gallery is presenting a solo exhibition of Ali Kaaf. The Fire’s Edge features pivotal bodies of work by the Algeria-born Syrian artist, including his Rift series and selections from his burnt cibachrome print series Ras Ras, as well as from his blown-glass series Helmet.
In Marks of Return at Aisha Alabbar Gallery, Palestinian artist Salma Dib spotlights how walls are expressions of resistance, drawing from Palestinian street inscriptions that stand against erasure and disappearance. At Zawyeh Gallery, Mohammed Joha similarly expresses resistance and endurance, but through collage, with his exhibition, Houselessness.
Other exhibitions include Domestic Compositions at Green Art Gallery, Iranian-US artist Kamrooz Aram’s cross-disciplinary inquiry into how painting, sculpture and architecture provide new ways of seeing cultural artefacts. Hujra at Tabari Artspace features a meditative dialogue between inner states and material processes by Iraqi artist Miramar Al Nayyar.
Monochromes at Taymour Grahne Projects presents the colour-driven landscapes of US artist Amy Lincoln. Grey Noise is presenting the second installment of an exhibition of the late Pakistani artist and educator Lala Rukh, reflecting upon her move towards greater abstraction from the late 1970s onward.
Performances
In Nerpala, Dileep Chilanka turns a traditional wooden framework, once found in shops across Kerala, into a performance that highlights the manual labour, rituals and movements specific to maneuvering the wooden planks. Chilanka originally developed the performance as part of Serendipity Arts Residency 2023. It will take place at Project Space on Saturday.
Rana Haddad and Pascal Hachem’s The Game is described on the Alserkal website as “a Beckettian experiment in stillness and undoing", moving between balance and collapse through sticks, chairs and trays. The performance will take place on November 23, also at Project Space.
Hussein Nassereddine, meanwhile, will present a performance blending narration, song and moving image. The work, exploring the overlap of myth and memory, is drawn from Nassereddine’s research into Islamic conceptions of time and the history of Arabic poetry. The performance will take place at Concrete on November 23.
Film
Cinema Akil will screen two films in The Yard during Art Week. These include Dahomey by Mati Diop. The film traces the return of 26 royal artefacts from France to Benin, documenting reactions and probing into themes such as colonial plunder and cultural restitution. The film will be showing on Saturday.
Banksy: Most Wanted, meanwhile, delves into the artist’s anonymity, showing the global mania of trying to uncover the street-artist’s identity. It highlights his works and activism, raising the question of whether we need to know the artist’s identity to appreciate their art? The film will screen on November 23.
In the final days of Art Week, Cinema Akil will be launching Mitti Indian Independent Film Festival. Taking place from November 21 to 27, the week-long programme will present seven independent films, archival works, workshops and conversations.
Opening with Anurag Kashyap’s Kennedy, a neo-noir following an insomniac former policeman, the festival will screen a diverse line-up, from folklore-driven features to memorable character portraits. It also includes a film appreciation workshop, titled Decoding Indian Cinema, which offers deeper engagement with South Asian cinema and craft.
