October 2014
Deadline for application to Core program: September 10, 2014
Campus Art Dubai is accepting applications for its third iteration, which starts in October. The school for UAE-based artists, curators, writers and cultural producers features a Core intensive, six-month course plus a Community programme of lectures, workshops and events. Meetings occur over weekends and feature seminars, workshops, critiques and one-on-one mentorship. Campus Art Dubai is part of Art Dubai’s extensive educational programming and participants selected for CAD 3.0’s Core programme will present a group project at the fair in 2015 (March 18–21).
In 2014–15, the Core course is led by the New York/Sharjah-based critic/curator Murtaza Vali and anthropologist Uzma Z. Rizvi. This iteration of Campus Art Dubai is focused on the recent past and the contemporary condition of the GCC, reflecting on issues of contemporality and modes of productivity, both artistic and otherwise, paying special attention to how heritage, its construction and memory, affects the making, framing, delivery, circulation and viewing of images from the UAE.
Campus Art Dubai is taught by a local and international cast of academics, critics, curators and artists. CAD 2.0 (2013–14) was led by curator Tirdad Zolghadr, taking on the theme of ‘Mediation’; CAD alumni have gone on to various MFA programmes, residencies, and fellowships, as well as working and exhibiting in the UAE’s various arts institutions.
The school includes two levels of membership:
Core—a selective and intensive six-month course for 15 participants aimed at postgraduates and practicing artists, curators and writers. Members of CAD Core follow a syllabus of all-day sessions twice a month, which include group critiques, lectures and workshops with visiting tutors, plus one-on-one mentorship.
Community—open to enthusiasts, as well as artists, writers and curators, this membership level includes monthly community events and talks, plus quarterly practical skills workshops. Sessions include lectures on UAE and MENA art history, led by historian Salwa Mikdadi, and language classes, taking in ‘how to talk art in Arabic.’
CAD Core 2014–15 co-lead tutor Murtaza Vali is a critic, curator, editor and Visiting Instructor at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. A recipient of a 2011 Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for Short-Form Writing, his writing is regularly published in various international art periodicals. His past curatorial projects include extra|ordinary: The Abraaj Group Art Prize 2013 (Art Dubai, 2013), Brute Ornament (Green Art Gallery, Dubai, 2012) and Accented (BRIC Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, 2010). He lives and works between Sharjah, UAE, and Brooklyn. Co-lead tutor Uzma Z. Rizvi is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Urban Studies at the Pratt Institute of Art and Design, Brooklyn, where she teaches anthropology, ancient urbanism, critical heritage studies, memory and war/trauma studies, art and social change and the postcolonial critique. Since receiving her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007, Rizvi has been Faculty Fellow and Chair for the Initiative on Art, Community Development and Social Change at the Pratt Center (2007–2008; 2010–2011) and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University (2008–2009). Currently, she is also a Visiting Scholar for Center for Gulf Studies at the American University of Sharjah.
Application deadline for Campus Art Dubai’s Core programme is September 10, and those interested in the Community programme can sign up throughout the programme’s duration.
Campus Art Dubai is held in partnership with Dubai Culture & Arts Authority and is supported by d3 Dubai Design District.
Art Dubai’s ninth edition runs from March 18 to 21, 2015. Held in partnership with The Abraaj Group, the fair takes place at Madinat Jumeirah. Art Dubai includes more than 85 gallery exhibitions each year, featured across three programmes—Contemporary, Modern and Marker. The fair also has the largest not-for-profit programme of any such event, worldwide. Its programming includes residencies, commissioned artists’ projects, a live radio station and cinema; the five-day Global Art Forum; and an exhibition of works by winners of the annual The Abraaj Group Art Prize.
