re:collections

When approached to curate this exhibition, the only parameter I was given was to showcase locally based artists. I reflected on locality and context through a fascination for how people experience a shared place and time differently. How do you sum up a place? An inexhaustible question for a place with remarkable endurance and stamina for change. We may share places fleetingly in a layover, temporarily for work, long-term with family, or permanently as citizens. Undeniably, it’s the people that give soul and substance to a place.

This exhibition attempts to unpack the infinite readings, interpretations, and translations that occur when thinking of place, memory, and time. It brings together a diverse group of creatives who investigate context through the natural and built environment and its social and cultural layers. What results is a collection of collections, varied in its inquiries, depictions, mediums, and processes. The exhibition features works by Amena Al-Yousef, Christto & Andrew, Fatma and Reem Al Sehlawi as Atlas Bookstore, Markus Elblaus, Nayla Al Mulla, and Simone Muscolino with the Moving Postcards Project.

In all the works exhibited, time plays a significant role. They have all been produced within the past decade. A decade in a place that has witnessed monumental changes at the threshold of hosting one of the largest world events. Amena, Fatma, Reem, and Simone’s works and installations have an archival quality, an anxious attempt to hold on or as a means of access and reference for future generations. Markus and Nayla present works frozen in time, a snapshot and account of a particular place and time. Christto & Andrew’s work speculates and constructs fictional and futuristic visions by collapsing past, present, and future.

In this place, I have grown to cherish being immersed in multiple perspectives and nurtured by them. It is the only reality I’ve known and the only thing that feels like home. I attempted to curate this exhibition in the same spirit. re:collections invites visitors to experience a grounded, complex, nuanced, and extraordinary place. It opens up urgent and necessary conversations without offering conclusions, allowing different translations to emerge.

You, being here, are a part of the recollections.