Exhibitions program 2022

The NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Art Gallery has announced its program for 2022. Spring marks the first institutional solo exhibition in the UAE for artist trio Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian, and fall will see Khaleej Modern—an in-depth survey of modern art in the Gulf. The Gallery has also announced collaborations with the National Pavilion UAE at the Biennale Arte 2022 in Venice, and with the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C. for the UAE’s 50th anniversary exhibition. The NYUAD Art Gallery’s program of exhibitions and collaborations reflects its ongoing commitment to supporting artists, curators, and scholars who expand the study and knowledge of art from across the globe.

On Tuesday, March 1, The NYUAD Art Gallery will open Parthenogenesis: Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, Hesam Rahmanian. The artists, originally from Iran, have adopted the UAE as their home. They are known for their immersive, surreal projects, performances, paintings, and animations, which have exhibited internationally, at multiple biennials and major museums (including Liverpool, Sydney, and Toronto biennials, and Kunsthalle Zurich, ICA Boston, MACBA Barcelona, and a forthcoming project at the Hayward Gallery, London). In their first institutional solo exhibition in the UAE, the artists create a landscape in the gallery that traces how an artwork grows itself through an artist’s relationships with others. Parthenogenesis is a testament to their 13 years in Dubai as artists living and working together, creating a landscape and tapestry of continuously evolving ideas and dialogues with collaborators, artists, and visitors to their home.

Fall 2022 will feature Khaleej Modern, a landmark historical survey of the last century of modern art movements across the GCC states, collectively known as the “Khaleej.” Curated by Dr. Aisha Stoby—who was recently announced as curator of the inaugural Oman Pavilion to the Venice Biennale—Khaleej Modern is based on her research tracing the region’s pre-‘boom era’ of the early/mid-20th century through 2008. By analyzing the Gulf’s modern art history together for the first time, the exhibition promotes a wider conversation on more inclusive narratives relating to comparative modernities and art movements in the region, and will play a vital role in illuminating the art history of the Gulf.

In addition to the Gallery’s 2022 program, Executive Director of The NYUAD Art Gallery Maya Allison is curating the National Pavilion UAE at the Biennale Arte 2022 in Venice, which opens to the public in Venice, Italy, on April 23. Titled Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim: Between Sunrise and Sunset, the project grows out of Allison’s long series of curatorial collaborations with the artist. It is a major new installation of human-sized, abstract, and organic sculptural forms that draws from Ibrahim’s deep connection to the local environment of his home of Khor Fakkan, on the rocky eastern coast of the UAE. Ibrahim is one of the UAE’s leading artists and an influential member of the historic group of experimental, conceptual artists who have led the vanguard of visual art in the UAE since the 1980s. 

Allison said: “I’m deeply gratified to see the many ways that, in 2022, we celebrate and make visible existing art histories, and investigate art practices that flourish here. Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim is a veteran experimental artist rooted outside the urban centers of the region, while Dr. Aisha Stoby’s groundbreaking research shows that clusters of artistic communities have long-thrived throughout the modern Gulf, often as informal, self-supported collectives, as she will trace in Khaleej Modern. I am compelled by the depth and complexity of the work of these artists, long-recognized regionally, but slowly registering in canons of global art history.”

Allison continues, “Similarly, for our partnership with the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C., both the curator, Munira Al Sayegh, and the artists she selected for their current exhibition, all thrive in the context of present-day UAE’s art scene. That ecosystem includes the artists in our Spring exhibition, and I look forward to welcoming audiences to discover the radical re-thinking of artistic practice by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, Hesam Rahmanian, who have found inspiration in their art community of the UAE. The projects of 2022 develop  a core tenet of The Art Gallery’s mission, in championing and growing the work of artists, and in documenting the journey that led us to this moment.”