For the latest entry in our ongoing series following the interns who are working at the National Pavilion of the UAE at the Venice Architecture Biennale, we hear from Sara Aleem. She is one of a group of 19 Emiratis and long-term residents of the UAE who each spend one month in Venice living, working and acting as custodians and docents of the National Pavilion throughout the duration of the exhibition Lest We Forget: Structures of Memory in the UAE. Each are contributing to The Art Blog with a diary-style entry.
Venice has a certain splendour that just does not seem to get translated in postcards, photographs or movie scenes.
This dawned on me as I gazed wide-eyed at the floating city through the airplane window as we descended, and even as we drifted through the canals, heading to our apartment.
Our life as interns started and we slowly moved away from being tourists and turned into semi-locals who huffed if we were slowed down by tourists and resorted to taking shortcuts through different alleyways as we walked through the city.
Apart from the lasting memories (and various sketches) that came from regularly losing our way, stumbling upon unforgettable gelato flavours or being helped by friendly locals on an adventure to find Carlo Scarpa projects, there are a few undercurrent realisations about Venice that will remain with me forever.
Since arriving, I had gradually started to check off all the things that confirmed Venice’s popularity: canals, bridges, masks. To this list, I added one of my own – the city of juxtapositions. I would observe and sketch gondoliers in traditional garb wandering through the canals, talking on their iPhones; tourists taking pictures with the latest cameras against a backdrop of a church built in the 1500s; and giant LCD screens on old brick walls displaying adverts for top designer brands.
It seemed fascinating to me that there is a sense of theatricality about Venice – the great extents that are taken to preserve the city and its historical culture, even as modernity washes upon it, eroding at it bit by bit.
This was where I understood how the topic of modernity and our interpretation of it at the National Pavilion United Arab Emirates was so relevant. Every brick wall I encountered in Venice, every painting I gazed at, made me realise that I was part of a city whose history lives on every day. I would step outside and realise that the walls that I’m leaning on, even if partially restored, have foundations that were built over a hundred years ago. This contrast, relative to the younger buildings in the UAE, is striking and it makes me understand that though we may not have recognised and preserved the architectural history of the UAE as well as we could have in the past, I’m happy that we’ve taken huge strides to do it now – lest we forget.
• Sara Aleem is an architecture student at the American University of Sharjah. Originally from India, she considers herself a global citizen with a passion to explore what the world has to offer through travel, cuisine and of course, gelato. Sara enjoys meeting new people and creating new experiences, illustrating and documenting them along the way. Follow her adventures in Venice – @veniceinterns and #veniceinterns on instagram and Twitter, as well as her personal account on instagram, @sara_aleem
aseaman@thenational.ae
