Autumn/winter 2021-22 programme

Art Jameel announces a dynamic autumn/winter 2021-22 programme at Jameel Arts Centre, bringing works from the 1970s to the present by over 55 artists across major group shows, regional debut solo exhibitions, international collaborations, new commissions and films.

Exhibitions:

The Distance from Here
September 8, 2021–January 22, 2022
Drawn from the Art Jameel Collection, loans and new commissions, this group exhibition features 11 artists exploring how our bodies become essential materials in navigating the day-to-day, highlighting artists’ responses to space and time. The show includes Mona Ayyash, Yto Barrada, Hicham Benohoud, Jason Dodge, Shilpa Gupta, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Hrair Sarkissian, Do Ho Suh, and Anup Mathew Thomas.

Pacita Abad: I Thought the Streets Were Paved with Gold
September 8, 2021–February 13, 2022
The first solo exhibition in the Middle East by the late Filipina artist Pacita Abad brings exuberant signature works—from her colourful trapunto embroideries to major paintings—that span abstraction to social realism, shaped by her peripatetic life and driven by an understanding of what it meant to be a woman of colour and an immigrant.

Off Centre/On Stage, curated by Todd Reisz
September 29, 2021–February 19, 2022
Off Centre/On Stage presents around 60 photographs, taken by architects Stephen Finch and Mark Harris in the late 1970s, accompanied by commentary and documentation from archives and newspapers, collected by architect and writer Todd Reisz. Supported by Barjeel Art Foundation, it captures a moment of early ambition for Dubai, as the city strived for global stature, illuminating fleeting instances of a long arc of endurance, ambition and grit.  

Artist’s Rooms: Samson Young
October 30, 2021–May 7, 2022
Multimedia artist Samson Young is developing a site-specific interactive installation, commissioned by Art Jameel in collaboration with the Kochi-Muziris Biennale and Burger Collection. Reasonable Music explores nervousness at a time of information overload, using computer-generated images, sound performance, and 3D-printed sculptures. An iteration of Reasonable Music will be shown at the next Kochi-Muziris Biennale.

Film: The Jump by Shuruq Harb
September 8, 2021–November 27, 2021
Awarded through the Han Nefkens Foundation - Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award, The Jump by Shuruq Harb is set within the tectonic rift of the Jordan Valley, guiding us through dizzying shots of the landscape while speculating the conditions surrounding a Palestinian man’s jump into the Mediterranean.

Alongside Jameel Arts Centre, the work is presented across the organisations that together jury the award – NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore; the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila; WIELS, Brussels; and the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona.

Library Circles: Salma Serry
February 2, 2022–August 3, 2022
Jameel Library presents writer and filmmaker Salma Serry’s research, exploring food as a site of confluence where history, politics and semantics are connected and reproduced, linking the Jameel Arts Centre’s programme with that of the forthcoming Hayy Jameel in Jeddah. Hayy Arts’ opening exhibition, Staple: What’s on your plate? is co-curated with London-based Delfina Foundation, investigating the entanglement of food with memory and ecology through contributions of over 30 artists, researchers and creative practitioners. Further news on the opening programme at Hayy Jameel – a new complex for exhibitions, learning, cinema and the creative community – will be announced over the coming weeks.

The Jameel Waterfront Sculpture Park features Park Projects, with the inaugural edition presenting Nahla Tabbaa (from December 11, 2021) and Trevor Yeung (from January 20, 2022), plus Hassan Khan’s award-winning soundwork, Composition for a Public Park returns by popular demand for the third year. 

All exhibitions are accompanied by learning and public programmes plus new bilingual (Arabic/English) publications, produced collaboratively by Art Jameel and available for purchase from Art Jameel Shop. Pacita Abad’s exhibition features free online resources in Tagalog.

For press inquiries, contact Ruba [​at​] ArtJameel.org