"Art is why I get up in the morning," the musician Ani DiFranco proclaimed in the song Out of Habit, which starts with butter melting on cold toast out of habit. Ever since my 20s, I've held this mantra close – there really have been many mornings when art was the only reason I got out of bed.
A recent example is the artist Lantian Xie, currently at Grey Noise gallery in Dubai. In the gallery space: one coloured-pencil drawing of the Chicago Hotel tacked on a wall. One wall painted green. One ashtray on the floor. Speakers playing Tagalog on a continuous loop. Two 1950s prints of pheasants. Five dirty styrofoam cups on the floor. And what would become my favourite part: a young Asian man dancing around his bathroom in his pyjamas. My normal gallery behaviour is to ask few questions and figure it out for myself, but in this case, I was so completely lost, I had no choice but to query the docent.
The artist, who lists hotel lobbies among his foremost interests, grew up in Garhoud, and the minimalist assembly of objects, sounds and images on display are his assembled memories from childhood. Together, they represent a sense of waiting and of looking in from the outside. The music he was dancing to, I was told by the docent, is what the chain restaurant Hardee’s plays when it puts you on hold, and the dancing man is what the artist fancies himself doing while he’s waiting on the phone. The underlying playfulness of the artist’s choices came as a refreshing blast in a room that appeared so sombre at first glance.
Since I moved to Dubai, the arts scene has been my favourite aspect of the city. There was an art night at Alserkal that featured motorcycle helmets transmogrified into objects of beauty and horror, medieval castles painted on cardboard boxes and adult-sized swings at the ready, offered up in the same spirit as the strawberry milkshakes. I cannot think of another city that offers this kind of experience, usually free of charge, without the hassles of large crowds. The works themselves, often by regional artists from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine and other countries in crisis, are frequently urgent in their messages.
2015 is shaping up to be a banner year for the UAE’s arts scene. Here are five to look forward to:
Louvre Abu Dhabi
Louvre Abu Dhabi has already accomplished an unprecedented engineering feat – setting its 7,000-tonne dome, as big as two football fields, in place in October 2014 – and it hasn’t even opened its doors yet. Its institutional aspirations suit its namesake: the Louvre in Paris is the first and last stop for classical art in the world, and in 2015 we will finally meet its sister. The future home of masterpieces by Vincent van Gogh, Andy Warhol, Claude Monet and Henri Matisse will soon become a destination for art lovers from all over the world.
Sharjah Biennial
On the forefront of the international art scene, the 12th Sharjah Biennial, entitled “The past, the present, the possible”, will run from March 5 to June 5. Free and open for three months, it will feature 50 artists from more than 25 countries who will show their work in an abandoned ice factory on the east coast, a warehouse beside the creek, and a building called The Flying Saucer Complex. Based on the calibre of art in past biennials, you can count on the Sharjah Art Foundation to assemble the kind of show that would attract art enthusiasts in London, New York or Paris, only without the crowds. It’s like having the Museum of Modern Art next door, and all to yourself, as many are reluctant to face the traffic (the trick is to go on Fridays).
Its head curator, Eungie Joo, is of Korean descent, and artists from South Korea are well represented on the roster. Because two-thirds of the art work has been commissioned for this event, I’m looking forward to seeing how artists from Brazil, Japan, the UAE and the United States address the idea embedded in the theme, with a view towards a future of greater artistic freedom worldwide.
Emirates Airline Festival of Literature
The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature could rest on its laurels, having established itself as a destination for writers and literature fans since 2009, but it continues to grow. Every year, more writers are invited, and the audience expands accordingly. I can hardly wait to hear the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speak during the event (March 3 to 7), and anticipate my children's delight at the stage version of War Horse with its life-size horse puppets, or sessions on graphic novels. In the meantime, the Dubai International Writers' Centre, which is an outgrowth of the festival, offers programming year round in the Al Shindagha Historical Neighbourhood.
Alserkal Avenue
Alserkal Avenue, a complex of art galleries in the Al Quoz industrial area in Dubai, will double in size this year, adding an events centre and outdoor courtyard, as well as more cafes, and perhaps most pressingly, more parking. Abdelmonem bin Eisa Alserkal, who initiated the project in 2007, wanted to recreate the informal, raw spirit of Shoreditch in East London or Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, a tricky feat to achieve in such a glitzy city. Thanks to the truly rundown location and repurposed warehouses, he’s not far off the mark.
Artsy markets
There’s a palpable rise in artisanal craft and flea markets in the UAE, marking a shift in the consumer “scene”. The making and selling of unique, handmade objects gives such transactions a sense of humanity, something that no mall can offer. The markets are held in venues from Dubai Marina to Jumeirah Beach Residence to Zabeel Park, as well as an increasing number of locations in Abu Dhabi. On every other Friday at the Arte market in Times Square Center, approximately 200 handcrafted displays fill up two floors, with hardly an inch to spare. Equally impressive are the buyers who choose to spend their precious weekend downtime supporting small-scale enterprises. The sense of a growing community is tangible.
And if none of the above inspires you, there's always the December release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, filmed on the sands of Abu Dhabi, to anticipate.
It’s like this, Ani DiFranco. In the corner of the ecru-and-black courtyard of XVA Gallery in Al Fahidi Historical District, a jagged red sculpture like thick yarn frozen as interlocking squares is suspended from above, barely grazing the stone floor. To enter the sunlit space, and be stopped first by dried roses hanging from the branches of a shading tree, and then diverted by the bright-red, net-like object in the distance, the one that throws the soothing natural colours into relief, is to step out of time and place, out of the hurried go-go-go of the city, and feel your senses are renewed. Reset.
Art is why I get up in the morning. Bring it on, 2015.
