The many languages of art

Arena Qatar

On the Verge

The Many Languages of Art

With the Fire Station announcing the names of the 20 artists selected for its maiden Artist in Residence program, we try to gauge what kinds of projects and collaborations we can expect over the next nine months.

BY AYSWARYA MURTHY

NOT ALL THOSE WHO WANDER ARE LOST

ADRIFT: Preliminary sketches of the raft Betancur-Montoya is building for his future project.

74

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

IMAGES COURTESY OF SEBASTIAN BETANCUR-MONTOYA

Y

OU FEEL A CERTAIN ENVY AS YOU LISTEN to Sebastian Betancur-Montoya talk about discovering connections in a country so far removed from his home in Colombia. Could one ever feel truly alone, when, despite being displaced from one’s origin, that comforting sense of belonging is a mere sketch away?

Betancur-Montoya explores these concepts in his as-of-yet unrealized endurance performance piece, Drift & Divorce. He means to set off from the western coast of Qatar on a rudderless, compass-shaped raft, thus eliminating any possible directional preference, and drift along an uncertain course for 20 hours and 40 minutes (Google’s estimated time for an non-existent direct commercial flight from Doha to Medellín, his hometown).

While the waters are calm, the land around Qatar isn’t and the region’s sensitive geopolitical situation is holding him back, even as he builds a prototype of the raft. It’s of singular construction; a faux home, walls, and roof and all, is set in its center, but the floor is a gaping hole that opens into the sea. Betancur-Montoya says it is reminiscent of the courtyard and patio designs that were once common both in Colombian and Qatari homes, but are no longer in use, abandoned to memory and art.

THE DISAPPEARING DIVIDE

I

N THIS AS YET UNNAMED INSTALLATION tentatively called “The Border Project”, Waqas Farid presses into action a nuanced and technical aspect of photography, to flesh out the concepts of the human toll of disputed borders and the healing nature of time and fresh perspective. He plans to start with the border close to his home and heart, the one that separates India and Pakistan. The heavily contested outline will be scaled down to about six-millionths of its original length and recreated on a platform smaller than one square meter. The 'six million' signifies the number of lives lost on both sides of the border during the partition, he says. A computerized cutting machine will be used to etch the pattern of the border out of wood (he has specifically chosen rosewood, the fragrant and richly hued timber, cherished by craftsmen and artists in both countries), which can only be seen through a custom-designed lens. As the viewer steps back, the border disappears. For Farid, this is indicative of how, while this border represents nothing but pain and loss for those who lived through those trubulent times, and thus often goes undiscussed, the next generation can look at and address it without the baggage of the past. We don’t ask him which side of the divide he is from and he doesn’t volunteer the information. Perhaps it really doesn’t matter anymore.

IMAGES COURTESY OF WAQAS FARID

DELICATE LINES: As part of this project, Farid plans to work on other sensitive borders like that separating Sudan and South Sudan.

September - October 2015

75

Arena Qatar

On the Verge

AN OLD WORLD IN A VIRTUAL REALM

A

T FIRST GLANCE, technology is far removed from art and design.

One is temporal, almost obscenely so, bent on reducing the world to 1s and 0s, while the other is famously emotional and of unsaid things. But Maryam Al Homaid brings these two discordant worlds together in her augmented reality project, “In Memory of the Roundabouts”. As Qatar shakes off the dust and sprints into a bold, new era, the demolition of iconic roundabouts is just one of many sacrifices Doha has had to make in the pursuit of larger, faster highways.

According to Al Homaid, while the skyscrapers of the world, including those in Doha, are mundane and interchangeable, these roundabouts are quintessentially Qatari, each carrying the weight of memories; not monumental ones but just snatches of an everyday life when they were navigational markers and an integral part of the daily commute. Pins on the city map. This project takes 3D rendering of roundabouts that no longer exist and uses augmented reality technology to project them into real spaces. This gives the user the opportunity to create an empathetic relationship with the missing structures. The roundabouts are depicted as angels, wings, and halos to emphasize their nonexistent state.

IMAGES COURTESY OF MARYAM AL HOMAID

ART GOES HIGH-TECH: A lot of Al Homaid's works focuses on incorporating technology into art and design. “Attempt” juxtaposes everday objects with their highly pixelated, 3D-printed counterparts.

RUBBLE, RUBBISH AND REASSIGNMENT

A

IMAGES COURTESY OF KELLEY LOWE

CITY IN A STATE OF CONSTANT FLUX, Doha is home to many vacant, demolished lots, stuck in limbo between the old and the new. In Kelley Lowe’s eyes, these empty squares, walled on three sides, are “a perfect stage for a performance, a work to exist, if only temporarily. ” And so “Over Oxer” was moved from the pristine confines of a gallery to sit amidst the heat, dust and harsh realities of a construction site. Inspired by different methods of wrapping and using construction tape, here the installation was truly at home.

“The work had been a response to sculptures that exist naturally, constructed for the purpose of signaling a designated work space, an area of caution. This piece used that same language to signal a new kind of space,” says Lowe. And while public art has additional challenges pertaining to legal issues and cultural norms, Lowe considers them very important; in fact, it was during this second iteration that “Over Oxer” evolved, she feels, adding a rich, new dynamic that demanded further exploration. For those passing by, stranger than the installation was the presence of a woman, busy at work among the debris. An effort, theatrical though it may be, to leap across obstacles that make women feel like aliens in certain surroundings.

GOING PUBLIC WITH ART: Lowe hopes to work more extensively on public art during her residency at the Fire Station.

September - October 2015

77

Arena Qatar

On the Verge

THE LENS AND ME

C

OMMISSIONED BY QATAR MUSEUMS to capture Turkey through Qatari eyes, Sara Al Obaidly’s pictures of the country are now on display at a Qatar Museums exhibition. But in parallel, she is also working on a personal project — a series of photographs that depict how Turks connect with their land. And while these pictures have yet to see the light of day, Al Obaidly obliges is giving a sneak peak. “Reflections” was taken at Lake Tuz where families would drive by, waddle across the salty, white sand and shallow waters, to take pictures. Much of her upcoming work in the Fire Station however, will, focus on portraits, Al Obaidly’s forte (last year, her “Old Hearts, New World” was picked by TIME LightBox as one of the best portrait photographs of 2014). In her studio space at the residency, she will work towards honing her skills and practicing photography lighting techniques. Among her fellow residents, Al Obaidly hopes to find other artists who can help her create stunning sets for her portraits. It is exactly these kinds of collaborations that the team behind the Artist in Residence program is hoping to inspire.

IMAGES COURTESY OF SARA AL OBAIDLY

FRAMED: The artist in Al Obaidly constantly searches for stories that she can tell through her camera.

A BLEAK ETERNITY IN PERPETUAL MOTION

H

IMAGES COURTESY OF HANA AL SAADI, ROBERT ALTAMIRANO

ANA AL SAADI shies away from over-explaining her projects. When you put forth your interpretation, her response is a simple “yes” — encouraging yet noncommittal.

The video of her installation, “Endless Game, Unless the Power is Out”, is a twominute film, silent except for the whirling of two fans and the continual tap-tap-tap of a tiny ball bouncing against the edges of the miniature football field suspended in space and its motionless “players”, cruelly glued down inside the closed box. All of them — the hapless players, the mechanical prime movers and the swaying playing field — are condemned to mindlessly participate in an endless game that no one can win. On and on and on, until the flick of a switch brings the whole charade to a merciful end. A concurrent project, “Endless Game, Unless the Power is Out”, also makes a similar statement with a sewing machine on autopilot that creates random patterns on a looping fabric. Hana shot into the national limelight last year when Damien Hirst, impressed with her submission, “Snail Print Factory“, invited her to visit him in his studio in the UK. One can see why he likes her work; while not as overtly morbid as Hirst's, Hana's installations conjure up feelings of dreadful eventuality that are as subtle as they are insidious.

A SPACE TO THINK: Al Saadi, a deeply contemplative artist, is looking forward to her own Fortress of Solitude at the Fire Station.

September - October 2015

79