News

The British Museum 

Supported by the Contemporary and Modern Middle Eastern Art (CaMMEA) acquisitions group 

17 May - 15 August 2021

Featuring around 100 works on paper – from etchings to photographs and artists' books – the majority of works in the exhibition have been collected in the past decade including works by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Manal AlDowayan. They highlight topics of gender, identity, history and politics, while also exploring poetic traditions and the intersections between past and present. There is no single narrative but a multiplicity of stories.

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Antenna Space

Online viewing room 

Organized by Claire Shiying Li 

20 April - 30 May 2021

Palm Trees can be seen in gated communities worldwide, where developers conveniently transplant the symbol of peace and wealth from resorts to suburbs as if the signified lifestyle can also be stamped anywhere. To see palm trees in a cold spring time raises suspicions about the legitimacy of time and space, leaving one wondering if the palm trees can survive a different weather while their cultural associations sustain as usual.

In a ghostly atmosphere, Spring Time, Palm Trees brings together works by six artists/duo, challenging the linear timeline and eliciting personal narratives under the new tempo-spatial construction. Within the fictional timeframe of photography and moving images, the parochial cultural bias based on linear timeline is challenged and inventive experience of life and art history forms along new circulations and reincarnations. Emancipated from memories and knowledges, one might need to reorient feelings of intimacy and fear in the open field of realist portraits and aesthetic sensory, reaching multiculturalism and critical historicism.

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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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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The Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole (MAMC+)
Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi and Aurélie Voltz

Until 26 September 2021

We are pleased to announce the third European iteration of the Hassan Sharif retrospective at MAMC+ Saint Etienne. The exhibition includes just over 150 pieces, ranging from early satirical cartoons and documentation of performances in the Hatta desert to sculptural works produced in the last year of his life. In direct reference to Hassan Sharif’s avant-garde and contemporary influences, the MAMC+ is showing two rooms devoted to the museum’s collection, focusing on minimal art, Fluxus, performance or Supports/Surfaces.

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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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Sustainability Pavilion, Dubai
Commissioned by Expo 2020 in collaboration with Art Dubai
Open to the public

We are proud to announce Mohammed Kazem’s participation in the 2021 World Expo’s Sustainability Pavilion, known as Terra, in Dubai (UAE). Two space-filling works prolong the Emirati conceptual artist’s ongoing exploration of his sensorial relationship to spatial environments.

Entry tickets

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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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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January 2021

Haleh Redjaian is one of the selected artists by the Cultural Foundation of Hesse (Hessische Kulturstiftung) providing a scholarship program every two years as 12 months travel grants.⁠ With this grant, Haleh will travel to Iran and Senegal, continuing her research around weaving techniques, the interplay between craft and rhythm, and more specifically their invisible dimensions. ⁠

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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.

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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Art Basel: Online Viewing Rooms

VIP Viewing Access: 23-24 September
Public Access: 25-26 September

Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Dubai-based collective Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian featuring an on-going series of works on paper entitled Where To? Wherever it Chances. Probing a world rocked by upheaval and instability, the artists appropriate images from current media streams, destabilising them to uncanny ends. 

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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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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. 

Curated by Carl De Smet

Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade (MoCAB) 

Until the reopening of the museum

PUFF OUT is a Bitter Medicine to museums under lockdown, initiated by the artist duo :mentalKLINIK and curated by Carl De Smet for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade as the first host. :mentalKLINIK’s PUFF OUT installation is physically set in the premises of the museum, but extended onto digital platforms.
It consists of six robot hoovers, programmed to detect dust in a room covered with heaps of glitter particles. The hoovers make their own drawings in a room devoid of humans and filled with glitter, illuminating the museum spaces that are no longer fit for their initial purpose. The scene is filmed and broadcasted live at all times on the museum’s website.
BLACK SWAN IS FLOATING IN THE ART WORLD.
ARE YOU READY TO TAKE THE BITTER MEDICINE BY :MENTALKLINIK?

For the live 24/7 stream, click here

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.

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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Grey Art Gallery, New York
Curated and organized by Suheyla Takesh, Barjeel Art Foundation, and Lynn Gumpert, Director of the Grey Art Gallery at NYU
Until 4 April

Hassan Sharif is included in Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s which explores mid-20th-century abstract art from North Africa, West Asia, and the Arab diaspora. Comprising nearly 90 works by artists from across the region. The selection of works reflect the wide range of nonfigurative art practices that flourished in the Arab world over the course of four decades.

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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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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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AlUla, Saudi Arabia

Co-curated by Saudi curators Raneem Farsi and Aya Alireza with Desert X Artistic Director Neville Wakefield

31 January - 7 March 2020

Manal AlDowayan presents an installation of 12 trampolines at Desert X AlUla. Entitled Now You See Me, Now You Don’t (2020), AlDowayan’s work riffs off the humble puddle—an ephemeral concentration of water stopped in its path as it flows to the lowest point of gravity—yet highlights burning issues of irresponsible irrigation practices that have spiked water scarcity in Saudi Arabia today.

Like alien puddles dotting the craggy AlUla valley, twelve trampolines invite viewers to bounce, touch, lounge or simply reflect. At sunset, the structures become Moon Circles, lit by a series of special lighting techniques. 

Organised collaboratively by Desert X and the Royal Commission of AlUla (RCU), Desert X AlUla is the first site-responsive exhibition of its kind in Saudi Arabia.

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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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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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Warehouse 421, Abu Dhabi 

10 December - 16 February

Publishing is the act of making public. It is not restricted to specific producers, languages of production, sanctified routes of distribution, and privileged readers. This is not publishing as we have come to know it. The Arab World is home to a growing number of book fairs and art book fairs. These two types of public platforms run parallel to each other, representing different, if not opposing, economies of cultural capital, systems of representation of subjects and subjectivities, as well as strategies for encountering and conversing with an audience

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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: 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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Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai

Curated by Murtaza Vali

11 November 2018 - 23 March 2019

We are very pleased to share Hassan Sharif's inclusion in Crude, curated by Murtaza Vali, in the inaugural series of exhibitions at the new venue of Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai. Bringing together 17 artists and collectives from the region and beyond, Crude explores oil as an agent of social, cultural and economic transformation across the Middle East and North Africa, as well as a driver of geo-political upheaval. 

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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

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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We are pleased to share details of a new monograph for Haleh Redjaian entitled in sequence (2018), edited by Wolfgang Fetz and Jörg van den Berg. Published by Verlag für Moderne Kunst, the book provides a backbone overview of Redjaian’s practice in tandem with acute insight into her formal ideologies of art making. The author pointedly remarks, “One sees geometric forms | strict order | grids | patterns | but primarily one sees Redjaian’s base material: the line | rather many lines| in many instances in the mode of serial repetition." 

in sequence will also be available at Gallery IVDE in October.

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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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Various locations in New York

5 September - 2 November

Studio visit: Monday, October 29, 6:30 - 8:30pm

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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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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Zaouia of Sidi Boukhrissane, Tunis

Curated by Khadija Hamdi Soussi

27 June - 1 July

Organised by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation, JAOU Tunis returns for its 5th edition to explore the cultural heritage in post-revolution Tunisia. The exhibition surveys the idea of 'approved heritage' through four elements: fire, air, water and earth. German-Iranian artist Haleh Redjaian creates spatial thread installations and murals for the exhibition Imaginary Museum, which takes French novelist André Malraux's writings as a starting point to question the notion of contemporary art in the Arab world.

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Officine Grandi Riparazioni (OGR), Turin

Curated by Abaseh Mirvali

12 July - 30 September

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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Edited by Sharmeen Inayat

Published in April 2018 

Vikram Divecha and Mohammed Kazem contribute to Uncommon Dubai +, a publication that offers a sliver of quotidian and artistic reflections on spaces of change and exchange, imbued with meaning and memory for individuals, communities and diasporas that enrich the city and its neighbouring emirates. Against the backdrop of the morphing coastline and the alluring locus of the creek, explore memoirs, investigations and poetic landscapes of the mind that are meant to engage with the contrasts of the city and offer collective aspirations for its past, present and possible futures.

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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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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.

Register

BACKLIT Gallery, Nottingham

26 May - 17 July

Featuring Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian's video animation Big Rock Candy Mountain, alongside works by Slavs and Tatars, Samson Young, Taus Makhacheva, Leila Al-Yousuf and Ryan Heath, the exhibition refers to the Caucasus region between Europe and Asia, known for its large number of distinct languages and cultures.

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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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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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Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane

24 November 2018 - 28 April 2019

The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT9) announced the list of participating artists for its upcoming edition, including Hassan Sharif. The exhibition will feature a wide range of art forms and give particular focus to artists exploring the ongoing presence of spirituality in digital times, the multiple ways that wealth, value and labour operate, the agency of the body, and concerns for others as well as the vulnerability of the natural world.

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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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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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Villa Empain - Boghossian Foundation, Brussels

Curated by Louma Salamé

15 March - 19 August

Abdelkader Benchamma presents a new composition for the upcoming group exhibition at Villa Empain, which examines the origins of the feeling of melancholia - manifested in both the East and the West since ancient history - which unremittingly reminds us of a lost origin, and instills in us a sense of mourning for a past world. This feeling of melancholy remains at the heart of the problems we are confronted with today because the world we face is an inevitable cause for concern, especially given the irreversible climate change.

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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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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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Fort Island, Madinat Jumeirah

Commissioned by Shumon Basar

Wednesday 21 March, 5:30 - 6:30 pm

Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, alongside Yuri Pattison, Ania Soliman and Melissa Gronlund will discuss how artists are engaging with technologies of automation, as well as the ever-increasing automation of the world. What new kinds of aesthetics, experiences and knowledge emerge. From interactive puppetry to robot choreography via the unconscious intent of algorithms, the artists discuss their ideas and work, and the complex concerns facing the current moment.

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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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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:

Galleria d'Arte Moderna (GAM), Milan

Curated by Sara Raza, Paola Zatti, Omar Cucciniello

11 April - 17 June

But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa at 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 Cavusoglu, Ali Cherri, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Rokni Haerizadeh, Susan Hefuna, Iman Issa, Gulsun 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. A selection of drawings from Haerizadeh's But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise, which lent the exhibition its title will be presented.

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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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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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Gallery 5, Al Mureijah Square

Sharjah Art Foundation

Wednesday, 31 January

9:30 am - 5:00 pm

Coinciding with the major retrospective Hassan Sharif: I am the Single Work Artist, Sharjah Art Foundation is organising Hassan Sharif: Interexchange Symposium, which will host a group of critics and artists to explore Sharif's five-decade career.

The exhibition runs until Saturday, 3 February

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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.

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

Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi

Focus: Beyond Territory

Booth X1-12

8 - 11 November

Preview: 7 November

We are pleased to participate in Abu Dhabi Art with works on paper, paintings and objects by Hassan Sharif in Focus: Beyond Territory, the newly-added solo section curated by Omar Kholeif. Additionally, a large-scale work by Vikram Divecha will be featured in the main atrium of Manarat Al Saadiyat, alongside works by Mohammed Kazem from the Kisses series in Gateway, curated by Maya Allison.

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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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.

MACBA: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona

28 October 2017 - 8 January 2018

Recipients of the second edition of Han Nefkens/MACBA prize, Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian present a collaborative exhibition at Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona. The Maids is a multi-part exhibition created in response to the city of Barcelona, and the result of a two-year process the artists call "an assembling of a collective body." As artists, collaboration is central to their practice. Their goal is to create more equitable forms of artistic exchange by inviting different makers to contribute freely and independently to ongoing works in progress.

For their MACBA project, the artists sought out Joan Baixas, the famed Catalan puppet artist and stage director whose work they have long admired. They also extended invitations to artist Niyaz Azadikhah, who has been leading community-based women's sewing workshops in Tehran; John Cole, a robotics engineer who specialises in sensors; and an international group of writers, including Mandana Mohit and Sohrab Mahdavi.

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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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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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Focus, Booth D11

Randall's Island Park

5 - 7 May

Preview: 4 May

We are pleased to return to the sixth edition of Frieze New York with works by Emirati artist Hassan Sharif and Berlin-based Iranian artist Haleh Redjaian. The booth highlights the artists' critical approach of using the grid as a measurement tool and foundation for their composition, allowing for chance and repetition. Both Sharif and Redjaian's works are presented within a more formally and visually similar framework to investigate how this philosophy translates into their three-dimensional objects, hand-woven carpets and works on paper.

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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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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Beirut Art Residency

Until 28 February

Abdelkader Benchamma will be in residence at the Beirut Art Residency, a live-work space for artists/collectives looking to develop projects in a stimulating environment. The goal of the program is to facilitate collaboration between international as well as local artists. During their time, residents are encouraged to diverge from their usual practice and experiment with new ideas with the comfort of knowing that they are not expected to produce finished work at the culminating Open Studio event. 

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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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Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

Curated by Valerie Hillings, Sasha Kalter-Wasserman, Sarah Dwider and Maisa Al Qassimi

Beginning 8 March

Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority has commissioned Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian to create an immersive and interactive installation for the second exhibition of works from the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi collection. Entitled Another Happy Day (2016-17), the installation emphasises the resonance of the past in the present and the power of representation across time by charting a historical continuum from the 1930s to today. The multi-room installation will feature site-specific paintings, videos, and artworks by artists including Nargess Hashemi and Laleh Khorramian and from the artists' art collection. It will take visitors on a journey through distinctive yet interconnected episodes or acts that offer reflections on the nature of art and how we represent ourselves and the world in which we live through words, images, gestures, and movement.

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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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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

The National Pavilion of United Arab Emirates at the 57th Venice Biennale presents works by five diverse artists including Vikram Divecha, Nujoom Alghanem, Lantian Xie, Sara Al Haddad and Mohamed Yousif. The exhibition will explore a strand of artistic practice in the UAE through the analogy of play. Featuring existing works, re-fabrication of 'lost' works and new commissions, the exhibition will stage a set of nested questions: Where does 'playfulness' in artistic practice come from? How and where is 'play' nurtured? What does 'play' do?

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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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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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March Project 2016

Sharjah Art Foundation

Until 19 February

Vikram Divecha participates in the third edition of March Project 2016 exhibition, which features site-specific works developed by five artists during an educational residency programme. Divecha presents a new body of work, entitled Sweeping (2016) where he remaps the routes of five sweepers to converge towards the Sharjah Art Museum building. Every day a team of sweepers clean the streets of Al Shuwaihean neighbourhood that surrounds the museum building. Each sweeper is assigned a specific route, which they silently map while collecting the refuse in green trash bags and depositing them on the sidewalk to create a temporary public sculpture in sight of the museum building. The work disorders the waste management process and frames an encounter between the quotidian neighbourhood and the public institution that sits within it, enacted by the sweepers' routines and the detritus they sweep.

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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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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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Centro Atlàntico de Arte Moderno - CAAM, Las Palmas

Curated by Katrin Steffen

Until 8 January 2017

Zoulikha Bouabdellah presents more than 30 works featuring drawings, paintings, sculptures, installations, photography, video and performance for her solo exhibition at CAAM. This exhibition marks Bouabdellah's largest solo in Europe, and traces her multidisciplinary practice echoing a profound historical and political significance, deeply rooted in formal and conceptual subtleties. The challenge of gender roles, social norms and taboos and of their influence on identity formation is a central theme in Bouabdellah's artistic creation. With a fine sense of subversive humour, she stands up against projections, stereotypes and clichés. Bouabdellah actively references European art history in order to focus on concepts of femininity and to provide re-interpretations.

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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.

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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Centro Atlàntico de Arte Moderno - CAAM, Las Palmas

Curated by Katrin Steffen

27 October - 8 January 2017

Zoulikha Bouabdellah presents more than 30 works featuring drawings, paintings, sculptures, installations, photography, video and performance for her solo exhibition at CAAM. This exhibition marks Bouabdellah's largest solo in Europe, and traces her multidisciplinary practice that has a profound historical and political significance, deeply rooted in formal and conceptual subtleties. 

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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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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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For an Image, Faster Than Light

MOCA Yinchuan

Curated by Bose Krishnamachari

9 September - 18 December

We are pleased to announce Hassan Sharif and Mohammed Kazem's participation in the inaugural edition of Yinchuan Biennale, which will witness more than 80 international artists representing all facets of the global spectrum and from all parts (east-west, north-south) working on contemporary issues that the world has to contend with. The exhibition will be held on the premises of MOCA Yinchuan and will include an engaging display of artworks both inside and outside the museum. 

Following a 2-week long artist residency at the MOCA Yinchuan, Kazem will create two site-specific installtions, entitled Directions (Standing on Water) and Directions Yinchuan. 

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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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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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2 – 4 June

Zoulikha Bouabdellah participates in Loop Art Fair in Barcelona and presents Envers/Endroit (Obverse/Reverse), which consists of an overlay, in the same plane, of scenes inspired by paintings that made a mark on Art History: Olympia by Edouard Manet, 1863, Gabrielle d'Estrées and One of her Sisters by an unknown artist from the School of Fontainebleau, 1594, and The Three Graces by Raphael, 1505. This juxtaposition of details from different paintings creates a visual dynamic in which feet meet a hand, sponging a leg, that itself seems to caress the cheek of a sleeping woman. 

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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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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

Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid

Until 3 June

We are pleased to announce Zoulikha Bouabdellah's third solo show at Sabrina Amrani gallery. In Objets de désir, Bouabdellah explores the space between the desire to possess and the object of desire itself. The object of desire does not exist in itself, but is its inaccessibility that gives value to it. The aura vanishes in the moment the object of desire is accessed, the platonic love is metabolised into a body, the fetish is emptied of meaning.

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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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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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Guggenheim, New York, USA

Curated by Sara Raza

29 April - 5 October

But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise is the third exhibition of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative and borrows its title from the 24 recently-acquired drawings by Haerizadeh. The exhibition illuminates contemporary artistic practices in the Middle East and North Africa and the region's diaspora by presenting a selection of newly acquired works for the Guggenheim's permanent collection. Kazem will participate with a large scroll work, entitled Scratches on Paper, which was also part of the 12th Sharjah Biennial. Following its presentation in New York, the exhibition will travel to Istanbul's Pera Museum in 2017. 

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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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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.

Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai, UAE
Booth E8

16 - 19 March

  
We are pleased to participate in the 10th edition of Art Dubai with works by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, Hesam Rahmanian, Hassan Sharif, Haleh Redjaian, Mohammed Kazem and Xu Qu.

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.  

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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La Maison Rouge, Paris, France
Until 12 June

Bita Fayyazi participates in Ceramix at La Maison Rouge with her iconic ceramic Cockroaches installation, which was first exhibited at the 6th Biennial of Contemporary Ceramic Art in Tehran in 1998. With over 250 pieces from international museums and private collections, this exhibition presents works by 20th and 21st century artists such as Matisse, Rodin, Picasso, Thomas Schütte and Ai Weiwei, among others.

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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.

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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The Flying Saucer, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah UAE
Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi

Until 14 May 

As presented at the National Pavilion of the UAE in the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale, 1980-Today: Exhibitions in the United Arab Emirates is now on view in Sharjah and looks at the history of exhibition making in the United Arab Emirates over the last 40 years. The emergence of art practices in the UAE is presented here through a selection of over 100 works by 15 Emirati artists.
The exhibition is built upon extensive research involving archives of newspaper articles, artists' writings, and catalogues, as well as interviews with artists and cultural practitioners. Reflecting personal and geopolitical trajectories, the research focused on the underexposed historical record and evolving practices of some of the UAE's most important modernist and contemporary artists.

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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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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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Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE 

Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi and Hans Ulrich Obrist

Until 23 March

We are pleased to announce Mohammed Kazem and Hassan Sharif's participation in Do It [In Arabic], in which more than 60 participating artists will create written instructions that will allow anyone to make a new work of art. The exhibition is a new iteration of Hans Ulrich Obrist's project, which began in Paris in 1993 as a conversation between Obrist, photographer Christian Boltanski and artist Bertrand Lavier. 

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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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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Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Booth A16 

18 - 21 November 2015

We are pleased to participate in the seventh edition of Abu Dhabi Art with new works by Hassan Sharif, Mohammed Kazem and Rokni Haerizadeh. Additionally, a large-scale copper sculpture by Sharif will be featured in the Beyond section, curated by Fabrice Bousteau, which aims to bring art to the public arena under the theme of Bliss.