Abu Dhabi Art has announced the curator of this year’s Beyond: Emerging Artists programme, as well as the selected artists.
Lorenzo Fiaschi, co-founder of GALLERIA CONTINUA, has been selected as curator for this section, which aims to provide a platform for emerging artists from the UAE by commissioning works to be exhibited during Abu Dhabi Art.
The artists, selected from more than 100 proposals by Fiaschi, the Abu Dhabi Art organizing committee, as well as a group of individual supporters of the arts in the emirate are: Fatma Al Ali, a multidisciplinary artist whose work for the fair will examine societal power dynamics in the region through historical archives and practices, Dina Nazmi Khorchid, whose textile-based practice seeks to root and reconstruct memory, a key feature of her ongoing Land, Untitled project which she will be expanding on for Abu Dhabi Art, and Simrin Mehra Agarwal, whose research-based work Subterraneous will delve into the artificial reefs and wrecks of war around the UAE.
The artists will showcase their work from 20 to 24 November at Abu Dhabi Art at Manarat al Saadiyat, with the exhibition subsequently moving to a new international location following the end of the fair.
Abu Dhabi Art Director Dyala Nusseibeh commented: “During the selection process we were struck by how analytical and thoughtful each of the chosen proposals were, across diverse practices, unpicking issues that ranged from conflict and war to our relationship with the environment and the impact of colonialism on indigenous plant life in the Gulf. Together the commissioned artists navigate utopian or dystopian imagined landscapes, in often playful, often piercing ways, creating the space for new histories of the region to emerge.”
