The new visionaries

When Mehnaz Tan, the proprietor of Dubai's Elementa gallery, bumped into Maitha Huraiz, an intern at Art Dubai this year, the 19-year-old Emirati art student threw down a challenge. After complimenting Tan, 36, on her gallery, which has been exhibiting art from around the world for just over a year now, Huraiz asked her why she hadn't yet shown any work by Emirati artists. Tan replied that she was on the lookout for local artists - but she had, as yet, still to be approached by any. Sensing a ripe opportunity, Huraiz promptly proposed a show at Elementa. Within weeks, the pair were in business.
The results can be seen this week, as a group show dubbed Beyond Convention - a collection of new work by young Emirati art students and recent graduates - goes live at Elementa. I thus find myself in the massive sprawl of the Dubai Airport Free Zone on a hot August afternoon, en route to Elementa gallery for a pre-show viewing and a chat with a few of the artists. In typical Dubai fashion, the gallery has opted for the less than idyllic surroundings of an industrial estate, trading easy access and a scenic neighbourhood for space and economy. This appears to be a pretty sound arrangement, although it is the first time I have had to stop at a checkpoint and present ID in order to visit a gallery.
Inside, a group of young women clad in abayas are bustling about the whitewashed space, hanging pictures, dragging ladders, fixing installations, tweaking sculptures, all the while chatting among themselves. We introduce ourselves to Mehnaz Tan and she in turn introduces us to the assembled group. They are initially reluctant to be photographed, but Tan reminds them that the theme of the show - beyond convention - should really extend to all aspects of the project. A brief whispered conference ensues, after which everyone politely agrees to a quick photo shoot.
Beyond Convention is the result of months of discussion, brainstorming, planning and experimenting by Huraiz and Tan. "I've always been meaning to work with artists from here," avers Tan, sitting alongside the placid Huraiz upstairs in the gallery's sunny office. "And when I saw the work Maitha showed me, I really thought it was strong." The show brings together work by 10 individuals, drawn from art faculties at Zayed University and the American University of Sharjah, as well as one or two contributions from recent graduates, such as the Tashkeel regular Khaled Mezaina. The evolution of the show, representing Huraiz's curating debut, gave the young curator a few sleepless nights, she admits, but also allowed for her to explore a variety of approaches and concepts before she and Tan settled on the final presentation. One idea was to give each participant a particular material to work with. Huraiz recalled seeing a similar concept at a show in New York and was particularly keen on the idea. "But Mehnaz didn't like it," she laughs.
Huraiz has long been planning an event like this. "I think that local artists are not encouraged, this is mostly by their culture," she says. "We are few. We're not very vocal and we don't put ourselves out there. That's the problem. It's not the galleries' fault. I think the art scene is growing in Dubai and there are more chances for us locals to work in this industry. And there are a lot of people I have noticed who are interested in local artists."
For Emirati artists of Huraiz's generation, these are days of ambition, possibility and artistic freedom. While previous generations of local artists faced familial pressures to choose more conventional career paths, as well as the very real paucity of art tuition and exhibition spaces in the Emirates, these days, increased art faculties at UAE universities, coupled with the growth in local galleries and the government's long-term plan to foster a productive local art scene, the current vacuum of local artists is slowly shrinking.
What immediately is apparent at Beyond Convention is the sheer enthusiasm in the work on display, as well as the varying degrees of experimentation with form, media and ideas that are suffused by a passionate desire to communicate. "This was an eye-opener for me," admits Tan. "She [Huraiz] put forward these artists I had never heard of, and there is definitely something very strong in the works. I've been at college in India and the UK and have seen student work there... but this creativity needs to be sustained. Bringing in all these art fairs, building museums, this will all really encourage the local artists."
But what does Huraiz's generation make of all this imported culture? "I feel very neutral about it," she giggles diplomatically. "But it is good, knowing other cultures, and being exposed to all that." Downstairs, I'm able to move around the works, which are more or less all completely installed, although a black-clad figure is still teetering atop a ladder, placing the finishing touches on what appears to be a flurry of crepe bandages. The rest of the girls are clustered around, chatting, texting or pitching in to help. Notably, there is no painting on display. Instead, we have a balance of photography, CGI images, screen prints and sculptures. Themes addressed in the work move from Rawdha al Shafar's colour-saturated, oddly dreamlike photographs of poor Emirati communities existing in forgotten hinterlands behind Sheikh Zayed Road, to intensely personal works. Amna Abulhou's small light bulb sculptures, for instance, deal with the personal and intellectual struggle of artists articulating ideas. There are pieces relating to feminist politics, represented by the ubiquitous abaya. And there are abstract sculptures, most prominently Alia Lootah's The Cube Collection, a series of interlocking wire cubes that descend in a chaotically ordered descent of rhythm and harmony, bound by brazing (a form of micro-welding) techniques. Further inquiry elicits the surprising discovery that they are in fact, inspired by blood vessels.
Confronting clichés and preconceptions was another unifying theme among the participants. And while the artists chose in some cases to deal with traditional elements of culture - for instance, the 19-year-old Meera Huraiz's brilliantly dark and comically cartoonish It print - they do so in a lighthearted way. Huraiz depicts an Emirati girl, shrouded from head to toe in black, sporting oversized sunglasses, hanging batlike upside down from a tree branch. "This girl, everyone ignores her and passes her by," says Huraiz proudly of her starring character. "But I wanted to throw attention to her, by making her big. When I first showed this to Mehnaz, instead of this print, I wanted to make T-shirts with her on. Or make a punching bag with her printed on."
In another series of images, she poses a figure dressed in a metallic cyan abaya, throwing dramatic shapes. "When people see us in our abayas, they think, oh, they are so serious. What a serious culture she must have. But I wanted to do an extreme contrast to what people think, with this playful feel. Look at the poses, the colour. It's funny. Although maybe you couldn't wear it for real. This is what I feel about life - even though she is wearing an abaya, she is still a regular girl. Right?"
Elsewhere, the 20-year-old Aisha Saeed Hareb stands thoughtfully next to her two submissions, large prints of a drop of coloured ink, captured as it begins to disperse in water. The stillness and control of the ink delicately blooming in water is the focal point of the work, the unpredictability of its dispersal. "I used ink and water," she explains. "The concept is the beauty of ink, the second it happens, as it goes in the water. I'm also interested in chromatherapy, which is used all over the world, and the colours of the images are inspired by rainbow colours. At the same time, it is a metaphor for freedom within limits. Freedom doesn't exist today. Well, I mean, we do have freedom, but there are limits. As you can see in my art work, a drop of colour, it expands itself and then it will just take its own time, until it ends. So, I wanted to discuss freedom and also colour therapy."
There is little bombast hype here - whereas many student-level shows get tangled into painful contortions of meaning and anxious displays of technical knowledge, here there is an almost naive spirit of relaxed yet impassioned motivation. Most of the girls talk about their plans for the future with optimism. Theirs is an attitude of casual confidence. Some, such as Lootah, talk of opening art colleges in the future. Others, like Huraiz and Shafar, confidently predict that they will buck the tradition of women abandoning their artistic careers in favour of domestic life. They are all bright, articulate and impassioned. They are, in total, a healthy and inspiring prognosis for the future of UAE art.
Huraiz sums up the show as being rooted in a traditionally-defined existence, but forward-leaning. "I want to clarify that yes, most of the themes in the show are culture-related, but we are trying to reinvent Arabic art. We don't want pictures of black burkas, falcons and the Burj al Arab. Some artists just take photographs of those things and say, 'This is art'. We all want to go beyond this."
amohammad@thenational.ae

Arsalan Mohammad previews Beyond Convention, an art show of young and aspiring Emirati artists at Elementa gallery in Dubai.