2019 full summer programme

Jameel Arts Centre, one of the first major contemporary arts institutions in Dubai, announces further details of its Summer 2019 programming, including ‘Second Hand’, an expansive group exhibition exploring materiality in contemporary art, featuring film screenings, commissions and performances; an open call for donations to The Library of Unread Books.

Second Hand
The 18 local, regional and international artists and collectives in Second Hand—on view July 3-November 23, 2019—employ traditional and non-traditional approaches to “making,” from man-made to machine made, often incorporating banal and everyday material to construct new forms and ideas. Through divergent modes of expression—sculpture, installation, assemblage, drawing, photography, painting and performance—together the artworks in Second Hand expound a treatise on materiality and highlight a broad approach to object-based practices that challenge our perceptions of the material.

Drawn from the Art Jameel Collection, Second Hand includes works by Adel Abdessemed, Haig Aivazian, Abbas Akhavan, Diana Al-Hadid, Doa Aly, Fayçal Baghriche, Walead Beshty, Vikram Divecha, Jason Dodge, Zahrah Al-Ghamdi, Bita Ghezelayagh, Mohammed Kazem, Azade Köker, Cinthia Marcelle, Keita Miyazaki, Slavs and Tatars, Moffat Takadiwa and Mario García Torres. The exhibition’s title also references Moffat Takadiwa’s Second Hand Information, 2014, created from repurposed computer keys and alluding to how, as information is passed on from one person to the next, the meaning of material changes over time.

Other works in the exhibition investigate the process and qualities of making and how these are understood through social, political, cultural and economic narratives. The process in part becomes the material: Haig Aivazian painstakingly draws marble tiles with graphite, while a meticulously crafted, site-specific commission by Zahrah Al Ghamdi sees leather forms spill out across the gallery and into the adjacent courtyard. Meanwhile, artists such as Mohammed Kazem, Slavs and Tatars and Vikram Divecha consider the relationship between time and production, through mapping, movement, sound and duration. Doa Aly will complement works on paper with a performance at the opening on Wednesday, July 3.

The Library of Unread Books
Donations are now being accepted for the Middle East debut of The Library of Unread Books, a living reference library comprised of books that were unread by previous owners. Visitors to Jameel Arts Centre are invited to gift their unread books from June 12-January 31, 2020; the Library will then take over the Jameel’s Lobby from November 16, 2019, to January 31, 2020, for the community to browse. Initiated by Heman Chong and Renée Staal, The Library of Unread Books is currently comprised of nearly 700 donated books. The Library is the result of a collective gesture; viewed as a whole, these books reflect on notions of access, excess and the politics of redistribution.

Additional exhibitions and programming
A significant debut survey of work by Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz, currently on view at Whitechapel Gallery, London, will tour to Jameel Arts Centre, March 12-August 30, 2020. Organised by Whitechapel Gallery and Castello di Rivoli in collaboration with Art Jameel, this will be the renowned artist’s first solo exhibition in Asia and the Middle East. The self-titled exhibition includes Rakowitz’s most significant, multifaceted installations, drawing on architecture, cultural artefacts, cuisine and geopolitics from 750 BC to today. In Dubai, the exhibition will be accompanied by Rakowitz’s first bilingual (Arabic-English) monograph, and a broad and compelling public programme for all ages.

This summer is the final opportunity to view commissions and exhibitions closing in August, including Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota’s highly popular immersive Artist’s Room and Contrary Life: A Botanical Light Garden Devoted to Trees, a light-installation garden created by Kuwait-based artists Alia Farid and Aseel AlYaqoub via the first edition of Art Jameel Commissions. Also on through September, the Jameel Prize 5 exhibition, a collaboration with the V&A, London, features work by Kamrooz Aram, Hayv Kahraman, Hala Kaiksow, Mehdi Moutashar, Marina Tabassum, naqsh collective, Younes Rahmoun and Wardha Shabbir.

Press contact
Sareh Faraj
sareh [​at​] artjameel.org