Blink and you will miss it. For only a week, Ductac’s Gallery of Light is showing a really well curated exhibition of Emirati art from the last 10 years.
Sponsored by CBRE, Huna Al Emarat juxtaposes established artists with new ones and photography with sculpture and design to create a fresh insight into the growth and expansion of the UAE’s art scene.
In the centre of the space, Mattar Bin Lahej’s sculptural calligraphy (a clever mix of tradition and contemporary art) greets the viewers as they enter. Ammar Al Attar’s Prayer Rooms – a series of photographs of prayer rooms around the city, have been mounted in light boxes to give them a new dimension that really allows the viewer to enter into the spaces and images from the Mobipix collective (who use mobile phone photography) complement the series both visually and with artistic dialogue.
What I especially like about this exhibition is the combination of art and design. Towards the back of the space, Caravan design collective have hung their False Ceiling over a hexagonal seating installation and hanging on the wall are typographic illustrations from Brusselssprout - a Dubai-based magazine who turn the imagery of the city into iconography.
If you are looking for an interesting overview into how creative we can be as a collective and the many variations that that creativity can take, then I recommend going down to see Huna Al Emarat before it closes on Monday.
• Huna Al Emarat runs until Monday 16 February at the Gallery of Light, Ductac, Mall of the Emirates, Dubai. For more info visit: www.ductac.org
