LOGO

EXHIBITION
APRIL 18 - May 8, 2021

Patterns in the MENA Region: Material Culture, Representation and Communities

By Adina Hempel, Atteqa Ali, Janet Bellotto, Kara McKeown, Marie-Claire Bakker, and Sabrina DeTurk

Exhibition: April 18 – May 8, 2021
Preview: April 18, 2021 from 4 – 9 pm (UAE time)
Venue: ZUUSS, Gallery 1 at the Foundry in Downtown, Dubai Location

RSVP: click here

Patterns in the MENA Region is a collection of projects exploring the visual and organizational elements of material culture, representation and community. The projects document and interpret knowledge gathered across creative developments in the UAE and MENA region to form an understanding of cultural identity, while considering history as an underlying organizational structure in today’s material culture and community within the pattern of everyday life. Each of the four research projects considers an aspect that will contribute to a growing understanding of the region’s traditions and customs. The history and traditions of the region have largely been passed down through oral histories. Long-standing trade routes connected the UAE and the Gulf to the rest of the world which are evident in architecture, objects and traditions that have impacted the art, design and cultural arenas in the UAE today. The research findings brought together in a digital collection presented in this exhibition discuss: the documentation of traditional jewelry of the Gulf region primarily through the collection of oral histories tracing the social role played by jewelry throughout the life cycle of women in the project From Cradle to Grave, a Life Cycle in Jewelry; the project Community Collaborations investigates the patterns of community formations across the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia including their impact on the development of artistic practices; while the project Writing on the Wall looks at the diverse production of street art in the Middle East and North Africa within the social, political and cultural contexts for this art form; and finally the project City EastWest explores the notion of authenticity and place specificity including how such constructs are formed and influenced through media representation as well as personal experiences. More information

LECTURE
APRIL 20, 2021

Patterns in the MENA Region: Material Culture, Representation and Communities

By Adina Hempel, Atteqa Ali, Janet Bellotto, Kara McKeown, Marie-Claire Bakker, and Sabrina DeTurk

Date: April 20th, 2021
Time: 12.30-1.30pm (UAE time)

Register for the webinar: click here

The presentation will share a collection of projects exploring the visual and organizational elements of material culture, representation and community that were part of the research cluster the Patterns in the MENA Region. The cluster comprises four main projects that range from: the documentation of traditional jewellery of the Gulf region primarily through the collection of oral histories tracing the social role played by jewellery throughout the life cycle of women in the project From Cradle to Grave, a Life Cycle in Jewelry by Marie-Claire Bakker and Kara McKeown; the project Community Collaborations by Atteqa Ali which investigated the patterns of community formations across the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia including their impact on the development of artistic practices; the project Writing on the Wall by Sabrina DeTurk who looked at the diverse production of street art in the Middle East and North Africa within the social, political and cultural contexts for this art form; and the project City EastWest by Janet Bellotto and Adina Hempel, which explored the notion of authenticity and place specificity including how such constructs are formed and influenced through media representation as well as personal experiences. The research findings are brought together in an exhibition that will be on display in the Foundry Gallery/Downtown Dubai from April 18th till May 8th 2021.

Each project will be introduced and main findings shared, followed by a Q&A. The session will be moderated by Woodman Taylor from the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises.

City EastWest: a fiction of global urban culture and communities

Today cities are globally connected by trade, transportation and migration, becoming hubs for exchange of knowledge, culture and heritage. Media and digital technologies have enhanced such connections and created a so-called ‘media presence,’ alluding to place specificity and aiming to construct authenticity. Much like Los Angeles which according to Norman M. Klein builds on a history of ‘continuously reinterpreting itself’, Dubai’s continuous projection of the cities’ identity into the future and the articulation of the distant past shares a common identity of change and experimentation. Dubai and Los Angeles are located at the opposite ends in the ‘East’ and the ‘West,’ they are incubators for creative industries and future development and share a strong media identity. This project documents the current perceived versus remembered urban experiences and from that a newly formed urban imaginary. City EastWest further explores the notion of authenticity and place specificity and how such constructs are formed and influenced through media representation versus personal experiences and develop a multilayered collective urban memory and identity of a place opposed to a singular narrative. Through social media, air travel and international trade, cities are more than ever linked and united as one giant urban network and arguably even as one giant global city. Story telling not only is a reminder of past traditions such as oral history culture in the UAE, but also has impacted the development of industries such as script writing for film industries as it is in Los Angeles. Using storytelling as means to read the built environment and juxtaposing this with archival material and site observation, the project aims to develop a fictional history of the future City EastWest.

RESEARCH PROCESS

This project documents the urban culture and transformation of creative industry in Dubai and Los Angeles over a period of five years. The resulting online archive will include over 50 narratives of each city, emphasizing their perceived understanding and experienced urban transformation of both cities. Supported by site documentation of four specific locations in both cites, those personal urban experiences were collected through oral histories and stories were contrasted and expanded in focus group conversations constructing a complex web of identities of either city.

These narratives form a collective urban memory of Dubai and Los Angeles pre-Covid 19. Consequently, the City EastWest identity cannot be reduced to simply one story, but rather is a complex web of experiences and memories, in which each person's memory is specific to time and place and cannot easily be applied universally to others or places. Additionally, memories are multilayered and are impacted by personal experiences and formed through interactions and media representations. The collected information centers around four prominent sites in both cities that were documented: Sheikh Zayed Road/E11, Dubai Creek/Canal, Los Angeles River and Los Angeles Sunset Strip/Boulevard. The collected material will present an understanding of the urban fabric and culture along or in these locations and form the context in which the interviewed individuals have experienced Dubai and Los Angeles.

City EASTWEST

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PROJECT TEAM

Adina Hempel

is a registered architect, urban researcher and Associate Professor at the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises, Zayed University in Dubai, UAE. She has conducted extensive research on the architectural and urban history of the UAE and was part of the curatorial team of the National Pavilion of the UAE at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. She served as Head of Research for the Shindagha Museum phase 1 pavilions in Dubai and has worked with the UAE Ministry of Culture and Youth on a variety of UAE Architecture related projects and currently is a member of the Technical Committee for Modern Heritage of the UAE. Adina Hempel studied Architecture at the Technical University of Dresden, Urban Studies at Columbia University in New York and Digital Film Making at New York Film Academy in New York and is currently pursuing a PhD in Architecture at the University of Stuttgart.

Janet Bellotto

is an artist, writer, and educator from Toronto and a Professor in Visual Arts of the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises, Zayed University, Dubai, where she also served in a variety of leadership roles. Bellotto is an initiator in various collaborations where she engages in projects and curates exhibitions that promote cultural exchange—most recently at the American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC. Artistic Director for the 2014 International Symposium on Electronic Art hosted in Dubai, she currently is editor for , which publishes on photography from the Arab world. Inspired by narratives and locations, water is a constant theme in her installation practice while examining the ever-changing world that she travels. In her most recent work, she focuses on islands—their isolation and vulnerability. Bellotto’s work has been exhibited in a variety of collective, group, and solo exhibitions internationally.

Acknowledgements: This project would not have been possible without the help of so many individuals throughout the five years, organized in alphabeitical order: Koan Jeff Baysa, Amanda Beech, Ann-Maree Reaney, Arianna Cancian, Maristella Casciato, Dunya Hussein Dowais, Fred Eversley, Joseph Fansher, Bruce Ferguson, Michelle Carole Gay, Corina Ghaznavi, Liz Gordon (Loft at Liz’s), David Howarth, Erkki Huhtamo, Noman M. Klein, Nadine Khalil, Joe Lewis, Maryam Al Mannae, Jane Mi, Hetal Pawani (thejamjar), Guillermo Alberto Marín Pérez, Zainab Ashoor Ahmed Saeed, Maram AlSharani, Sundos AlSheebani, Brett Steele, Shamsa Al Suwaidi, Woodman Taylor, Marcus Tolledo, Leila Anna Wahba (A+D Museum), Emma Warbuton and Barry Veerkamp have tirelessly supported and contributed in various capacities to the project.

LINKS
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Contact:   cityeastwest@gmail.com