PRESS

THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, 2010

Art in America/The Bidoun Library Project

BAZAAR LIBRARY
by aimee walleston 08/05/10
The street booksellers in the Village, some of whom defiantly sell their vast and varied selection right in front of the
Barnes and Noble on Sixth Avenue, represent New York at its bibliophilic best. The printed works they sell represent their
own secondary economy: big ticket fashion magazines, anthologies and art books are purchased at full price by those
who can afford them, then get passed down at a cut rate to NYU and New School students via street sellers, who have an
enviable overhead and unenviable climate control. This evening, The Bidoun Library Project, a newly-formed archive
of Middle Eastern publications compiled byBidoun magazine in conjunction with The New Museum’s Museum as Hub
program, has invited some of the Village’s street booksellers to bring their words eastward and set up shop in front of The
New Museum. On Friday, September 10, the Bidoun Library Project will also feature an audio-video presentation at the
museum. Here, we speak to Bidoun Senior Editor Negar Azimi about the project.

AIMEE WALLESTON: How was the Bidoun Library Project conceived? What was the ultimate goal?

NEGAR AZIMI: Initially, the library was born of the instinct to simply get books we happen to love and that are often
hard to find in the Middle East out there circulating: rare artist monographs, avant-garde magazines, children’s books,
comic books, zines—you name it. The Bidoun Library had its first outing in Abu Dhabi of all places, but has since taken
on a life of its own, adapting to every new location and situation. Before New York, it has traveled to Abu Dhabi, Dubai,
and Beirut. Next, it will move on to Cairo.

WALLESTON: How does the Library interact with the print publication? Is their a conversation between the two?

AZIMI: In many ways, this version of the Library was born of an issue of the magazine we made called “Pulp,” which be-
gan a long-term engagement with thinking about the ways in which print culture was implicated in representing the Mid-
dle East. We are concerned with both books as distinctly 20th Century phenomena, nearly defunct, and as something that
may have multiple lives given the cause and context surrounding its birth. We’re also looking at the book as an “object”:
something coveted, fetishized, instrumentalized and so on, interests us. Bidoun, itself as a magazine, is implicated in this
tangle of concerns, from its own material-ness, to its attendant agendas and concerns.
WALLESTON: Are the publications you’ve collected mostly printed in the Middle East? Do you think our Western-cen-
tric ideologies and points of view could be broadened with the dissemination of more Middle Eastern texts?

AZIMI: The publications are a huge mix of things. Books about the Middle East produced in the US or what was the
Soviet Union, books about Islam made by the converted, Kathy Acker’s Algeria, propaganda texts of any and all stripe,
cheap romances, Marx and Orwell in Arabic, even an Arabic Superman. Above all, the Library addresses the Middle East
as an idea, the different ways it’s been represented, bastardized, hijacked and more in print culture--both from within the
Middle East itself and from without.

WALLESTON: For the event at The New Museum, how was it decided to invite the booksellers from the Village to par-
ticipate?

AZIMI: Babak Radboy, our Creative Director, is a long-time collector of rare and strange eclectica from the print world
and has long been interested in the particular “canons” the booksellers of New York sit upon. In this case, they hail from
Senegal and sell a whole lot of vaguely defined “classics.” This is, in a way, our attempt to engage the notion of the canon.

WALLESTON: Does this project interact with any of the New Museum’s current shows?

AZIMI: In an uncanny way, it does collide with Brion Gysin’s show. We have some Gysin literature, but we’re also just
generally interested in the counter-cultural encounter with the Middle East as an idea. You know, the Gysins, Ginsbergs
and Burroughs of the world hung out in Tangier, and elsewhere.
POSTED BY AIMEE WALLESTON AT 2:50 PM
“Museum as Hub: Bidoun Library Project” Exhibition
NY Art Beat

Closes in 45 days

At The New Museum of Contemporary Art

Media: Installation, Other, Media Arts

The Bidoun Library Project at the New Museum is a highly partial account of five decades of printed matter in,
near, about, and around the Middle East. Arrayed along these shelves are pulp fictions and propaganda, mono-
graphs and guidebooks, and pamphlets and periodicals, on subjects ranging from the oil boom to the Dubai bust,
the Cold War to the hot pant, Pan-Arabs to Black Muslims, revolutionaries to royals, and Orientalism to its op-
posites.

Most of the 700-odd titles on display were acquired specifically for this exhibition. The shape of the collection
was dictated primarily by search terms on the World Wide Web rather than any intrinsic notion of aptness or
excellence. Searching for “Arab,” “paperback,” “1970s,” and “<$3,” we acquired dozens of books about the Oil
Crisis, the cruel love of the Sheikh, and the lifestyles of the nouveau riche. A similar search for “Iran” produced
its own set of types and stereotypes. We did not set out to find the best books about, say, the Iranian revolution;
in a sense, we looked for the worst. Or, rather, we tried to look at what was there.

The result is less a coherent group of titles or texts than an assortment of books as things, sorted roughly into
four themes or units. Catalogues hang from the ceiling in front of each shelf cluster. Inside is a documentation
of a selection of books from that shelf, in dialogue with excerpted texts and images from the library as a whole.
The Bidoun Library includes a program of Iranian film, video, and television culled from low-fidelity DVDs
and VHS tapes that circulate among Iranians in the Diaspora. The selection includes post-revolutionary variety
shows, music videos, and other totems of middlebrow—unibrow?—culture. This is an Iranian cinema unlikely
to be shown at Lincoln Center.

Please exercise caution when investigating the Bidoun Library. Many of the books, magazines, and pamphlets
on display are in delicate condition. Gloves are provided for you to wear, to preserve the integrity of the materi-
als on view.

If you should examine a book more closely, please remember to return it to its original location. Keep sealed
items sealed. Thank you for your interest in the Bidoun Library.
New Museum Collaborates with Bidoun Magazine for ‘Museum as Hub: Bidoun Library Project.’

The New Museum has collaborated with the magazine ‘Bidoun: Arts and Culture From the Middle East’ which has organized an exhibition
for the Museum as Hub. The exhibition “Museum as Hub: Bidoun Library Project” will be in view in the New Museum’s fifth floor from
August 5th through September 26, 2010.

For the opening day of the project, Bidoun has invited booksellers usually found outside the New York University library to set up shop in
front of the New Museum on the Bowery an extension of their project. The New Museum will host a free evening event on Thursday, August
5, from 7 to 9p.m. to include selected readings and video clips from the Bidoun Library collection to celebrate the project’s launch.

The Bidoun Library Project at the New Museum is a highly partial account of five decades of printed matter in, near, about, and around the
Middle East. Arrayed along numerous book shelves are over 700 publications ranging from pulp fictions and propaganda, monographs and
guidebooks, and pamphlets and periodicals, on subjects like the oil boom to the Dubai bust, the Cold War to the hot pant, Pan-Arabs to Black
Muslims, revolutionaries to royals, and Orientalism to its opposites.

For its North American debut, the Bidoun Library focuses on the twentieth century: more specifically, the period after the Second World War,
set against the context of the Cold War, when the Middle East as we know it came into its own. It was the heyday of the printed page, perhaps
the last period in which the predominant forms of the written word were the book, the newspaper, and the periodical magazine. Looking back,
the printed matter of the last century appears increasingly opaque as it recedes further and further from active circulation. A library, then, is
entropy.

The motif of the exhibition is the object of the book-the book as object of material production, and the book as a vector for material objec-
tives. Both notions were at play in the publishing projects of the Cold War, when the First and Second World Wars contested at the level of
word and image.
The Russian International News Agency produced Central Asian photo books; so did the US State Department. The politico-cultural maga-
zine Tricontinental, produced in Havana by the Organization of Solidarity of the People of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and disseminated
on university
campuses across the Third World, mirrored the magazine Transition, produced in Africa, edited by
an Indian, and funded by the CIA.

Most of the titles on display were acquired specifically for this exhibition, the shape of the collection dictated primarily by search terms on
the World Wide Web rather than any intrinsic notion of aptness or excellence. Searching for “Arab,” “paperback,” “1970s,” and “<$3,” Bi-
doun acquired dozens of books about the Oil Crisis, the cruel love of the Sheikh, and the lifestyles of the nouveau riche. A similar search for
“Iran” produced its own set of types and stereotypes. They did not set out to find the best books about, say, the Iranian revolution; in a sense,
they looked for the worst. Or rather, they tried to look at what was there.

Since 2008, the Bidoun Library has been exhibiting source materials and artist projects that pertain to, grow out of, or extend the work of the
quarterly magazine Bidoun: Arts and Culture From the Middle East. Like the magazine and like the Museum as Hub itselfthe Bidoun Library
is at once a space, an archive, and a network of collaborators. Since its inaugural installation in Abu Dhabi in 2008, the Bidoun Library has
partnered with an array of international art institutions and collectives, including the Lebanese comics journal Samandal and the Turkish
artist’s book publisher Bent, as well as Art Dubai, Ashkal Ahwan: The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, and 98weeks Project Space in
Beirut.

Following its New York debut at the New Museum, The Bidoun Library Project will travel to Museum as Hub partner the Townhouse Gallery
in Cairo, Egypt.

‘Museum as Hub: Bidoun Library Project’ Opening Event

Thursday, August 5, 7 p.m.

To mark the opening of “Museum as Hub: Bidoun Library Project,” the magazine Bidoun: Arts and Culture From the Middle East presents
selected readings and video clips from the Bidoun Library collection. In addition, for the opening day of the project, Bidoun has invited book-
sellers usually found outside the New York University library to set up shop outside the New Museum as an extension of their project and as
a provocation.

‘Margins of Error’

Friday, September 10, 7 p.m.

$6 members/$8 general admission

An audio-visual extravaganza of The Bidoun Library Project, this event features a historical reenactments, misreadings, poorly transferred
film screenings, and a slideshow. Presented by the editors of Bidoun, with special guests Fatima Al Qadiri and Anand Balakrishnan.
Dubai: Art speaks a universal language which can be understood beyond the barriers of geography and culture.
Critics and writers can, however, help us better analyse and evaluate a work of art, for us to understand and ap-
preciate more of what we see.

For those who wished to know more about how to analyse and write about art, Bidoun Projects and Dubai Cul-
ture, recently held its first workshop.

The free sessions, which ran over five months from January to May, were so successful that the organisers are
planning to organise similar events every year.

Bidoun Projects, among other specialist art services, publishes a quarterly magazine. Its editor-at-large Antonia
Carver shared with Gulf News a little about how the professionals evaluated and wrote about art.
Carver said art criticism was a discipline in its own right.

“It takes into account both knowledge of history, an artist’s work, their background and also skills and tools that
writers can use in approaching the artist and their work,” she said.

“We had different tutors come in each month for each workshop, from different backgrounds — some report-
ers, some critics, academics, artists, and novelists writing about art. They’ve each brought different perspectives
with them, and different ways of approaching and writing about art.”

Carver said the main objective of the course was to help participants and tutors to establish a comfortable writ-
ing relationship, in order to develop their critical writing skills.

Selection criteria
Participants were selected on the basis of short biographies and art-related writing they were asked to submit as
part of their application.

Carver said: “Each session focused on keynote aspects of writing about art that were discussed by a wide range
of leading artists and art critics from the region and worldwide.”

She said course tutors included Seattle’s Douglas McLennan, editor of the artsjournal.com website.
McLennan focused on online journalism and ways to establish a serious, critical presence on the internet, she
said.

Associate professor of Architecture and director of Undergraduate and Graduate Programmes at American Uni-
versity of Sharjah, Kevin Mitchell, led discussions on the importance of spatial concepts in art.
Carver said this debate led into students completing a written assignment — about spatial concepts or a topic of
their choice — under the guidance of individually assigned tutors.

So what details should we examine first to appreciate a work of art?

Carver said: “Our critics and tutors did sessions on the ‘certain something’ that an artwork can have, which
draws you in, and makes you want to learn more about it, to look at it more, to study and understand it more.
Sometimes it’s this indefinable quality that is the initial spark,” she said.

“We also need to look at a work from a 360-degree perspective.”

Insight on techniques

And what techniques should a good painting contain?

Carver said it was very hard to define a good painting exactly without using examples.

“There are artists that study painting for years and can be technically ‘good painters’ but the contemporary art
world usually demands more of a conceptual side to the work, for the technique to be pushing new ways of do-
ing things, for the painting to include some kind of narrative or story,” she said.

And was the artwork’s historical context important in the evaluation process?

“Yes. This is something that the tutors pushed in particular and discussed at length with the participants on the
course,” Carver said.

“We need to see works in a context of what came before, of influences on the artist.”

Carver said the workshop was so successful that Bidoun Projects and Dubai Culture hoped to run it every year.
“We have had a tremendous response, so continuing the workshop in some capacity is definitely a plan,” she
said.

“We have also had many people from the workshop express a desire to maintain the collaborative spirit of the
group in the future and we are thinking up ways we can continue and promote this relationship through a da-
tabase we have made known to newspapers, magazines, and media outlets interested in recruiting art-specific
writers.

“We hope that local publications will invest in this resource and encourage local writers to develop art criticism
in the UAE.”

Carver said the courses were free and open to applications from anyone interested in the arts and developing
their writing skills, including arts practitioners, curators, artists, journalists, and students.

-- gulfnews.com
Basel winds down, London revs up
By Georgina Adam

Published: June 19 2010 00:28 | Last updated: June 19 2010 00:28

Confidence in the art market has powered back with a speed and strength that has taken even seasoned professionals by surprise. This week, just
before London hosts what is potentially the strongest impressionist and modern auction season in history, sales were strong at the Art Basel fair (fin-
ishing on Sunday). Deals were being done from the first minutes of the fair’s VIP opening, from a $14m Picasso sculpture sold by Krugier gallery to
a run on Billy Childish paintings, which sold out at Neuguerriemschneider at prices from €4,000 to €25,000 – Bianca Jagger being among the buy-
ers. “It’s been crazy – full of people. People just want to see things that are good. The [May New York] auctions assisted in raising prices,” said Tom
Heman of the New York Metro Pictures gallery. And art advisor Sandy Heller, whose portfolio of heavy-hitting clients includes hedge-fund manager
Steve Cohen, noted: “There’s an air of confidence, and the fair is very high quality this year.”

Design Miami/Basel, the fair which runs alongside Art Basel (ends on Saturday), has seen a distinct improvement this year, hosting 32 galleries and
drawing praise for the quality of the offerings. The Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich was among the visitors at its buzzy opening, although he
didn’t visibly acquire anything. However London dealer David Gill found buyers for two Bonetti pieces: one a silver chest of drawers with ebony
drawers (€45,000), the other a cabinet looking like a giant gift box, titled “Happy Birthday” and with a ribbon tied around it (€68,000). Interestingly,
the French dealer in antique furniture, Didier Aaron, was present, showing what he called “Avatars”, pieces of 18th-century furniture with illustrative
panels showing how they connect to 20th-century works.

Still in the design field, the Chicago-based auctioneer Wright is selling a collection of contemporary art and design which it has shipped in from
Paris; it goes under the hammer on June 24. The sale (total value about $1m) is an eclectic assemblage of 100 pieces – paintings, furniture and light-
ing – ranging from flea-market finds (French armchair, $500-$600) to an Aya Takano painting ($120,000-$180,000). According to specialist Michael
Jefferson, the sale has come to Chicago because the firm has a “strong connection to the owner, and his art advisor in Paris is a colleague and friend”.

André Derain’s ‘Arbres à Collioure’, on sale in Sotheby’s impressionist and modern art sale on Tuesday
Over the coming fortnight London expects to pass a historic milestone in its position in the art market, with the most valuable auction season it has
ever seen. This week sees impressionist and modern paintings go on the block, with Sotheby’s opening the ball on Tuesday evening with a 51-lot sale
that could raise £148m. The most expensive work here is one of only two self-portraits by Manet, painted in 1878-1879, which has been sent for sale
by hedge-funder Steve Cohen (est. £30m-£40m). However the real buzz is about a 1905 Fauve painting by André Derain “Arbres à Collioure”, which
has lain in a Parisian bank vault for 30 years and is estimated at £9m-£14m. The following evening, Christie’s blockbusters come under the ham-
mer in a £230m, 63-lot sale that features a Blue Period Picasso, “Portrait of Angel Fernández de Soto (The Absinthe Drinker)”, and one of the famed
series of Monet waterlilies, each estimated to make between £30m and £40m. However with rare and desirable works such as these, it is difficult to
predict the final result and the estimates could be easily beaten. Just this week in Paris a rare limestone sculpture by Modigliani, “Tête de Cariatide”
(1910-1911) bested its admittedly unambitious €3m-€5m estimate 10-fold, selling for an astonishing €43.2m. Eight bidders wanted it, with three
still bidding right to the end. So next week could have plenty of surprises in store.

Art fairs are mushrooming, with hardly a week passing without news of a new event. Latest up are two in Korea, the country best placed to chal-
lenge Hong Kong for supremacy in the Asian art market. South Korea, like Hong Kong, has a solid economy, low taxes on art, a strong collector base
(something Hong Kong lacks), established museums (ditto) and many internationally known artists, from Nam June Paik to Lee Bul.

Seoul’s main fair, KIAF, held in September, is run by Korean art dealers and has increasingly lacked dynamism. Now its former director, Jonghyo
Cheong, is creating a new, more international event, supported by the newsgroup, JoongAng Media Network. Titled Art Seoul, the first edition is
slated for September next year and “is expecting participation from world’s leading galleries and to showcase top-quality artworks: Korean art collec-
tors are travelling overseas to purchase western artworks, Korean art galleries are increasing the number of exhibitions by foreign artists,” according
to Jonghyo.

His is not the only new event in Korea, as the director of the respected Gwangju Biennale is also planning to launch a fair – also in September 2011.
London’s Lisson gallery has already signed up for it.

The Middle Eastern art specialist Antonia Carver (whose husband Simeon Kerr is the FT’s Dubai correspondent) has been appointed the new director
of Art Dubai, following on from the London art dealer John Martin. She will take up her new job in August. Carver has lived in Dubai for the last
eight years and is currently director of Bidoun Projects, part of the Middle Eastern art and culture magazine. “It’s early days to talk about my plans
but among my aims are to develop the Global Art Forum and work with other institutions to create a true regional platform for art in the Gulf,” she
says.

Georgina Adams is editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper

ARTICLE 86 - Art Dubai Appoints Antonia Carver as Its New Fair Director

Based in Dubai for the past eight years, Carver has been a member of the renowned Middle Eastern arts organization
Bidoun since its inception in 2004.

DUBAI.- The Board of Art Dubai has announced the appointment of Antonia Carver to succeed John Martin as Fair Di-
rector of Art Dubai. Antonia Carver is a writer and arts administrator, and has been widely recognized as a leading advo-
cate of contemporary Middle Eastern art. She has been working in the arts for the past sixteen years, and brings to the fair
a broad base of experience across both the commercial and not-for-profit sectors.

Based in Dubai for the past eight years, Carver has been a member of the renowned Middle Eastern arts organization Bi-
doun since its inception in 2004, and is currently editor-at-large of Bidoun magazine and director of Bidoun Projects, re-
sponsible for overseeing a dynamic programme of artists’ projects, commissions, exhibitions, talks and educational events.
Bidoun Projects was the curatorial partner of Art Dubai in 2010. In these roles, Carver has worked with some of the Mid-
dle East’s best-known as well as emerging artists, complementing her knowledge of international contemporary art.

John Martin, who remains on the board of Art Dubai, commented: “We are delighted that Antonia Carver has accepted the
role of fair director. Her appointment underlines the Board’s commitment to build on Art Dubai’s exceptional worldwide
reputation for innovation and quality. Antonia’s experience internationally and in the region will strengthen the core val-
ues of the fair, ensuring it continues to be a significant driving force in the growth of the region’s art scene.”

The fifth edition of Art Dubai takes place in March 2011. Coinciding with Sharjah Biennial 10, the UAE will become the
destination for collectors, curators and art lovers from around the world. With the deadline for gallery applications closing
at the end of June, the fair has seen a surge of interest from international galleries wishing to participate, as well as appli-
cations from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon and key art markets around the MENA region.

Commenting on the prospects of the fair next year, Carver said: “Art Dubai’s success is built on its engagement with the
MENASA region, its great roster of leading galleries and the support of dedicated collectors from the UAE and beyond.
The innovative programme of artists’ projects and the Global Art Forum have made Art Dubai a particularly popular and
dynamic event. I’m delighted to be joining the fair at a time of unprecedented homegrown support for artists from the
Middle East, and when international interest in the region has never been higher. I’m aiming to work with galleries, col-
lectors, artists, institutions and professionals to strengthen the role the fair can play within the region whilst continuing to
develop the enormous international support that the event has always enjoyed.”

Bidoun Projects’ programmes in 2009-10, directed by Carver, included a touring library of Middle Eastern art books and
music; a course of workshops and seminars in critical writing; and curating a dynamic set of international film and video
programmes, talks, and artists’ commissions. Recent collaborating partners include the Sharjah Art Foundation, the New
Museum, TDIC, Townhouse gallery, LACMA, the Cinematheque de Tangier, Galerie Sfeir-Semler, the Dubai Culture and
Arts Authority (Dubai Culture), and the Emirates Foundation.

Carver was a correspondent for the Art Newspaper and has contributed to journals, newspapers and exhibition catalogues
worldwide. As a film curator, she is a member of the programming teams for the Dubai International Film Festival and
Edinburgh International Film Festival, specializing in Arab and Iranian cinema.

Carver graduated in 1994, and has worked in publishing and visual arts ever since – in Sydney, Australia, and in London
at G&B Arts International and contemporary visual arts magazine; the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva), and as
an editor at Phaidon Press.
Based in Dubai for the past eight years, Carver has been a member of the renowned Middle Eastern arts organi-
zation Bidoun since its inception in 2004.

DUBAI.- The Board of Art Dubai has announced the appointment of Antonia Carver to succeed John Martin as
Fair Director of Art Dubai. Antonia Carver is a writer and arts administrator, and has been widely recognized
as a leading advocate of contemporary Middle Eastern art. She has been working in the arts for the past sixteen
years, and brings to the fair a broad base of experience across both the commercial and not-for-profit sectors.

Based in Dubai for the past eight years, Carver has been a member of the renowned Middle Eastern arts or-
ganization Bidoun since its inception in 2004, and is currently editor-at-large of Bidoun magazine and director
of Bidoun Projects, responsible for overseeing a dynamic programme of artists’ projects, commissions, exhibi-
tions, talks and educational events. Bidoun Projects was the curatorial partner of Art Dubai in 2010. In these
roles, Carver has worked with some of the Middle East’s best-known as well as emerging artists, complement-
ing her knowledge of international contemporary art.

John Martin, who remains on the board of Art Dubai, commented: “We are delighted that Antonia Carver has
accepted the role of fair director. Her appointment underlines the Board’s commitment to build on Art Dubai’s
exceptional worldwide reputation for innovation and quality. Antonia’s experience internationally and in the
region will strengthen the core values of the fair, ensuring it continues to be a significant driving force in the
growth of the region’s art scene.”

The fifth edition of Art Dubai takes place in March 2011. Coinciding with Sharjah Biennial 10, the UAE will
become the destination for collectors, curators and art lovers from around the world. With the deadline for
gallery applications closing at the end of June, the fair has seen a surge of interest from international galleries
wishing to participate, as well as applications from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon and key art markets
around the MENA region.

Commenting on the prospects of the fair next year, Carver said: “Art Dubai’s success is built on its engage-
ment with the MENASA region, its great roster of leading galleries and the support of dedicated collectors from
the UAE and beyond. The innovative programme of artists’ projects and the Global Art Forum have made Art
Dubai a particularly popular and dynamic event. I’m delighted to be joining the fair at a time of unprecedented
homegrown support for artists from the Middle East, and when international interest in the region has never
been higher. I’m aiming to work with galleries, collectors, artists, institutions and professionals to strengthen the
role the fair can play within the region whilst continuing to develop the enormous international support that the
event has always enjoyed.”

Bidoun Projects’ programmes in 2009-10, directed by Carver, included a touring library of Middle Eastern art
books and music; a course of workshops and seminars in critical writing; and curating a dynamic set of inter-
national film and video programmes, talks, and artists’ commissions. Recent collaborating partners include the
Sharjah Art Foundation, the New Museum, TDIC, Townhouse gallery, LACMA, the Cinematheque de Tangier,
Galerie Sfeir-Semler, the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture), and the Emirates Foundation.

Carver was a correspondent for the Art Newspaper and has contributed to journals, newspapers and exhibition
catalogues worldwide. As a film curator, she is a member of the programming teams for the Dubai International
Film Festival and Edinburgh International Film Festival, specializing in Arab and Iranian cinema.

Carver graduated in 1994, and has worked in publishing and visual arts ever since – in Sydney, Australia, and in
London at G&B Arts International and contemporary visual arts magazine; the Institute of International Visual
Arts (Iniva), and as an editor at Phaidon Press.
Based in Dubai for the past eight years, Carver has been a member of the renowned Middle Eastern arts organization Bidoun since its inception in 2004.

DUBAI.- The Board of Art Dubai has announced the appointment of Antonia Carver to succeed John Martin as Fair Director of Art Dubai. Antonia Carver is a writer
and arts administrator, and has been widely recognized as a leading advocate of contemporary Middle Eastern art. She has been working in the arts for the past sixteen
years, and brings to the fair a broad base of experience across both the commercial and not-for-profit sectors.

Based in Dubai for the past eight years, Carver has been a member of the renowned Middle Eastern arts organization Bidoun since its inception in 2004, and is currently
editor-at-large of Bidoun magazine and director of Bidoun Projects, responsible for overseeing a dynamic programme of artists’ projects, commissions, exhibitions,
talks and educational events. Bidoun Projects was the curatorial partner of Art Dubai in 2010. In these roles, Carver has worked with some of the Middle East’s best-
known as well as emerging artists, complementing her knowledge of international contemporary art.

John Martin, who remains on the board of Art Dubai, commented: “We are delighted that Antonia Carver has accepted the role of fair director. Her appointment un-
derlines the Board’s commitment to build on Art Dubai’s exceptional worldwide reputation for innovation and quality. Antonia’s experience internationally and in the
region will strengthen the core values of the fair, ensuring it continues to be a significant driving force in the growth of the region’s art scene.”

The fifth edition of Art Dubai takes place in March 2011. Coinciding with Sharjah Biennial 10, the UAE will become the destination for collectors, curators and art lov-
ers from around the world. With the deadline for gallery applications closing at the end of June, the fair has seen a surge of interest from international galleries wishing
to participate, as well as applications from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon and key art markets around the MENA region.

Commenting on the prospects of the fair next year, Carver said: “Art Dubai’s success is built on its engagement with the MENASA region, its great roster of leading
galleries and the support of dedicated collectors from the UAE and beyond. The innovative programme of artists’ projects and the Global Art Forum have made Art
Dubai a particularly popular and dynamic event. I’m delighted to be joining the fair at a time of unprecedented homegrown support for artists from the Middle East, and
when international interest in the region has never been higher. I’m aiming to work with galleries, collectors, artists, institutions and professionals to strengthen the role
the fair can play within the region whilst continuing to develop the enormous international support that the event has always enjoyed.”

Bidoun Projects’ programmes in 2009-10, directed by Carver, included a touring library of Middle Eastern art books and music; a course of workshops and seminars in
critical writing; and curating a dynamic set of international film and video programmes, talks, and artists’ commissions. Recent collaborating partners include the Shar-
jah Art Foundation, the New Museum, TDIC, Townhouse gallery, LACMA, the Cinematheque de Tangier, Galerie Sfeir-Semler, the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority
(Dubai Culture), and the Emirates Foundation.

Carver was a correspondent for the Art Newspaper and has contributed to journals, newspapers and exhibition catalogues worldwide. As a film curator, she is a member
of the programming teams for the Dubai International Film Festival and Edinburgh International Film Festival, specializing in Arab and Iranian cinema.

Carver graduated in 1994, and has worked in publishing and visual arts ever since – in Sydney, Australia, and in London at G&B Arts International and contemporary
visual arts magazine; the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva), and as an editor at Phaidon Press.
The Dubai-based specialist of contemporary Middle Eastern art Antonia Carver has been selected to succeed
John Martin as director of Art Dubai.

Carver is currently director of Bidoun Projects, the curatorial wing of the eponymous magazine that focuses on
Middle Eastern culture and art. She also sits on the Dubai international film festival committee and has been a
correspondent for The Art Newspaper.

“There’s never been such a level of international interest in the region and its art and culture,” she said. “There
is a new maturity in the market with a group of young Emirati and UAE-based collectors who are interested in
how the market works and are looking at international as well as regional artists.”

A number of these collectors are attending Art Basel this year. Carver says she will be consulting with the team
who run the fair, 50% of which belongs to the Dubai International Finance Centre, before unveiling any new
projects, but she already knows she wants to “broaden the fair into Menasa region and also work with innova-
tive, international galleries interested in the Middle East, to create a real regional platform for discussion about
art, as well as working closely with the Sharjah Biennale.”

There is a notable precedent of journalists becoming fair directors right here at Art Basel: Marc Spiegler, co-
director of the fair, was also previously a journalist, and wrote for this paper.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates— Leading Middle Eastern art fair Art Dubai has appointed Antonia Carver, a
journalist and curator who has most recently led Bidoun Projects, as its new director. Prior to the appointment,
she worked as editor-at-large for Bidoun magazine (the publishing side of the Middle Eastern cultural outlet)
and the Art Newspaper (which first reported her appointment), as well as the Dubai International Film Festival,
where she served on the board.
The Dubai Art Fair is partly owned by the Dubai International Finance Center, a conglomerate of financial com-
panies that is a major patron of the arts in the Middle East. Last year, Abaraaj Capital, an equity company that is
part of the DIFC, presented the first annual Abraaj Capital Art Prize at the Museum of Arts and Design in New
York, awarding three emerging artists — from Iran, Algeria, and Turkey — with $200,000 and showing their
works at the museum and the Dubai Art Fair.

Officials from the fair say that they plan to work closely with the Sharjah Biennale to raise the international
awareness of artists from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia as they expand into those regions. Re-
cently there has been a surge in contemporary art in the Middle East, as wealthy locals have flocked to interna-
tional and regional art fairs, snapping up works along the way.
New director of Art Dubai talks of her regional renaissance--Ed Lake
Last Updated: June 15. 2010 4:31PM UAE / June 15. 2010 12:31PM GMT

As of the beginning of August, Art Dubai will have a new director: an English writer and editor who has made herself omnipresent in the Middle
Eastern art scene over the past eight years.

“They offered it to me last week,” said Antonia Carver, speaking from Dubai Airport where she was waiting to fly to Switzerland for Art Basel, the
world’s leading art fair.

“It’s all been quite a rush because we wanted to take advantage of the fact that Art Basel was on to do something there. I start on August 1 and the
other side of things, of course, is that time is ticking and March suddenly seems quite close.”

It’s hard to believe that she is really feeling the pressure. Up until now, Carver has managed to combine roles as a founding editor of the arts maga-
zine Bidoun and as a Middle East correspondent for The Art Newspaper and the film trade paper Screen International.

At the same time she has been a selector for the Dubai International Film Festival and an organiser for the Global Art Forum. She has also been serv-
ing as a member of the jury for the Abraaj Capital Art Prize and edited or contributed to several art books.

Carver has arranged to withdraw from some of these more active duties to focus on Art Dubai. “My programming role at DIFF is just as a consultant
and just on the Arab films,” she said. “It’s also a sort of a passion of mine so I was loath to give that up.”

Meanwhile, she is retreating to a board role on Bidoun magazine, where she will advise on strategy. Her focus will be the fifth Art Dubai, and her
priority will be to “consolidate and strengthen ties to the region, meaning MENASA” – that is, the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.

“I’m pretty lucky to take over this year because next March is also Sharjah Biennale 10, so it’s Art Dubai and the Sharjah Biennale, and it’s going to
be a fantastic year,” she said. “Really the UAE at that time in March will be a destination for anybody that’s interested in engaging in the art world in
the region.”

Carver came to Dubai in 2002. She had been working for the Edinburgh International Film Festival as an advisor on Iranian film. When her husband
came to work on the Financial Times’s UAE desk, Carver welcomed the opportunity Dubai offered to deepen her acquaintance with Middle Eastern
culture.

“For me what was so exciting was that it was so close to Iran,” she said. “You could hop on a plane and also go to Beirut and places like that where
I’d begun to work with artists and filmmakers. It was really nice to get more into that.”

In 2002, she admits, Dubai “was quite a different place”. “There wasn’t so much going on and you really had to dig beneath the surface,” she says.

When you did, though, “you found these amazing initiatives like the Emirates Film Competition, which was just acting like an informal film school.
Things were really happening, but they just weren’t as obvious as they are today.”

Indeed, eight years later the UAE’s cultural scene is flourishing. “There’s probably never been such international interest in Middle Eastern contem-
porary art as there is now,” Carver says.

“There’s the Sharjah Art Foundation that presents one of the leading biennales definitely in this part of the world, and then there is Art Dubai and the
gallery scene here, and there are some major museum plans that are happening in Doha and Abu Dhabi.
“This all presents a kind of Renaissance, if you like, or a new move in this region, and something that people internationally are very interested in.”
They will want to see what Carver does next.
More than 50 professionals and aspiring writers graduate from the first of its kind initiative in the region
Dubai, UAE; May 31, 2010: The Dubai Culture & Arts Authority (Dubai Culture), the Emirate’s dedicated
authority for culture, heritage and the arts, and Bidoun Projects, an arts organisation dedicated to supporting
and promoting contemporary artists from the Middle East, successfully concluded the first of its kind ‘Writing
About Art’ workshops offering unique insights into art critique to professionals and aspiring writers.
v
More than 50 writers with a keen interest in the arts took part in the workshops held over the past five months.
Experts from around the world engaged the participants in various aspects of writing about the arts, including
art criticism, analysis against global benchmarks and a wider perspective of the evolution of the arts across the
world.
Alia Al Hashimi, Senior Specialist at the Projects Department in the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority said: “The
response to the ‘Writing About Art’ workshops, held for the first time ever in the region, has been overwhelm-
ing. The event offered a unique platform for artists, art professionals and art writers to come together, brain-
storm and promote the standards of art writing. A genuine appreciation of the arts, followed by insightful writ-
ing, will help in shaping a stronger arts community.”
She added: “As the first group of art critics graduating from this initiative, the participants will help to engage
the community in understanding and appreciating the arts. These art critics will in turn educate the general
public about art, thereby facilitating greater interaction between the arts and its audience. They will also play a
key role in further reiterating Dubai Culture’s goal to strengthen the cultural scene in the region by promoting
original content creation from Dubai. ”
Dubai Culture and Bidoun Projects will explore opportunities in networking with regional publications, gallery
directors, and publishing houses to promote the writings done by the workshop participants, to further strength-
en art appreciation and awareness, thus creating a vibrant cultural scene in the Emirate.
VASIF KORTUN APPOINTED CURATOR FOR THE UAE NATIONAL
PAVILION AT THE 54TH VENICEBIENNALE

United Arab Emirates to participate for second time in international art exhibition building on successful debut
in 2009

BigNews.Biz - May 23,2010 -

ABU DHABI, May 23rd: The Ministry of Culture, Youth & Community Development and the Office of the
UAE Pavilion is proud to announce the participation of the UAE National Pavilion for the second time at the
54th International Art Exhibition – the Venice Biennale in the summer of 2011.

After a hugely successful entry at the worlds most universally recognized and prestigious contemporary art
exhibition in 2009, UAE has selected esteemed Turkish writer and educator Vasif Kortun as the Pavilion’s cura-
tor. Kortun was chosen as the next curator by a Selection Committee comprised of distinguished curators and
art world practitioners including: Rita Aoun, Art and Cultural Advisor of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Development
& Investment Company; Antonia Carver, editor-at-large of Bidoun magazine and manager of Bidoun Projects;
Salwa Mikdadi, Head of Arts and Culture Programming for Emirates Foundation; Jack Persekian, Artistic
Director of the Sharjah Biennial and Tirdad Zolghadr, critic, writer, filmmaker and curator of the UAE’s first
National Pavilion in 2009.

Kortun is a writer, curator and teacher in the field of contemporary visual art, and lives and works in Istanbul
where he has greatly influenced the local and regional art scene. He is the programmes and research director of
a new intra-disciplinary institution to open in 2011 in Istanbul and was the founding director of several spaces
including Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center (2001-2010), Proje4L Istanbul Museum of Contemporary
Art (2001-2004), and the Museum of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York (1993-1997).

Kortun was the chief curator of the Third and the co-curator of the Ninth Istanbul Biennials in 1992 and 2005,
respectively, and has, in addition, co-curated Biennales in Taipei (2008), Sao Paolo (1998), Tirana (2003) and
organized the Turkish Pavilion in Venice (2007), and 1994 and 1998 Sao Biennials. He has curated numerous
exhibitions in Turkey and internationally, and received the Ninth Annual Award for Curatorial Excellence given
by the Center for Curatorial Studies (2006).
With the great success of the UAE’s first National Pavilion at Venice last year, there was every reason to ensure
the United Arab Emirates would continue with strong curatorial participation decided through a Selection Com-
mittee of professional stature.

Abdul Rahman Mohammed Al Owais, Minister of Culture, Youth and Community Development commented,
“The UAE National Pavilion in Venice did more than celebrate the emergence of the country on the cultural
stage, it offered both an artistic and intellectual contribution to the Venice Biennale—one that successfully re-
flected, and encouraged critical thinking and artistic practice in and about the UAE.”

The Venice Biennale today includes the official pavilions of more than 70 nations since its inception in 1895. Its
International Art Exhibition draws more than 300,000 influential visitors from around the world. The UAE Pa-
vilion continues to be developed and presented under the leadership of its Commissioner, Dr. Lamees Hamdan,
a member of the Board of Directors of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority
.
Established to endorse the UAE’s art scene on an international platform and build on local projects, such as the
progressive Saadiyat Islands, the National Pavilion will return to Venice to engage in vibrant cultural exchange -
a significant part of the mission of the Office of the UAE Pavilion.
“One of the main objectives of the Pavilion is to strongly communicate internationally the depth of contempo-
rary art practices in the United Arab Emirates, and to provide a foundation to support the nation’s diverse and
developing art scene,” said Dr Hamdan. This was demonstrated through the initial program of the Pavilion with
its curatorial theme focused on ‘exhibition making’, a theme which generated audience participation and critical
commentary. Now, through the National Pavilion, the UAE will yet again take pride in showcasing its work and
artists to the world, representing the country through its imminent artistic development.

The UAE’s debut in the 2009 Venice Biennale as the only gulf nation to participate in the history of the exhi-
bition highlights the country’s cultural agenda elevating it to international heights and generating awareness
around the multitude of activities scheduled for the future. The ongoing success of the Sharjah Biennale (under
the Sharjah Art Foundation), together with the growing international reputation of Dubai galleries and Abu
Dhabi’s governmental ambitious and inspiring plans through institutions as the Saadiyat Island and Performing
Arts Centre, have placed the UAE on the global cultural radar. Kortun’s international experience in the region
and internationally, along with his ability to compose analytical and challenging exhibitions, engages the audi-
ence with the vision of fundamental cultural development in the UAE.
Details of the featured artists and the exhibition program will be announced in late 2010 or early 2011. The
UAE Pavilion at the Venice Biennial is supported by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Community Develop-
ment.

ENDS

For more information, please contact:

BIZ COM - For PRoactive Communications
P.O. Box 48889
Dubai - UAE
Tel: +971 4 332-0888
Fax: +971 4 332-0999
Email: info@bizcom.ae
Dubai Culture And Bidoun Projects Honour Participants Of ’Writing About Art’ Workshops
(31 May 2010)

More than 50 professionals and aspiring writers graduate from the first of its kind initiative in the region

The Dubai Culture & Arts Authority (Dubai Culture), the Emirate’s dedicated authority for culture, heritage and
the arts, and Bidoun Projects, an arts organisation dedicated to supporting and promoting contemporary artists
from the Middle East, successfully concluded the first of its kind ‘Writing About Art’ workshops offering unique
insights into art critique to professionals and aspiring writers.

More than 50 writers with a keen interest in the arts took part in the workshops held over the past five months.
Experts from around the world engaged the participants in various aspects of writing about the arts, including
art criticism, analysis against global benchmarks and a wider perspective of the evolution of the arts across the
world.

Alia Al Hashimi, Senior Specialist at the Projects Department in the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority said: “The
response to the ‘Writing About Art’ workshops, held for the first time ever in the region, has been overwhelm-
ing. The event offered a unique platform for artists, art professionals and art writers to come together, brain-
storm and promote the standards of art writing. A genuine appreciation of the arts, followed by insightful writ-
ing, will help in shaping a stronger arts community.”

She added: “As the first group of art critics graduating from this initiative, the participants will help to engage
the community in understanding and appreciating the arts. These art critics will in turn educate the general
public about art, thereby facilitating greater interaction between the arts and its audience. They will also play a
key role in further reiterating Dubai Culture’s goal to strengthen the cultural scene in the region by promoting
original content creation from Dubai. ”

Dubai Culture and Bidoun Projects will explore opportunities in networking with regional publications, gallery
directors, and publishing houses to promote the writings done by the workshop participants, to further strength-
en art appreciation and awareness, thus creating a vibrant cultural scene in the Emirate.
MIDDLE EAST REPORT
by Nazy Nazhand

The Arab world’s art boom is tripartite: 1) record-breaking auction prices for works by contemporary and
modern Arab and Iranian artists; 2) extravagant annual art fairs in Dubai (March) and Abu Dhabi (November);
and 3) the recent UAE museum boom, which has seen world-renowned starchitects commissioned to design
the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha (I.M. Pei), the Museum of Middle East Modern Art (MOMEMA) in Dubai
(Ben van Berkel and UNStudio), the Louvre Abu Dhabi (Jean Nouvel) and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (Frank
Gehry).
Behind this spectacle of wealth and culture is a not-so-gentle reminder that each emirate has staked its own
claim as an international hub of commerce and culture in the Gulf. As for the West, well, it has taken notice, and
is clearly ready to pounce. But for many observers, all this activity has revealed a significant problem of nation-
al and historic identity.

When it comes to modern and contemporary art, the Middle Eastern region has little sense of its own develop-
ment or native identity. Its cultural evolution has been reduced to a narrative addressed to a Western audience
and concerned only with the immediate. The actual grassroots have been neglected in favor of transplanted palm
trees.

The March Meeting

Such notions were swirling through my brain when I arrived for the “March Meeting” in Sharjah in the UAE,
fully expecting to encounter little more than ritualistic paeans to “contemporary art” and fetishized notions of
Eastern culture. And it was with great pleasure that I discovered otherwise.

Sponsored by the Sharjah Art Foundation in collaboration with the New York-based nonprofit ArteEast, the
March Meeting is the brainchild of Jack Persekian, the foundation’s ambitious director, who this year invited the
meeting’s participants “to look into the future and present ideas and works in progress, and identify the resourc-
es needed to realize these projects.”

For three days, artists, curators, members of collectives and representatives of independent spaces, small-scale
nonprofit organizations, and theater and performance groups from the MENASA region –- the Middle East,
North Africa, South Asia and their diasporas -– spoke and made presentations about their programs. Each of 50
speakers was restricted to 15 minutes, with only two or three quick questions from the audience allowed. This
method kept the focus sharp, the audience’s attention firm and, more importantly, fostered a desire for further
dialogue among the attendees during the breaks and at the end of each day’s presentations.

In between the morning and evening sessions, small groups of three or four speakers would gather for informal
presentations across the canal at Shelter Maraya, a kind of temporary art center (see below). Keynote lectures by
Moroccan literary scholar Abdelfattah Kilito (on translation) and globetrotting Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor
(on archives) rounded out the second and third evenings.

While diverse, the various presentations offered a rare look at the grassroots cultural movements taking place
across the Arab world today, as well as the challenges faced by such endeavors. Three common themes could
be discerned: the use of new communications technologies; funding of alternative art schools and independent
spaces; and libraries and archives.
Some highlights
The Sharjah-based Lebanese musician and artist Tarek Atoui (who is artist-in-residence at the New Museum this
month), spoke about the Arab Platform for Art and Technology (APAT), an institutional database -- searchable
in Arabic and English -- designed to map, archive and link individuals, organizations, and projects the fields of
visual arts, new media, and multidisciplinary new technologies throughout the Arab world.

Antonia Carver, projects director for Bidoun, the quarterly magazine on Middle Eastern art and culture, dis-
cussed the peripatetic Bidoun Library and a parallel effort to form an association of independent Arab art-book
publishers. Carver envisions a bilingual catalogue of both existing and forthcoming art books in the Middle
East, designed to foster distribution in the region and around the world.

The twin brothers Rashid and Ahmed Bin Shabib -- a pair of 26-year-old entrepreneurs who publish Brown-
book, an urban lifestyle guide focusing on art, design and travel across the Middle East and North Africa -- pre-
sented a new project they call Shelter. Designed as an “alternative community,” Shelter offers rental space in
Dubai and Sharjah where creative individuals and businesses can host a range of activities, including art exhibi-
tions, educational programs and film screenings.

The Iranian artist Bahar Behbahani, who has recently exhibited her works in the Silverstein Photography An-
nual in Chelsea and at Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery on Madison Avenue, showed scenes from an unfin-
ished short film -- both haunting and exquisitely well-crafted -- titled Leyla CANCELLED due to bad weather.

The March Meeting also serves as a platform for its host, the Sharjah Art Foundation, which took the oppor-
tunity to introduce curators Suzanne Cotter and Rasha Salti, who presented their theme for the 2011 Sharjah
Biennial, “Plot for a Biennial.” Also coinciding with the meeting was the opening of a retrospective exhibition
of works by the Palestinian-Kuwaiti artist Tarek Al-Ghoussein, organized by Persekian, at the Sharjah Art Mu-
seum.

Persekian later noted how important it would be for participants in the March Meeting to “share ideas and
resources, weave possibilities of cooperation and joint-ventures and work in complementary ways.” Without a
doubt, the seeds of these ideas were firmly planted, but I hope next year’s March Meeting can also bring into the
mix some patrons, mentors, enablers and funders, so that the dialogue can move beyond a platform of ideas and
emerge as a catalyst for realizing innovative artistic endeavors throughout the Arab world.

NAZY NAZHAND covers contemporary art from Middle East and is the founder of Art Middle East.
Our library contains 1,300 publications—a feast of magazines, journals, alt weeklies, newsletters, and zines—
and every year we honor the stars in our Utne Independent Press Awards. We’ll announce this year’s winners on
Sunday, April 25, at the MPA’s Independent Magazine Group conference in Washington, D.C., and post them
online the following Monday. We’re crazy about these publications, and we’d love it for all of our readers to
get to know them better, too. So, every weekday until the conference, we’ll be posting mini-introductions to our
complete list of 2010 nominees.

The following eight magazines are our 2010 nominees in the category of arts coverage.

A celebration of handmade objects and the people who create them, American Craft brings to life the work of
glassblowers, woodworkers, jewelry makers, and artisans of all stripes. Published by the American Craft Coun-
cil, it covers its inspiring subjects from workbench to gallery. www.americancraftmag.org

An arts magazine with a decidedly literary bent, The Believer covers books, film, music, and pop culture with
barely contained intellectual glee. Part of the McSweeney’s empire founded by author Dave Eggers, it constant-
ly finds new ways to showcase the creative impulse. www.believermag.com

The arts, culture, and fashion of the Middle Eastern region are fertile ground for the writers and artists of Bi-
doun, who traverse their territory with wit and irreverence. Whether they’re living in the region or are part of
the diaspora, their dispatches are crucial intelligence. www.bidoun.com

Each issue of Creative Review is eye-popping, showing some of the best work from worldwide advertising, de-
sign, and visual culture. Its articles add depth to this dazzle, profiling scenes, people, and creative work that you
wouldn’t hear about any other way. www.creativereview.co.uk

Esopus is a visual feast, showcasing the work of contemporary artists alongside critical writing, fiction, poetry,
interviews, and even a themed CD. The very definition of “labor of love,” it comes out only twice a year, but it’s
always worth the wait. www.esopusmag.com

Forget box-office battles and vapid celebrity chatter: Film Comment focuses its lens on cinema’s substance.
Drawing on a deep, experienced pool of critics and feature writers, the magazine gets off the red carpet to ex-
plore the wonderfully diverse film omniverse. www.filmlinc.com/fcm/fcm.htm

Published in Ireland but covering the entire world of music, The Journal of Music uses actual musicians as
writers. The resulting coverage, which runs the gamut from folk to classical to pop, is arresting reading for both
casual fans and aficionados. www.journalofmusic.com

Poets & Writers is targeted at wordsmiths, yet appeals to anyone who loves to get lost in a bookstore. And if
you’re yet another hopeful unpublished author—come on, admit it—you’ll find good advice on finding an agent
and a deal. www.pw.org
Make up and sell the copies
Last Updated: April 16. 2010 1:30PM UAE / April 16. 2010 9:30AM GMT

Comprised solely of reproductions and reinterpretations of contemporary Middle Eastern artworks, the exhibition Forms of Compen-
sation raises searching questions about authorship and the cultural economy writes Ursula Lindsey.

At an opening at the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo a few weeks ago, William Wells, the owner, was chatting with a middle-aged woman
in red-rimmed glasses. “And how much is this piece?” she asked, pointing towards one of the works on display. For a second, Wells
looked flummoxed. “We’ll have the prices tomorrow,” he told her. But a minute later, he turned to me and laughed. “It hadn’t occurred
to me that people would want to buy the pieces, he said. “I wonder if they realise they can have them made downstairs.”

“Downstairs”, in this case, meant the workshops in an alley beneath the gallery, which had created – or rather, replicated – all the
pieces on display. The exhibition, curated by Bidoun Projects (an offshoot of Bidoun magazine) and called Forms of Compensation,
featured 21 “counterfeit” copies of iconic modern and contemporary artworks, most of them by Arab or Iranian artists. The show, in
other words, was a collection of knock-offs.

This may seem like little more than a clever visual joke, a familiar observation about contemporary art’s overrated value and unique-
ness. But Forms of Compensation raises questions about what can be replicated and what can be estimated in a work of art, and how
each one relates to the social and economic space around it.

The moment for such reflection is opportune. In the past decade, a contemporary Middle East art market has come into being – pro-
pelled by post-September 11 interest from the West, by the endless search for emerging art markets, and by several Gulf kingdoms’
desire for cultural cachet. New galleries, art fairs and exhibitions have opened. Curators from abroad have scoured the region for art-
ists to bundle together into group shows with titles such as DisORIENTation and Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East.
Prices for work by Middle Eastern artists have spiralled upwards, culminating in sales such as that of the Iranian artist Fahad Moshiri’s
Love (made of Swarovski crystals and glitter on canvas) for just over $1 million (Dh3.7m) in 2008. A copy – the curators use the term
“clone”– of one of Moshiri’s works is on display in Forms of Compensation. His Living Room Ultra Mega X (2003) features a gaudy
armchair made extravagant with gold leaf and gold thread. The workman Gouda Mohamed Gouda replicated it, at much less expense,
using second-hand furniture and gold spray paint.

Bidoun’s creative director Babak Radboy selected the original works from Dubai auction catalogues. In his choices, he tried to remain
“detached,” he says.

“I didn’t want it to be about quality of works in and of themselves. I wanted it to be random… I chose things that would be recognis-
able and would capture a moment.”

The artist Ayman Ramadan oversaw the reproduction of the pieces in Cairo. Radboy sent Ramadan photographs of the original art-
works, with instructions that they each incorporate one noticeable change. The Cairo workshops had no idea of the scale or texture of
the originals, and were purposefully left to their own devices. The final pieces – copies of photographic copies – often ended up altered
in additional, unintentional ways.

Ramadan created many of the pieces himself: he changed Saadane Affif’s neon sign Essence to read “Assets”; re-created the Turkish
painter Burhan Dogançay’s Rings (Wall sculpture series) using plastic bracelets; and added forks to Hassan Sherif’s Spoon and Cable
sculpture (Sherif reportedly “got a kick” out of the copy).

“It’s like putting a mirror in front of the artwork,” Ramadan says of the copies. “You start to see the original in a completely different
way.” In a way, the copies seem to mock, to dilute, their originals. The ingenuity and confidence with which Cairo craftsmen blithely
copied famous works unsettles the originals: Mona Hatoum’s sign, Waiting is Forbidden, was originally created by a Cairo workshop
after the artist’s design; the copy that appears in this show was made at the same shop. But while the original (created in an edition of
six) has sold for $25,000, the same shop that made them sells the “copies” for about $30 (Dh110).

But while the show may be “anti-artwork”, says Radboy, it is nonetheless “pro-artist.” In the copies that populate the exhibition, Rad-
boy says, “the thing that’s missing is the time that the artist put into thinking and making this piece.”

Forms of Compensation had its first appearance at Art Dubai, where Radboy and his collaborators obtained a booth in the fair area,
displaying their counterfeits alongside the authentic offerings of galleries (they even added a last-minute replica of a work on sale
nearby).

Yet the show’s significance seems very specific to the Townhouse and its environs. Located in the centre of Cairo at the end of a
crowded commercial alley, the 13-year-old gallery has been a leader of Cairo’s slowly burgeoning independent art scene. It has also
insisted – not without difficulties – on an unusually open and symbiotic relationship with its neighbours. Local residents pray in the
building’s stairwell; openings are held on Sundays because that’s the day the surrounding workshops are closed, and their staff are free
to attend. Ramadan became an artist after working as a security guard at the gallery. He has a very personal sense of the pleasure and
instruction of copying. Back when he became interested in art, he says: “I couldn’t afford to buy it. I used to copy it to decorate my
room.”

Forms of Compensation plays on all the relationships – creativity to copying, art to commerce, international to local, gallery to street –
that already exist around the Townhouse, and draws a wealth of meaning from them.

The show explores the overlap between different modes of production – the fact that art is a commodity but also something else be-
sides. The critic Walter Benjamin famously declared that mechanical reproduction, in the form of photographs and the cinema, would
deplete art’s ineffable “aura”, and mark the end of “outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery.” Yet
Radboy argues that the reproduction of a work – the way that it is “inscribed in culture” – augments its power. Certainly the “fakes” in
Forms of Compensation send audiences back to the originals, to ponder them all over again.

Ursula Lindsey, a regular contributor to The Review, lives in Cairo.

Critically hailed as the strongest edition to date, Art Dubai 2010 welcomed nearly 18,000 international and regional visitors in the fourth year of the fair. With strong
support from the royal family, non-profit organisations, regional companies and the city’s growing number of private collectors, Art Dubai offered its most extensive
programme of collateral events including the Global Art Forum, Art Park curated by Bidoun Projects, the Abraaj Capital Art Prize, The Poetry of Time hosted by Van
Cleef & Arpels as well as numerous tours of private collections and events over five days.

Of the 72 participating galleries, the majority experienced strong sales from the outset with major purchases from international and regional institutions in addition to
established and first-time collectors from the Middle East, Europe, Asia and the United States. A number of participating galleries, including Athr Gallery from Jeddah,
Berlin galleries Christian Hosp and Caprice Horn, traffic from Dubai and San Francisco’s Frey Norris sold nearly all of their available works at the fair.

Sales highlights included Sadequain Naqqash’s The Three Graces sold by Grosvenor Vadehra Gallery for 200,000 USD; Dirimart’s sale of Snow White Without the
Dwarves by Ghada Amer for 160,000 USD to a private collector; New York-based Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery’s sale of a Reza Derakshani work for 80,000
USD; Sydney’s Agathon Galleries sale of a Tommy Watson painting for 40,000 USD; The Grain – Blue, by Duck-Yong Kim, which Seoul’s Lee Hwaik Gallery sold for
35,000 USD; and Katherine Bernhardt’s Rihanna 0-60 in 3.5 sold by Carbon 12, Dubai, for 20,000 USD.

“Art Dubai has grown in confidence over four years, increasing its relevance on the world stage and offering unique opportunities for galleries, institutions and collec-
tors. The fair came of age this year as demonstrated by the quality and diversity of the work on show, the significant increase in attendance, strong sales from institu-
tional and private buyers and the incredible support of Dubai’s art community during the week of the fair,” said John Martin, co-founder and Director of Art Dubai.

“I think Art Dubai is a great barometer for where the Middle Eastern art market is heading,” said Hisham Samawi from Ayyam Gallery, Damascus/Dubai. “People seem
ready to buy and build their collections, and that has us excited about the rest of the year.”

In addition to a range of galleries from more than 30 countries, guests of Art Dubai witnessed the Global Art Forum’s engaging conversations amongst speakers such as
Don and Mera Rubell, El Anatsui, Maria Baibakova, Vasif Kortun, Jack Persekian, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Fereydoun Ave and many more.

Visitors were also able to participate in a rich programme curated by Bidoun Projects, featuring a group show of Middle Eastern artists called A New Formalism, inter-
active artist-led tours, special commissions by artists including Farhad Moshiri and Ebtisam Abdul-Aziz, Art Park Talks, Bidoun Video and the Bidoun Library.

In its second year, the Abraaj Capital Art Prize unveiled the works of its 2010 winners, including a multimedia mural by Hala Elkoussy, acting as an archive for Cairo’s
history; a film installation by Kader Attia recreating the artist’s experience in Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock; and an installation by Marwan Sahmarani comprising
paintings, drawings, ceramics and video premised upon visual themes from the Renaissance.

Furthermore, thousands of Art Dubai visitors took the opportunity to view Van Cleef & Arpels’ exhibition The Poetry of Time, covering almost a century of watch mak-
ing creativity and expertise.

Alongside the business of buying art, some of the region’s youngest creative types joined family workshops organised by child education programme START to develop
their own works in aid of regional children in need of arts-related therapy.
Perched on the edge of video art and technology
Bidoun’s ‘Cloudy Heads’ proves to be an unexpectedly amusing experience

DUBAI: The first large, flat-screen television has been set at right angles to the other three. Each of the four
monitors is dedicated to a program of video art, each selected by a different curator. Two of the screens are inert,
while a serious-looking woman with a note pad confronts the fourth.If the signage is to be believed, this first
monitor is dedicated to the...
Bidoun Projects, a wing of the eponymous Manhattan-based magazine that served as the curatorial adviser to
the fair, presented a series of videos and a project called “The Big Idea,” which focused predominantly on Emi-
rati women artists. Bidoun also commissioned Iranian “market artist” Farhad Moshiri to make ice sculptures,
and retained artists Sophia Al Maria, Khalil Rabah, and Daniel Bozhkov to provide interactive, freewheeling
tours of the fair to amused audiences.
THE UNSUSPECTING STAR of the third annual March Meeting in Sharjah was a young performance artist
named Barrak Alzaid. With a lot of sass and two little handwritten-in-pink-highlighter signs—one reading TWO
MINUTES, the other reading PLEASE STOP!—he kept immaculate time over the course of three days, fifty
lightning-quick presentations, and two keynote lectures by literary scholar Abdelfattah Kilito (on translations)
and curator Okwui Enwezor (on archives).

Seated in the front row of a sterile conference room, with a staff badge looped around his neck and a laptop bal-
anced perilously on his knees, Alzaid gently terrorized each and every speaker with the occasional cock of his
head and flash of his sign. Without him, this year’s considerably overprogrammed March Meeting would have
fallen apart. With him, it established a nice rhythm, coalesced around common themes, and generated several
urgent discussions—on alternative art schools, peripatetic libraries, and the sudden ubiquity of archival endeav-
ors in these lands.

For art-world observers outside the Gulf, it can be fiendishly difficult to figure out what’s going on inside the
UAE. At least three of the country’s seven emirates are pushing hard to become the region’s singular cultural
hub, and they often seem more opaquely competitive than transparently collaborative.

Of course, there was a time when Sharjah was the most bumping lifestyle destination of the lot. Now Dubai gets
all the action, while Abu Dhabi looms like some dark star on the horizon, waiting to suck everyone’s energy into
its dense matrix of mysterious acronyms (from the sovereign wealth fund ADIA to the cultural agency ADACH
and its archrival TDIC). Sharjah, meanwhile, has become a dormitory town that is, moreover, entirely dry—to
get a drink requires a drive to the neighboring emirate of Ajman, which, I assure you, has no cultural ambi-
tions whatsoever, beyond a smattering of seedy beachside bars more suitable to paid companionship than artsy
conversation. (Of course, I did experience stabs of regret on waking one morning in Sharjah to the text message
YOU MISSED A SPECTACULAR NIGHT OF FILIPINO URBAN DANCE CREW AT BAYWATCH IN AJ-
MAN.)

But while Dubai has the market and Abu Dhabi the monumental museum plans, Sharjah does have a decent
biennial, a fund for artists, and the March Meeting (dubiously tagged a “networking” summit). It also has long-
standing performance venues, already existing exhibition spaces, and a bit of real pedestrian street life—all am-
bulating kids and families—which makes for a more pleasant, less alienating milieu than those parts of Dubai
hinged on fearsome megamalls, ostentatious hotel complexes, and terrifying ten-lane freeways.

All the 2010 March Meeting attendees lodged at the same modest hotel, the Golden Tulip, and each morning
they took a breezy stroll along a quaint canal to the conference room, abutted by a sun-drenched lounge in Mul-
taqa al-Qasba (with the free Wi-Fi, caffeine, and cakes the reigning work ethic required).

A delightfully diverse lineup of artists, collectives, and small-scale organizations made formal presentations
followed by open discussions. Sessions of three or four speakers then broke for more informal conversations,
called dardashat in Arabic, which took place across the canal in Shelter Sharjah at Maraya Art Center, the newly
opened sister space of Shelter in Dubai. The catch this year was that all the participants in the March Meeting
were meant to present a work in progress (rather than a review of how they began, where they’ve been, or what
they’ve done). In past years, explained Jack Persekian, director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, which organized
this iteration of the event in collaboration with the New York–based nonprofit ArteEast, “we were presenting
ourselves, our projects, and our histories. We talked about our past and present. For 2010, there was a proposal
from Rasha Salti”—the creative director of ArteEast and, perhaps not coincidently, the cocurator, with Suzanne
Cotter, of the next Sharjah Biennial—“that we look into our future.” The March Meeting, he explained, could be
“a mechanism to map out the cultural agenda for the next few years.” Given the fact that it included participants
from Africa and Asia as well as from the Arab world, it could also offer a broader and potentially more produc-
tive definition of what “the region” has become.
Did it work? Time will tell. Most of the participants seemed to be pitching their projects to phantom funders.
But because grant-making organizations did not announce their presence, participants clearly felt free to reflect
on—and complain about—funding policies that only recognized certain structures.

Day One began in this vein, with Mriganka Madhukaillya’s presentation of the Desire Machine Collective’s
Periferry project on the Brahmaputra River in northeast India. The artist-led group refurbished a ferry from the
1970s and turned it into a media lab that is now literally adrift on a waterway that links Tibet, China, India, and
Bangladesh. The ferry had hosted residencies and symposia, “based on funding,” said Madhukaillya, “because
those are the formats that funders understand.” His intention, however, was to phase out those formats, funders
be damned, because the residencies were too short and the symposia too fleeting.

Christine Tohme of the Beirut-based powerhouse Ashkal Alwan picked up the funding strand when she an-
nounced that the long-planned-for Home Works Academy will open in Beirut in November. Just weeks before
the March Meeting began, a local patron gave Ashkal Alwan a space for the school—free for the first five
years—in a former furniture factory next to the Beirut Art Center. “It’s taken ten years for arts institutions in
Beirut to get funding from the local community,” she said.

Tohme’s announcement, along with her rapid-fire preview of the forthcoming Home Works Forum, beginning
in Beirut next month, hit one of the March Meeting’s high marks. Another came courtesy of Pad.ma (Public Ac-
cess Digital Media Archive), presented by the artists Shaina Anand, Sebastian Lütgert, and Ashok Sukumaran.
From there, a strong pattern of archival concerns emerged, amplified by artists’ talks—Khaled Hourani hilari-
ous on “Picasso in Palestine,” Jananne al-Ani studious on “The Aesthetics of Disappearance: A Land Without
People”—on using historical material in the process of creating new work.

Antonia Carver of Bidoun Projects proposed forming a distribution network for independent publishers of
art books in the region, and discussed the ever-evolving Bidoun Library along the way. Mia Jankowicz, four
months into her term as artistic director of the Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) in Cairo, joked that Carver
rendered her entire presentation redundant, but offered a no less insightful lecture on merging the libraries of
the CIC, the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art in Cairo, and the Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum.
Then Laura Carderera of Townhouse chimed in with her own plan to organize a full-fledged conference on
archival practices this fall.

Across the canal at Shelter, Mirene Arsanios of the 98 Weeks Research Project in Beirut talked about collecting
avant-garde magazines published in the Arab world from the mid-twentieth century through today. Rasha Salti
referred to her study group with the Beirut-based researcher Kristine Khouri, the History of Arab Modernities in
the Visual Arts.

By day three, Sebastian Lütgert of Pad.ma announced the convening of an ad hoc session on archiving at Shel-
ter. “This may be the year of the archive, or simply a year of the archive,” he said, “which is fabulous, but also
terrible, because it might very well be the year many of us get tired of archives.” A lively discussion ensued.
But by then we were all late for Okwui Enwezor’s keynote on—what else?—archiving in the work of Fiona Tan
(however random a work in the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale seemed in this particular context).

I couldn’t find Barrak Alzaid anywhere in the audience, but he must have been there somewhere. Enwezor
talked for his allotted time, answered questions, scanned the room, and summed up: “Okay, we all have to go.
We’re going to Ajman, I know.”

---ArtForum.com
Art Dubai 2010 presents its strongest programme to date

United Arab Emirates: Tuesday, March 02 - 2010 at 09:58PRESS RELEASE

This year, Art Dubai (17-20 March) will host its strongest programme of collateral events to date. It will include the Global Art Forum,
the unveiling of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize, special projects curated by Bidoun Projects and the exhibition The Poetry of Time pre-
sented by Van Cleef and Arpels.

Art Dubai, which welcomes over 70 galleries from 30 countries, has become the essential gathering place for art professionals, col-
lectors and artists from across the Middle East, South Asia and beyond, setting the business of art within a context that is intelligent,
stimulating and relevant.

Art Dubai 2010 will also debut single artist-focused stands highlighting current and future masters providing both established and
novice collectors a broader and deeper understanding of how an artist's work has progressed.

Global Art Forum:

The Global Art Forum is the Middle East's most influential platform for cultural discussion. Under the banner "Crucial Moments",
key episodes in the evolution of contemporary art practice in the Middle East will be scrutinized throughout a four-day symposium of
debates, discussions and workshops.

A wide range of topics drive the discussions, from Modernism in Iran to the recent influx of transient institutions. Art education also
proves a key topic and is explored in the notion of the Future Art School. Further subjects address shifting paradigms of public and
private patronage, as well as trends in the collectors' markets. In addition, a series of one-on-one conversations with some of the
world's most renowned artists will offer a fascinating insight into the mystery and mechanics of the creative process.

The Global Art Forum is generously supported by the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (DCAA).

Bidoun Projects:

Bidoun Projects, the not-for-profit curatorial wing of arts organisation and publisher Bidoun, will continue its partnership with Art
Dubai with a comprehensive programme of events, including a group exhibition of upcoming Middle Eastern artists, commissions
exploring the spectacle of an art fair, artist-led tours of Art Dubai and a the Bidoun Library, featuring a nomadic archive of books,
catalogues, journals and ephemera.

Art Park is once again host to a range of film screenings, innovative talks and performances that look at the relationship between
archives, art, music and film in collaboration with avant-garde archiving site UbuWeb.

A key feature will be the Bidoun Projects exhibition: A New Formalism, which takes as its starting point the subtle articulation of four
works that share a space. "The exhibition will complement the rest of the programme, which looks at the spectacular and temporal na-
ture of art fairs. A New Formalism brings together a precise selection of works by Hazem El Mestikawy, Iman Issa, Mahmoud Khaled
and the collective U5 that together pose an expanded understanding of formalism," said Antonia Carver, Director, Bidoun Projects.

UAE artist Ebtisam Abdul-Aziz will display a new work, specially commissioned for the fair in which she will re-imagine a map of
the Arab world according to a set of numerical codes. Abdul-Aziz is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Sharjah, UAE, work-
ing in installation, performance, photography and on paper. Her recent exhibitions include the UAE and ADACH Pavilions at 53rd
Venice Biennale; Sharjah Biennial 7; and Languages of the Desert, at the Kunst Museum, Bonn, Germany.
To demystify the art fair experience, Bidoun Projects has commissioned artists to act as Art Dubai tour guides. Taking the fair-as-
stage-set as inspiration, artists including Daniel Bokhkov, Sophia Al Maria, and Khalil Rabah will conduct daily tours, devising their
own narratives through the galleries and the grounds, in an exploration of the pure subjectivity of interpretation. These tours will be
offered to all visitors to the fair.

The special projects at Art Dubai will also feature new installations including ice sculptures designed by world-renowned artist Farhad
Moshiri and Sand/Fans, a restaging of Alice Aycock's conceptual kinetic sculptural installation that was first exhibited at 112 Greene
Street, Soho, New York, in the early 1970s.

The unique 'pop up' Bidoun Library will give visitors access to a wealth of materials created by and for artists, as well as those pub-
lished by independent organisations based in the region. This will allow visitors to explore, research, and create wide-ranging connec-
tions through materials that are generally unavailable in the Gulf.

Bidoun Projects are kindly supported by the Emirates Foundation.

Artist Focus Stands:

Of the galleries participating in Art Dubai 2010, up to a quarter are innovating by creating Artist Focus Stands which feature the work
of only one or two artists. These new stands at Art Dubai will enable collectors and visitors to see a progression in a specific artist's
work over time, generating a greater sense of depth, involvement and understanding of an artist's oeuvre, rather than a quick snapshot
of several artists represented by the gallery. Single or dual-focused galleries at Art Dubai will include pieces from modern Indian and
Egyptian masters such as M.F. Husain and Adel El Siwi as well as more up-and-coming artists from Korea, Chile, Peru, Spain and the
Sudan.

Among the artists being showcased in the Artist Focus Stands is legendary Indian painter and filmmaker, M.F. Husain. Represented by
Grosvenor Vadhera Gallery, London, Husain's paintings have played a key role in bringing artwork from the Middle East, North Africa
and South Asia (MENASA) region to the international spotlight. A number of his works will be on display, showing a progression of
Husain's work throughout his more than six decades as an artist.

Art Dubai will also feature single-focus highlights from two Egyptian contemporary masters - Adel El Siwi represented by Artspace,
Dubai, and Chant Avedissian, represented by Rose Issa Projects, London. A renowned painter, El Siwi has showcased his work
through group and solo exhibitions throughout the world. He had emigrated to North America and Europe but returned to Egypt fa-
vouring his motherland for its deep roots in the arts. Chant Avedissian in his colorful stenciled images, deftly explores the boundaries
between "high" and "low" art, politics and pop. Avedissian refined his techniques in Western art schools, but draws inspiration from
Egypt's modern Golden Age, with its glamorous divas and mustachioed movie stars. His iconic figures include legendary singers Om
Kulthoum and Asmahan; screen sirens Shadia and Hind Rostom; heartthrobs Farid al-Atrash and Abdel Halim Hafez; and once-adored
statesmen like Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Several galleries participating in Art Dubai 2010 will champion emerging regional talent, including Lebanon's Ayman Baalbaki and
Iraqi painter Mahmoud Obaidi, both from Agial Art Gallery in Beirut. Bahrain's Albareh Art Gallery will feature a focus on works by
Sudanese artist Mohammed Omer Khalil and Faisel Laibi Sahi from Iraq. Rossi & Rossi from London is exclusively showcasing work
by Pakistani artist Naiza Khan.

Locally, Dubai-based Green Art Gallery will feature the work of Turkish artist Nazif Topcuoglu. While the photographer has been
shown widely across Europe, this will be his first exhibition in a regional art fair.

Abraaj Capital Art Prize:

The 2010 winning artworks of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize will be unveiled at a special ceremony in advance of the Jumeirah Patron's
Preview at Art Dubai on 16th March. Kader Attia (Algeria) working with curator Laurie Ann Farrell (US), Hala Elkoussy (Egypt)
working with curator Jelle Bouwhuis (The Netherlands) and Marwan Sahmarani (Lebanon) with curator Mahita El Bacha Urieta
(Spain/Lebanon) have been working in secret since they won the prize in September based on the proposals they submitted. www.
abraaj.com.

The Poetry of Time by Van Cleef & Arpels:

For the first time, Van Cleef & Arpels is organising a prestigious exhibition covering almost a century of watch making creations
dedicated to the Poetry of Time, exclusively for Art Dubai. An interactive workshop area will feature famed watchmaker Jean-Marc
Wiederrecht and enameling artist Dominique Baron.
Art Dubai Invites Bidoun Projects To Devise Curatorial Programme (14 February 2010)
Curating a series of non-commercial exhibitions, commissions, screenings and educational events, Bidoun Projects give artists a voice

Bidoun Projects, the not-for-profit curatorial wing of arts organisation and publisher Bidoun, will continue its partnership with Art Dubai with an
extensive line-up of art events and exhibitions at the 2010 fair to support the region’s artists.

“Bidoun Projects have established a critically acclaimed, independent platform within Art Dubai for upcoming artists and curators to profile the most
significant new work coming out of the region,” said John Martin, Director and Co-Founder of Art Dubai.

The four days of Art Dubai, 17-20 March 2010, will present a range of activities offering something to suit all age groups. A key feature will be the
Bidoun Projects exhibition: A New Formalism, which takes as its starting point the subtle articulation of four works that share a space.

“The exhibition will complement the rest of the programme, which looks at the spectacular and temporal nature of art fairs. A New Formalism brings
together a precise selection of works by Hazem El Mestikawy, Iman Issa, Mahmoud Khaled and the collective U5 that together pose an expanded
understanding of formalism,” said Antonia Carver, Director, Bidoun Projects.

Art Park, the converted car park underneath the galleries at Madinat Jumeirah, returns for the third year at Art Dubai and will foster discussion dur-
ing the fair, with a range of talks and performances. Film programmes curated by Bidoun Projects and guest curators Masoud Amralla Al Ali, Aram
Moshayedi, and duo Özge Ersoy and Sohrab Mohebbi will be screened. Art Park is also home to the Bidoun Lounge, which will host to a set of in-
novative talks and performances looking at the relationship between archives, film, music and art, presented with UbuWeb, the avant-garde archiving
site.

UAE artist Ebtisam Abdul-Aziz will display a new work, specially commissioned by Bidoun Projects for the fair, outdoors at Art Dubai in which she
will re-imagine a map of the Arab world according to a set of numerical codes. Abdul-Aziz is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Sharjah,
UAE, working in installation, performance, photography and on paper. Her recent exhibitions include the UAE and ADACH Pavilions at 53rd Venice
Biennale; Sharjah Biennial 7; and Languages of the Desert, at the Kunst Museum, Bonn, Germany.

To demystify the art fair experience, Bidoun Projects has commissioned artists to act as Art Dubai tour guides. Taking the fair-as-stage-set as inspira-
tion, artists including Daniel Bokhkov, Sophia Al Maria, and Khalil Rabah will conduct daily tours, devising their own narratives through the galler-
ies and the grounds, in an exploration of the pure subjectivity of interpretation. These tours will be offered to all visitors of the fair.

Featured alongside Art Dubai’s line-up of galleries, Bidoun Projects has commissioned new installations and projects including ice sculptures de-
signed by world-renowned artist Farhad Moshiri and Sand/Fans, a restaging of Alice Aycock’s conceptual installation that was first exhibited at 112
Greene Street, Soho, New York, in the early 1970s.

The Bidoun Library, also located at Art Dubai, will give visitors access to a wealth of materials created by and for artists, as well as those published
by independent organisations based in the region. The unique ‘pop-up’ space allows visitors to explore, research, and create wide-ranging connec-
tions through materials that are generally unavailable in the Gulf.

The library houses a collection of books, catalogues, journals, and ephemera that traces contemporary art practises as well as the evolution of the
various art scenes of the Middle East. A new section includes books, music and films published by Kanoon, Iran’s Centre for the Intellectual Devel-
opment of Children and Young Adults, founded in 1961, which was an incubator for some of the country’s most celebrated artists and filmmakers,
including Abbas Kiarostami, Ebrahim Forouzesh, Amir Naderi and Farshid Mesghali.

Tickets are now on sale for Art Dubai through www.timeouttickets.com. They are priced at AED 50 each and entry for children 12 and under is free.
They will also be available at the door during Art Dubai.

Art Dubai 2010 is held in partnership with private equity group Abraaj Capital and enjoys support from its sponsors Van Cleef & Arpels, Jumeirah
Hotels & Resorts and HSBC. Canvas magazine will produce Canvas Daily, the official daily supplement for Art Dubai 2010.

Bidoun Projects’ programmes at the fair are generously supported by the Emirates Foundation.
The Bidoun series program (Bidoun Projects) similarly is also the Abu
Dhabi art show “the Middle East platform” a part. The Bidoun project is a
support promotes the Middle East contemporary art nonprofit organization.
This project demonstrates named “the Bidoun library and project space” on
the Abu Dhabi art show the Middle East contemporary art multimedia inter-
action files. And includes the precious books, the display table of contents,
movie, the audio and video artware and documentary film. This file puts in a
design unique space display, glances over, experience and exchange for the
visitor. A Bidoun project side jointly will also hold a group discussion with
the Abu Dhabi art show organizer, the participation discussed all quarters to
have the main sponsor, came from publishing industry, archive and record
art and other aspect the experts.
In addition, the non-profit organisation Bidoun Projects is launching
its Bidoun Library and Project Space as part of the Middle Eastern
Platform. Installed in a pop-up space created by the UAE design firm
Traffic, this innovative new resource is a place for relaxing, social-
ising and browsing through an interactive, multimedia archive on
Middle Eastern contemporary art, including rare books, exhibition
catalogues, films, videos, sound artworks and documentation.
The latest issue of Bidoun (#18) is the magazine’s second interview issue, where various artists, writers, design-
ers, and public figures share insight into the Middle East’s artistic and cultural scenes. Samples of the issue can
be seen here.

Bidoun’s description of their latest publication:

Sit rapt as pop star M.I.A. tells tall tales of her Tamil childhood in Sri Lanka. Hang out with Beirut- based com-
ics collective Samandal as they talk shop about giant robots, graphic novels, and civil wars. Look askance as
Alejandro Jodorowsky describes psycho- magic and the alchemy of refuse. Marvel at the doomed but gaga art
world of 1970s Tehran with gallerist Tony Shafrazi. Plus: defacing Guernica, defaming Paul Bowles, dueling
Hitchcocks, Iraqi modernism, the world’s largest artist’s book, the secret of beauty, and Ghida Fakhry.

Bidoun, which based in New York and printed in the United Arab Emirates, was founded by Lisa Farjam in
2004 to help cover cultural activity in the Middle East (which she felt had second-rate media coverage in the
past). The quarterly magazine focuses on delivering exceptional content that ranges from the serious to the hu-
morous, covering topics such as politics, fashion, youth culture and media.

Bidoun