Fall 2022 program: A Season for Regrounding

Warehouse421, Abu Dhabi’s home-grown arts and design center, announces its Fall 2022 Program, A Season for Regrounding, featuring two major exhibitions and an extensive public program that focuses on local food security and ecologies. The program will see the opening of On Foraging: Food Knowledge and Environmental Imaginaries in the UAE’s Landscape and Mohamed Khalid: Let me tell you something on October 9, 2022. 

A Season for Regrounding offers a wide-ranging program of talks, workshops and special events that are a mindful exploration of creative and communal approaches to reconnecting with the environment. One of the most extensive and robust public engagement programs presented by Warehouse421 yet, the season highlights alternative ways of existing within our natural ecosystem that challenge anthropomorphic viewpoints, bringing back direct, bodily and tanglible engagement with traditional sources of wisdom. 

On Foraging: Food Knowledge and Environmental Imaginaries in the UAE’s Landscape 
October 9 to December 25, 2022
Gallery 2

First presented in the UAE Pavilion at Expo 2020, On Foraging is a group exhibition that explores what it means to be in constant search of nurturing and feeding, for the individual and the collective, within seemingly arid environments. Given the rising global challenges and issues around climate change, the exhibition considers the long and multifaceted history of an environment that has for generations fed its own people in a rich variety of ways. Presenting reserves of cultural and agricultural knowledge that have been passed down through generations and that continue today, On Foraging reveals the work that goes into unearthing the landscape through a confluence of personal and collective narratives, and ultimately calls for historical food knowledge to be brought forward, re-examined, and rediscovered.

This second iteration of the exhibition builds on this important conversation, opening it up to wider public viewing with new commissioned works and research, as well as a second edition of the accompanying eponymous publication that reflects these additions. Curated by Dima Srouji, Faysal Tabbarah, and Meitha Almazrooei, the exhibition features works of 14 UAE-based and regional artists including: Ammar Al Attar, Abdullah Al Saadi, Auguste Nomeikaite, Nujoom Al Ghanem, Shaikha Al Mazrou, Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Moza Almatrooshi, Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, Nahla Tabbaa, Vikram Divecha, Paola Sakr, Reem Falaknaz, Eileen Vazquez, Zaina Khayyat and Abir Mnasria. 

Mohamed Khalid: Let me tell you something 
October 9 to December 25, 2022
Gallery 1

The first institutional solo exhibition for UAE-based artist Mohamed Khalid, Let me tell you something results from Warehouse421’s Artistic Development Exhibition Program, a capacity-building initiative that supports the professional and artistic development of early to mid-career creative practitioners. Organized in partnership with The Institute of Emerging Art, the exhibition examines the materiality of everyday objects and coaxes out their metaphoric potential, exploring the connectivity of the artist’s subjects and their frangible correlation to human beings. Featuring seven new works produced this year,  Let me tell you something examines the search for connection by examining the systems that combine to form communication, from handwriting to technological algorithms to scraps of paper, all drawn from real-life episodes of missed communication. The exhibition text features a foreword by art and culture writer Melissa Gronlund titled A Letter Always Arrives.

Mohamed Khalid is an alumnus of the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship (SEAF) and Campus Art Dubai 7.0, with previous group shows exhibited at Art Dubai, Warehouse421, and Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Fall 2022 Program: A Season for Regrounding
September 21 to December 25, 2022

Notable events from the program respond to themes addressed in the On Foraging exhibition such as a meditative workshop led by artist Nahla Tabbaa that explores Mina Zayed’s resilient ecosystem, and a father-daughter tour of its food markets; a food-related lecture performance by artists Moza Al Matrooshi and Tabbaa; cultural tours of farms and photowalks in ecological sites across Abu Dhabi; and a beach cleanup that invites participants to create a large scale, site-specific installation made from collected waste. The season also includes an outdoor market, Playing with Nature, that brings together locally-based artists, artisans, and creatives to showcase a range of sustainably made products. 

Detailed information about the program can be found on warehouse421.ae.