Pia Copper
In Dubai Isabelle Van Den Eynde (IVDE) Gallery recently hosted What Lies Beneath, curated by the enfant terrible of Iranian art, Rokni Haerizadeh. The show features impressive emerging talents, including Niyaz Azadkhah, whose videos feature women that, whether clothed in chadors and fiddling with prayer beads, pole dancing, or buying fancy lingerie in the underground markets, are as remarkably playful as they are iconoclastic. The brightly-colored, ethnic-inspired tapestries of Iman Raad – the calligraphy reads, “Our cow doesn’t milk, but pisses plenty” – also sets the dual tone of this exhibition.
My favourites comprised Mona Hakmi’s "Heroic Deeds” series; the small pastel-coloured canvasses reminded me of many a taxi ride through Tehran, a visual mélange of billboards, passers-by and monuments dedicated to martyrs. The pastel tones of Hakmi’s paintings softens her depiction of Tehran, a sometimes cruel and contradicting city, built of both love and hate intertwined.
Amir Hossein Etemad, Founder and Owner of Tehran’s Etemad Gallery, will open his space next month during Art Dubai, when he will feature a selection of British contemporary art, an entirely new concept for both the Dubai and the al Quoz art sectors.
In other exhibitions around the city, the Farjam Collection on display at the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) is a smaller scale gem, featuring works by many of the iconic Middle Eastern and Arabic artists including Ahmed Moustafa, Fateh El Moudarres, among others. The exhibition catalogue Nujoom is a great way for an international audience to acquaint themselves with the old and new names of the Arab art scene and to better understand the unique spiritual and cultural elements that continue to inspire them.
Between the Lines is the debut show at DIFC’s new branch of XVA Gallery, a Bastakiya oldie. Interesting and at times amusing, especially Morteza Zahedi and Mohsen Ahmadvand’s cartoonish reflections on the Middle East, the show promises an array of contemporary art and Middle Eastern culture “inside” jokes. Also noteworthy are Al Braithwaite’s handmake book entitled Museum no. 1 Hizbollah’s Caviar which compares American war lingo with Iraqi war lingo (Bush’s generals vs. Saddam), and seems to prophesize recent revolutions in Lybia, Bahrain, Egypt and elsewhere on the Middle East map.
This years’ highlight was Lara Baladi’s Perfumes & Bazaar, The Garden of Allah, which sold for $34,000. The second highest selling lot was From the Market by Kuwaiti artist Khazaal Al Qaffas, which sold for $28,000, followed by Ramin Haerizadah’s I heard Your Sound of Revolution at $27,000. The Kuwait artists were the exhibition’s newest players, and their success proved that more and more up and coming art is being made in the Gulf. Names to watch include Sami Mohammed, Hind Akil, Fareed Abdul, Ghadah Alkandari, Ibrahim Ismail, Ibrahim Habib and Rania Abdulhassan.
