After living for few years in Dubai, I am one of the artists who exhibit at the Alserkal Cultural Foundation, and this year too it renewed its participation to Sikka, an event that took place from the 11th to the 21st of March, within the artistic initiative of Art Dubai (15-18th of March).
I took this great opportunity to visit my son, who lives and works in Dubai, and to also bring some of my new “Ladies” to the Alserkal Cultural Foundation, sculptures created with the technique of porcelain paperclay.
Sikka hosts emergent artists who are resident in the United Arab Emirates and are selected by a governmental commission in various spheres of the art world, ranging from visual arts, performance, installations, to music, film, and workshops.
It takes places in Bastakiya, where the Foundation is.
It’s the most authentic area, close to the Dubai Museum, and the most historical of Dubai; a little neighborhood full of little lanes and small buildings of very light stone, with the suggestive old wind towers that once, before the air conditioning, used to cool down the interiors. It is one of the rare quiet places in Dubai, without any construction sites nearby; you can breathe some peace, and an atmosphere that is a bit… labyrinthine. In fact I always get lost, oh well, it’s not that hard…
There is a group of young artists that created a collective and they have been moving around the Dubai creative scene for several years. They are called Satwa 3000, my son Jacopo is part of them, as a videographer and during this event they adorned a little square using wood palettes, building a tree house-type of structure as a relax zone around two trees, a bar right next to the structure, a gazebo functioning as a shop where they were selling t-shirts they printed, a photo booth where Marta, the group’s photographer, was taking iconic pictures of a public that every evening was queuing just to get them, amongst tapestries, hedgerows, wood, colors.
Then I went to Alserkal Avenue, the area I prefer the most, with high activities all throughout the year.
From 2008 in fact, the industrial district Al Quoz, is at the center of a deep conversion, contemporary art galleries have opened their headquarters or branches there, where cultural activities regularly take place, concerts, markets, creative initiatives also related to design and fashion.
There is also a nice theater, an open space with a bar equipped with outside wooden tables, puffs, and carpets, little green areas, free independent and art movies projections, an exhibiting space and a great mezzanine with book shelves and little couches that look like beds, and given the free wifi, there’s many young people that go there to study or work. Unfortunately just like many Dubai activities they have uncommon timings, which I haven’t understood yet.
On the occasion of Art Dubai, in Alserkal Avenue, they inaugurated “Concrete”, the new ultramodern building and exhibiting space, by OMA Studio, and designed by the dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. 8-meters-high dark grey walls that are able to rotate and slide, it is destined to host exhibitions, shows, conferences etc.; it is a great space, but what left me wondering was the operas exhibited “Syria into the light”, a collection of paintings, sculptures, videos, drawings, made by different Syrian artists from the beginning of the 20th century to our present time.
With AnnaMaria Bersani, the director of the Alserkal Foundation, we shared the opinion that it seemed a set up mostly destined to glorify the venue rather than the operas themselves. Am I maybe old-fashioned?
Dubai still remains a difficult and tiring city, for its dimensions, but also for being so dispersive and diversified, Art Dubai itself happened in many locations and areas very far from one another amongst which the Dubai Design District, Madinat Jumeirah, and in other areas of town where artistic initiatives where taking place quite disconnectedly.
March is also not the perfect month to go, as you might find yourself caught in a fairly common sandstorm, with temperatures around 36 °C, or in a rainstorm that floods the city, and 10 °C in variations in temperatures between day and night, and of course I have managed not to miss any of this.
