Last updated on September 9th, 2024 at 03:00 pm
Sharjah, UAE – 7 September 2024: The Sharjah Art Foundation this autumn prepares to uniquely showcase two unsurpassed talents in Senior Māori artist Emily Karaka and Moroccan-French visual artist Bouchra Khalili. Middle of the two exhibitions, Ka Awatea, A New Dawn and Between Circles and Constellations respectively invites attendees to fully immerse in such themes as cultural identity, historical memory, migration and political resistance. Beginning today 7th and running until 1 December 2024, these exhibitions are projected within the scope of promoting wise planet problem solving discourse on matters of sovereignty, migration and belonging to community, acceptable amongst any audience base.
Emily Karaka: Ka Awatea, A New Dawn
In the region Sharjah Art Foundation has not only evented such firsts but has since hosted the major survey exhibition of the celebrated Senior Māori artist Emily Karaka. Related articles state that this exhibition also tells the story of Karaka’s artistic development covering a period of half a century hence the title Ka Awatea, A New Dawn. It is this approach and knowing her background that helps understand her work as a bright abstract expressionist – she embeds herself into the heart of Maori culture, fight for politics and within the politics of her own tribes in Aotearoa New Zealand.
This exhibition, in a way, reveals a ‘missing link’ for UAE’s audience as it brings together Karaka’s personal stories with political activist’s writing. It has become common to speak of such canvases as “political landscapes,” so Maria Karaka’s works are, not by chance called, “portraits of the people on Māori land”. Karaka is known for her deep responsiveness to issues of Maori sovereignty, the Treaty of Waitangi, and colonialism, social justice, environmentalism, and even the notion of family love, hence her art can be described as “self-portraits in the landscape.”
Being a mostly self-educated artist, Karaka Walsh has always been an ardent advocate supporting the cause of Māori sovereignty, focusing on struggle through art and involvement with its tribe. This exhibition not only brings out the artist but also the tribal chief, each movement of the brush reconciling the target of art with genealogical and cultural knowledge. One would find important works such as Te Uri O Te Ao (1995) and also brand new works including those produced for this particular exhibition. Considered one of the greatest influences in contemporary Māori art, Karaka’s exhibition Ka Awatea, A New Dawn is not just any ordinary installation. Rather, it is an important and seldom found exhibition that addresses the issues regarding the fights for indigenous sovereignty and recognition.
The launch will take place in Galleries 1, 2 and 3 at Al Mureijah Square and it is free to all. However, advance registration is required.
Bouchra Khalili: Between Circles and Constellations
In addition to the exhibition of Emily Karaka, the Sharjah Art Foundation has a great pleasure to inform about a significant personal exhibition of Bouchra Khalili, contemporary artist, history Judith Party. Whose practice addresses the suppressed narratives of the migratory and stateless people. Khalili’s exhibition, Between Circles and Constellations, introduces the aspects of her artistic practice developed throughout the last 15 years yet gradually revealing her new thematic interest in the theme of solidarity and resistance within marginalized groups. Khalili, born in Morocco and currently living in Vienna, elaborates an interdisciplinary approach consisting of film, photography, printmaking, installation and textiles.
The exhibition’s title, Between Circles and Constellations, derives its inspiration from two strong frames that can be found in many of Khalili’s works: the ‘circles’ which refers to al halqa, a folklore of Moroccan storytelling, and the ‘constellations’ which depicts the cross border solidarities embedded in her work. The Middle Eastern expression ‘circles’ is further developed in Khalili’s new work The Public Storyteller (2024), a two-channel film installation focused on the political narrative and memory transmission in the form of halqa. This video work based in Marrakesh connects the political struggle of North African construction workers in France during the 1970s to the struggles people are seeking freedom today and places them within the same history.
The work focuses on a large tapestry of Khalili’s titled Sea-Drifts (2024), said to be a highlight of the exhibition. The authors try to research the migration of eight respondents from Northern and Western Africa to the Canary Islands in this piece. These winding and dangerous osmosis over the Atlantic are depicted on indigo washed fabrics, attempting to link the routes of trade in indirect emigration and the trade of indigo-dye. In this process, Khalili examines the colonial legacies that have informed today’s patterns of migration, disturbing conventional cartography in rendering the narratives of people without states. In brief, the understanding of textiles employed by Khalili in this case is not only a physical link between the past and the present
The exhibition will also include The Constellation Series (2011) completing the Mapping Journey Project. On this stage, Khalili prints the patterns made by people on the Mediterranean sea using screen and various blue colors for sea and night-intending background. They appear like the patterns on the sky which editors refer to as constellations, that stand for the ways of how people are on the move towards certain directions that cut across boundaries. Khalili’s idea of “radical citizenship” is illustrated by the exhibition in question, that calls for a form of community that does not accept the prevailing parameters of self-definition, spatial boundaries and nationhood.
Between Circles and Constellations takes its visitors into a deep analysis of migration, homelessness, and sheer possibility of new forms of collective awareness. This exhibition will take place at Galleries 4, 5, 6 at Al Mureijah Square, together with the weekly film screening of The Tempest Society every Saturday at Mirage City Cinema.
Sharjah Art Foundation: A Focus in Contemporary Art
Both exhibitions show the Sharjah Art Foundation’s continuing resolve to promote modern art that enhances the exchange between the local and the overseas art communities. The Foundation being one of the centers of the art movement does not also shy away from varied cultures but rather provides a platform in which current issues of the nation-state, identity, and power, and resistance can be analyzed. And with the works of Emily Karaka and Bouchra Khalili on display, Sharjah Art Foundation stands by its pursuit of showcasing the works of indigenous and stateless communities in order to connect universal debates and local perspectives.
For spatial creation and spatial interaction or even the inclusion and presence that these exhibitions offer, artistic lovers or cultures, and even scholars will have the power of tracing discourses of resistance and unity and will position Sharjah as a culturally active center in the UAE.
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