Curated by Sophie Mayuko Arni
Organized by Global Art Daily Agency
Presented by The Third Line Shop
Venue: The Third Line Shop, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, UAE
Exhibition Website
Presented by The Third Line Shop – The Third Line gallery's in-house shop focusing on local and regional makers – in collaboration with Global Art Daily – a digital publication and agency amplifying the UAE’s contemporary art scene with multicultural perspectives – Mubeen, City as Archive is an installation materializing commercial and utility-led design methodologies to celebrate small businesses that make up the vibrancy of Dubai.
Mubeen Calligraphy is a small advertising studio on an unmarked street in Satwa, Dubai. Everyday, Mubeen’s designer Faisal Abdu (b. 1988, Kottakkal, Kerala) creates the vibrant shop front graphics that give neighborhoods like Satwa, Al Quoz, and Deira their unmistakable character.
Artist Christopher Joshua Benton (b.1988, Portsmouth, Virginia), formerly based in Satwa, has worked with Faisal for several years. Together, they connect the street market and the art market, illuminating the invisible mechanisms of labor and production behind the glowing lights and psychedelic graphics that line Dubai’s most-loved shopping districts.
Featuring direct designs from Mubeen’s archive, the installation takes inspiration from Deepak Unnikrishnan’s list poem “Pravasis?” (Malayalam for “expatriate”) in Temporary People (2017):
Tea Boy...Barber...Fishmonger...Cobbler...Fruit Hawker...Chicken Decapitator...Dressmaker...Shawarma Slicer...Caar Mechanic...Cafeteria Worker...Sculpture Mover...
These are the jobs that help the city run–worked by people whose presence is marked by transience.
The lightboxes of Mubeen, City as Archive highlight the material and symbolic values of commodification – stripping down the visual vernacular of the city into emoji-like icons. From the mind of one designer to the vector that is Dubai, these lightboxes carry traces of a homeland, as Mubeen’s design choices interweave personal and cultural identity, territorializing and imprinting themselves upon the city's fabric.
Artist Biography
Christopher Joshua Benton is an American based in Abu Dhabi and Cambridge, working in artistic research and installation. His exhibitions have been presented at museums, biennials and art fairs around the world including the Fikra Graphic Design Biennial (Sharjah, UAE), Abu Dhabi Art: Beyond Emerging (Venice Biennale) and Dubai Design Week. Further projects have been exhibited at Jameel Arts Centre (Dubai, UAE); Warehouse421 (Abu Dhabi, UAE); Aicon Contemporary (NYC, USA); and BLOCKHOUSE (Tokyo, Japan), among others. His art and research have been televised on the BBC and CNN, and in print on Dezeen, GQ, and Architectural Digest. Christopher is a graduate of University of Georgia and has completed programs and fellowships with University of Oxford as a Gilman Scholar and Rhode Island School of Design. In 2023, he will graduate from his master's degree in Art, Culture, and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology through the generous support of the Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation.