Fall/Winter 2020-2021 programme

Jameel Arts Centre announces its diverse Fall/Winter 2020-21 programme featuring two new exhibitions; site-specific installations in the Jaddaf Waterfront Sculpture Park; and a new Artist’s Garden commission. 

Exhibitions: Do You Remember What You Are Burning?
December 16, 2020–July 24, 2021

Hiwa K marks his debut in Asia and the Middle East with a solo exhibition titled Do You Remember What You Are Burning? at Jameel Arts Centre highlighting more than ten years of the acclaimed artist’s bold and timely practice.

Hiwa K blends humour with personal experience to produce bodies of work that speak to contemporary experiences of displacement, belonging and resilience. Many of the works in this exhibition relate to the artist’s home city of Sulaymaniyah, in Iraqi Kurdistan, and his experiences of fleeing as a refugee and returning many years later. The exhibition brings together major works including One Room Apartment, an outdoor installation originally commissioned for Documenta 14 (2017), and a new interactive large-scale work, produced especially for this show’s debut in the UAE.

The exhibition was commissioned by Art Jameel as a three-venue collaboration with Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto.

Exhibitions: Age of You
January 28–August 14, 2021

Curated by Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist, with graphic design by Daly & Lyon, Age of You is a dynamic, immersive exhibition about how our perceptions of ourselves have changed, and what it means to be an individual today.

A collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, and set across two of Jameel Arts Centre’s gallery floors, Age of You includes works in film, fashion, sculpture and installation by more than 70 contributors, presented through 13 chapters that chart the remaking of the interior self. The exhibition features words and slogans by the curators and creative collaborators juxtaposed with specially commissioned art installations.

The exhibition previews a forthcoming book by the curators, The Extreme Self, a sequel to their previous cult title The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present.

Site-Specific Installations: Artist’s Garden
October 17, 2020 onwards

Jameel Arts Centre’s latest Artist’s Garden commission is awarded to Namrata Neog and Sunoj D: Desert is a Forest asks, “What negotiations, relationships and hierarchies emerge and submerge in this thinking landscape?” The garden explores local biodiversity and the way we see and interpret the environment through the complex entanglements of humans, non-humans, food and domesticity. The plants grown in the Artist’s Garden — indigenous to the UAE and telling the story of their traditional uses as food and medicine — are accompanied by a programme of talks, readings and performances by the artists and their UAE-based collaborators.

Library Circles: Maryam Al Dabbagh
Until January 7, 2021

The autumn edition of the research and experimental exhibitions series Library Circles features writer and researcher Maryam Al Dabbagh, commissioned by Jameel Library to produce a bilingual text and audio installation that takes visitors on a journey throughout the Jameel and into its hidden corners. The work features conversations and personal narratives around the theme of belonging, explored through the lenses of bureaucracy, administration and the (long-prophesied) age of retirement.

The Assembly: 2020 Takeover
October 30–November 14, 2020

The Assembly is an annual programme designed to foster original programming for and by UAE youth, managed by nine core members aged 18-24. The 2020 Assembly members, selected via a highly competitive process, are: Aliyah Alawadhi, Arthur de Olivera, Ashay Bhave, Daniel Rey, Dina Al Khatib, Mohammad Mhaisen, Saad Boujane, Tala Yahya Khalil and Tasnim Tinawi. Their Takeover addresses the theme of “Reassigning Value,” and includes the commissioning of 14 UAE-based artists and creatives to produce physical artworks, interventions and events at the Jameel, plus a digital programme on the Assembly’s blog Verticals.

The Jameel’s Sculpture Park features the debut of new permanent sculpture Formation III: The Dappled Light of the Sun by Conrad Shawcross plus the return of Hassan Khan’s popular, award-winning, multi-lingual musical artwork, Composition for a Public Park. Michael Rakowitz’s major survey show comes to a close on November 22 while Artist’s Rooms by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Taysir Batniji and Larissa Sansour continue through January 3, 2021.