There’s no calligraphy, geometric tiles or oil paintings of dhows.
Instead, visitors descending the stairs to see the work of young Arab artists at a new exhibition in New York are confronted by a glass cubicle. Its base is filled with the rubble of war. Perched at an awkward angle is a video screen playing footage of a faceless woman, her status as an "immigrant" spelt out in Arabic.
The story becomes clear at the back, where viewers are encouraged to step through the walls of Samer Fouad’s exhibit, through an invisible boundary and inside the box, amid the debris of Aleppo. Only then does the word “refugee” emerge.
"It is about that changing identity, the way someone who is displaced is seen differently" says Razan Al Sarraf, the 22-year-old Kuwaiti curator of the Young Arab Artists exhibition.
It opened last week as part of the New York Arab Art and Education Initiative – a year of cultural talks, workshops and showcases.
The exhibition takes up a basement space at ArtX, a gallery on the West 14th Street border between Greenwich Village and Chelsea, two neighbourhoods with strong places in New York’s art scene. Questions about and explorations of Arab identity and Middle Eastern politics make up the bulk of the work on display in the unusual space, where one mirrored wall is a reminder that the dark basement most recently served as a nightclub.
Sarraf's work The 100 Portrait Series hangs here, depicting the faces of dead ISIS terrorists, based on images taken from propaganda video screenshots, recruitment websites and selfies. The rows of oil on canvas pictures are designed to riff on different concepts of portraiture – from the East, where such work risks accusations of tampering with the hand of God, to the West, where it was traditionally used as one of the highest forms of praise.
_______________________
Read more:
Exploring how the Arab world ‘is the origin of so much we take for granted in the West’
British Museum's new gallery shows the influence of Islam in the Middle East and beyond
Louvre Abu Dhabi’s dynamic mission is shared at the Frankfurt Book Fair
_______________________
It also touches on questions about how the media should cover terrorist atrocities with the ever-present danger in offering publicity to perpetrators. Some of the faces have been gently obscured, their lines not quite filled in, their colours faded. The effect of the deathly mugshots is heightened by occasional glimpses of viewer’s faces between them on the mirrored wall.
“We saw the mirrors,” said Sarraf, “and I thought it would have been very sad if nothing happened in that space. It would have been dead.”
Sarraf said her aim in creating the exhibition was to capture some of the excitement in the Arab art world which has rapidly growing scenes in Kuwait and around Art Dubai and Louvre Abu Dubai. "I'm sick of 40-year-old, 50-year-old artists that are doing the same work over and over again, representing very old concepts that haven't evolved," she said. "I wanted to show what is really going behind the scenes."
Getting a foothold has not always been easy at home. Sarraf said she had spoken to gallery managers about exhibiting her ISIS portraits. "And they just wanted to avoid it completely and said: 'Do you have any calligraphic art?'"
Instead there is Ahaad Alamoudi's colourful video of Tini Warwar, a song that took over the Gulf's air waves in 2013 with its traditional Saudi drumming mixed with Western flourishes. And there are prints by Tareq Sultan (AKA Kuki Jijo), whose reimagined magazine front pages cheekily explore the fluidity of identity beneath a censor's pen.
The Dove by Farah Salem is a series of photographs showing a figure wearing a striking white abaya among the backstreets of Kuwait City.
"It was kind of like this idea of visibility and becoming comfortable with taking up space as women, spaces where we are often told: 'No, you don't belong' or 'the streets belong to men'," she said by phone from Chicago where she is studying for an MA in art therapy and counselling.
“I was interested in starting up that conversation and seeing what happens when I position this delicate being, this white, clean dove in these spaces where she is not supposed to be.”
Salem said she was excited it was on show in New York at a time when many in the United States could see only two polarised ideas of the Arab woman – either super-empowered or super-oppressed. "I think it is very timely to bring awareness and unveil this taboo of Arab identity both politically and in the contemporary art world," she said.
If bringing such ideas to the US and tackling misconceptions is the first stage for Sarraf (who said she had already met people who admitted to not being able to find Kuwait on the map) then next stage is to take on similar questions of identity at home.
“I want them to see that if this works all the way over here hopefully it should work within our community.”
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Alaan%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202021%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Dubai%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Parthi%20Duraisamy%20and%20Karun%20Kurien%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20FinTech%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%20stage%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%247%20million%20raised%20in%20total%20%E2%80%94%20%242.5%20million%20in%20a%20seed%20round%20and%20%244.5%20million%20in%20a%20pre-series%20A%20round%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Tonight's Chat on The National
Tonight's Chat is a series of online conversations on The National. The series features a diverse range of celebrities, politicians and business leaders from around the Arab world.
Tonight’s Chat host Ricardo Karam is a renowned author and broadcaster who has previously interviewed Bill Gates, Carlos Ghosn, Andre Agassi and the late Zaha Hadid, among others.
Intellectually curious and thought-provoking, Tonight’s Chat moves the conversation forward.
Facebook | Our website | Instagram
The years Ramadan fell in May
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
Hili 2: Unesco World Heritage site
The site is part of the Hili archaeological park in Al Ain. Excavations there have proved the existence of the earliest known agricultural communities in modern-day UAE. Some date to the Bronze Age but Hili 2 is an Iron Age site. The Iron Age witnessed the development of the falaj, a network of channels that funnelled water from natural springs in the area. Wells allowed settlements to be established, but falaj meant they could grow and thrive. Unesco, the UN's cultural body, awarded Al Ain's sites - including Hili 2 - world heritage status in 2011. Now the most recent dig at the site has revealed even more about the skilled people that lived and worked there.
Correspondents
By Tim Murphy
(Grove Press)
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
1.
|
United States
|
2.
|
China
|
3.
|
UAE
|
4.
|
Japan
|
5
|
Norway
|
6.
|
Canada
|
7.
|
Singapore
|
8.
|
Australia
|
9.
|
Saudi Arabia
|
10.
|
South Korea
|
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Review: Tomb Raider
Dir: Roar Uthaug
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Daniel Wu, Walter Goggins
two stars
More from Neighbourhood Watch:
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Key changes
Commission caps
For life insurance products with a savings component, Peter Hodgins of Clyde & Co said different caps apply to the saving and protection elements:
• For the saving component, a cap of 4.5 per cent of the annualised premium per year (which may not exceed 90 per cent of the annualised premium over the policy term).
• On the protection component, there is a cap of 10 per cent of the annualised premium per year (which may not exceed 160 per cent of the annualised premium over the policy term).
• Indemnity commission, the amount of commission that can be advanced to a product salesperson, can be 50 per cent of the annualised premium for the first year or 50 per cent of the total commissions on the policy calculated.
• The remaining commission after deduction of the indemnity commission is paid equally over the premium payment term.
• For pure protection products, which only offer a life insurance component, the maximum commission will be 10 per cent of the annualised premium multiplied by the length of the policy in years.
Disclosure
Customers must now be provided with a full illustration of the product they are buying to ensure they understand the potential returns on savings products as well as the effects of any charges. There is also a “free-look” period of 30 days, where insurers must provide a full refund if the buyer wishes to cancel the policy.
“The illustration should provide for at least two scenarios to illustrate the performance of the product,” said Mr Hodgins. “All illustrations are required to be signed by the customer.”
Another illustration must outline surrender charges to ensure they understand the costs of exiting a fixed-term product early.
Illustrations must also be kept updatedand insurers must provide information on the top five investment funds available annually, including at least five years' performance data.
“This may be segregated based on the risk appetite of the customer (in which case, the top five funds for each segment must be provided),” said Mr Hodgins.
Product providers must also disclose the ratio of protection benefit to savings benefits. If a protection benefit ratio is less than 10 per cent "the product must carry a warning stating that it has limited or no protection benefit" Mr Hodgins added.
T20 World Cup Qualifier
October 18 – November 2
Opening fixtures
Friday, October 18
ICC Academy: 10am, Scotland v Singapore, 2.10pm, Netherlands v Kenya
Zayed Cricket Stadium: 2.10pm, Hong Kong v Ireland, 7.30pm, Oman v UAE
UAE squad
Ahmed Raza (captain), Rohan Mustafa, Ashfaq Ahmed, Rameez Shahzad, Darius D’Silva, Mohammed Usman, Mohammed Boota, Zawar Farid, Ghulam Shabber, Junaid Siddique, Sultan Ahmed, Imran Haider, Waheed Ahmed, Chirag Suri, Zahoor Khan
Players out: Mohammed Naveed, Shaiman Anwar, Qadeer Ahmed
Players in: Junaid Siddique, Darius D’Silva, Waheed Ahmed
Company%20profile
%3Cp%3ECompany%20name%3A%20Shipsy%3Cbr%3EYear%20of%20inception%3A%202015%3Cbr%3EFounders%3A%20Soham%20Chokshi%2C%20Dhruv%20Agrawal%2C%20Harsh%20Kumar%20and%20Himanshu%20Gupta%3Cbr%3EBased%3A%20India%2C%20UAE%20and%20Indonesia%3Cbr%3ESector%3A%20logistics%3Cbr%3ESize%3A%20more%20than%20350%20employees%3Cbr%3EFunding%20received%20so%20far%3A%20%2431%20million%20in%20series%20A%20and%20B%20rounds%3Cbr%3EInvestors%3A%20Info%20Edge%2C%20Sequoia%20Capital%E2%80%99s%20Surge%2C%20A91%20Partners%20and%20Z3%20Partners%3C%2Fp%3E%0A