Mitchell’s inquiry into the “pictorial turn,” designated a primacy to pictures that at times rivals the textual as they both inhabit our understanding of visual culture, particularly in the contemporary world of fast and fleeting images. Yet the question of “what do pictures want?” remains relative for our understanding of images through history. Mitchell tells us that pictures should be, “understood as complex assemblages of virtual, material, and symbolic elements.” Images are a particular form of pictures, as Mitchell explains. Questions we ask images vary but always include, who made you? where, when and why were you made? And what are you trying to tell me? They are essentially questions that would help us understand a work of art, its meaning, significance and place in history. Mostly, of course, images keep us pondering without simple or direct answers. They tell us that they are complex and require in depth engagement and interaction. They in fact want us to learn more than what we think they are capable of telling us.
As an exhibition, When Images Speak invokes the question of what do images want, while giving us clues for possible answers, as it opens paths to us into the rich and diverse visual production in the Arab world during the twentieth century, and across to the current times. The selection of works included in this exhibition is neither exhaustive nor complete. Clearly there are many other principal protagonists of both the modern and contemporary periods who are missing. However, through these works, we can enter various key conversations and debates that were pertinent in advancing the visual arts as well as contributed to constructing the modern cultures in the region.
With works largely from the collection of HH Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the founding group of artworks that launched the Dubai Collection initiative in the spring of 2021, together with loans generously offered by other patrons of the initiative, the exhibition equally contemplates a compendium of dialogues possible through the nature of this innovative initiative that brings several threads and conversations together. While private collections are always expressive of their collectors’ visions, these collections being no exception, through their selective and curated merger, they equally form discourses that are theoretical as much as they are pictorial, and that allow for interpretations and provocations that would help us understand the modalities and power of culture at a number of given moments of history.
The works of art in When Images Speak collectively introduce many of the dominant beliefs, critical inquiries and social dynamics of their times, and particularly reflect on the nationally charged questions around the mid-twentieth century in the Arab World. Along with major political shifts — with particular attention to the creation of the Arab nations following struggles for independence — artists of the Arab world were aware of the need for developing a distinct visual language capable of expressing their new self. They were also aware of their social responsibilities as artists and their role in educating their audiences through their art and actions. In forming national identities and iconography, those artists played a vital role that further aided in the construction of the national consciousness. These works, thus offer us examples of how they explored and navigated the complex and rich history of post-colonial and post-national connectivity, intersections, and collaborations between artists of the different Arab countries.
Equally, they show us how the negotiations of modernism by Arab artists unfolded during the past century and its evolution into the contemporary trends of today. The accommodating grouping of the works into three intersecting and overlapping themes is directed by the conversations activated by and between the works. The groupings equally reflect the common issues of concern across the Arab world as investigated and contemplated by some of the most influential and progressive artists who shaped the modern movements. The twentieth century witnessed the formation of many art movements and collectives throughout the region. Artists were debating the appropriateness of some styles, the necessity of invoking certain subjects, while constructing locally significant aesthetics adept to represent their past and present within a wider international context. Most of the works exhibited here defy a simple stylistic classification and instead flow between the allocated different spaces. The artists themselves span the region, with many living in diaspora, yet they intersect through their realities, imaginations and constructions.
Of specific significance is to highlight here the role of the Emirates Fine Arts Society (EFAS), formed in Sharjah in 1980, and specifically through their magazine Tashkeel launched in September 1984, in opening new spaces for dialogue after many closed in the other cities of the Arab world due to wars and disruptions during the 1980s and 1990s. EFAS and Tashkeel essentially allowed for a continuation of these conversations, as well as the ability to reflect on the successes and failures of their previous activities, while moving forward with new concerns and in new directions. A good number of the artists in this show (Fateh al-Moudarres, Abdul Qader Al Rais and Rebab Nemr, to name a few) were engaged with Tashkeel and with the Emirati art scene through the magazine: as contributors or featured artists and through invitations to exhibit in EFAS’s regular exhibitions. The activities of the Society aimed to establish and grow roots locally, regionally and internationally.
Most importantly, EFAS charted a new oath for the development of art in the United Arab Emirates. While in the last decades of the 20th century the UAE became a host for many of the Arab modernists through various projects, at the turn of the 21st century it played a more pivotal role in the evolution of artistic practices by artists of the Arab world. The multitude of programs and initiatives, including Art Dubai - an art fair that operated more as an institution - supported contemporary art within a larger global context, not only in terms of production and exhibition but as a hub for commercial and intellectual exchange that was largely missing in the region.
When Images Speak offers to the public a selection of artworks that in many ways exemplify this process of evolution, through the perspective of the city that hosts them today.
Works in the Abstract Variation grouping speak to the place and complex relationships Arab artists had with notions of abstraction in the development of modern art in the Arab world. Large and open, the grouping brings together a wide range of conversations. Many works in the other two groupings would easily fit here as well. Abstraction in the Arab world signaled a focus on form rather than subject, without necessarily fully abandoning narrative, as a specific Arab trend for most of the twentieth century that continues today.
Abstraction occupied many artists during the mid-twentieth century who debated this transformation in meetings and in press. Some saw the transition into abstraction as a sign of progress and maturity, where artists would engage with a heritage that is very familiar and comfortable with abstraction — be it ancient, like Mesopotamian, or pharaonic or Islamic in its various dynasties and history — and with modern international styles alike. They saw it as a form of resistance. Others worried about its usefulness and legibility for an audience who is not familiar with modern art. They questioned abstraction’s ability to connect with the public and argued it prohibited art from playing a more direct role in the national education. The debate, heated at times, equally reflected another preoccupation with the role of artists in educating the “taste of nations » and artists’ responsibilities to their societies.
The engagement with the Arabic letter is a specific form of abstraction that was popular throughout the region. The trend, which includes various experiments that centered or encompassed the forms of the Arabic alphabet became widely known as Huroufiyah (Hurufiyya) from the 1980s onwards. As an aesthetic category, Hourufiyah is a contested term that is disliked by some scholars, who prefer to think of the works in connection to Islamic calligraphy, and hence would refer to artworks as “calligraphic abstractions.” Some prefer to call it “textual abstraction,” which with then include works beyond the realm of Arabic speaking artists, to include work by Iranian and Pakistani artists for example.
However, hourufiya here would specifically speak to a conscious deconstruction the modern Arab artists performed to free the letters from the hegemony of the text or its sacred history in connection to the Quran. In some works, artists do highlight it as part of a new modern language of daily life, such as in the fragmented but recognizable letters of Ali Omar Ermes and Hassan Massoudy. In others works, like that of Omar El Nagdi, it is purely a malleable abstract form in a composition. Many artists experimented with the Arabic letter in their work, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s in reaction to sentiments of pan Arabism and organized meetings that led to forming the Union of Arab Plastic Artists. It was a useful identity marker that allowed for identity to be part of their search into abstraction. For most artists, it then ran its course and usefulness and they generally abandoned it.
Societies in Transition exhibits a number of conversations on style and subject connecting works by artists from different Arab countries at varying times. A dominant need for artists early in the twentieth century, was to grasp how to negotiate the notion of ‘nation’ as it was being formed into coherent geopolitical entities. While navigating diverse styles and techniques, topics that concerned those artists centered on societal changes and shifts that were taking place in their newly formed nations. In exploring who they were becoming as citizens of nations, they investigated their societies, histories, family structures, mythologies, and cultures. Consequently, they opened dialogues between nations and individuals. Nevertheless, the scope of local struggles for independence soon revealed their strong interdependency with regional developments, and in the contemporary works, with global issues of concern.
Many of these works push the line between myth and reality, and as such consciously contribute to new historical constructions. Aside from the significance of the specific subjects of the work, we can discern an emphasis on the dynamic interactions and relationships portrayed, which necessarily contradict the timeless, ageless, static portrayal of Orientalist art. These works, thus provide evidence of resistance to colonial representation, while equally being critical of internal policies adopted by the new nations. They articulate the artists’ understanding and negotiations of the self through societal relationships and through shared, pervasive elements of narrative.
Examples included here are works that probed traditional lives in popular and old neighborhoods of various Arab countries, but also stories of rural migration that added tension to major cities in the process of modernization. The work navigates the politics of the time: poverty, insecurity and displacement, which necessarily contradicts the image of optimism and prosperity extended by the rulers of new nations.
Women’s position and role in the new nations is also questioned in several works. The painting by Naziha Salim, for example, displays a group of Iraqi women wearing the traditional Iraqi Abayya, situating them as such within a specific class and tradition. They gather around tea, a popular Iraqi tradition, but their poses and expressions speak to the uncertainties of the change they are experiencing.
Families, and motherhood specifically, were popular subjects during the mid-twentieth century as well. In Gazbia Sirry’s painting, the figure of the mother is portrayed as the backbone of this family that does not include a dominant male figure. The title, The Six Immigrants, however, references a missing figure — we assume the father — who is absent in this structure.
Exploring historical roots, another important theme, provided a way for artists to ground the newness of their modern nations into a long and solid past. Investigating meaning in their histories validated their recent understanding of national coherence, but also supported their search of national and local iconographies, as in early works like that of Hassan Soliman, which explores pharaonic iconography and meaning.
While resolving various formal stylistic concerns, works in this group explore interpretive memories of cultural practices and their new meanings in society. They equally negotiate psychological insights and reflect on anxieties and struggles of the time.
The group Evoking the Environment expresses Arab artists’ preoccupation with their surroundings. The environment — both natural and constructed — constituted another important concern during the twentieth century. The practice allowed artists to introduce the public to different modern styles, as the array presented in this group attest. For example, I would argue that landscape painting was a good exercise that allowed Arab artists before the mid-twentieth century to experiment freely with various techniques. Most of the works on display here share in their abstract approach to the natural or urban scape in that they are mostly devoid of inhabitants. Many negotiate different meanings that go beyond the image represented: they navigate relationship to the land or rural life and the changing urban settings of city life through shared, pervasive elements of narrative.
In general, in the Arab world, there has been more interest in urban-scapes than landscapes. Cities of the Arab world express continuity as well as change. For some artists, the urban structure allowed for a method of constructing an ideal imaginary of the nation. Painting cities, thus became a method of constructing, and documenting. Equally, however, it allowed artists to critique the change they experienced through registering the ongoing destruction of small towns and villages or their assimilation into larger urban areas, as the country developed its modern identity. Capital cities, as such, became the focus of the artists’ imagination for the way they represented new cosmopolitan centers, with all of their challenges.
Painting nature as the main subject, at the same time, remained a peculiar period experimentation in Arab art. Whilst practiced by some artists, it never gained enough popularity or developed into a genre of interest. In countries like Lebanon and Palestine, a specific interest in landscape painting grew and was sustained, expressing explicit associations that differed distinctly from other countries of the Arab world. For example, in Saliba Douaihy’s series of painting, one of which is included here, he negotiated his intimate relationship with his home-village, which equally facilitated his transition into complete abstraction. Nouri Al Rawi also produced a series of paintings portraying his home town, Rawa in Iraq. However, his focus mostly lamented the modernization of the city that was erasing its identity and celebrated the unique characteristics that were disappearing under such transformation.
On the other hand, Iraqi artist Faiq Hassan’s early work of a picturesque view is hallmark of pre mid-twentieth century painting in Iraq that sits in stark stylistic opposition to Amer Al Obaidi’s stylized representation of a constructed scape of the later period, where the figure of the horse carries political and historical significance.
For Leila Al-Attar, landscape provided a psychological space of introspective examination of the role of gender in society. Rafa al-Nasiri creates a similar psychosomatic environment that invokes more than an interest in the beauty of nature. His signature horizon provokes a romantic historical and literary imaginary. Finally, for Shakir Hassan Al Said, excavating the effect of the passage of time on the walls of his city, provided him with an exercise into abstraction and the different aesthetic theories he was developing at the time.
When Images Speak is the first in a series of exhibitions by the Dubai Collection that will continue to contextualize artists from the Arab World and its neighboring countries. Each iteration will include many of the vital but missing voices from the conversations invoked here that will necessarily widen their scope and depth. More than their themes and messages, these objects are beautiful works of art that signify artists’ visions and imaginations. They are also documents of their times that narrate a history of interconnectedness, shared hopes and struggles. We hope that the works in this exhibition intrigue you the viewer to see more. They are your entry into a wealth of ideas and multitude of voices.
See Anneka Lenssen, Sarah Rogers and Nada Shabout, Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, The Museum of Modern Art, 2018.
Shabout, Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics, University of Florida Press, 2007; Shabout, “The Challenge of Arab Art,” In Editors, Chris Dercon and Avinoam Shalem, Future of Tradition - Tradition of Future, Prestel Publishers, Munich, 2010; and Shabout, “Rethinking Contemporary Arab Art,” in Arab Express: The Latest Art from the Arab World, Mori Art Museum, Japan, 2012.
See “Exploring Abstraction,” In Modern Art in the Arab World: 242.
See Suheyla Takesh and Lynn Gumpert, ed., Taking Shape: Abstraction from The Arab World, Grey Gallery, NYU, 2020.