Current Exhibitions
AT THE EDGE OF LAND
23 MAY - 29 SEP 2024
Looking at port cities, shifting sands and riverbanks, ‘At the Edge of Land’ delves into the intricate and often concealed relationships between landscapes and trade. The exhibition highlights unexpectedly interconnected geographies, resources and commodities, moving between land and sea to tell stories of conflict, erosion and extraction. It challenges ideas of emptiness and development, shedding light on the regions and people on the margins of trade routes.
ARTIST’S ROOMS:
SANCINTYA MOHINI SIMPSON
8 JUL - 24 NOV 2024
This artist’s room showcases three significant works by Sancintya Mohini Simpson, Vessel (iteration #5), Jahajin and Ṭāpū, that reflect on the exploitation of indentured labour by colonial sugar industries, and the ongoing legacies of this system.
As a descendant of indentured labourers, taken from South India to South Africa between 1860 to 1911, Sancintya honours her ancestors through offering a nuanced representation of their histories, and broader histories of indentured labour and diaspora communities. Sancintya works with a variety of media, including installation, performance, video, experimental sound, poetry, and painting influenced by South Asia miniature painting. Working with layers of research, materiality and metaphor, she makes connections between history, memory and the displacement of communities across oceans.
She offers a transformative approach to understanding the multifaceted experiences of displacement and intergenerational trauma. Reconciling a need for care against violent colonial histories, her practice has taken a more restorative approach in works such as Vessel (iteration #5), where the complexities of loss and processes of healing can coexist.
ARTIST’S ROOMS:
AUGUSTINE PAREDES
8 JUL - 24 NOV 2024
Augustine Paredes’ artist’s room brings together his own personal histories and stories that explore his relationship to identity and family. Focusing on his personal journey as a migrant – constantly navigating between time, places and identities – the works delve into the complexities of his own experiences and the enduring effects of colonialism.
Augustine’s practice has primarily centred on photography. Gradually moving away from the camera as a main source of image-making, he has embraced a more process-based approach that focuses on the inherent qualities and agency of materials used within his work. This shift has led him to reconnect with his own history and memories, while confronting the challenges and violence he’s endured as a migrant.
The exhibition’s central work is Mother – a portrait of Marife, an all-important figure in his life and one that embodies his connection to home and sense of belonging. Other works present traces of burns, verses of poems, paintings, ink stains, fibres, pearls and wool threads. Together, these works explore the artist’s reflections on guilt, desire and devotion.
ARTIST’S ROOMS:
AMBA SAYAL-BENNETT
8 JUL - 24 NOV 2024
Drawing is at the centre of Amba Sayal-Bennett’s practice, expanding across works on paper, projections and sculptural installations. This artist’s room includes works spanning the last eight years of the artist’s practice that critically engage with the socio-political contexts of architectural heritage and modernist ideologies and aesthetics. Amba is particularly interested in the nature of abstraction, using technology in the form of language, tools, methods and materiality to stage relations and engagement between human and non-human.
Within her work, Amba critiques the tendency of colonial practices to decontextualise and appropriate. She traces the migration of architectural forms across continents, such as to Chandigarh in Punjab, the birthplace of her maternal grandparents, and where Le Corbusier’s purpose-built city examines the failings of modernism in post-colonial contexts. She explores modernism’s rejection of ornamentalism as well as her interest in sci-fi aesthetics, a genre which has long been criticised for its colonial overtones.
Figurative representations are absent within Amba’s work, however, the presence of the body is felt through her physical interaction with the materials and technological mechanisms she uses. She explores the active role of these materials and tools, considering them not as passive elements but as entities with agency.
Amba’s practice explores the intersections between socio-political histories, materiality and technology encouraging viewers to reconsider the nature of abstraction and the complex relationships between past, present and future.
ARTIST'S GARDEN:
SAMUR BY ZHENG BO
4 FEB - 1 DEC 2024
Zheng Bo’s practice aims to cultivate a kinship with plants, working with human and more-than-human collaborators across dance, film, drawing and installation. His works engage with the fundamentals of human relationships to the natural world, asking us to attune our attention to how we interact with the living world around us.
During his extensive visits to different natural habitats in the UAE in the summer of 2022, Bo was captivated by the Umbrella Thorn Acacia, known locally as Samrسمر, Samur or Salam. One of the most resilient trees in the Arabian Peninsula, the Samur provides food and shelter for humans, birds, camels, and insects and features in literature, poetry and religious texts across time. As well as the Arabian Peninsula, the Samur tree is also native to the Thar Desert of India and Pakistan, the central Sahara Desert and East Africa; a geography and landscape connected through deep ecological time.
For his Artist’s Garden commission, Bo choreographed a dance with two human dancers and a Samur tree growing in the Mleiha desert in Sharjah, as a way to understand and reconnect with the land and the tree. The dance pays homage to the tree’s tenacity and strength — the vibrancy of its branches, the delicacy of its leaves, and the defensiveness of its thorns. The performance is presented here as a film installation at the Jameel set within a landscape of indigenous plants that thrive in the desert.
About Jameel Arts Centre
Art Jameel supports artists and creative communities. Founded and supported by the Jameel family philanthropies, the independent organisation is headquartered in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and works globally. Art Jameel’s programmes – across exhibitions, commissions, research, learning and community-building – are grounded in a dynamic understanding of the arts as fundamental to life and accessible to all.
Art Jameel’s two institutions – Hayy Jameel, a dedicated complex for the arts and creativity in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Jameel Arts Centre, an innovative contemporary institution in Dubai, UAE – are complemented by digital initiatives plus collaborations with major institutional partners and a network of practitioners across the world.
Art Jameel’s model is collaborative: major institutional partners include Delfina Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Locally, the organisation works with individuals and organisations to develop innovative programming that embraces both ancient and new technologies, and encourages entrepreneurship and the development of cultural networks.
(Source: https://artjameel.org/about/art-jameel/)
Opening Hours: Saturday - Thursday,
10 am - 8 pm
Tuesday, closed
Friday, 12 pm - 8 pm
Address: Jaddaf Waterfront, Dubai