Located in Abu Dhabi’s Mina Zayed old port neighbourhood, 421 Arts Campus develops a year-round program of exhibitions, lectures, workshops, special events and educational initiatives that offer learning opportunities accessible to the entire local community and public in general. The space was born as Warehouse 421 in 2015, inside a renovated warehouse, immediately repurposed as an exhibition and community space with galleries, studios, co-working spaces, a library, a bar and an outdoor public square that acts as multipurpose space for film screenings, symposiums, shows as well as hosting a series of permanent artistic installations commissioned for important exhibitions.

Main entrance 421 Arts Campus, ph. courtesy 421 Arts Center, Abu Dhabi

421 Arts Campus encourages practitioners to explore the potential of public spaces as a means for community advancement and engagement through a wide-ranging programmatic model that facilitates artistic exchange and shared critical dialogue. Deeply rooted in the principles of sustainability, it provides a fertile environment for emerging creative practices and those who wish to harness the arts as a means of inquiry and social transformation. A process that manages to involve all those artists who often find themselves excluded from the large market of well-known art galleries and, even more so, from the circuit of museum structures reserved for the few. The project is led by Faisal Al Hassan, who leads programming and all operations, as well as being responsible for defining the strategy of community-led initiatives and developing institutional partnerships in the UAE and internationally. 421 Arts Campus has launched an online call, from November 2023 to January 2024, for the selection of artists resident in the UAE region. A jury of expert art professionals from the United Arab Emirates has chosen the four creatives: Asma Khoory, Auguste Nomeikaite, Christopher Joshua Benton and Jumaanah Alhashemi, who will be hosted by the center from February to July 2024 and will be able to benefit from special grants, financial resources and professional support to work on developing a capstone project in their practice.

Artists in residence. From left to right: Jumaanah Alhashemi, Christopher Joshua Benton, Auguste Nomeikaite, Asma Khoory. Photo courtesy 421 Arts Campus

Asma Khoory proposes a path in the investigation of reality, memory and narrative and the way in which they often merge or contradict each other through materials. The intersection between personal memory and public memory is also significant for her. Asma’s artistic practice revolves around the themes of constructed time, human relationships and conversations, dreams and collective memory through painting and other media. Auguste Nomeikaite is a photographer, filmmaker and intermittent writer. Thematically, her work explores interpersonal relationships, often using sociological inputs, and also addresses broader ecological concerns. Her practice involves the construction of narratives of claims and actions against dominant forms; she studies her subjects and the manipulations of modernity through a left-wing feminist lens. Auguste’s interventions are not based on cynicism, but on empathy, caring and on the development and dissemination of non-academic knowledge. Christopher Joshua Benton‘s research explores how immigrants bring with them traces of their homeland using the tools of artistic research, social practice and installation. Jumaanah Alhashemi is an interdisciplinary designer, artist, researcher and producer. She works at the intersection of design, art, science, culture and technology. Artists who have also achieved international relevance have already emerged from 421 Arts Campus. The credit goes to an exceptional working group, which has created a space of proximity where culture is close to people and where community bonds are recomposed. In this center people meet, see exhibitions, talk about books, listen to debates, implementing forms of daily participation and sharing. Pluralism of orientations, respecting freedom of thought, science, teaching and art is in everyone’s interest and knowing how to govern changes is an urgent political, cultural and professional challenge.

Mona Ayyash, “The Clock Doesn’t Care”, 2024, video frame, courtesy the artist

Two exhibitions are currently underway in the space: “The clock doesn’t care”, Mona Ayyash‘s first solo exhibition, and the group show “On a timeline: 2024 MFA graduate show”. In the first, the Palestinian artist, born in 1987 in Kuwait City and based in Dubai, presents a video made in collaboration with a group of actors, dancers and performance artists, focusing on small body movements. The work is a study in non-functional repetitive motion, without purpose or productivity that questions the tension between time passing and time wasting. The protagonists filmed themselves while responding to movement suggestions: they had to focus their attention on the meaning of “do nothing”. The artist extracted fragments of the film and modified them, superimposed them, constantly accumulating and subtracting images. The everyday and the banal are the main themes highlighted; the bodies seem to be stuck and repeat their movements in loop, never going anywhere. There isn’t a main narrative that can attract the viewer, but the need to investigate the objective nature of time. The soundtrack accentuates the sense of permanence of the narrated time. “The clock doesn’t care” expresses how time, indifferent to our individual activities, will continue its inevitable move forward without worries or coercion. This project grew out of the artist’s previous participation in the 2020 Homebound Residency Program, while she is currently participating in the 2024 cycle of the 421 Artistic Development Program, under the guidance of Jolaine Frizzell.

AA.VV., “On a timeline, 2024 MFA graduate show”. Installation by Sara Alahbabi, 2024, colored neon, ph. credit Antonella Zaccuri

“On a timeline: 2024 MFA graduate show”, invece, è una mostra collettiva che presenta i lavori di: Sara Alahbabi, Ciel Arbour-Boehme, Zara Mahmood, Fatima Al Romaithi e Farah Soltani, laureati in Arte e Media alla New York University Abu Dhabi. I progetti si basano sulla ricerca e la sperimentazione e visualizzano domande e idee in modi espansivi che forniscono preziose informazioni sulla nostra condizione globale contemporanea. Il lavoro di Sara Alahbabi, in particolare, trae la sua ispirazione dal centro di Abu Dhabi, una città costellata di quartieri, nazionalità e storie diverse provenienti da tutti i continenti e ceti sociali. L’artista realizza il concept delle opere attraverso la pratica intuitiva e intima del camminare. La restituzione è una varietà di installazioni di luci al neon luminose, ognuna unica nella sua configurazione e colore, appese a contrasto su pareti scure. Alahbabi, durante le sue camminate, ha scattato centinaia di fotografie che ha utilizzato come riferimento per poi decidere che il suo progetto finale doveva evolversi in qualcosa di più concettuale e coinvolgente. Ciascuno dei percorsi mappati ha creato una forma unica, che ha utilizzato come contorno per i suoi pezzi di luci al neon, un mezzo elettrizzante che rispecchia la vivacità della città. I suoi lavori, non semplici rappresentazioni del percorso, ma vivide intersezioni tra le sue esplorazioni personali e il paesaggio urbano, restituiscono l’essenza della città attraverso gli occhi di una donna degli Emirati.

Antonella Zaccuri

Info:

Mona Ayyash. “The Clock Doesn’t Care”
16/05 -25/08/2024
VV. AA. “On a Timeline: 2024 MFA Graduate Show”
16/05 -25/08/2024
421 ARTS CAMPUS
Zaied Port-Al Mina, Abu Dhabi, EAU
www.421.online

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is a contemporary art magazine since 1980