Twenty galleries. More than fifty artists. One exhibition built around repetition, memory glitches, historical absurdity, and the instability of language.
Déjà vu at Concrete at Alserkal Avenue brought some of the UAE’s leading contemporary galleries together in the country’s first collaborative gallery exhibition.
Enjoy!
I recently went to one of the most important exhibitions of the year here in Dubai.
Déjà vu brought 20 UAE galleries together at Concrete in Alserkal Avenue.
More than 50 artists were featured, from some of the region’s leading contemporary galleries.
The project was conceived as a collective commercial initiative, created to support galleries affected by the current events.
Rather than a single curatorial theme, the show unfolds through three streams: the uncanny, historical absurdity, and linguistic slippage.
The exhibition also spans practices across generations, from painting and installation to conceptual, archival, and politically charged works.
Installed inside Concrete, the exhibition also activated one of the city’s key spaces for large-scale experimental shows.
The works were so incredibly diverse, ranging from what felt intimate and personal to conceptual and experimental.
Several works in the exhibition circle recurring themes in regional art: memory, rupture, repetition, displacement.
Some of my favourites included:
A Brief Commentary on Almost by Mirna Bamieh
Silence in repetition 2 by Juma Al Haj
The Lioness Confronts Dimna, and The Lion-King Receives Shanzaba by Bady Dalloul
A Man Burning #2 and Sad Fighter #14 by Amir Khojasteh
Proyección Facial #1 from his Ex Vito’s Series by Adrian Pepe
Sculptural works by Katya Traboulsi
Works by Rula Halawani, Fayçal Baghrichr, and Michael Sailstorfer
Untitled by Slavs and Tatars
SH-OBT by Dariush Zandi
I’m interested in this shared curatorial proposition, one that makes art and acquiring art more accessible, a vital step forward in growing the local and regional arts and culture ecosystem.
