Curated by Sophie Mayuko Arni
Organized and presented by NYUAD Art Gallery and NYUAD Arts Center
Venue: NYU Abu Dhabi Project Space, New York University Abu Dhabi Saadiyat Campus, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Exhibition Website
East-East: UAE meets Japan
East-East: UAE meets Japan explores work by four young voices of the Emirati art scene through cross-cultural interactions with the arts of Japan. The exhibition draws parallels between Japanese and Emirati culture as both societies, steeped in tradition, are propelled into a postmodern age while striving to maintain a balance between their cultural heritage and a curated futurism.
East-East: UAE meets Japan, curated by Sophie Arni. NYU Abu Dhabi Project Space, October 2016. Photo courtesy NYUAD Art Gallery.
Why always look to the West, when we can look East?
East-East: UAE meets Japan explores work by four young voices of the Emirati art scene through cross-cultural interactions with the arts of Japan. The exhibition draws parallels between Japanese and Emirati culture as both societies, steeped in tradition, are propelled into a postmodern age while striving to maintain a balance between their cultural heritage and a curated futurism. East-East challenges and expands the meaning of “global art” as understood by artists, curators, and viewers in an increasingly interdependent world.
This thematic dichotomy will explore the inherent tension between tradition and modernity – Nōh and Bedouin mythology, spirituality and repetition, Zen Buddhism and the desert’s connection to materiality.
The curator, Sophie Mayuko Arni, is an NYUAD student in her senior year. She explains: “I wanted to break the overused and overheard ‘East-West’ terminology by turning it on its head. Why always look to the West, when we can look East?”
Introduction
East-East: UAE meets Japan explores the ways young voices of the Emirati art scene choose to regard cross-cultural contact with the arts of Japan. The exhibition aims to draw parallels between Japanese and Emirati culture as both traditional societies have moved rapidly into global capitalist postmodernism. The exhibition serves to show both cultures' attempts to keep a balance between heritage and futurism.
The 4 artists featured for the exhibition are: Khalid Mezaina, Al Anood al Obaidly, Amna al Maamari, Ahmed Alanzi. Works explore the similarity in both countries’ fine balance between rooted tradition and expanding modernity. The four chosen themes read as follows: 'Images of a Floating World', 'Modernity and Materiality', 'Craft and Repetition' and 'Costume and Pride'. Themes as Nōh and Bedouin mythology, spirituality and repetition, weaving and knotting, Zen Buddhism and the desert’s connection to materiality, traditional and ceremonial dress, are contrasted to overwhelming consumption typified by plastic materials in such chain stores as Daiso. The exhibition as such combines the Emirati artist's established styles with Japanese stylistic elements. Four years ahead of Dubai and Tokyo hosting the Expo and Olympics respectively, the occasion seems fitting to celebrate these two cultures together to further solidify their place on the global art map.
Pictures of a Floating World
Khalid Mezaina (b. 1985, Dubai) is an Emirati designer and illustrator whose work for East-East: UAE meets Japan exudes a sense of playfulness and ease reminiscent of the ‘floating world’ of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints from the Edo period (1603-1868).
The earliest of these prints were conceived in 18th century Edo, present-day Tokyo, as visual escape from everyday life in the new capital of the military shogun regime. The emerging kabuki theater scene and the outfits of feminine bijin teahouse maids were the subjects of early ukiyo-e prints, as these iconic characters symbolized the new urban culture of Edo. Mezaina took the challenge to export the spirit of Edo-period prints to a 21st century Emirati environment.
One theme kept throughout his series is a notion of playfulness and theatricality. Maiden (2016) features a woman drawn in an ukiyo-e-inspired style wearing a kimono and the burqa. The soft pink color scheme and figure suspended against a blank background are reminiscent of early Edo style prints, such as Suzuki Harunobu’s Young Woman Jumping from the Kiyomizu Temple Balcony (1765), a great source of influence for Mezaina’s prints for this series. Myth (2016) features a mythical woman with the two indigenous fauna symbolically central to Emirati cultural traditions, the falcon and the gazelle. In the same way ukiyo-e artists created dreamy images of a new kind of urban Japanese society, Mezaina's prints stand as images of a world floating on top of current and past Emirati cultural icons.
Modernity and Materiality
Al Anood Al Obaidly (b. 1990, Abu Dhabi) tackles the issue of our lost relationship to overwhelming, mass-produced and mass-consumed materiality.
Al Obaidly’s sources most of her materials from Daiso, a Japanese company specializing in cheaply made plastic goods with branches worldwide including in the UAE. Keeping in line with her practice as a found-object artist, she viewed this exhibition as an opportunity to work with plastic, a new medium for her. She also developed her works under with the Japanese aesthetic theory of wabi-sabi, which emphasizes the ideals of imperfection and beauty in simplicity and incompleteness, over the perfection achieved with machine-made production.
In Shelf (Daiso #1) (2016), Al Obaidly rejects the relationship to materiality prevalent in contemporary Japanese and Emirati societies by deconstructing and reconstructing objects ‘found’ in Daiso on Yas Mall, Abu Dhabi. The unproportioned and unfinished quality to some of these objects is presented in such a way to beautify their transience and imperfection. 3D collages (Daiso #2) (2016) also celebrates objects and materials’ beauty freed from their artificial branded make-up, using a minimalist approach to negative space for both the artist and the viewer. Al Obaidly’s process for East-East: UAE meets Japan is documented in her Process Book for the East-East Exhibition (2016) which provides the research and references to many Japanese postwar conceptual artists, including the likes of Yoko Ono (b. 1933) in advocating wabi-sabi ability to persist in tandem with global capitalism.
Craft and Repetition
Through knotting and mark-making, Amna Al Maamari (b. 1990, Abu Dhabi) utilizes the act of weaving threads in order to explore her own Emirati heritage, while adventuring into the theoretical territory of Zen Japanese philosophy.
The repetition of knotting in Al Maamari’s work is influenced by the sadu weaving method, the traditional form of weaving practiced by Bedouin women in the long history of this region. In parallel to this influence, Al Maamari’s appreciation for presence and repetition was influenced by the compositions of Zen gardens. Al Maamari’s work attempts to measure time and space through the knots she ties around each panel, as the artist hopes to paint a metaphor of stillness with the panels’ calculated positioning on the ground.
Rhythm (2016), a floor installation in pink and green thread knotted around plaster panels, evokes a rock garden with its highly calculated yet minimal floor design. The o-mikuji culture of wrapping one’s wishes onto Shinto temples’ gridded walls also provided Al Maamari with a new perspective on mark-making immaterial thoughts onto physical space. Knots (2016), a series of canvases incorporating hand-tied knots on their surface, refers to the abstract shapes that can be obtained with elaborate weaving and knotting techniques on a two-dimensional surface. Using exclusively pink and green, she references the colors of early benizuri-e Japanese printmaking, with their natural beni pink and green pigments only available at the time.
Costume and Pride
Ahmed Alanzi’s (b. 1985, Abu Dhabi) singular work in this exhibition, Kibimosht (2016), combines the ideas of national pride and traditional costume.
The sculptural garment celebrates the craft and skillset required to make such fine garments. Kibimosht stands as a fusion between the bisht and the kimono: the former being the traditional long cloak, usually made of brown, beige or black wool, that men from the Arabian Gulf region and Iraq wear over their kandura for special occasions, the latter being still worn in Japan, both by men and women, only for special occasions such as weddings, formal traditional events and tea ceremonies.
Kibimosht takes influence especially from the yukata, the more casual summer male kimono. Made of cotton rather than the traditional silk of finely-made kimonos, the yukata, dubbed the most affordable Japanese traditional costume, is argued to be a very practical option for those wishing to wear traditional dress in everyday life. It has been a great center of focus in contemporary debates on encouraging the Japanese population to start wearing more of their traditional dress. On the other hand, most factory-made wool bisht fabric available in the UAE for tailoring ministerial bishts carry the tag ‘Made in Japan’.
The brown wool fabric used for Kibimosht, bought and tailored by the artist in Dubai, is thus interestingly also made in Japan which makes Kibimosht a piece made entirely of Japanese fabric. As a hybrid piece, it was sewed together with gold embroidery in the UAE combining the luxury and legacy of the bisht with the simplicity and eternal appeal of the yukata. One could understand this marriage between these two fabric styles as an alternative to counter the gradual Westernization or the underlying exotification of Japanese and Emirati traditional wear.
– Sophie Mayuko Arni
November 2016, Abu Dhabi
Press
NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery official release
NYU Abu Dhabi Events official release
Abu Dhabi World, 20-26/10/2016, print and web
Al Ittihad,23/10/16, web and print
Magpie, 30/10/2016, web
Gulf News, 18/10/16, print
The National, event listings 23/10/2016, print
Abu Dhabi Events, 18/10/2016, web
Krossbreed by Khalid Mezaina, 21/10/2016, web
Artist Biographies
Ahmed Al Anzi (b. 1984, Abu Dhabi) is a fashion designer, artist, curator and cultural critic with a special focus on sustainability and eco-design. His work deals with the perception of ceremonial wear in the Gulf region. He has been involved in the thriving Dubai fashion industry and Abu Dhabi’s art scene, receiving in 2014, a Cultural Fellowship from Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation (ADMAF). In 2015, he co-curated The Secret Life of Date Palms, an exhibition organized by Brownbook, as well as acted as Cultural Ambassador at the UAE Pavilion at EXPO Milan (2015). He has been invited to moderate a number of talks about the Emirati creative industry, including the DiA (Dialogue in Architecture) organized by The Tryptic Note in Dubai (2015), and the Riwaq Al Fikr as part of the Abu Dhabi Festival organized by ADMAF (2016). He studied Environmental Science and Marine Biology at Auckland University of Technology. He defines himself as a ‘Contemporary Bedouin’.
Anood Al Obaidly (b. 1990, Abu Dhabi) is from Abu Dhabi and is a 2013 graduate of the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises at Zayed University, where she earned a BA in Visual Arts. She works with mixed media and found materials, exploring outdoor spaces in the Al Bahia area of Abu Dhabi. Her most recent exhibition, Turning Point took place at Tashkeel, Dubai in 2014. In the same year, she was awarded the prestigious Sheikha Salama Artist in Residence Award, which allowed her to work for one year with visiting faculty from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Amna al Maamari (b. 1990, Abu Dhabi) graduated from Zayed University of College of Art and Creative Enterprises with a B.A. Visual Arts in 2013. She developed her interests in both drawing and sculpture when she was a student. Following her graduation, Al Maamari joined the prestigious Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Fellowship Program in partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design for a year-long professional studio practice. Al Maamari is driven by rhythm and aims to capture stillness in fragments.
Khalid Mezaina (b. 1985, Dubai) is a graduate candidate in Visual Communications from the American University of Sharjah, Khalid Mezaina entered the art world through full-time placements in art organizations, including the Sharjah Art Foundation and works currently at Tashkeel in Dubai. Khalid launched ‘Krossbreed’ in 2010, which is an independent, interdisciplinary studio and brand, involved in design and illustration. He is a graduate of the 2014-2015 edition of The Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Fellowship (SEAF) Program. His art has been featured in regional and international exhibitions including Past Forward: Contemporary Art from the Emirates (2014); Emirati Expressions IV: Conventions of Art (2015); and Portrait of a Nation (Abu Dhabi Festival, 2016).