421 presents Four New Major Exhibitions That Support Emerging Artists from the MENASA Region
Part of the Winter 2023 Program, the exhibitions include solo and group exhibitions exploring memory, remembrance, time, and language.
Installation view: Rand Abdul Jabbar. ليكن مذكوراً (May it be remembered), 2022. Video projection with audio and mud brick sculptures. Duration: 7 minutes. And The Mirrors Are Many
On view until May 8, 2023
421, Mina Zayed
Abu Dhabi
Mahshid Rafiei: Of Mythic Proportions
On view until May 8, 2023
421, Mina Zayed
Abu Dhabi
Round 4: 100/100 Best Hundred Arabic Posters
On view until March 5, 2023
Outdoor Plaza
421, Mina Zayed
Abu Dhabi
On view from March 3 to 5, 2023
Art Dubai
We are pleased to present four major exhibitions as part of our Winter 2023 Program. The exhibitions on view support the work of emerging artists and practitioners from the MENASA region and explore memory, remembrance, time, and language. The exhibitions include And The Mirrors Are Many, a group exhibition that is the result of the 421 Curatorial Development Program; Mahshid Rafiei: Of Mythic Proportions, the first solo exhibition for artist Mahshid Rafiei; Round 4: 100/100 Best Hundred Arabic Posters; and Biography of a Passage, which will be presented at Art Dubai 2023.
Curated by Dania Al Tamimi, A Biography of a Passage, that will be presented at Art Dubai from 3rd to 5th of March, 2023, and will feature the works of eight emerging artists from across the region. The exhibition seeks to de-essentalize our understanding of time and explores the distortion of memories, using materials and elements from the land and the sea; detangles the physical body and the psyche through its relation to the environment; and investigate contrasts between the infinity of time and the finite bodies that pass through it.
More information about the exhibitions is provided below.
And The Mirrors Are Many
Curated by Mona Al-Jadir
Part of the 421 Curatorial Development Program
Gallery 2
February 5 to May 8, 2023
And The Mirrors Are Many investigates institutional repositories of memory–the museum, the memorial, and the archive–and poses the questions: why do we remember, and how? By examining these contemporary modes of remembering, the exhibition considers the relationship between remembrance and history. It reflects on the aesthetics, techniques, provenance, and language that are deployed in the process of memory-making.
Taking its title from the Mahmoud Darwish poem, On the Last Evening on This Earth, the exhibition reflects on the persistence of catastrophic events that continue to inscribe upon the present through traces, armatures, and echoes.
Recent global demands for the restitution and reparation of displaced artifacts, as well as the rising calls for the decolonization of museums around the world, including the need for the inclusion of forgotten and ignored histories, means that these institutions are now facing an existential crisis; some might argue that they are struggling to adjust to change while searching for their place in the future. As the region enters what seems like a future-focused cultural-production boom, it is essential for individuals and institutions to collectively interrogate these questions that influence our understanding of the past, the present and dreams of the future.
Featuring annotations spread across the gallery spaces and new commissions, And The Mirrors Are Many spans a range of mediums including sculpture, video, and installation to photography, printmaking, and textiles. Artists participating in the exhibition include Rand Abdul Jabbar, Nasser Alzayani, Maitha Abdalla, Sarah Smarrazzo, Emii Alrai, Vikram Divecha, Rohini Devasher, Mirella Salamé, Moza Almatrooshi, Hadeyeh Badri, Reem Al Menhali, Dima Srouji and Fatima Uzdenova.
And The Mirrors Are Many is curated by Mona Al-Jadir and emerged from a year-long journey as part of the 421 Curatorial Development Program in collaboration with The Bombay Institute for Critical Analysis and Research (BICAR) and with mentorship from curator Sabih Ahmed.
Mahshid Rafiei: Of Mythic Proportions
Part of the Artistic Development Program
Gallery 1
February 5 to May 8, 2023
Mahshid Rafiei’s first solo exhibition, Of Mythic Proportions, is the result of the 421 Artistic Development Program. Featuring a large-scale installation of newly commissioned works that take up the entire space in Gallery 1, the exhibition explores the myth of origin and the aesthetic processes of its conservation. Of Mythic Proportions includes sculptures and sound pieces where elements are intentionally hidden to offer a deceptive reading and ask us to consider how art provides a stand-in for what might be missing. Through this play on illusion and perception, Rafiei suggests that illusion is not the antithesis of truth but a co-conspirator, guiding us in a world of loss.
Rafiei’s work draws on long periods of research into fields such as language, literary theory, and material histories. This exhibition emerged from her research into the UAE’s conservation efforts and the relationship between heritage and nationhood. Of Mythic Proportions presents a body of work that meditates on how aesthetic processes of transformation operate in these tangible and intangible methods of conservation, and how they manifest in our sensory environment.
Of Mythic Proportions is the inaugural presentation of the 2023 edition of the Artistic Development Program, which is organized in collaboration with pedagogical partner The Institute for Emerging Art.
Round 4: 100/100: Hundred Best Arabic Posters Exhibition
February 5 to March 5, 2023
This year marks over eight years of partnership between 421 and 100/100: Hundred Best Arabic Posters. The 100/100: Hundred Best Arabic Posters was started by a group of academics and students from Cairo that features the Arab world’s visual culture through selecting and highlighting the best Arabic posters from the region.
Supported by 421, this year’s edition of the 100/100: Hundred Best Arabic Posters competition drew thousands of submissions from over 30 countries. The selected design entries, which are part of the 4th edition of the competition, are currently on view at 421 until March 5, 2023.
An exercise in experimental crowd-sourced design, the exhibition presents 100 design-focused posters and celebrates the diverse cultural aesthetics and rich creative landscape of the region. It demonstrates the plasticity of the Arabic language in its lively relationship to design, as it molds itself structurally around shifting design dictations. A marker for culture, heritage, and history, the exhibition acts as a critical archive of Arab-born design and type.
A Biography of a Passage
Curated by Dania Al Tamimi
Art Dubai
March 3 to 5, 2023
Biography of a Passage is an offsite exhibition presented by 421 at the 2023 edition of Art Dubai. Curated by Dania Al Tamimi, the exhibition features the work of eight emerging artists from across the region and seeks to de-essentialize our understanding of time.
Time is used to quantify, measure or compare the duration of events or the intervals between them. It is perceived as an indefinite continuous chronology of occurrences in the past, present and future, regarded as a whole. How can time be defined, if not bound by our constructed notions of it as a linear and quantifiable unit of temporal sequence?
Time is observed through the evidence of its passing. Biography of a Passage draws on time as a binding element in the biography of objects, the active archiving of our lives, and the solidification of our collective experiences. The participating artists explore the distortion of memories, using materials and elements from the land and the sea; detangle the physical body and the psyche through its relation to the environment; and investigate contrasts between the infinity of time and the finite bodies that pass through it.
The tension between being and remembering is pivotal to the research that leads this exhibition. The works displayed examine the poetics of our relationship with the elements around us and reflect on the shifts and interchanges that are in constant motion and that are dependent on the cycles that mark them. Beyond the materiality of media presented here, the works in this exhibition take on the role of witness through documentation, where observations attempt to measure the unmeasurable and imagine a multilayered reality beyond our sense of perception. Participating artists are Doha Aboelezz, Liane Al Ghusain, Sara Al Haddad, Dhabiya Al Rumaithi, Nasser Alzayani, Poras Dhakan, Tilika D’Souza, Victoria Parrucci, and Ayman Zedani.
Winter 2023 Program
Running in tandem with the exhibitions, And The Mirrors Are Many and Mahshid Rafiei: Of Mythic Proportions, the Winter 2023 Program: RE/COLLECT THIS responds to the ideas presented in the exhibitions and offers an opportunity to collectively reflect on the ways that eurocentric, hegemonic methods of remembering can influence collective self-perception, and ultimately, how we imagine and build our futures. Audiences can attend artist-led talks, workshops, and performances; homecooking sessions; cultural tours and excursions; professional development courses; a three-day film program; and a performance symposium, all offering new perspectives on the formation of alternative ways of remembering.
For a full program schedule, visit this link