This composite photo, yellowed by age and with retro-style rounded corners, shows a time and place that is an important part of our nation’s history but often overlooked.
Taken in 1980 in Al Shahama, one of Abu Dhabi’s suburbs, it shows a newly built house given to a family by the government. In it, Ahmed Abdulla Al Jassasi stands in the foreground while a woman walks past a dusty car in the distance. A pile of wood outside the house suggests there is still some work to be done.
But what is really special about this photo is that its owner, Houreya Naser Musabah Khamis Al Kalbani, donated it to a national project called Lest We Forget, a study of amateur photographs taken by Emirati families.
Dr Michele Bambling at Zayed University began the project four years ago, when she asked her students to forage the family archives for personal photographs.
It was so popular and grew so quickly that she was soon able to present it in exhibition form. It was then picked up by the Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation, which has backed the project and under the guidance of Bambling and a research team, the foundation will present it at the 14th International Architecture Biennale in Venice, which runs from June until November.
“It is an amazing and unique project that brings forward the rapid and exciting architectural development of this country,” says Dr Salvatore LaSpada, the executive director of the foundation, who adds that it is a major development for the arts and cultural scene, as the UAE will be the first Gulf country to take part in the exhibition and to have a permanent pavilion at the prestigious event in Venice.
The architecture biennale runs during alternate years to the art exhibition and this year, the overall curator, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas – who visited the capital in January to give a talk on the subject at Manarat al Saadiyat – has selected the theme Fundamentals.
It will focus on the architecture rather than the architects and the histories of the buildings rather than their structure itself.
With this in mind, Bambling’s project of a vernacular history of the built environments here in the UAE is a perfect fit.
The exhibition planned for Venice, also supported by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Community Development, is titled Lest We Forget: Structures of Memory in the UAE. It will highlight the tangible architectural elements as well as the intangible, the evocative memories of these buildings through time. Bambling has also chosen to focus on the 1970s and 1980s because this was the transition period between the traditional structures and the very modern skyscrapers we know today. It is a period that is in danger of being forgotten if we don’t preserve the memory, she explains.
“In the biennale, we are not only showing the architecture and the data about the people who commissioned, designed and built these buildings, we are complementing the exhibition with the actual memories and experiences of the people who resided in and occupied them,” she says. “As the curator, I am facilitating many voices and memories surrounding these structures.”
The exhibition will present photographs gathered from national archives, government records and prominent collections as well as unpublished material such as donated photographs, recorded personal accounts and architectural models of the older buildings that have been made in collaboration with local universities. It will also feature physical objects, such as old coral bricks that were used to make the houses or documents that illustrate the architectural plans.
“All of our material is assembled for the first time from these disparate voices so it is a unique opportunity to see the Emirates in a way that has not been presented before,” says Bambling.
With a research team that includes Marco Sosa and Adina Hempel, architects and professors from Zayed University in Dubai, and Hanan Sayed Worrell, who is the senior client representative at the Guggenheim Foundation in Abu Dhabi and who has lived in the UAE for more than 20 years, the project is a collaborative effort.
But the collaboration does not stop with the boundaries of academia. Last week, the team launched an open call at the capital’s Qasr Al Hosn Festival asking for contributions of photographs, documents such as old postcards or even just verbal accounts that can be recorded as testimonies. They are now extending that invitation to everyone to contribute to the project by setting up a website and an open email account.
“We want everyone to feel part of this project, we would like to bring as many people as possible together and to hear their stories. We are very interested to learn about the memory and to preserve it while we still have a chance.”
• Lest We Forget: Structures of Memory in the UAE will be at the 14th International Architecture Biennale in Venice from June 7 to November 23. Visit www.uaepavilion.org and www.labiennale.org for more information
