The results of an open call on social media to find emerging contemporary artists in the UAE is going on show at Abu Dhabi’s The Space this month.
The 50 artworks were collected over the course of three months by The Henosis Events (THE) team, who asked artists to express the “mind-boggling realities” of the 21st century.
The title of the show – Mind Your Hashtags – is a tongue-in-cheek way to represent new-age vices and the art on display includes visual, 3-D, sound-art and video-art installations.
From Egypt, Eman Hakim has painted a piece called The Old Man that concentrates on feeling rather than his face.
Saif Mhaisen, a Palestinian artist, contributed a pen and digital-editing drawing from a series titled A Grid of Portraits, which "aims to reference the presentation of visual information in social media in its basic sense: arbitrary, clear-cut imagery floating in a seemingly infinite digital realm".
Desislava Dare, from Bulgaria, has placed a selection of found keys on a wooden panel to represent the fact that we hold our own destiny within us. In her artist statement, she quotes a Hindu mystic speaker named Jiddu Krishnamurti: “In oneself lays the whole world … if you know how to look and learn: the door is there, the key is in your hand. Nobody on Earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.”
THE is a platform by artists for artists, to provide genuine art for those who are looking for contemporary art with fresh perspectives.
• Mind Your Hashtags opens on Thursday at The Space, Abu Dhabi, at 6pm
aseaman@thenational.ae
