The art of community

Foundry is the latest addition to the UAE’s arts and culture scene. identity catches up with its curator Giuseppe Moscatello to learn more about its place within the arts community.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAL STANCELEWSKY

The cultural scene in the UAE continues to grow, and joining its roster of recently opened spaces for the creative community is Foundry, a hybrid space in Downtown Dubai that doubles as an art gallery and co-working space alongside a library and café. Plans for Foundry include holding contemporary art exhibitions and hosting cultural programmes for communities across the UAE and the wider region, as well as collaborating with established art institutions, curators and artists. Currently on show are: exhibitions by artists Jeffar Khaldi, Navid Azimi Sajadi and Goncalo Mabunda; a project by Ayesha Hadhir, Rawda Al Ketbi and Sheikha Al Ketbi; and a private photography collection of Emirati designer Khalid Shafar.

What is the aim of Foundry? How will it contribute to the city’s design and arts scene?

The aim of Foundry is to give everyone, be they artists or art enthusiasts, a creative space and sense of community. A place where people from all walks of life can come together to create and innovate, Foundry contributes to the city’s design and arts scene in more ways than one. Many talented artists will have the opportunity to showcase their work for the entire UAE, and world, to see.

What is the significance of the three main exhibitions currently showing at Foundry?

All shows throughout Foundry are focused on reflecting the artist’s works and life experiences. Navid Azimi Sajadi’s ‘Allegorical States’ project comprises three mixed media installations which are an indirect pictorial and allegorical narrative passage of the transiting of the mind, from one state to another. On the other hand, ‘Emotions Running High’ by Jeffar Khaldi is a solo exhibition that sees charged paintings which evolve from political satire and pop signifiers to fantastical, dreamy scenes that marry parallel worlds and landscapes. Khaldi’s body of work reads like a fever dream, indicating that the lives we live aren’t separate from those we imagine.

What are your plans in terms of curating the

artworks and exhibitions? At Foundry we aim to make art more accessible; [a place] that speaks to a wider audience, allowing different communities to converge at a hub that combines art, culture,

entertainment and work. We enjoy collaborating with independent artists, discussing their work, and curating their projects in line with our vision.

How are you planning on bringing together

creatives from both the arts and design? I believe that nowadays the line between art and design has become so thin, there are various schools of thought. We are experiencing an important time whereby hybrid projects are becoming a regular occurrence. Artists and designers are collaborating and working together like never before.

Can you tell us more about Khalid Shafar’s private collection? How did the idea come about, and are you planning on creating

more such exhibitions? The words ‘private collection’ might sound intimidating, but we have always believed that if you create or own beautiful art, you have the responsibility to share it with other people. We have always known Khalid as a designer, but never thought he would own a collection. When we first saw the collection, we immediately recognised his vision of supporting Khaleeji photographers. We proposed that he showcase this incredible collection to the public for the first time, at Foundry, to encourage other collectors to start buying more such art. This also allows the artists greater recognition and exposure.

Tell us about the inspiration behind the design for Foundry and how it accommodates the diverse functions of the

space. Foundry led the design of the interiors, which were inspired by brutalist architectural forms. The focus was on the honest expression of materials while providing a clean backdrop to allow the art to take centre stage; [these were] the guiding principles for the team at Zebra Dubai.

The ground and first floors are designed for dedicated co-working spaces that allow the community to come together, collaborate, form new friendships and spark ideas. It is here you will find custom leather-wrapped reading pods, designed exclusively for Foundry – the perfect space to curl up with a book or work away. Foundry has also collaborated with local artists to create bespoke furniture, which itself becomes a piece of art within the space, allowing emerging designers to gain further exposure.

What are some of your future plans for

Foundry? We are preparing a series of exhibitions and activations for March with street artists such as Harif Guzman, Rex, Adil Aubekerov and many more. Foundry is also expanding with some outdoor installations, as well as enhancing some of its areas with community activations. We are also engaging with a lot of podcasters by bringing in their communities and initiatives to Foundry, and collaborating with regional and international artists and galleries.

Previous page: Khalid Alshafar ‘Private Collection’ showcases lens-based work by regional artists from across the Middle East, North Africa, Iran and Turkey. Top left: ‘A Letter to Future Self’ by Nasir Nasrallah, 2016. Bottom: ‘Allegorical States’ mixed-media installation by Navid Azimi Sadjadi. Right: ‘Rejuvination of Past Vol. 4-1’ by Tariq AlHajri.

Community voices

Ishara Art Foundation’s latest exhibition, Growing Like A Tree, continues to shed light on complex perspectives from South Asia from its hub in Alserkal Avenue

WORDS BY MOHAMMAD EL-JACHI

Aishwarya Arumbakkam, from the series ka Dingiei (2016-ongoing). Archival pigment print, 61 cm x 61 cm. © Aishwarya Arumbakkam. Image courtesy of the artist and Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Grant for Photography 2019, SSAF.

Upon entering Ishara Art Foundation, visitors are greeted by a complex web of pencilled-out associations between friends and collaborators. A sketch by curating artist Sohrab Hura is a microcosmic representation of the bonds that make up Growing Like A Tree, the exhibition that is currently on show at the gallery.

From its inception in 2019 with the exhibition Altered Inheritances: Home Is a Foreign Place to its current showcase, the foundation continues to map a complex topography of South Asian identities and perspectives from its home in Alserkal Avenue in Dubai.

The foundation has made a point of featuring both established and emerging artists from the Global South. The intergenerational Altered Inheritances: Home Is a Foreign Place by Shilpa Gupta and Zarina explored placehood and belonging. Amar Kanwar’s 2020 Ishara showcase Such A Morning also ran in tandem with multimedia exhibition The Sovereign Forest at the NYUAD Art Gallery, bringing the seminal artist’s works in film and installation to a collegiate audience in the neighbouring emirate.

Through a research-led approach, Ishara has engaged in exhibitions both on and offsite as well as online, in addition to education initiatives in and outside the UAE. Its activities have effectively established and deepened ties to a rich network of South Asian and international creative networks, from artists and academics to similar foundations and institutions.

Growing Like A Tree features works by 14 artists and collectives from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Germany, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Singapore, several who have never exhibited institutionally on a regional or international level. It also marks Sohrab Hura's first curatorial project as a photographer and filmmaker.

The exhibition encapsulates a collective moment in the lives of images that are often fleeting and obscured. “How can an exhibition capture new geographic alignments in the 21st century?” asks Sabih Ahmed, associate director and curator of Ishara Art Foundation, in a question he posed to

Hura. These new alignments are far-reaching, contingent both on shared socio-political struggles and converging personal narratives.

Growing Like A Tree therefore showcases an artistic network that is both sustainable and self-initiating, according to Ahmed.

Two vignettes, handwritten by Hura, serve as one potential entry point into the exhibition, documenting both a period of decline in his mother’s health and a formative, life-affirming experience as a burgeoning photographer.

His own narrative thread is multifaceted, and he reflects on his early life and adolescence in a later archival series that sees his father emerge as a key influence on his artistic trajectory.

This same resilience – equal parts dark, whimsical and commonplace – is expressed through works like Yu Yu Myint Than’s Sorry, Not Sorry (2019), which is the only photobook in the exhibition meant to be read. It documents a process of forgetting after the breakdown of a relationship, a slow march of images that parade states of absence and presence.

A series by Anjali House – a non-profit organisation in Cambodia that offers both material aid and creative, educational outlets to underprivileged children – is shown across two tables forming a rough ‘L’ shape.

“I was charmed by the way they moved with the camera: carefree, raw and unaware of the baggage that came with being a photographer,” Hura says of his time with Anjali House. These images are wonderfully unabashed and intuitive.

One of the show’s most striking features is the lack of any conventional labels that would otherwise disrupt its delicate hierarchy of visuals and texts. Hura is present here, in scrawled wall texts and photographic notations interspersed throughout.

Bunu Dhungana, from the series Confrontations (2017). Archival pigment print, 30.5 cm x 45.7 cm. © Bunu Dhungana. Nida Mehboob, Shadow Lives (2020-ongoing). Archival pigment print, 23 cm x 15 cm. © Nida Mehboob.

“Growing Like A Tree lays out an incomplete blueprint of my experience of community and friendship, where photography forms the nucleus of this large and pulsating nervous system that entangles our lives together,” he says.

The Nepal Picture Library, which occupies a large swathe of wall space, documents the struggles of the country’s underground communist movement through the activism of Sushila Shrestha and Shanta Manavi. At the end of this wall is Bunu Dhungana’s Confrontations series (2017), which grapples with social visibility through the colour red, catapulting the viewer into semi-darkness towards three ephemeral, inward-looking audio-visual works.

One of these pieces, Sarker Protick’s Origin (2016), shows the transition of globular red, in and out of human scale. The piece evokes a spirit of image-making that is felt throughout the space.

Growing Like A Tree may very well help visitors reconsider the singular, solitary outlook that artists and practitioners often adopt. This illusion of a creative vacuum is dismantled by Hura, who likens an archive and by extension the exhibition itself to an endlessly flowing stream that belies demarcation. “I’ve always thought of the archive to be a containment. But maybe it’s more like a valve that enables flows passing through. Like Dubai. Like everyone else who is part of this show,” he says.

Growing Like A Tree’s approach to both community and exhibition-building signals a deepening of roots for Ishara Art Foundation; a definite step forward for lens-based showcases in the UAE, amidst so much that is impersonally personal.