PANOPTIKON

On Contemporary Visual Culture

PANOPTIKON PAPERS SERIES

Building Cultural Capital:

Contemporary Art in Dubai and
the African Art Circuit
by

J.R. Osborn, Ph.D.

Department of Visual Communication
American University in Dubai
w.h.osborn@gmail.com

and

Katy Chang, Director

Cultural Capital: Finding Art in Dubai
Mer-chan Productions

2009

PANOPTIKON PAPERS 2, September 2009

PANOPTIKON - On Contemporary Visual Culture
ISSN 1996-0344

www.panoptikon.net

Editor: Marcelo Guimaraes Lima

thepanoptikon@gmail.com

PANOPTIKON PAPERS SERIES, September 2009

text copyright © J.R. Osborn and Katy Chang, 2009

PANOPTIKON PAPERS 2 September, 2009

 Building Cultural Capital:
Contemporary Art in Dubai and
the African Art Circuit

by

J.R. Osborn, Ph.D.

Department of Visual Communication
American University in Dubai
w.h.osborn@gmail.com

and

Katy Chang, Director

Cultural Capital: Finding Art in Dubai
Mer-chan Productions
katychang@mer-chan.com

Paper prepared for the

Revisiting Modernization Conference
Thematic Area 2: Emerging Circuits of African Art Production and Exhibition.
University of Ghana, Legon
July 27-31, 2009

PANOPTIKON PAPERS 2, September 2009

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Building Cultural Capital:

Contemporary Art in Dubai and the African Art Circuit

by

J.R. Osborn and Katy Chang

A professor of architecture in Abu Dhabi asked his

students: “The UAE is spending all this money and
importing the Louvre. Why not use that money to support
local artists and, in the long run, you will build your own
Louvre.” To which his student responded: “Yes, that may
be a good idea . . . but it takes too much time” (Lima 2009).

The United Arab Emirates is currently attempting to “modernize” within the shortest time

possible. Both Dubai and Abu Dhabi can afford all the components of modernization (the cities,

the buildings, the infrastructure, the media, the museums, the art, etc.) except the historical

time required for modernization. Although the expected results of this process are commonly

compared with the commercial and industrial centers of Europe, America, and Asia, they may

also be placed alongside African history, in which a similar timeframe has produced novel

interpretations of contemporaneity and globalization. Africa, like the Middle East, is traversing

a compressed time out of which its hopes to create a future (Njami 2005: 14). The historical
linkages of Africa and the Middle East offer an interesting point of intersection for this endeavor.

With its bold challenge to become a center of global finance, media, and culture, Dubai is

redrawing the map of commercial and artistic exchange. This endeavor involves the decentering

of European and American markets, with the emerging Dubai art market as a key example. A

circuit of African-Middle Eastern exchange could significantly rewrite the modernization of art

as well as the critical and aesthetic categories of modernism. Contemporary African art offers a

compelling venue for the reimagination of history, tradition, and modernity (Jewsiewicki 1991;

Jules-Rosette 1984; Kasfir 1999); and Simon Njami (2005) has specifically noted how a trans-Arab

exhibit of contemporary art would complement Africa Remix. African-Middle Eastern dialogue

remixes the history of modernity, as long as both sides are willing to take the time. African visions

PANOPTIKON PAPERS 2 September, 2009

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of the contemporary condition resonate with the compressed time of Dubai’s modernization,

and African artists may approach Dubai as a new stage from which to address global audiences.

But this shimmering vision of the future, like much of Dubai, is still under construction.

Contemporary Art in the UAE: Institutions without Dialogue

In 1989, the Jordanian Royal Society of Fine Arts and the Islamic Arts Foundation

of the United Kingdom curated “Contemporary Art from the Islamic World.” The exhibit

traveled from London to Amman in the hope of highlighting “a new dimension in the

collaboration between East and West” (Ali 1989: x). Whereas artists from countries such as
Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Sudan, Turkey, and Yemen merited individual catalog

essays, the UAE was addressed en masse with the other countries of the Gulf Cooperative

Council (GCC): Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. A brief five-page essay

(Ali 1989: 46-50) noted that contemporary art across the GCC region was still very much in

development. Of the 207 participating artists, only sixteen represented the GCC. The exhibit

did not include a single artist from the UAE. With the sole exception of the United Arab

Emirates, every GCC member country contributed at least one artist’s work. At the turn of

the century, acknowledgement of contemporary art was virtually nonexistent in the UAE.

More recently, the country has pursued dramatic development in hopes of becoming both

a regional and global center of media, and culture. The Dubai government built “Dubai Media

City” and “Dubai Internet City” to function as regional hubs for major broadcast and technology

companies. The Dubai media market now challenges the traditional Arabic centers of Egypt and

Lebanon for regional supremacy. Similarly massive economic investments have been directed

toward the trappings of artistic and cultural institutions, such as the proposed branches of the

Guggenheim and the Louvre museums in Abu Dhabi. The design of these buildings generated

an enormous amount of publicity although a grain of sand is yet to be lifted in their construction.

The government-monitored media presents the idea as if it were already a reality, and the mere

PANOPTIKON PAPERS 2, September 2009

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proposal of such grand projects justifies their imagined contributions. Adopting a mantra of

“If you build it, they will come,” UAE development plans assume that once grand museums,

international art fairs, expensive art prizes, and luxury apartments are established, a vibrant

community of local artists, collectors, and critics will quickly follow. As centers of art and

culture, both Abu Dhabi and Dubai place the simulacra of the cart (a relevance in the international

art world) before the local horses of collectors, artworks, venues, and art communities.

Alongside the Abu Dhabi museums, the Art Dubai fair and the Sharjah Biennial are also

heavily investing in contemporary art. The first is primarily market driven, while the latter

maintains a more curatorial focus. But like the Abu Dhabi museums, these institutions reach

toward Europe and America as sources of innovation rather than creating new centers or new
coalitions of contemporary art. Although Art Dubai along with its satellite art fairs brought

over a billion dollars to the region, the majority of its seventy exhibitors were European or

American galleries. Approximately one third of the stalls represented local and regional

galleries, and a few Asian galleries rounded out the total. Art Dubai inaugurated the Abraaj

Capital Art Prize in 2009 with much fanfare. The Prize, which is championed as the world’s

largest monetary art prize, recognizes innovative collaborations between international curators

and artists working in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (the MENASA Region).

The three winning entries collected over $1 million each in prize money. Each of these prizes

highlighted the collaboration of a European gallerist and a Middle Eastern artist they had “found.”

In comparison to the monetary glitz of Art Dubai, the Sharjah Biennial is an international

exhibit sponsored by the Sharjah Art Museum. The Emirate’s Biennial began in 1993, with

2009 being its ninth iteration. The event’s museum sponsorship affords a greater degree of

artistic experimentation than the market-driven Dubai art fair, and it boasts a wide variety

of media, conceptual pieces, and site-specific installations. In previous years, the Sharjah

Biennial directly followed Art Dubai. This allowed art enthusiasts to attend both events
in succession. A rich interplay arose from such a major regional exhibition following

on the heels of a thriving Art Dubai. The fair helped establish a collector’s market in

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the UAE, and the Biennial pointed the way toward a more experimental artistic future.

In 2009, however, the artistic vision of the UAE appeared to falter. The Sharjah

Biennial and Art Dubai coincided, as a larger initiative known as Contemparabia organized

“Gulf Art Week 2009.” This multinational event unfolded over six days with happenings in

Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, and Doha, Qatar. Media coverage was typically effusive and

championed the event as a bold initiative, but the distance between sites, difficulties of

transportation, and scheduling conflicts tended to isolate venues rather than connect them.

Attempting to harness a surging interest in Middle Eastern contemporary art, the overlapping

schedules intended to pour Art Dubai’s increased attendance into the Biennial. But it instead

resulted in a competition for resources and visitors. Most visitors directed their attention to
one site rather than traversing the region. Consequently, the expected dialogue connecting

art marketing, curatorial exhibition, and museum planning failed to materialize. Instead,

the UAE and the region appeared struggling to find an artistic voice. This confusion was

mirrored during the Venice Biennale in June 2009, where both the UAE Ministry of Culture

and the Abu Dhabi Authority on Culture and Heritage hosted competing pavilions (Al Qassemi

2009). Each pavilion claimed the national banner of the UAE and featured many of the same

artists. This inadvertent rivalry puzzled a number of visitors and reinforced a chaotic vision

of art in the UAE. This was the UAE’s first year at the Venice Biennale, and the dueling

pavilions highlighted the country’s financial ability to purchase multiple seats at the table

rather than champion local artists and regional galleries as rising stars of contemporary art.

The Missing Modernism of Contemporary Art in Dubai

Cultural Capital: FindingArt in Dubaiis a feature-length documentary currently in production.

The film has conducted interviews with over fifty Dubai-based artists, gallerists, curators, and
scholars in search of the city’s artistic pulse. Although the growth of contemporary art in Dubai

strikes an overall positive chord, interviewees lamented a lack of local critics and the failure of

PANOPTIKON PAPERS 2, September 2009

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venues to inspire critical dialogue and engagement. As the contemporary art community in the

UAE deals with logistical issues of event planning and coordination, the negotiation of venues

and scheduling distracts from the need for critical commentary. Many gallerists also comment

that the educational basis for art appreciation is lacking. The unflattering label of “decorative”

was frequently applied to describe local artistic preferences. The Dubai art scene privileges a

connoisseurship of expensive collection and privileged display rather than aesthetic interaction

with the city, the community, the environment, or broader issues of social and political concern.

The denunciation of “decorative” art foregrounds an ideological appreciation of art that

differentiates the cultural and artistic position of modernism from the infrastructural technologies

of modernization. For proponents of critical engagement rather than decoration, the cultivation
of artistic modernism offers yet another outward marker of the UAE’s attempted modernization.

In this light, the number of art galleries is comparable to the development of highways or the

number of regional internet portals. But the ideals of aesthetic modernism cannot be easily

measured with quantifiable markers of economic and technological development. Moreover, the

modernist dispersal of decoration as a secondary function reflects a specifically European history

of art. In this history, modern tendencies stress a critical reassessment of the past and its artistic

products, preoccupation with the demands of artistic media, an experimentation with that media,

originality of presentation, the rejection of established hierarchies (both social and consumerist),

and the autonomy of art as a neutral sphere of critical and aesthetic discourse (Adorno 1997;

Harrison 1996). Although an environment of postmodern concurrence has replaced the teleology

of European modernization, the postmodern continues to reference the modern, and traits of

modernism remain markers of a vibrant artistic community. Contemporary art, with is multiple

messages and interpretations, positions aesthetic modernism as the sign of artistic modernization

in much the same way that capitalism, media networks, and sophisticated technology become

signs of economic and industrial modernization. Contemporary art builds upon the modernist

assumptions of intentional deployment of aesthetic media and the creative reworking of

traditional media as a premise of artistic practice. Critical deployment of artistic forms imbues

the artistic presentation of contemporary experience with aesthetic and cultural value. The

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autonomous function of art positions it as both recorder and commentator on that experience.

The Dubai art community is currently negotiating whether tacit acknowledgment of this

ideological modernism is truly a prerequisite for contemporary art. Dubai certainly does not

question the ideal of modernization. Indeed, it vigorously embraces a modernization of its

own terms, where “modern” is conveniently reified into an availability of luxury goods, a

thriving leisure class, and a vibrant consumer economy. In the cash-based lingua franca of

Dubai, modernization is readily available as long as one can afford it. Everything becomes

subject to its exchange value. The idea of art as a commodity is therefore not problematic. The

problem lies instead with the perceived value of that commodity. With the global recession and

a weakening economy, art can no longer afford to remain merely a status symbol of financial
surplus. In order to stay viable, the Dubai art scene must cultivate an appreciation of art

that is more than decorative. The challenge of art in Dubai faces a particularly postmodern

dilemma: how can art be elevated to the position of a Louis Vuitton handbag (Lopardo 2009)?

The enthusiastic adoption of modern materialism, separated from the historical and social

struggles that produced the material infatuation, highlights perhaps the trickiest of postmodern

quandarys: what are the cultural implications of modernization—and, for that matter, post-

modernization—in a society that has not embraced modernism? While the UAE eagerly adopts a

consumerist society, the modernist ideals that question tradition, champion the novel, and embrace

social experimentation, all of which arose hand in hand with consumerism, remain foreign. As an

autonomous realm, contemporary art offers a potential site in which these critical visions might

converge with material marketing. The modernist tendency to reexamine tradition and suggest

aesthetic alternatives (“primitive,” “modern,” and “remixed”) can draw upon Dubai’s diverse

population, 80% of which are expatriates. Although expatriate and local artists respond to a

common urban landscape, they bring with them a variety of traditions, cultural forms, and media.

But Dubai’s social and ethnic rifts are particularly noticeable in the art world. Even

the term “Dubai artist” remains contentious. Despite large expatriate communities, the

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term may only refer to Arab Emirati artists. Or it may apply to anyone practicing within the

Emirate, regardless of nationality or origin. The UAE remains a strongly hierarchical society

with significant ethnic, gender, and class divisions. Contributions of south Asian workers

in building the infrastructure of modernization are therefore perceived in a widely dimmer

light than the cultural initiatives of European and American consultants. Consequently,

minor works by European, American, and Persian artists present a cache of validity that

bolsters their attractiveness to Dubai-based collectors. This trumps the autonomy of art, in

which experimentation with media or the innovative construction of a message serves as a

marker of value. In the current Dubai market, the origin of an artwork—whether Emirati,

European, Indian, or Persian—largely determines its exhibition and exchange value.

The lack of African artistic representation in the Dubai market highlights this complex

cultural maneuvering. Bo Tasle d’Heliand spent a number of years studying art in the workshops

of Kenya, and has recently relocated to Dubai as an artist in residence. His current project

“Extraction narrative; coordinates: 1°47’N, 36°47’E” combines Google satellite imagery with

a record of his time spent with the Turkana. After struggling to find an African presence in

the Dubai art scene, d’Heliand discovered that African artwork, as well as work perceived as

addressing African themes, is much more difficult to display in Dubai than elsewhere. Whereas

European and American museums and galleries have a niche for African art, both traditional and

contemporary, Middle Eastern collectors and audiences seem to appreciate neither the traditions

nor their creative expropriation in contemporary settings (d’Heliand 2009). The local preference

for “decorative” pieces further weakens the appeal of experimental works, especially those that

challenge the social hierarchy or remix artistic traditions. If they choose to present work that

critically engages their audiences, gallery owners must make a two-fold argument: (1) That the

national origin and decorative display of artworks are not the sole markers of value and (2) that a

remixing of tradition is as important to the future vision of Dubai as the fetishization of Europe.

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Artistic Models of Contemporaneity

Dubai specifically, and the Middle East more generally, are in dire need of new languages

to discuss modernity. Contemporary art has a significant role to play in these discussions.

The autonomy of art provides a laboratory for presenting, displaying, and sharing alternative

visions of the future. Numerous commentators on African art have noted how the artistic

laboratory short-circuits the historical time of modernism (Jewsiewicki 1993; Kasfir 1999).

The critical experiments of contemporary art draw upon all available resources: forms,

media, and traditions. They remix and re-envision the contemporary environment without

requiring the recreation of histories and processes that produced this environment. When

an artistic display strikes a chord, it justifies the time (or the lack of time) required for its
production. The process of production is as much a critique as the results are aesthetic.

Contemporary African artistic has located a number of new languages in the visual and

performative products of the continent. In explaining the need for Africa Remix, Simon Njami

stated that African artists reached a new plateau in the examination, representation, and remixing

of contemporaneity: “Artists have no need to prove anything through their work. They are

no longer essentially ethnic, though no-one can disown their roots, they are aesthetic and
political” (Njami 2005: 21). This third wave of African art was preceded by two stages, which

mirror the responses to tradition present in contemporary Middle Eastern art: first, a celebration

of African artistic roots and a subsequent period of denial in which the media and forms of

European practice were adopted with vigor (ibid.). The third stage of Africa Remix synthesizes

the African thesis and the European antithesis in proper Hegelian fashion. It moves discussion

away from the origin of the art and into the realm of the contemporary. Today’s artistic quest,

according to Njami, is existential. Contemporary art explores the current condition in all its

ramifications, mutations, and differences. There may be no global definition of the contemporary

condition, but its questions and responses overlap both geographic and artistic boundaries.

For Njami, the “Chaos” of African art has “metamorphosized” into a critical commentary.

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The art of Africa Remix refashions itself in a dialectical response to tradition and employs

artistic media to experiment with and explore the contemporary condition: “Today’s Africa

is inevitably the illustration of the cultural syncretism underlying all of contemporaneity”

(Njami 2005: 15). In particular, scholars such as Bogumil Jewsiewicki (1991; 1993), Johannes

Fabian (1996), and Bennetta Jules-Rosette (2006) have explored Congolese popular painting

as an incredbly rich field of symbolic and critical dialogue. Criticisms of history, modernity,

and the contemporary condition are re-presented by artists and transposed into a modeling

system of hidden messages and visual codes (Jules-Rosette 1987: 96). Popular painting

neither eschews modernity nor provides a viable alternative. Instead, it “explores modernity,

tracks it down everywhere, examines it, critiques it, caricatures it in an effort to capture its

formula and key, to possess it” (Jewsiewicki 1993: 790). In decoding these messages, viewers
similarly attempt to capture a formula. They follow the artists to arrive at their own critical

assessment and self-reflection. Popular paintings perform not only a decorative role, but also

a dialogical one. They do not simply display scenes for a viewer; they engage a viewer. The

frame of artistic display becomes a communicative, symbolic, and aesthetic practice in which

messages of tradition, politics, value, and experience are negotiated before the viewer’s eyes.

A similar aesthetic shift is currently occurring in the Arab world and the Middle East. The

realm of contemporary calligraphic art is one area in which Middle Eastern artists are vibrantly

rewriting tradition (Ali 1997). A number of recent studies and exhibitions have explored the

transformation of theArabic letter from a formal construct of a calligraphic tradition to an expressive

form and a symbolic image in contemporary aesthetics (Shabout 2007; Porter and Eigner 2008;

Kreamer, et. al 2007). Contemporary calligraphic works directly address the tradition of Islamic

art, with its interplay of decorative and communicative functions. But the remixing of the written

word also strikes a deeper chord in the examination of Middle Eastern modernity. The linguistic

modernization of Arabic is an incredibly delicate and complex issue (Shabout 1999; Haeri

2003: 73-74). An artistic exploration of language can highlight these issues in ways that other

artistic traditions may not. Contemporary calligraphic art therefore introduces both an aesthetic

and a linguistic framework for reassessing Arabic tradition. As these visions gain value as a

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decorative art, their underling critique sets the stage for a wider embrace of modernist aesthetics.

Roberto Lopardo, a practicing artist and Chair of the Visual Communication Department

at the American University in Dubai, has noticed a significant rise in the reflexivity of regional

art and design over the past five years. In 2007, Lopardo co-curated the first “Basically Human”

exhibit and a second iteration of the same theme is currently on display in New York. The title

derives from the products of the first exhibit, which emphasized issues of identity as young

Middle Eastern artists struggled to find their own voice. In the current show, however, Lopardo

noted that identity concerns are no longer the primary motif. Instead, artists are beginning to

experiment with their chosen form as a means of critical commentary and self-expression. The

dialogue between artist and viewer has become a discourse of aesthetics and politics rather than
a decorative display or an argument of self-justification. Dubai-based artists are “moving out

of the studio and into the space that surrounds them” as art provides a medium through which

to introduce novel discussions and engage the wider community. Alongside the imported

handbags of Louis Vuitton and the construction of the world’s grandest structures, “contemporary

art is increasingly becoming a partner in Dubai’s changes, rather than just an observer.”

Revisiting Modernism: The Importance of An African-Middle Eastern Exchange

Dubai continues to emerge as a center of artistic production and exchange. Initially fueled by

financial investment, its cultural base has been strengthened by a cosmopolitan population, an

increasingly educated workforce, and a high percentage of design workers. The past five years

have seen a boom in the opening of galleries and exhibition halls. In 2005, the city had less than

five exhibit halls. It now has over thirty galleries, as well as numerous art organizations, studio

spaces, art education centers, and the region’s signature collector event: Art Dubai. Although the

recent global economic downturn has slowed development throughout the UAE, the number of

galleries has reached a tipping point where they are ensured of continued dialogue and success.

Kouroush Nouri (2009), the owner of the Dubai-based gallery Carbon 12, sees the downturn

as a rich opportunity for local art. Tighter budgets may beneficially trim some of the excess

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of the Dubai art scene and firmly establish a regional focus on curatorial and artistic quality.

The current round of questioning is therefore no longer whether contemporary art will

arrive in the UAE, but what form that art will take. How will local art revisit the question

of modernity? More importantly, can Dubai emerge as a cultural center of its own or will it

remain a satellite to European and American innovations? Can discourses of modernism and

the critical reassessment of artistic forms be revised in such a way that they do not necessarily

flow through the metropoles of Europe? These questions are especially relevant to the display

and distribution of contemporary art, both in the opening of new marketing channels and in the

sharing of artistic visions with new audiences. The question of artistic modernism, as opposed to

the infrastructural question of modernity uncovers a variety of artistic, performative, and aesthetic
spaces that hide within and among the multiple modernities that mirror European art history.

Both African and Middle Eastern artists are similarly striving to catapult themselves from

local shows onto the stages of Paris, London, Berlin, and New York. Global artists compete

for the limited gallery space of European and American venues. Consequently, the artistic

circuit becomes congested as a one-way track, while alternative circuits of transcontinental

exchange and dialogue break down. With the UAE’s excessive spending and investment in

modernization, these relations are beginning to drift. European-based artists have recently

begun to eye Dubai as a new market. As a stream of artists from the Middle East, Africa, and

elsewhere flow into Europe, the overflow spills back into the Middle East. But just as art may

short circuit the historical time of modernization, the exchange of art may usefully short-circuit

the geographic marketing streams contemporary art. The resurgence of movement along pre-

modern routes—such as the circulation of artists, art works, and artistic forms from Africa to

the Middle East and vice versa—may reawaken the critical of dialogue of modernism. This

new modernism might bypass the question of how emerging artists can acquire seats at the

European table. It produces, instead, an alternative feast in which Europe is not the primary chef.

PANOPTIKON PAPERS 2 September, 2009

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— 1997. Modern Islamic Art: Development and Continuity. Gainesville: University

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Al Qassemi, Sultan Sooud. 2009. “UAE’s Oneness.” In The Khaleej Times (June 13, 2009).

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