News

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
Organized by Kiki Teshome
Until 16 May, 2021

Carnegie Museum of Art’s Online Exhibition Series features Rokni Haerizadeh’s silent rotoscoped painted video titled Reign of Winter (2012–2013). The film which was exhibited as part of the 2013 Carnegie International, uses footage from the 2011 wedding procession of Kate Middleton and Prince William. The artist layered components of the footage with fantastical forms and anthropomorphic figures, inviting viewers to consider how mass media influence our perceptions and interpretations of current events, traditions, and empire.

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Sharjah Art Foundation
The Flying Saucer, Sharjah
Curated by Omar Kholeif
12 March - 15 June 2021

Mohammed Kazem participates in Unsettled Objects, a special exhibition featuring major new acquisitions and rarely seen works from the Sharjah Art Foundation's collection. The artists and works on display explore the hidden stories behind art and its history.

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Roundtable 2: Sharjah Biennial in Retrospect
Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah
5:15 - 7:15 pm
12 March 2021

Unravelling the Present takes an expanded
ten-day online and on-site format, the program explores the past 30 years of the Sharjah Biennial. Mohammed Kazem is a panel speaker as part of Roundtable 2: Sharjah Biennial in Retrospect. The panelists in this roundtable, who played a crucial role in the establishment of the Sharjah Biennial, will reflect on their experience, offering historical and critical feedback on the conception and evolution of the Biennial, from its inception in 1993 to the launch of a new approach in 2003.

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New Museum, New York
Ongoing

The New Museum’s Screen Series Online presents the trio’s video Dance after the Revolution, from Tehran to L.A., and back (2020). The video draws from rich and varied histories of Persian and Arabic dance, and in particular, the figure of exiled Iranian dancer, choreographer, and entertainer Mohammad Khordadian now residing in Los Angeles, became known as the “King of Dance,” incorporating humor and bending gender roles, inspiring men to use movements traditionally reserved for women.

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Centro Galego de Arte Contemporânea, Spain
Curated by Santiago Olmo and Fernando Gómez de la Cuesta
Until 13 June 2021

This group exhibition features works by women artists from very different backgrounds. In diverse ways, address the power of pre-established images, of all those that manipulate and condition women, or that limit, condemn, censure and self-censor their voice.

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Institut français, Berlin's art space LES VITRINES

23 January – 28 March 2021

The curator Liberty Adrien is pleased to present the exhibition “Corps (in)visibles” by the Franco-Egyptian artist Hoda Tawakol at the new contemporary art space LES VITRINES of the Institut français Berlin. While her hand-dyed, colourful and intimately sewn textile sculptures clearly signpost questions of women’s labour, Hoda Tawakol also interrogates the wider yet more insidious forces (social, biological, cultural) impacting the female body. For the 24-meter-long windows, Hoda Tawakol has created a unique watercolour mural and a series of textile works.

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Art Dubai Portraits | Online Exhibition

January 20 2021

Mohammed Kazem’s Art Dubai Portrait Exhibition, The Shape of Everyday, features works from the early 1990s through today that are emblematic of the Emirati conceptual artist’s oeuvre. Three of the artist’s career-defining bodies of works—his seminal Directions series, his ‘scratchings’ on paper, and his visualisation of the materiality of light and sound, are united in a show where conceptual profundity meets frank irreverence.

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NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery

20 January - 10 July 2021

In this exhibition, nine artists and art collectives employ technology for self-expression and self-fashioning. In making visible both the restrictions and the freedoms of digital culture, they explore how identities and histories are created, transformed, or invented. The artists appropriate technologies to narrate, alter, augment, or invent their identities and histories.The visitor is invited to travel a branching, non-linear, virtual path through works by artists who explore the transformation of individual identity that digital tools and internet connectivity have co-produced in our lives.

The show will include the trio’s film From March to April...2020 made during lockdown as a response to the coronavirus crisis.⁠

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ARTISSIMA UNPLUGGED

Frenetic Standstill

Digital catalogue

5 November - 9 December, 2020

Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde is pleased to announce participation in the digital initiatives of Artissima Unplugged with a selection of works by Hassan Sharif, the collective of Ramin and Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, Hoda Tawakol, and Raed Yassin.

Curated by Ilaria Bonacossa, the overarching theme, Frenetic Standstill, prompts reflection on the concept of acceleration as opposed to inertia, and speaks to the increasing urgency to change our paradigms in response to present crises.

Artissima 2021

November 2020

The Absent Album (2010 - 2015) by Raed Yassin, recent recipient of the first edition of the Tosetti Value award for Photography. Yassin will take part in Perspective: The Economy of Images with an exhibition project held at the headquarters of Tosetti Value in 2021

The Absent Album (2015) is a series of blown-up polaroid photographs of scenes from Egyptian films. Acting as replacement mechanisms, the shots recreate family settings and memorable moments of the artist's personal life. Throughout the duration of the civil war in Lebanon, he and his family were forced to move from place to place, which often resulted in the loss or destruction of cherished family photo albums. In this desperate situation, Egyptian cinema transformed itself into a factory of images, which the artist used to manufacture and fill-in the gaps of his paperless memories. Here, the polaroid behaves like the instant medium typical in familial settings, but it also simultaneously contradicts that intimate quality with mass-produced cinematic subjects.

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SCAD Museum, Savannah

8 October 2020 – 31 January 2021

The exhibition on artists collaborations ‘I Put a Spell on You’ at the SCAD Art Museum in Georgia, Savannah. Organized by guest curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath who are themselves a collaborative curatorial duo. ⁠The show presents 11 distinct models of collective practice, highlighting the complex, co-authored process of artistic production. Featuring works by the Dubai based collective Ramin, Rokni Haerrizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian.⁠.

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Malmö Konsthall, Sweden

Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi and Mats Stjernstedt
Until 10 January, 2021

The second European iteration of Hassan Sharif: I Am The Single Work Artist at Malmö Konsthall, Sweden, travels from Sharjah Art Foundation (2018) and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2020). The exhibition includes just over 150 pieces, which range from early satirical cartoons and documentation of the performances in the Hatta desert to sculptural works that were produced in the last year of his life. The emphasis in the exhibition is on sculptures and objects. The exhibition will be on view at the musée d’art moderne et contemporain (MAMC), Saint-Étienne, in spring 2021.

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3 September - 13 December

Online opening: 2 September, 7PM CEST

Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde is thrilled to announce the first solo exhibition in Germany by the Dubai-based collective of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt entitled Either he's dead or my watch has stopped. Groucho Marx (while getting the patient's pulse), borrowing from the film classic A Day at the Races (1937) by the Marx Brothers.

Curated by Dr. Martina Weinhart, the expansive installation debuts a monumental floor painting created especially for the SCHIRN – a dense web of detailed narratives and references supplemented by sculptures and video works, such as We Are the Eighth of a Kind (2014), in collab­o­ra­tion with the artist and musi­cian Lonnie Holley, From Sea to Dawn (2016), and the new produc­tion If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose the Third(2020). The base and center of the trio’s artistic work is their house in Dubai. In the process of living and working together, they create artworks and exhibitions frequently in an exchange with friends and other artists. In line with this principle, the exhibition also includes two textile sculptures by Franco-Egyptian artist Hoda Tawakol.

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Online platform

19 - 26 May, 2020

Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde is pleased to participate in not cancelled: Dubai, a digital art week with a scheduled program of live events and resources to support the artists' voices and to break and/or sustain the rhythm of the presentations. 

We thank Vikram Divecha (b.1977, Beirut) and :mentalKLINIK composed of Yasemin Baydar (b.1972, Istanbul) and Birol Demir (b.1967, Ankara), who have reshuffled the deck from New York and Brussels, where they are based, and for embracing these complex times in which we live. 

We're happy to share Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian’s new video From March to April... 2020 (available on Youtube) along with some of artists' notes below: 

"The video is a record of a period of time, working and living in quarantine (which we have always been privileged to do) that is made casually with our phones on our daily activities/routines. It borrows verses from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and references Iranian poet and film director Forough Farrokhzad’s documentary entitled The House Is Black. 
The video is trying to show the transient moments of life while the world is on pause and in solidarity over covid-19. 
The video is an invitation to be vigilant. Our aim is to show time different from duration - duration is finite but time is like a third path, a product of the imagination.”

For the full video, click here

22nd Biennale of Sydney, Powerhouse Museum
Until 8 June 2020

As part of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney Entitled NIRIN, the collective collaborate on a new exhibition using a selection of artefact's from the Powerhouse Museum’s collection. Incorporating and disorganizing objects, the artists make a sweeping arc across themes of grief, the body and healing. The installation also includes video work by Javad Azimi and Hamid Hosseini.

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Antananarivo, Madagascar
8 February - 26 April 2020

:mentalKLINIK participate in the first multi-disciplinary exhibition organized by The Art and Culture Endowment Fund HY entitled Here We Reach all the Dreams of the World. The exhibition inauguratesthe fund’s new Art Platform HY which will be dedicated to enhance the value of art and culture in Madagascar through artistic residencies and cultural exchanges.

Musée Régional d'Art Contemporain (MRAC) Occitanie/Pyrénées-Méditerranée, France
Until 19 April 2020

For his first personal exhibition in a French museum, Abdelkader Benchamma invests three rooms of the MRACin an immersive installation which operates a network of echoes and resonances, playing with the codes of figuration and abstraction. These organic flows bring to mind the movement of natural elements, like air, clouds, earth, space. 
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KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi and Krist Gruijthuijsen
Until 19 July

KW Institute for Contemporary Art presents the first major retrospective of the Emirati artist Hassan Sharif (1951–2016) in Europe. Sharif was one of the most influential artists from the Middle East of the twentieth century. He is considered a leading pioneer of Conceptual Art and new experimental artistic approaches that reconceived a conventional understanding of time, space, form, and social interactions, and which continue to resonate significantly with the younger generation to this day.
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Witte De With, Rotterdam
Until 19 July 2020

This exhibition explores the immigration of form. It regards a cultural product that is as much the result of local traditions as it is a cosmopolitan artifact. The show invites you to consider a blue-and-white ceramic piece as both a vessel and a port. It gathers artworks in different media made by contemporary artists from the Americas, Asia, and Europe. 
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Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manilla 
6 February – 12 April 2020

Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian participate inConstructions of Truths. The exhibition asks us to reflect on the truths of images that populate our everyday lives and how these affect how we view the world. Artists included in the show present work using the projected image as a metaphor for how images are projected on us as viewers and how artists, through formal, aesthetic and narrative spaces, question these constructions.

Constructions of Truths is presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila in partnership with the Han Nefkens Foundation and in collaboration with Edouard Malingue Gallery, Kurimanzutto, The Ruya Foundation and Silverlens.
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The Corner, Whitman-Walker, Washington D.C
Until 29 March 2020

This exhibition is a call to action with over 100 unique works of art by over 100 leading visual artists that is organized by the artists and activists Mary Ellen Carroll and Lucas Michael. Each work incorporates, or represents an actual account from a child who was separated from their family and detained by the U.S. government. 
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21,39 Jeddah Arts
Organized by the Saudi Art Council, Curated by Maya El Khalil
Until 28 April 2020

Manal AlDowayan and Mohammed Kazem participate in the seventh edition of 21,39 Jeddah Arts titled I Love You Urgently.
The art initiative is a call to action in response to the environmental emergency from the specificity of a local context. At a time when Saudi Arabia is undergoing a rapid transformation, the council called on local and international artists, architects, designers and thinkers to seek tangible solutions and to formulate alternative and symbiotic ways to inhabit our planet.
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Booth C44
Palexpo, Geneva

Preview: Wednesday, 29 January
30 January - 2 February 

We are pleased to announce our participation in the upcoming edition of Art Genéve, with works by HASSAN SHARIF, ROKNI HAERIZADEH, :mentalKLINIK and MOHAMMED KAZEM.

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Galerie Krobath, Austria

Until 29 February 2020

Redjaian’s most recent work has been influenced by her reading of French philosopher Gaston Bachelards “The Poetics of Space” . Bachelard was a phenomenologist, holding the view that there was a dynamic interplay between an active mind and its surroundings. He undertook a systematic study, or “topoanalysis,” of the “space we love” and begins his analysis with the house, arguing that it is always more than a purely functional configuration of orthogonal planes

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Manchester Art Gallery

Curated by Clare Gannaway

Until 19 September 2019 

Rokni Haerizadeh is currently participating in Get Together and Get Things Done which investigates what brings and binds people together from protest to partying, how power and control operate globally and historically, and how history, media and art shape collective action. This exhibition features works from the gallery’s collection as well as national and international loans from the 18th to the 21st century. Together, they examine the importance of the communal action over the past two centuries in relationship to topics such as empire, trade, and economics, as well as the role of public protest.

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Collège des Bernardins, Paris

4 October - 10 November

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the reopening of the Collège des Bernardins, Paris, Abdelkader Benchamma will transform the entire nave of the building into an immersive wall drawing installation. Both powerful and poetic in its formal execution, the artist's attempts to disrupt visceral perception of space and time. Co-aligned with his exhibition, Benchamma will participate in Nuit Blanche 2018 in Paris, an annual all-night arts festival taking place on 6th October. This year's edition thematically inspired by the research of George Lemaître, a priest astronomer and physicist who was one of the first men to have thought of the expansion of the universe. Benchamma's contribution, alongside Melik Ohanian, have been invited to realise a vast installation specifically for the floor of the nave of the Collège des Bernardins.

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Booth: Focus, A24

Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi

14 - 17 November

Preview: 13 November

We are pleased to participate at this year’s 10th-anniversary edition of Abu Dhabi Art, with a presentation surrounding the conceptual practice of Mohammed Kazem, highlighting recent works in tandem with key photo documentation of his performances since the 1990s. 

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Booth: Dialogue, Orange 11

Oval Lingotto Fiere, Turin

2 - 4 November

Preview: 1 November

Dedicated to the collective and individual practices of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, the booth will manifest as an unfolding continuation of their major exhibition forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home at Officine Grandi Riparazioni (OGR), Turin, which recently took place from 12 July till 30 September 2018.

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Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah

29 September - 10 November

Celebrating ten years of Production Programme grants, Sharjah Art Foundation will present a selection of works from previous editions of the Production Programme this autumn, of which Raed Yassin is included. Yassin, the 2014 awardee, participates with his work entitled Exhibition No. 8 (2016) from his Warhol of Arabia series. One of Sharjah Art Foundation’s core initiatives, the Production Programme challenges artists, mostly from the region, to conceive and realise innovative work that transforms the way art is understood and experienced.

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Collège des Bernardins, Paris

4 October - 10 November

Collège des Bernardins, Paris

6 October 

We are thrilled to announce that Abdelkader Benchamma has been awarded Le Prix Occitanie - Médicis. The judges elected to honour Abdelkader Benchamma as the winner of the 1st edition. As part of this distinction, he will receive a 3-month residency at the Villa Medici, Rome, beginning later this year. During his stay, the artist will have the opportunity to develop his personal projects and participate in the activities of this prestigious and inspiring institution. He has also been granted to exhibit his work in 2019 at Musée régional d’art contemporainn de Sérignan.

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Busan, South Korea

Curated by Artistic Directors: Cristina Ricupero and Jörg Heiser

8 September - 11 November 

We'd like to congratulate Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian on their inclusion at The Busan Biennale 2018. As an independently created international contemporary art exhibition, the Busan Biennale has distinguished itself from other biennials with its expression of Busan’s city identity and its experimental and dynamic exhibitions.

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La Patinoire Royale, Brussels

Curator: Jérôme Sans 

7 September - 8 December

La Patinoire Royale / Galerie Valérie Bach is happy to present OBNOXIOUSLY HAPPY, :mentalKLINIK’s first solo exhibition in Belgium, curated by Jérôme Sans. "The exhibition, which brings together a whole fifteen years of their activity - such an introspective rather retrospective - presents a symptomatic set of the multifaceted approach of their universe that constantly blurs borders. :mentalKLINIK is an allusion to the laboratory where coexist practice and theory, as the :mental refers to the spirit and the KLINIK to practice " (Jérôme Sans).

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Eugster || Belgrade

Curator: Yasmina Reggad.

12 September - 1 December

Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi

24 - 28 June

:mentalKLINIK will participate in a week-long artist residency as part of Abu Dhabi Art's partnership with Khalifa University of Science and Technology. Engineering and science students have been invited to work on a collaborative project by Brussels-based Turkish artist duo and Carl De Smet (noumenon), which will be presented at the upcoming edition of Abu Dhabi Art from 14 - 17 November 2018.

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Officine Grandi Riparazioni (OGR), Turin

Curated by Abaseh Mirvali

12 July - 30 September

First Art Museum, Nashville

Curated by Mark W. Scala

22 June - 16 September

Borrowed from the collection of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, a selection of works from Rokni Haerizadeh's on-going Fictionville series is presented in Chaos and Awe: Painting for the 21st Century. The exhibition features paintings by an international array of artists that induce feelings of disturbance, curiosity, and expansiveness through the portrayal of forces shaping and disrupting society, such as economics, ideological conflict, language, technology, science, and philosophy. "Haerizadeh's exaggerations bring out the savagery of the actions they depict, highlighting the bestial undertones of political rituals. Victim and aggressor are equally grotesque, as are landscape and architecture," notes writer Media Farzin in her essay Unpeopled: Cosmopolitan Figurations in Recent Paintings, published in the catalogue. Chaos and Awe will tour the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia in November 2018.

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Land Art Mongolia 360°, Khentii Province

Curated by Lewis Biggs

30 July - 8 August

Vikram Divecha collaborates with a local coal supplier as part of his residency to create works for the 5th edition of Land Art Mongolia (LAM). The exhibition asks pertinent questions such as how do we situate art, and specifically art made in the Mongolian context, in relation to Humanism and the Anthropocene Age. LAM focuses on Land Art as a form of spatial visualisation of the relations between nature, culture and social policies. It promotes freedom of expression in joining people and institutions from all sectors of Mongolian society by meshing their respective backgrounds and perspectives through collaboration and networking actions of regional and global scope.

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LACMA, Los Angeles

Curated by Linda Komaroff

6 May - 9 September

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents In the Fields of Empty Days: The Intersection of Past and Present in Iranian Art, a groundbreaking exhibition of both historical and contemporary Iranian works that highlight ways in which artists have used and continue to use the past as a metaphor for the present day. This notion is revealed in art and literature in which ancient kings and heroes are used in later contexts as examples of virtue or as objects of derision, while long-gone Shi'ite saints are evoked as champions of the poor and the oppressed. The exhibition examines this appropriation of the past, largely in the context of the present including a large scale concrete poetry by Ramin Haerizadeh based on two significant newspaper headline during the Iranian Revolution.

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Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Geneva

Curated by Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi

30 May - 9 September

Musée d'art moderne et contemporain (mamco) is inaugurating the first phase of its reflections concerning the internationalisation of its exhibition corpus and the emergence of a world art history with four summer exhibitions. We Began By Measuring Distance features works by Hassan Sharif, Marwan Rechmaoui and Basma Al Sharif from the collection of the Sharjah Art Foundation, and responds to the invitation to broaden the frame of reference of practices under review at mamco.

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Warehouse421, Abu Dhabi

5 May

Ramin & Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian will host a participatory community activity at Warehouse421, experimenting with archival images from the UAE's history. Originally created for the UAE's National Pavilion at Venice Biennale, Rock Paper Scissors: Positions in Play, this exercise re-interprets archival photographs, including images of Sheikh Zayed and pivotal moments in the history of the UAE by magnifying some of their less obvious peripheral elements. Visitors are invited to take part using their mobile phones or cameras, re-photographing the archival images and finding their own story in them.

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Galerie A, Izmir

Curated by Dr Necmi Sönmez

Organised by K2 Contemporary Art Centre

Until 8 April

The 4th edition of PortIzmir - Izmir International Contemporary Art Triennial looks into the future that appears pressured by the ever-present avant-garde archive, backward glances and repeated modernist discourses. Featuring works by :mentalKLINIK, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Claus Föttinger and Füsun Onur, among others, the exhibition seeks to examine the current state of contemporary image-making and highlights ways of political and poetical reflections.

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Booth C35

Tour & Taxis, Brussels

19 - 22 April

We are pleased to participate in the 50th edition of Art Brussels with works by Hassan Sharif, Mohammed Kazem as well as collaborative and individual works by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian.

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Le CENTQUATRE-Paris

Curated by Hervé Mikaeloff and Ingrid Pux

14 April - 13 May

Haleh Redjaian's work is included in the exhibition of works from the BIC collection, which brings together more than 140 works by 80 artists. Featuring drawings, installations, sculptures and videos resonating with the philosophy of the company, the exhibition highlights how everyday objects such as pens, razors or lighters open up new practices and territories of creation.

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Galleria d'Arte Moderna (GAM), Milan

Curated by Sara Raza, Paola Zatti, Omar Cucciniello

11 April - 17 June

Borrowing its title from a series of drawings by Rokni Haerizadeh, But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise - Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africaat Galleria d'Arte Moderna (GAM) marks the final exhibition of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. Featuring works by Lida Abdul, Abbas Akhavan, Kader Attia, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Ali Cherri, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Rokni Haerizadeh, Susan Hefuna, Iman Issa, Gülsün Karamustafa, Hassan Khan, and Ahmed Mater, this exhibition features a diverse range of artistic voices and critical concerns from a rapidly evolving region and its international diaspora. The exhibition offers a cross-circulation of ideas rooted in science, mathematics and philosophy and raises urgent issues of migration and displacement in areas around the world, including Italy.

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Wallach Art Gallery, New York

Curated by Natalie Bell

Until 8 April

As part of his first-year exhibition at Columbia University, Vikram Divecha presents a single partition panel that is acquired from the contractors of Frieze art fair. The panel will be returned to the contractor to be installed as a functional partition panel at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde's booth during Frieze New York in May. Panel (2018), is an ongoing project and examines how objects and practices accrue value, as they circulate via galleries, institutions, fairs and exhibitions. Divecha intends to keep fluctuating the role of the panel post the art fair.

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Le Centquatre-Paris

Curated by Yasmina Reggad

24 March - 6 May

Abdelkader Benchamma's exhibition at Le Centquatre-Paris goes beyond the limits of drawing to create huge mural drawings that modify and upset our relationship to space as well as our perceptions. Benchamma's drawings draw inspiration from visual scenarios that stem from reflections on space and its physical reality, its limits and its zones of contact with mental space. They operate with diversions, modulating objects to testify of possible malfunctions in our relationship with the other and with things. Shifting of reality, intrusion of the invisible, indeterminate matters undergoing transformation, minuscule catastrophes are all at the heart of Benchamma's work.

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Malmö Konsthall, Sweden

Curated by François Piron and Mats Stjernstedt

Until 6 May

Odradek invited eight artists including Hassan Sharif, Judith Scott, Laura Lamiel, Henri Jacob, Oscar Tuazon, Franz Erhard Walther, Katinka Bock and Nairy Baghramian whose works similarly transgress the fixed dualities between subject and object. The exhibition aims at making links and weaving affinities between the practices of these artists from various backgrounds and generations.

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Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi

Curated by Ferran Barenblit and Nasser Abdullah

Until 17 March

Mohammed Kazem and Hassan Sharif participate in From Barcelona to Abu Dhabi: Works from the MACBA Art Collection in dialogue with the Emirates. The exhibition, which is part of the Abu Dhabi Festival and held in partnership with Manarat Al Saadiyat, showcases highlights from the MACBA collection in dialogue with artworks by 20 Emirati artists from ADMAF's collection and borrowed from private collectors.

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Museo di Palazzo Ducale, Mantova

Curated by Tarlan Rafiee and Peter Assman

10 March - 13 May

Organised by Bread and Salt Project, this exhibition features works by Nargess Hashemi, Parvaneh Etemadi, Farah Ossouli, Rozita Sharafjahan and Golnaz Taheri to highlight how Iranian women positioned and adapted themselves in a society which was rapidly changing post-1979 Islamic Revolution. The works carefully survey elements from history, culture, tradition, environment and urbanisation, both in their homeland and in the west.

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Concrete, Alserkal Avenue

Curated by Karim Sultan

5 March - 1 April

UAE Unlimited, in collaboration with Alserkal Programming presents Ishara: Signs, Symbols and Shared Languages featuring works by 10 UAE-based artists Amna Al Dabbagh, Cheb Moha, Chndy, Dina Khorchid, Farah Al Qasimi, Flounder Lee, Nasir Nasrallah, Saba Qizilbash, Salem Al Mansoori, and Shaikha Al Ketbi, in addition to visual poetry by guest artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian. The concept of the exhibition is derived from a broad understanding of the meaning and use of language. The curatorial process for the exhibition has been thematically informed by the idea of "lingua franca," which hints at constructed, second or third languages that were used to aid communication between various groups or in situations where communication was difficult.

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Screening and Discussion

Concrete, Alserkal Avenue

Wednesday 7 March, 7:00 pm

As part of the public programme for Ishara, guest artists Ramin, Rokni and Hesam will be in conversation with exhibition curator Karim Sultan to discuss ideas of communication, language and storytelling. This dialogue will explore the references accumulated by the artists, tracing their influences that relate to the theme of language and sign-making.

The screening will focus on Aakkaandi (2014-15) a 35 minute 17 second long video that depicts a pig-faced tourist-curator clutching a tote bag visit a tailoring shop to get a new dress copied. A doctor and his violently shushing nurse administer everything from injections to dental reconstruction. Improvised with Idrani Sirisena and Edward St, who live and work at the villa that the artists share, these short, simple vignettes are interspersed with the couple's recollection of the Sri Lankan Civil War and the political machinations that stoked the conflict. The work culminates in a collaboratively painted canvas that they steadily layer with Tamil lettering. Several sections of Aakkaandi were filmed by Edward St and many of the images in the film are inspired by the works of exiled Tamil poets, particularly 'The Aakkaandi Bird' by Shanmugam Sivalingan and '21 May 1986' by R Cheran.

Curriculum Vitae # 44

Spring 2018

Ramin Haerizadeh's work graces the cover of Selections Magazine's recent issue, which invited 22 artists to share their Curriculum Vitae in the most artistic way possible and in the manner in which they'd like to present themselves. The trio is featured in the magazine, each artist's submitted Curriculum Vitae below:

Louvre Abu Dhabi

Curated by Alia Zaal Lootah

Until 25 March

As part of the French-Emirati Cultural Programme, in collaboration with the Louvre Abu Dhabi, this exhibition is based on the collaboration between four artists living in the UAE and four well-known historical French manufacturers. Responding to the role of railways in the standardisation of time during the Industrial Revolution, Divecha introduces an intervention within the French Railway schedule as part of his collaboration with MTX - Broderie Architecturale. Through Saint-Lazare train station, a train journey from Paris to Rouen is captured by Claude Monet and revisited by Divecha in an attempt to question our perception of time.

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Warehouse421, Abu Dhabi

7 March - 24 June

Warehouse421 restages UAE's participation at two recent national exhibitions from the Venice Biennale's International Art Exhibition (2017) and International Architecture Exhibition (2016). Curated by Hammad Nasar, Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play features works by Vikram Divecha, Nujoom Alghanem, Sara Al Haddad, Lantian Xie and Dr Mohamed Yousif, and explores a strand of artistic practice in the UAE through the analogy of play.

Commissioned by the UAE Pavilion, the Haerizadeh brothers and Hesam Rahmanian fashioned a playground in book form, which is included in the accompanying catalogue and serves both as an additional site of the exhibition and as its speculative expansion featuring works over 40 pages by the artists.

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Al Naba'ah, Sharjah

With support from Shurooq and Sharjah Art Foundation, an underground water tank and pump were recently installed in a roundabout in Al Naba'ah residential area to meet the harvest season from February - April and November - January for Vikram's project for Sharjah Biennial 13.

In June 2017, Divecha created a site-specific installation by activating a potential for farming in a roundabout in Al Naba'ah residential area. He invited municipal workforce, who look after Sharjah's landscaping, to bring vegetable and grain seeds of their choice from their family farms in Lahore and Punjab. They sowed these seeds in the roundabout, which now becomes host to span several cycles of sowing and harvesting. Beej calls into question the position of the gardeners' in relation to the land that they cultivate, both in Pakistan and in the UAE. The unregistered seeds highlight the movement, presence and status of those who tend them. Participating gardeners are Sajad Hussain Bughio, Muhammad Saleem Manzoor Ahmed and Muhammad Shabbir Ahmad Din.

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Booth C39

Palexpo Geneva

1 - 4 February

Preview: 31 January

We are pleased to participate in Art Genéve with works by German-Iranian artist Haleh Redjaian and Hassan Sharif. The booth highlights Sharif and Redjaian's critical approach of using the grid as a measurement tool and foundation for their compositions, allowing for chance and repetition.

Exhibition Dates:  4 January - 10 February, 2018

Alexander Gray Associates presents Hassan Sharif: Semi Systems, the Gallery's fourth exhibition of work by the artist (b.1951, Iran - d.2016, Dubai, United Arab Emirates). Focused on Sharif's use of the grid, geometry, and repetitive gesture, the exhibition includes work in a variety of media made as early as 1982 until his death in 2016.

The Emirati artist Hassan Sharif (1951-2016), who has a sensational retrospective at the Sharjah Art Foundation here on the edge of the Persian Gulf, was a born contrarian. Working in a range of seemingly unrelated media and styles, he made art that belongs to no locatable culture, or maybe to several. Dodging definitions, he referred to himself, half-jokingly, as a nomad, though he didn't live like one. Apart from a few youthful years in England, he spent his entire life in the Gulf region, where he is revered today as a pioneer.

Extract from The New York Times, click here to read the full article

Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde congratulates Rokni Haerizadeh for winning the OGR Award for his on going Fictionville series. The works were chosen for their engaging images that find overtones in the contemporary world. The artist extends the boundaries of painting to transform news, photographs and images of current events into mythological visions that reveal a corrupt circus of humanised beasts and other unreal creatures, all inserted in a fantasy landscape. Haerizadeh sees art in everyday life, without drawing boundaries between the two worlds. The international jury composed of Fawz Kabra, New York-based independent curator, Abaseh Mirvali, independent curator of contemporary art and architecture based between Mexico City and Berlin, and Nicola Ricciardi, artistic director of OGR - Officine Grandi Riparazioni, Torino, chose Haerizadeh's works from 206 galleries participating at Artissima. The exceptional approach taken by the OGR Award makes collaborations with the winning artist possible; to further explore enlightening and immersive artistic practices.

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Sharjah Art Foundation

Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi

4 November 2017 - 3 February 2018

In the making for several years, this landmark retrospective will include Hassan Sharif's diverse body of work from the early 1970s to 2016. On view in Al Mureijah Square and Bait Al Serkal, Arts Square, the exhibition will encompass Sharif's early newspaper caricature and comic strip drawings, Semi-System works, performances, paintings and 'urban archeology' objects.

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Oval Lingotto Fiere, Turin

Disegni

Booth DS 05

3 - 5 November

Preview: 2 November

We are pleased to participate in Artissima in the newly-added Disegni section with works by Dubai-based Iranian artist Rokni Haerizadeh from his celebrated Fictionville series. The booth will explore the visual narrative of these works, where the artist isolates still and moving images from news media and transforms them with expressive painterly gestures into scenes of grotesque fantasy and ribald humour.

Villa Empain | Boghossian Foundation, Brussels

Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath

22 September 2017 - 18 February 2018

Taking its cue from John Berger's 1972 groundbreaking text on visual culture, the eponymous exhibition explores the various formalistic strategies that artists employ to re-configure our perception of the world. After its debut at ARTER, Istanbul, Ways of Seeing is on view at Villa Empain in Brussels and brings together works by 33 artists including Hassan Sharif's playful work Slippers (2016). The exhibition invites the viewer to investigate the manifold ways by which artists accord forms and concepts that are otherwise familiar with renewed appearances and meanings. Each of the artworks on display beckons us to take a second look, upon which the contours of a new reality begin to emerge.

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Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi

Until 19 March 2018

Mohammed Kazem presents works from his ongoing Space and Direction series in Hajj: Memories of a Journey that documents the legacy of the arduous and challenging routes that pilgrims travelled across continents, through the show's largest section dedicated to Journeys. Organised by Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Centre in collaboration with TCA Abu Dhabi, this exhibition coincides with the 10th anniversary of the Grand Mosque's opening.

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The Palestinian Museum, Birzeit

Curated by Reem Fadda, Fawz Kabra and Yara Abbas

Until 15 December

Mohammed Kazem participates in Jerusalem Lives, a group exhibition that attempts to study and examine the city of Jerusalem as a case study, a microcosm or condensed laboratory that metaphorically represents globalisation and its failures, and to find answers that inspire us to struggle for a better future.

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La Patinoire Royale, Brussels

Curated by Hervé Mikaeloff

Until 27 May

This exhibition renders an overview of Hassan Sharif's eclectic practice, from his early cartoons and performances to his recent paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations. The works included in the show continue his career-long investigation on where art can be found, what art is for, what our expectations are of it and how those limits can be usurped. "When I met Hassan in Dubai in 2014 and 2016, I discovered a few sketches of unrealised monumental sculptures that he later wanted to create for his exhibition at La Patinoire Royale. The scale of these Objects further reflects on Sharif's ideas of redundancy and uselessness," notes curator Hervé Mikaeloff. 

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Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai

Booth E6

15 - 18 March

We are pleased to participate in the 11th edition of Art Dubai with works by Hassan Sharif, Mohammed Kazem, Abdelkader Benchamma, Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian.

Viva Arte Viva
International Art Exhibition

13 May - 26 November 2017

Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde is proud to announce the inclusion of Hassan Sharif in the International Art Exhibition Viva Arte Viva, curated by Christine Macel for the 57th Venice Biennale.

Hassan Sharif is represented by Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai, Alexander Gray Associates, New York, and gb agency, Paris. 

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NYUAD Art Gallery, Abu Dhabi

Curated by Maya Allison and Bana Kattan

2 March - 25 May

Hassan Sharif and Mohammed Kazem participate in But We Cannot See Them, an exhibition that surveys one of the most important artistic communities in the UAE's history with works by Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim, Abdullah Al Saadi, Hussein Sharif, Vivek Vilasini, Jos Clevers and Ebtisam Abdulaziz. Community has played a key role in every modern art historical breakthrough, with artists banding together around manifestos, or turning to one another for support when art institutions rejected their innovations. Art communities grow out of critical and creative exchange among peers and mentors. This exhibition focuses on one community of artists, sometimes called "the five", at an intersection of visual artists, writers, and filmmakers based in the UAE. Its members identified with a "new culture" of encouraging radical, formal and conceptual experimentation. Eventually, some of these artists founded the celebrated Flying House.

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DUCTAC, The Gallery of Light, Dubai

Curated by Cristiana de Marchi and Muhannad Ali

21 February - 7 April

Predicated on curious desire to locate the spirit of experimentation that was present in the genesis of UAE avant-garde contemporary art practice, Is Old Gold? indirectly questions if, how and why this narrative has been aborted, lost or evolved and if it can or should be recovered in the current context. In a comparative experiment that takes the form of a fictional narrative, two artists from the contemporary 'younger' generation of Emirati artists were assigned to work separately on a 'character' from the '5 UAE'. The experimental, productive structure of the exhibition reflects on the atelier atmosphere of innovative exchange initiated by Hassan Sharif and transmuted and sustained by four of his students - Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim, Mohammed Kazem, Abdullah Al Saadi and Hussain Sharif.

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Kunsthalle Zurich

Curated by Daniel Baumann

4 March - 7 May

Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian participate in Speak, Lokal, a group exhibition that focuses on how artists worldwide investigate and broach local conditions. All sorts of artistic practices come into play, from activism to "archivism", from photography to graphic novels, from documentaries to performances and research based communal efforts. Paradoxically, the restricted and highly connoted territory of the Local is perceived as a place of autonomy and liberation, a space where precision is possible and needed to uncover discrepancies and make a difference. If Speak, Lokal is foremost an optimistic proposition, it does not gloss over the ambiguity of the Local as it neighbours on the dangerous territories of nationalism, provincialism, and commercialism - a trend typified in the well-known slogan "Buy Local!" Perhaps, after all, the Local is just a fiction (or a phantasy) - albeit a powerful one. The trio will premiere their new rotoscope animation From Sea to Dawn, which sees them print almost 3000 stills from news footage, paint on each of the printed images, photograph the results and stitch them together to form the 6 minute 21 second video. 

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Aga Khan Museum, Toronto

Curated by Fereshteh Daftari

Until 4 June

Rokni Haerizadeh participates in Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians, which looks at the use of power, humour, mysticism, and poetry in contemporary Iranian art to both openly and subversively critique subjects such as gender, politics, war, religion, and spirituality. Whether in Iran or in the diaspora, the artists' narratives have been informed by conditions triggered by the 1979 Revolution and by the pressures in the larger world. While some of the works in the exhibition reflect the socio-political tensions of the past 25 years, others transcend them to create all-embracing spaces free of strife.

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Various Venues

Curated by Christine Tohme

10 March - 12 June

We are pleased to announce Vikram Divecha and Abdelkader Benchamma's participation in Sharjah Biennial 13, which unfolds in five parts from October 2016 through October 2017. Tamawuj, a noun in Arabic which is defined as a rising and falling in waves, but also a flowing, swelling, surging, fluctuation or a wavy undulating appearance outline or form, is reflective of SB13's aims to cultivate collaborations, infrastructures and strategies within Sharjah and the project localities. Divecha and Benchamma will create site-specific commissions for the Biennial, which poses questions around, and proposes answers to the conditions for the possibility of an art world.

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National Pavilion United Arab Emirates

57th Venice Biennale

Curated by Hammad Nasar

13 May - 26 November

While the exhibition explores notions of 'playfulness' in artistic practice, the role of 'play' and how it is nurtured, Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian will respond to this theme in the accompanying publication by overhauling a significant section of its pages. The book becomes an additional site of the exhibition and speculatively, its expansion. Through the hand of the three artists, a book is no more a book, relinquishing its original purpose to the conquering folds of a new work, which in turn spins a complex web of alternative images. The intervention will be at the fulcrum of their unique collaborative practice: characters fusing into one another, one artist may execute the ideas articulated by the others, the three often blurring together becoming composite.

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Mandalay Hall, Kochi

Curated by Mo Reda

Unil 25 March

Mohammed Kazem's Pepper House residency culminated in a group exhibition Residuals and the Anthology of Narcissism, where he presents new works from his Direction series alongside works by Emirati artist Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim. Running in parallel with the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the exhibition is supported by the Kochi Biennale Foundation and Maraya Art Centre, and is part of the Trans-Indian Ocean Artist Exchange that aims to facilitate and stimulate artistic exchange between the different regions of the Trans-Indian Ocean.

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Shangri La Centre for Islamic Arts and Cultures, Honolulu

9 - 22 January

We are pleased to announce Mohammed Kazem's residency at Shangri La Centre for Islamic Arts and Cultures, as part of the inaugural Honolulu Biennial. At the end of the residency, Kazem will preview his work during the museum's Night Shift programme - an event that is part of Shangri La's on going experimental #OpenShangriLa series. Built in 1937, Shangri La supports several artists and scholar residencies each year. Previous residencies include visual artists Shahzia Sikander, Walid Raad and Afruz Amighi, among others.

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Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Until 29 March

As part of Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the satellite exhibition Binary States, India - UAE explores the bilateral relations between India and UAE across multiple disciplines, where Vikram Divecha presents Veedu (Malayalam for house), a film highlighting aspects of the strong community from Kerala living and working in the UAE. Building a house in their native city holds a lot of importance for these expats. These houses take many shapes, and are at times influenced by architecture from the Gulf. The remittances that are directed towards these houses take many forms - from aesthetics to arab-ness, from longing to pride. Following the design process of two house plans, this film will be shaped by exchanges between UAE-based clients and a Kerala-based architectural firm. Besides highlighting Emirati-Indian ties through various media and topics, the exhibition also celebrates the overlapping elements in Emirati-Indian cultures, which date back to decades of social, urban, and economic ties.

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Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Until 19 February 2017

Aisha Khalid presents a solo show Two Worlds as One at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen. Inspired by Islamic mysticism, known as Sufism, Khalid focuses on issues such as women's roles, identity, power structures and Western preconceptions about her native Pakistan through detailed, poetic miniature patterns and sensuous works made out of textiles and embroidery. In this exhibition, she examines how familiar elements associated with safety, home and domesticity can be transformed in her imagery, taking on new - and very different - meanings.

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Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw

Curated by Magda Kardasz, in cooperation with Magdalena Komornicka

Until 31 January 2017

Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian's participate in Social Calligraphies, a group exhibition featuring works by artists from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. The exhibition looks at history, culture, or the political, social, and economic problems of the artists' home countries from a distance, and presenting them in a broader framework. The theme of the show touches upon issues of identity, aesthetics of disappearance, war and culture, the archeology of future (set between the realm of local legends and science fiction), geometry and architecture, the position of women (in between tradition and global dreams), and the role of the artist. The Haerizadeh brothers and Rahmanian present a video animation Big Rock Candy Mountain (2015) and a film Chai-e Iran (2013).

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Hassan Sharif

Main Section

Booth Black 12

Oval, Lingotto Fiere, Turin

Preview and Vernissage: 3 November

4 - 6 November

As a continuation of Involved in Nonsense - a solo presentation dedicated to Hassan Sharif's early practice in Back to the Future at Artissima in 2015 - this year we are pleased to present the artist's recent Objects, which he started creating in the 1980s.

Always questioning the functional and the useless, the found and the created, Sharif transformed consumer products and waste into complex assemblages and weavings. In his Objects, he raised concerns about consumerism and social order, the human body and the physical evidence of our times. According to the artist, his Objects are the vernacular aesthetics of everything that is 'useless, meaningless and artificial' and illustrate an important truth about the world we live in. Weaving them together with rope, coil and twine, the heaps and bundles that he created became a visualisation of the surplus of mass-production - the commonly unseen by product of the UAE's globalised, consumerist society that developed since the country's formation.

Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

7 October - 19 February 2017

We are pleased to announce Aisha Khalid's solo show Two Worlds as One at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen. Inspired by Islamic mysticism, known as Sufism, Khalid focuses on issues such as women's roles, identity, power structures and Western preconceptions about her native Pakistan through detailed, poetic miniature patterns and sensuous works made out of textiles and embroidery. In this exhibition, she examines how familiar elements associated with safety, home and domesticity can be transformed in her imagery, taking on new - and very different - meanings.

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Pepper House, Kochi
Curated by Mo Reda

9 October - 6 November

In collaboration with Maraya Art Centre, the Kochi Biennale Foundation has invited Mohammed Kazem for a one-month residency, which will culminate in an exhibition at the Mandalay Hall during the Kochi-Muziris Biennale this December. 

The Pepper House Residency programme is an international residency opportunity for artists from all disciplines to work and collaborate within a studio space situated at the Pepper House, Fort Kochi. The space of the Pepper House Residency consists of extensive studio facilities (for production), the Laboratory of Visual Arts library (for research), and the Pepper House cafe (for dialogue). The residency is structured on the idea of a three-dimensional approach to creativity in which the idea of artistic practice is supported by its two necessary extensions - public interaction and inquiry.

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We are very pleased to announce that Vikram Divecha has joined the gallery's roster of artists.

Vikram Divecha (born 1977, Beirut) is a Mumbai-raised artist based in the UAE. He has developed a research-based, pedestrian practice in Dubai, where he is constantly negotiating for existing space, material and labour, to work with what he terms 'found processes' - forces and capacities that prevail in a society. Divecha works with urban processes and systems within state, social and industrial spheres and situates his practice in these operations to examine, intervene and extract the various layers of a given situation. In doing so, he withdraws himself from the final result to let the 'found processes' take over the works, which are not necessarily for the hermetic world of white cubes, but out in the streets and populated places. After introducing a set of parameters, Divecha engages in slow processes that would then evolve in an autonomous manner. Through his engagement with members of the community such as municipal gardeners, rock-blasting engineers, street sweepers and other diverse faculties, he creates idiosyncratic situations that translate into public art, permanent fixtures, sculptural installations and video works.

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We remember the life and artistic legacy of Hassan Sharif who passed away on Sunday, September 18, 2016 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates at the age of 65 years old. 

Sharif's exact date of birth is unknown, nor did it really matter to him. He didn't put stock in conventions of age, identity or the need for comfort. Only art and the restless making of art grasped his attention. He was a prolific cultural producer and facilitator, moving between roles as artist, educator, critic, activist, and mentor.

His career as an artist began in Dubai and Sharjah in the 1970s, working as a satirical caricaturist, highlighting a rapidly changing United Arab Emirates at the dawn of its formation. In 1979, Sharif is awarded a scholarship to the United Kingdom where he studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art and returned five years later to the UAE, with the goal of establishing an art practice and building an audience for contemporary art in the Gulf region. The young country was an unlikely setting for an artist with a taste for provocation but his work found exactly the resistance that stimulated him. With determination, Sharif began a life-long pursuit to expand the definitions of art and the role of artists. 

For his earliest experimental work of the 1980s, Sharif brought friends to the edges of Dubai and they were the audience for his performances - jumping in the desert, tying rope between rocks - using apparently simple gestures to pointedly question ideals of technical skill, mastery, and accomplishment. Always questioning the functional and the useless, the found and the created, he transformed consumer products and waste into complex assemblages and weavings in his ongoing series "Objects". In these works, Sharif raised concerns about consumerism and social order, the human body and the physical evidence of our times. He was fascinated by the errors and flaws that arise in rigid systems, utilizing them in his large body of "Semi-system" drawings. Across his diverse work, he believed that flaws in such systems are ultimately creative ruptures.

Internationally recognized as a pioneer of conceptual art and experimental practice in the Middle East, Sharif served as a colleague and mentor to generations of Emirati artists. He believed that art was not only practice to be expanded and shared, but also a catalyst for community. In the early 1980's, he founded the Al Marijah Art Atelier in Sharjah, and was a founding member of the Emirates Fine Art Society and of the Art Atelier in the Youth Theater and Arts, Dubai. In 2005, he was one of four artists to establish The Flying House, a Dubai art space dedicated to promoting contemporary Emirati artists. The first Emirati to have his work shown in the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar, Sharif was also among the selected artists to represent the U.A.E. during its first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009. Sharif's artwork is included in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar; the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, U.A.E.; the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, U.A.E.; the Sittard Center, The Netherlands; and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, U.A.E., and Guggenheim, New York, U.S.A.

Hassan Sharif will be remembered for his gentle and generous spirit and his playful attitude. The legacy of his artistic journey will inspire artists and audiences, having left an indelible mark on Middle Eastern art history and the global art world.

Blueproject Foundation, Barcelona

9 September - 6 November

We are pleased to announce Abdelkader Benchamma's solo exhibition The Great Invisible Battle at the Sala Project, where he directly intervenes with the walls to create a large scale installation in which he also incorporates some of his earlier drawings on paper. Benchamma takes the 1942 photograph and short film The Los Angeles Battle as the departure point for this exhibition and highlights the impossibility of an objective interpretation of an iconic event. 

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Tashkeel, Dubai

7 September - 13 October

During the year-long Critical Practice Programme 2015-16 at Tashkeel, Vikram Divecha closely collaborated with Debra Levine to present a project that questions positions of value through the context of time and money. Portrait Sessions invites a spectrum of self-identified 'non-professional painters' to become 'the artist' and to paint Divecha's portrait. The duration of each portrait session is determined by how much time AED 150 can buy according to each 'artist's' professional rate. Providing participants with a 65 x 50 cm primed canvas paper, acrylic paints and brushes, Divecha will be the only model during the sessions until the end of the exhibition on 13 October.

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Magazin4 - Bregenzer Kunstverein, Bregenz

Curated by Wolfgang Fetz and Jörg van den Berg

2 September - 20 November

German-Iranian artist Haleh Redjaian's solo at Bregenzer Kunstverein looks at the line and its subsequent multiplication by inviting the viewers to engage with its supposed regularity and then losing themselves in its underlying faults. By taking the line as a departure point in her works on paper, handwoven rugs and installations, Redjaian creates ornate, gridded patterns that suggest a rational tangibility of the world. Her work undermines any logical explanation and opens up to poetical interpretation. 

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2 June - 16 July

Galerie du jour, Paris

Another world (((in our world))) is a comprehensive exploration of fields of learning on the frontiers of science, tradition, science fiction, the fantastic and, in fine, the real. It reactivates a quest for wisdom aiming to transcend the apparent contradiction between materialism and spiritualism, positing an ontology of the mystery based on an interdisciplinary approach at the crossroads of art and technology, transhumanism and shamanism, alchemy and nanotechnology, esotericism and quantum physics, the demonstrable and the imaginary. Focusing on the notion of fantastic realism, as laid out by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier in Le matin des magiciens (The Morning of the Magicians, 1960) and Planète (Planet), the book's spinoff periodical, Another world (((in our world))) seeks to revitalize the concept and bring it to new audiences in a hybrid event-part-group exhibition, part-colloquium, part-laboratory for epistemological experimentation. 

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Seoul Art Space, Geumcheon

12 May - 23 June

Mohammed Kazem will take part in a six-week residency at Seoul Art Space in collaboration with Maraya Art Centre, during which Kazem will also participate in Geumcheon's Open Studios exhibitions.

Seoul Art Space is a creative space dedicated to visual art, remodeled in October 2009 from an old print works located in Doksan-dong. It provides the local community with an opportunity to enjoy culture through its various programmes. 130 visual artists (or teams) from 24 countries have moved in since it opened. Its programme includes exhibitions, workshops shared with with students and residents, and open studios. Maraya Art Centre's residency programme is designed to support emerging and mid-career contemporary UAE artists and designers. Working with institutions internationally, Maraya sends UAE-based artists overseas and hosts up to three residents per year. 

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9 July - 16 October 2016

Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian have been commissioned to create a series of installations, performances and sculptures for Liverpool Biennial 2016. This will be realised through a wide range of media permeating throughout the city, with artwork revolving around the question "What if?", creating new narratives as audiences explore Liverpool Biennial. At Cains Brewery, they will create work on-site, using 'smuggled' objects shipped from Dubai to Liverpool by container.

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Focus, Booth A16

Randall's Island Park, New York

5 - 8 May

We are pleased to announce our participation in Frieze New York with Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, where the conquering folds of a new work imagined by the Iranian artist trio have transformed the New York Times-published Obama: The Historic Journey (2009) into a tale of our times. An onslaught of tropes sprung from globalized corporate visual culture, collaged onto the individually traced pages of the original book, cast a silhouetted Obama as the ultimate business manager. Strategies of concealing and revealing unfold across these pages, as the original images peer out from behind the masking of collaged imagery. The 27 drawings are excerpted moments from the wider sequence, freeze-framed and contemplated-a glimpse of the curtain being lifted on a largely unfathomable collaborative creation that ultimately seems to be the product of a sole hand.

Read full essay by Kevin Jones

Honolulu, Hawaii, USA 
Curated by Fumio Nanjo

Spring 2017 

We are pleased to announce Mohammed Kazem's participation in the inaugural Honolulu Biennial, which will be curated by Mori Art Museum's Fumio Nanjo and opens in Spring 2017.

The Honolulu Biennial Foundation (HBF) supports the local arts infrastructure with a global outreach and launches the Honolulu Biennial next year, which marks Hawaii's first entry into the international biennial circuit. The first edition of the Honolulu Biennial will focus on art from the Pacific, the Asian continent and the Americas. Throughout the year, HBF serves the local community by presenting educational outreach programs with an emphasis on programming for Hawaii's youth, focused on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math), as well as exhibitions for the local arts community. 

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22 - 24 April

Tour & Taxis, Brussels, Belgium  

Prime Booth B50

We are pleased to announce our participation in Art Brussels with a prime booth featuring works by Emirati artist Hassan Sharif and German-Iranian artist Haleh Redjaian, where a formal comparison will be drawn between the 3D weaving techniques and works on paper by both artists. The booth will be an investigation of Sharif and Redjaian's critical approach of using the grid as a measurement tool and foundation for their composition, allowing for chance and repetition. 

Solo Booth B50-S

The solo booth will centre on a video animation Letter! (2014) by Iranian artist Rokni Haerizadeh, which uses footage from a Femen protest, and shows how the protest is turned into its own hysterical, violent and performative spectacle once the gaze of the media is present. Haerizadeh refers to his videos as 'moving paintings' to emphasise the pulse of the video. He purposely doesn't refer to them as animations as he's not tracing a movement between frames, instead, each movement is enacted in these individual hand-painted frames to create an erratic pulse, and also merges thousand of individual paintings into one durational piece. 

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Hassan Sharif and Cristiana de Marchi's book Embodying, reflects on Sharif's early performances, each corresponding to 29 poems by de Marchi, where she is narrating and animating, almost bringing these documented performances back to life. In the early 1980s and 1990s, Sharif carried out a series of performances without an audience and had them photographed in colour or black and white by close friends or other artists. This documentation of the artist's movements shows how pointless and meaningless these actions and mundane activities appear to be when taken out of context.

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Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi, UAE
11 April - 10 May

Mohammed Kazem and Hassan Sharif participate in Portrait of a Nation, a group exhibition celebrating the 20 years of Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation (ADMAF) and featuring works by 50 Emirati artists. Divided in seven different thematic areas, the works explore topics of Nation and Unity, Geography and Nature, Architecture and Urbanism, Portraiture and Identity, Religion and Spirituality, Language and Calligraphy, and Tradition and Heritage. The exhibition captures the ever-changing face of the visual arts in the United Arab Emirates through a work from Sharif's Objects, which are sculptural assemblages constructed from mass-produced materials and created via random and arbitrary rules, and Kazem's performative work Photographs with a Flag, in which the artist stands next to small flags that neither represent countries, corporations or institutions, but are merely pieces of cloth in different colours, set into a space of ground in Dubai's Al Mamzar area. 

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7 April - 14 May 2016

Hassan Sharif presents a solo show at New York's Alexander Gray Associates, featuring sculptures and woven assemblages. Recognised as a pioneer of conceptual art and experimental practices in the United Arab Emirates over the past four decades, Sharif has transgressed traditional frameworks for art making by extending his practice to performance, installation, drawing, painting, and assemblage that integrates ordinary objects as the primary medium. The tapestry-like works in this exhibition are conceptually linked by their relationship with the human body and social structures. 

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Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong
Booth 3C27

24 - 26 March

We are pleased to announce our participation in Art Basel Hong Kong with a collaborative booth by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, where the trio will continue a theatrical approach to exhibition making by presenting an accumulation of collages, watercolours, paintings and assemblages produced collectively and individually. The booth conveys as much insight into their practice - the ritual of living and working together - as it is a playful affront to the romantic notion of the solitary, singular artist, and his work.

Published by Edition Patrick Frey
Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian's Her Majesty? is a limited edition facsimile where the trio have completely overhauled the XL coffee table publication, which was published by Taschen Verlag in 2012 about the life of Queen Elizabeth II. Her Majesty? is now available at the gallery and each book comes with a unique, handmade cover of only 600 copies. 

For more information and to order a copy online, please click here.  

Main Entrance, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, UAE
Until 6 July
As part of Alserkal Avenue's Programming for Art Week 2016, Mohammed Kazem presents a site-specific installation My Neighbours, which consists of images from his 2006 photograph series of the same name. These photographs were taken over the course of several days looking outside from the artist's window in Al Quoz. A clothesline hangs at the bottom of each image, his neighbour's clothes hung out to dry, changing with every passing day. The only constant among the photos is a wide expanse of clear blue sky. In a city like Dubai, with very little public spaces, the sky holds out the promise of a shared space, a common that encompasses us all. 

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Until 4 September

Hassan Sharif's solo exhibition at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art includes a selection of works from the museum's collection such as object installations and artist archives made between 1981 and 1987. During these years, Sharif established new, self-imposed system of repetition, duration, and chance in the execution of his work. These methodologies have driven a practice spanning 40 years that mischievously confront our material and immaterial complicity with production of art and culture, as well as commodoties and industry. The exhibition shows key works through which Sharif asserts the role of art and the artist in writing new visual languages to disseminate critical debates on the political, economic and cultural layers of the society. 

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IFEMA - Feria de Madrid, Spain

Booth 7D12

24 - 28 February

We are pleased to participate in the 35th edition of ARCOmadrid where Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian will present works from the Big Rock Candy Mountain series.

Much of the artists' work involves the appropriation of images and objects from magazines, markets, the Internet and mass media. In preparation for Big Rock Candy Mountain, they printed 1000 stills from news footage, painted on each of the printed images, photographed the results, and stitched them together to form the video. The source imagery depicts the destruction of cultural artefacts in war-torn countries like Syria and Iraq by individuals affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS). By slowing down the imagery, the artists discover obscure details, relationships, and editing techniques that they intensify through their own manipulations, including doubling, collage, and figurative drawing.

Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey
Until 1 May
Ramin Haerizadeh participates in Memory and Continuity, which features works from the Huma Kabakci Collection that Nahit Kabakci began to put together in the 1980s. The collection is considered one of the most important examples of the few consciously created and well-sustained collections in Turkey. Preserved and upheld by two generations, the collection's affiliated and divergent points are brought to the fore in this exhibition.

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Pātaka Art + Museum, Porirura, New Zealand
Until 15 May

We are pleased to announce Zoulikha Bouabdellah's participation in Cross-Border: Video works by contemporary artists from the Southern Mediterranean, which coincides with Wellington's International Arts Festival and features video works from the ZKM's 2013 exhibition Cross-Border by artists such as Amal Kenawy, Rana ElNemr, Reem Ghazzi, Susan Hefuna, Emily Jacir and Katia Kameli.

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Fundación Banco Santander, Madrid, Spain 

Curated by Abdellah Karroum and Fatma Mostafawi

Until 19 June 

Hassan Sharif participates in Looking at the World Around You. Contemporary Works from Qatar Museums, which is held in collaboration with Madrid's Fundación Banco Santander.

The exhibition includes works that traverse nearly two centuries of artistic production across three continents. Conceiving of art as a way of looking at the world around you, of proposing a multitude of interpretations and ideas for changing perceptions, the exhibition is itself an invitation to look again and see anew; an invitation, in other words, to rethink the alignment of histories and how to make sense of the world today.

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Auditori Fundació Antoni Tàpies 

Aragó 255, 08007, Barcelona, Spain

8 February at 7.30 pm

We are pleased to announce Ramin & Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian's participation in Flow Series #2, where they will be in conversation with Rosa Lleo, founder of The Green Parrot. 

Flow Series a programme promoted by the Fundació Han Nefkens and the Fundació Antoni Tàpies with the aim of bringing together members of the art world from different continents and contexts. Encounters focussing on an artist and their ongoing work are the object of a conversation followed by a meal. An invitation to discuss the implications of a global dimension in the work of contemporary artists while sampling the edible creations of local artists. 

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Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain
Until 12 June
Zoulikha Bouabdellah participates in Lucy's Iris. Contemporary African Women Artists, a group exhibition featuring installation, photography, video, painting, drawing and sculpture by 20 artists, each of whom addresses issues of gender, identity, ethnic groups, body, borders, territory and environment, history, memory, politics, tradition and present, feminism, colonial and postcolonial issues, migration and displacement, among others.

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Brunei Gallery, London, UK 

Curated by Amal Khalaf, Abdel Al Kadiri and Abdulnasser Gharem

Until 19 March

We are pleased to announce Mohammed Kazem and Hassan Sharif's participation in In Search of Lost Time. The exhibition, commissioned by The British Council in association with Brunei Gallery, presents works that explore the complex relationship between image, speed and time in the Gulf. In doing so, the exhibition aims to provoke a discussion about the role of art and culture in the region through the works of Rajaa Khalid, Jafar Islah, Sami Mohammed, Ahmed Mater, Abdallah Al Saadi, Ajlan Gharem, Camille Zakharia, Kazem, Sharif, Sophia Al Maria, Monira Al Qadiri, Lantian Xie, Mohammed Sharaf and Shaweesh. 

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ICA | The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA 

Organised by assistant curator Ruth Erickson with curatorial assistant Jeffrey De Blois

Until 27 March

The Birthday Party is the trio's first museum exhibition in the USA and borrows its title from a 1953 play by Nobel prize winning English writer Harold Pinter, a surreal comedy about a party organised as a ploy to get the character to sit down. The Haerizadeh brothers and Rahmanian began their version as a kind of a party-cum-performance in August at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde. During the performance, they shuffled around the space in costumes made of long prayer robes that obscured their vision, spilling paint across a floor they constructed, while unwrapping presents and making accumulative sculptures out of their contents. 
In the current installation at the ICA, they bring together some of the remnants from the performance - the painted floor, the sculptures, and the video documentation - with a number of new works and a selection of works by other artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Bahman Mohassess, Ree Morton and Hassan Sharif.

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Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia

Until 10 April

All The Rivers Run Into The Sea. Over. / Copy. Yet, The Sea Is Not Full. Over. (2015) challenges the conventional modes of display and standards of value. Every inch of the room is covered, including walls and floors, with no concern for hierarchy and preciousness. Their medley of influences ranges from satirical folk theatre, illuminated manuscripts, miniature painting and Persian poetry, to Modernist art and Pop culture. 

The trio discuss their collaborative practice in this youtube video: APT8 Artist Interview | Ramin and Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian at QAGOMA.

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