Antonia Carver, The New Director of Art Dubai on ‘Writing about Art’ - May 2010
Image: Graduating class of Bidoun’s ‘Writing about Art’ workshop, June 2010
ChinarTree: Why do you think it is especially important to focus on ‘Writing about Art’1 now?
Antonia Carver: I feel we’re at a tipping point at the moment, in the Gulf particularly. We have a lot of upcoming large-scale projects and yet many of the voices writing about regional artists come from the outside, after very brief visits to the region. When things are written quickly and in isolation, you don’t tend to get a sense of historical perspective or the way artists relate to each other and the larger currency of ideas.
In the Gulf there is a history that’s really not acknowledged in the way people write. Dubai has been a port city for hundreds of years; goods have come in from India, Pakistan, Africa and Iran. With the movement of goods has come the transfer of ideas and Dubai now acts as a meeting point for artists from those different places.
The seminal point for me was last March (2009) when the Sharjah Biennal and Art Dubai happened at the same time. For the first time, there were artists coming from Palestine, Lebanon, Tehran and Egypt - the four great seats of contemporary art - meeting on an equal footing in Dubai.
They were able to exchange ideas and see the value in what happens here. In contrast, this is mismatched by most regional media which tends to approach art through descriptive terms or regurgitated material, rather than opinion.
CT: How do you feel international media approaches writing about Middle-Eastern art?
AC: When people are writing about the Middle-East, whether it’s about events or politics, they are trying desperately to grasp on to something. In the Gulf, things haven’t developed in a linear way; we’ve got museums coming before art schools and not-for-profit ventures developing alongside commercial galleries - it’s very postmodern or non-linear.
If you’re a visiting critic trying to make sense of this, you try to slot it into some kind of linear curve, as you would in the West. I feel there is a natural tendency to make comparisons and try to link things to movements elsewhere.
Of course some of those movements have been influential. For example, I came across a great manifesto written by Egyptian artists in the ‘70s who called themselves Surrealists. Similarly there is school of young Emirati filmmakers that are making short films in the UAE. They use a lot of surreal language, look at spiritual themes and deal with existential ideas.
For me, these films are more about the influence of aural poetry than about short filmmaking elsewhere. The filmmakers have looked into their legacy of cultural influences and translated them into a new medium. So, there has been this ‘re-interpretation of ideas’ but at the same time people in the region have been influenced in a completely different way.
If you’re trying to come at these new forms of art practices through a traditional standpoint or seeing them through the prism of European art history, there’s no way of actually understanding them.
CT: How do you feel about using terms from globalized theories, such as altermodernity or cultural hybridity when writing about regional art?
AC: There’s a long way to go with developing a specific language for the region. Although often in a community, it is the artists that are able to vocalize complex ideas.
On a global level, we have been through an intense period of these ‘geographical group shows’ or shows based on religion; so many have become shorthand for how to understand the region. Of course, if artists are packaged in that way then they will be understood in that way.
CT: Do you feel that there are critics or curators in the Middle-East looking at new ways of critiquing and presenting art?
AC: I think there are; Murthazar Vali is an example. He was born and brought up in Sharjah but lives in the States now. He looks at artists in a situation of exile and writes about their work in a different way. Rather than just looking at the victimhood of hybrid situations, he tries to understand an artist’s work through a much more complex prism; looking at the power that exists in that relationship as well.
For example he’s written a lot about Emily Jacir, who’s Palestinian, but grew up in Saudi Arabia and lives between Ramallah and New York. She’s often seen as ‘a Palestinian artist’ and therefore someone who’s on a constant protest! Whereas her work looks just as much at America as it does Palestine.
Obviously there is Jack Persekian; as a curator, he also writes and is part of the movement to interpret things in a more complex way. Kaelen Wilson-Goldie has been really important because she’s written about particular artists in depth. She specialises in Lebanese artists and shows that although they often reference the war, it’s not their be all and end all.
I hope that’s something that will happen more and more - that artists from the region will be shown in solo shows and therefore be written about in that way too.
CT: And finally, do you feel as critics we have any particular responsibilities when writing about art?
AC: I think this is a good question, how one approaches the question of ethics in writing. I suppose you have to have a certain moral compass. There is a responsibility to the artist, to represent their work in way that adds to it. You have to develop a relationship between the artist and writer.
If it’s a very passive representation, then it doesn’t further the artist’s work in any way. So that responsibility is to yourself and the artist. This also comes back to this sense of history, not to see anybody in an isolated context but as part of a bigger picture.
1 Bidoun’s ‘Writing about Art’ Workshop was held in conjunction with the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture) and took place at the Shelter, Dubai, January-June 2010.
