Jameel Arts Centre announces its diverse Fall/Winter 2020-21 programme featuring two new exhibitions; site-specific installations in the Jaddaf Waterfront Sculpture Park; and a new Artist’s Garden commission. The programme also includes the latest edition of Library Circles and a two-week takeover of the Jameel by its youth collective, The Assembly.

Library Circles: Maryam Al Dabbagh
September 16, 2020 – January 7, 2021
The autumn edition of the research and experimental exhibitions series Library Circles features writer and researcher Maryam Al Dabbagh, commissioned by Jameel Library to produce a bilingual text and audio installation that takes visitors on a journey throughout the Jameel and into its hidden corners. The work features conversations and personal narratives around the theme of belonging, explored through the lenses of bureaucracy, administration and the (long-prophesied) age of retirement.

Site-Specific Installations: Jaddaf Waterfront Sculpture Park
September 30, 2020 onwards
Formation III: The Dappled Light of the Sun, a large-scale sculptural work by renowned British artist Conrad Shawcross makes its debut in Jaddaf Waterfront Sculpture Park, adjacent to Jameel Arts Centre. The new permanent installation comprises geometric structures that give an impression of organically branching, cloud-like forms made up of thousands of tetrahedrons. The immersive canopy stands on three tripods, six meters above ground level, revolving around geometry’s natural patterns.

The cooler months also see the return of artist and musician Hassan Khan’s popular, award-winning, multi-lingual musical artwork, Composition for a Public Park. Unfolding across Jaddaf Waterfront Sculpture Park through three simultaneous movements, the work includes a spoken libretto, written by Khan and presented here in Dubai in three languages — Arabic, Urdu and English.

Site-Specific Installations: Artist’s Garden
October 17, 2020 onwards
Jameel Arts Centre’s latest Artist’s Garden commission is awarded to Namrata Neog and Sunoj D: Desert is a Forest asks, through our situation in the UAE, “What negotiations, relationships and hierarchies emerge and submerge in this thinking landscape?” Set to open in October 2020 and grow over the coming months, the new garden explores our local biodiversity and the way we see and interpret the environment through the complex entanglements of humans, non-humans, food and domesticity. The plant species grown in the Artist’s Garden are indigenous to the UAE and tell the story of their traditional uses as food and medicine, offering a means to explore local plant ecology and nutritional habits. The Artist’s Garden is accompanied by a programme of talks, readings and performances by the artists and their UAE-based collaborators.

The Assembly: 2020 Takeover
October 30 – November 12, 2020
The Assembly is an annual programme designed to foster original programming for and by UAE youth, managed by nine core members aged 18-24, who develop initiatives based on their own interests and experiences. The 2020 Assembly members were selected via a highly competitive process, following nominations from Art Jameel’s extensive network of industry leaders. For two weeks starting October 30, 2020, the Assembly will take over the Jameel with curated interventions and public programming addressing their chosen theme of ‘Reassigning Value’. The nine Assembly members have selected another 14 UAE-based young artists and creatives and together they will present artworks, interventions and events at the Jameel, ranging from illustration, painting, sculpture and photography to sound-design, film and performance, plus a digital programme on their bespoke online blog.

Exhibitions: ‘Do You Remember What You Are Burning?’
December 16, 2020 – July 24, 2021
Hiwa K marks his debut in Asia and the Middle East with a solo exhibition at Jameel Arts Centre highlighting more than ten years of the acclaimed artist’s bold and timely practice.

Hiwa K blends humour with personal experience to produce bodies of work that speak to contemporary experiences of displacement, belonging and resilience. Many of the works in this exhibition relate to the artist’s home city of Sulaymaniyah, in Iraqi Kurdistan, and his experiences of fleeing as a refugee and returning many years later. The exhibition brings together works spanning more than ten years of the artist’s practice, including One Room Apartment, an outdoor installation originally commissioned for Documenta 14 (2017), and a new interactive large-scale work, produced especially for this show’s debut in the UAE.

The exhibition was commissioned by Art Jameel as a three-venue collaboration with Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto.

Exhibitions: ‘Age of You’
January 28 – August 14, 2021
Curated by Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist, with graphic design by Daly & Lyon, Age of You is a dynamic, immersive exhibition about how our perceptions of ourselves have changed, and what it means to be an individual today.

A collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, and set across two of Jameel Arts Centre’s gallery floors, ‘Age of You’ includes works in film, fashion, sculpture and installation by more than 70 contributors, presented through 13 chapters that chart the remaking of the interior self. The exhibition features words and slogans by the curators and creative collaborators juxtaposed with specially commissioned art installations.

The exhibition previews a forthcoming book by the curators, The Extreme Self, a sequel to their previous cult title The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present.