Jameel Arts Centre announces major solo exhibitions and commissions for spring 2022

Highlights include the inaugural Park Projects programme, which features site-specific artist interventions on ecology

'Noon' by Fahd Burki. Photo: Grey Noise, Dubai and the artist

Art Jameel, the organisation behind Dubai’s Jameel Arts Centre, has announced its spring 2022 programme for the gallery.

Among the highlights are solo exhibitions by Pakistani artist Fahd Burki and Russian artist Taus Makhacheva, site-specific commissions and a community learning programme on the region’s urban histories.

The exhibition Fahd Burki: Daydreams will showcase more than 50 works from Burki's 15-year practice, while Taus Makhacheva: A Space of Celebration marks the first survey of the Moscow-born artist.

Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai. Reem Mohammed / The National

Makhacheva's exhibition will open in February and includes the artist’s installation, sound and performance works. She explores complex histories from West Asia through objects and characters, including her alter ego Super Taus.

Burki, whose works range from paintings to drawings and prints to sculpture, often draws from architecture, nature and science fiction. His solo exhibition, which opens in March, will trace his earlier figurative work to more recent abstract creations.

In January, writer Todd Reisz will present an intensive “night school” for 15 participants. The school will explore the urban histories of the region and expand on the ongoing exhibition Off Centre / On Stage, curated by Reisz, which looks at Dubai’s development.

Jameel Arts Centre is also introducing a programme of site-specific interventions by creatives from around the world. The inaugural Park Projects will feature one artist from Dubai, Nahla Tabbaa, and another from Hong Kong, Trevor Yeung. The two have been commissioned to be part of a two-day ecology symposium, inspired by the centre’s Artist’s Garden (Desert is a Forest) project.

Tabbaa will look at food production and organic ecosystems in her time-based interventions using textile and natural dyes, and the work will evolve into a limited-edition artist’s book.

Yeung’s installation Volcanic Universe will span the centre’s outdoor car park. A choreographed network of sprinklers will go off in the middle of the day to water a man-made ground.

The projects will be unveiled in February.

In the same month, the Artist’s Garden symposium will bring together artists, anthropologists, historians and botanists to consider the links between community-based cultural practices and environmentalism, particularly in the region. The full programme of speakers will be announced by the centre in the coming weeks.

For next year’s Library Circles, the centre will present the work of Egyptian food researcher and filmmaker Salma Serry, who is using regional menus as a departure point to look into the history, knowledge, politics and economics of the region. Her research includes printed menus, interviews and personal photo archives that compile a vision for these food histories in the region.

More information on Jameel Arts Centre’s spring 2022 programme is available at jameelartscentre.org