A.R.M. Holding Art Collection

Initiative Details
A.R.M. Holding Art Collection
Sources
Original Publication
Date
Sep 19, 2022

Art and creativity are unrivaled in their power of bringing people together and eliciting national pride, we choose to stand behind artistic expression in all its forms and further Dubai’s standing as the world’s capital of culture and creativity.

A.R.M. Holding is the first corporate patron of the Dubai Collection, the first institutional art collection in the emirate held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum and created to document the history of the city and narrate its cultural identity.

The Collection

Elena Damiani

Peru, (b. 1979)

As the dust unsettles No. 3

Watercolour, handmade lokta paper, cotton canvas

142 x 106 x 3 cm

2020

Elena Damiani considers the conceptual significance of archives and the persistence with memory in a society fearful of forgetting. This has influenced her practice and research where she transforms found material into collages, sculptures, video and installations. As opposed to traditional archives with historical-linear narratives, the majority of her work disregards an order by suggesting possible mental relations. She utilises identifiable structures of traditional archives to activate recollections and reveal the potential to fragment and destabilise either memory as recorded, or history as written sequence of what has come to pass.

She earned an Architecture degree from Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas UPC Lima, Peru, and went on to study Fine Art at Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Corriente Alterna, in 2005. Damiani received an MA in Fine Art Practice from Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK.

Damiani’s work has recently been exhibited at international institutions and biennials, including Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh / MUAC, Mexico City, Mexico / Gwangju Biennale, South Korea / Venice Biennale, Italy / Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico / Skissernas Museum, Lund, Sweden / Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, USA / Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia.

Damiani‘s work forms part of many prestigious art collections including MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, New York, U.S.A. / Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, U.S.A. and Paris, France / The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation, Madrid, Spain / PAMM Perez Art Museum, Miami. U.S.A / The Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunis, Tunisia.

Courtesy of Selma Feriani

Ivan Argote

Colombia, (b. 1983)

Mamarracho

Acrylic on canvas on wood

200 x 223 x 4

2021

Ivan Argote studied at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá, Colombia; and at l’Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris, France. His work explores the relationship between history, politics, and the construction of our own subjectivities. Argote’s films, sculptures, collages, and public space installations attempt to generate questions about how we relate to others, to the state, to patrimony and traditions. His works are critics, sometimes anti-institutional, that relate to the idea of bringing affects to the politics, and politics to the affects, with a strong and tender tone.

Some of his solo exhibitions include Juntos Together ASU – Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe (AZ) 2019; Radical Tenderness, MALBA, Buenos Aires, 2018; Somos Tiernos, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico, 2017 and Sírvete de mi, sírveme de ti, Proyecto Amil, Lima, among others. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, biennials and film festivals such as Global Resistance, Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR, 2020; Desert X, Coachella Valley, CA, US, 2019 and Poéticas de la emoción, Caixa Forum, Barcelona; 2018 and Regreso al futuro, Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2018, among others.

His works are part of important collections such as Guggenheim Museum, New York, US, Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR, ASU Art Museum, Phoenix, USA, CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques), Paris, FR, Colección de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, CO, Kadist Foundation, San Francisco, USA, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, USA, MACBA, Barcelone, ES, MUNTREF, Buenos Aires, AR and Saatchi Art, London, UK among others.

Courtesy of Albarran Bourdais

Shamma Al Amri

UAE, (b. 1985)

Blue and Yellow: 9 from 3

Print on archival paper

60 x 40 cm

Ed. of 5

2022

Shamma Al Amri holds two MA degrees: one in Culture and Creative Industries from Abu Dhabi HCT, and another in Contemporary Art Practice from the Royal College of Art in London.

As a member of the UAE and regional cultural scene, she has initiated several cultural projects, including The Nomad Box, Majhool, and bleep. Additionally, she is a co-founder and member of The Arab Art Salon in London.

Al Amri has exhibited her work both locally and internationally, including at the United States touring show "Past Forward" and Meridian International Center in Washington DC, "Equal Voices in the Room" in London, "Becoming" at Subject Matter Gallery in London, "MACBA" (Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona), "From Barcelona to AD" at Abu Dhabi Power of Dreams, UAE Pavilion, and the United Nations Office in China.

She has also completed notable fellowships and residencies, such as the SEAF Rhode Island School of Design fellowship, an Air residency with the Delfina Foundation, and a residency at Domaine De Boisbuchet in France. She was also honoured as a recipient of the Cultural Foundation Art Residency in 2020.

Gil Heitor Cortesão

Portugal, (b. 1966)

Upside Down

Oil on plexiglass

200 X 210 cm (quadriptych)

2022

Having studied at FBAUL, Lisbon and Licenciatura em Artes Plasticas, Pintura, Cortesão's largely Europe-based exhibitions display his realistic painting technique of architecture, both interiors and exteriors, which exude a tone of melancholy stillness, as though abandoned, but not forgotten. Cortesão disrupts the illusion with explorative paint splatters and surface manipulation of his paintings on plexiglass. He has exhibited in several institutions including CAM Centro de Arte Moderna and Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, and is part of the permanent collections of the ARCO Foundation (Madrid), MUDAM (Luxemburg) and Fundacion Pedro Barrie de la Maza (A Coruna), amongst many others.

Gil Heitor Cortesão lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.

Courtesy of CARBON 12 and the artist

John Torreano

USA, (b. 1941)

Galaxie Cluster

Acrylic paint and acrylic gems on canvas

183 x 183 cm

1979

John Torreano is an American artist, best known for utilising faceted gems in a variety of mediums and methods in order to create "movement oriented perception" in his works. Torreano grew up in a large Catholic family and this has influenced his artistic practice; he always uses jewels serving as a metaphor for vigil lights. Other religious influences appear in his pieces as well while in recent years his paintings have used gems to create space-like constellations. Throughout his career, Torreano has investigated the properties of real and fake gemstones in the differing contexts of lighting, placement, and materials. He believes that artists are similar to physicists in their use of theoretical models to gain insight into the physical world. Torreano uses the gem to bring together the world of theory and the world of things. Because gems are a geometric form as well as an object of popular culture, his use of fake gems can become real art by standing in the gap between the two. Torreano argues that humans have a role in fabricating and refining gems, just as the artist fabricates a sculpture.

Torreano’s works have been exhibited in several museums and institutions, among all: Whitney Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, and many others. His series of paintings titled "TV Bulge" were featured in the 1969 Whitney Biennial.

Courtesy of Thomas Brambilla

Martín Soto Climent

Mexico City, (b. 1977)

El vuelo de los pájaros - El canto de la noche (Phantogram)

Charcoal pigment on cotton canvas

153 x 128 x 6 cm

2020

Martin Soto Climent is well known for his surrealist manipulation of images and objects. His practice refers to the forms of the body and the psychology of desire embedded within an economy of consumption. By re-contextualising ever so slightly and executing delicate re-arrangements by ways of appropriation and juxtaposition his works often have the humble quality of the ready-made or appear to be fragile assemblages exploring issues of temporality, desire, decay and marginality. Soto Climent creates objects, installations, sculptures, photographs, and paintings sourcing materials and imagery from the quotidian and his interventions into everyday objects are occasionally temporary.

Martín Soto Climent was born in 1977 in Mexico City where he lives and works. Recent institutional solo-exhibitions include Hessel Museum of Art, Hudson USA, Museo Universitario del Chopo Mexico City, Museo Pietro Canonica Rome, Palais de Tokyo Paris, Kunsthalle Winterthur, El ECO Museo Experimental, New Jersey Museum of Contemporary Art and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil. His work is to be found in numerous collections such as Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA, Hessel Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA, Colección Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico, Loewe Foundation, MCA Chicago, Chicago, USA, Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland, MOCA, Miami, USA, and the François Pinault Foundation, among others.

Courtesy the artist and Andréhn-Schiptjenko

Dickens Otieno

Kenya, (b. 1987)

Layers

Shredded aluminium

cans woven on steel mesh

186 x 171

2022

Dickens Otieno’s tapestries use and draw attention to the potential beauty in objects that would otherwise be dismissed as useless and discarded. He shreds aluminium cans and weaves them into tapestries, in a process informed by the weaving of natural materials such as papyrus, raffia, or palm that he observed growing up. His mother was a tailor, and he spent many hours in her workshop amongst lesos and kitenges, whose colours and patterns have since influenced his aesthetic. This engagement with fabrics grows from an interest in the way pattern, colour and iconography are used to imbue functional objects with meaning and identity. Otieno draws heavily on his immediate physical surroundings, particularly the urban environment in his native Nairobi to create his compositions. Objects piled high in markets, the constantly shifting skyline, the pockets of nature in the concrete and steel haze of Nairobi – these are the sources of Otieno’s inspiration for his richly hued, increasingly sculptural compositions.

Otieno has participated in numerous group exhibitions locally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include See Here, Old Neals Auction House, Nottingham, 2018; Africa/Africa, Total Arts Courtyard Gallery, Al Quoz, Dubai, 2018; Young Guns, Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi, 2017; The Third Dimension, Circle Art Gallery, 2016; UNI-FORM MULTI-FORM, Roots Contemporary, Nairobi, 2016; Paint and Metal, National Museum in Nairobi, 2016. His recent residencies include the Tilleard Artist Residency in Lamu, Kenya, and a 6-week fellowship in Italy at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. Recent exhibitions include Mabati Tailor, a solo exhibition at Circle Art Gallery in 2020, a solo show at Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles 2021 and group shows in London at Cromwell Place and 1-54 Art Fair, 2021. In 2022, Dickens was included in the Kenyan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and will be showing at Untitled Miami and a group exhibition in Los Angeles.

Courtesy of Circle Art Gallery

Xavier Veilhan

France, (b. 1963)

Foster

Plywood, acrylic paint

120 x 90 x 2.5 cm

2021

Xavier Veilhan is arguably one of his generation’s most important artists. His work is multi- faceted; encompassing sculpture, installation, painting, photography as well as hybrids of all of these, and he is also engaged in performance work and filmmaking. He plays with the notions of the generic, of the industrially produced object and of universal representation, creating objects at once ambivalent and stark. Concerned with the scenography of a dedicated presentation, Veilhan addresses issues of perception as well as the physical and temporal relationships created within the context of the exhibition format.

Veilhan on-going formal research into both figuration and abstraction and his interest in works that investigate both the second and third dimension, has led him to explore well-known categories such as portraiture, statuary, and mobiles.

Xavier Veilhan (b 1963 France) lives and works in Paris. His work has been exhibited worldwide in acclaimed institutions such as the Château de Versailles, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Geneva and in 2017 at the 57th Venice Biennale, for which he transformed the French Pavilion into Studio Venezia.

Veilhan also frequently works in the public space. Inaugurated in the autumn of 2020, Vårbergs Jättar is Sweden’s largest public commission to date. Other large permanent works have been installed recently in the cities of Lille (Romy, 2019) and Lausanne (La Crocodile, 2019, with Olivier Mosset).

Courtesy the artist and Andréhn-Schiptjenko

Dia Mrad

Lebanon, (b. 1991)

GREEN GROW BELOW

FineArt inkjet print on archival paper

100 x 100 cm

Ed 2 of 3

2020

Dia Mrad is a Lebanese Architecture photographer. He was born in 1991 in Ras Baalbek, and moved to Beirut in 2007, a city that instantly intrigued him with its “mystery and captivating architectural allure.”

The road to explore his curiosity materialised in 2011 with pursuing a Master’s degree in Architecture, where Dia also used photography as a tool to explore patterns and analyse urban situations. After graduating in 2017, he started using a mix of photography and academic formation to decipher Beirut, which is still a confusing subject. He employed strategies he had learned and practised to produce a fresh perspective on informed/informative architectural photography and visual storytelling.

Between 2017 and 2019, Dia’s passion for exploring Beirut slipped between trying to find work and relocating to the nearby Aley district. But being away from the city offered perspective and time to reflect. After relocating back to Beirut in 2019, and then going on a trip to France and Italy, Dia came back with the idea that would set the tone of his future work: that Beirut’s architecture is deserving of a great deal of attention; that Beirut’s unique mix of architectural styles woven between layers of history was something so particular yet so neglected, a forgotten treasure that needed to be uncovered. This was a turning point that led to working on a systematic photographic archive of Beirut, an imprint of the city and its architecture.

Courtesy of Zawyeh Gallery

Dia Mrad

Lebanon (b. 1991)

GRU

FineArt inkjet print on archival paper

100 x 98 cm

Ed 3 of 3

2020

Courtesy of Zawyeh Gallery

Elena Damiani

Peru, (b. 1979)

As the dust unsettles No. 1

Watercolour, handmade lokta paper, cotton canvas

142 x 106 x 3 cm

2020

Courtesy of Selma Feriani

Marco Castillo

Cuba, (b. 1971)

Bajo relieve con 24 círculos y 16 depresiones orgánicas

Cardboard

91 x 117.5

2021

Born in 1971 in Camagüey, Cuba. He lives and works in Mérida, Mexico.

Marco A. Castillo is founder of the art collective Los Carpinteros, and his work is imbued with an interest in Cuba’s history and the country’s post-revolutionary, social and cultural changes. Castillo has been extensively researching architecture, design and sculpture, which are fundamental aspects of his artistic practice in the quest to create installations, drawings and sculptures that relate to space and negotiate between the functional and the non-functional, often expressed in a humorous manner.

Already from his earliest works, Castillo’s oeuvre is one of the most important and internationally influential in Latin America in the last twenty years.

Along with a global movement of historical revision, Castillo reflects on the modernization of Cuba in the 1960s and 1970s and his work references influential Cuban artists, architects, and designers of that generation. The sculptures and works on paper from his most recent project combine elements of modern design and Soviet-period socialist realism with traditional Cuban techniques and materials, including mahogany wood and rattan fabric, as well as graphic designs of the period.

In recent years, the artist has focused on researching and reinterpreting the works of key figures of modernism in Cuba and what he calls a “forgotten generation,” such as Gonzalo Córdoba, María Victoria Caignet, Rodolfo Fernández Suárez (Fofi), Joaquín Galván and Walter Betancourt. From a political standpoint, Castillo seeks to follow the historical trail of these designers, interior designers, and architects, while positioning himself as a defender and herald of Cuba’s artistic heritage.

Marco A. Castillo is represented in important national and international collections, such as Tate Modern, London, Great Britain; Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York, USA; Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba; Centre of Art “Reina Sofia” Museum, Madrid, Spain; Thyssen - Bornemisza Contemporary Art, Vienna, Austria; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Daros Foundation, Zürich, Switzerland; Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, USA (LACMA), Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada. etc.

Courtesy of Albarran Bourdais, Madrid

Gulnur Mukazhanova

Kazakhstan, (b. 1984)

Moment of the present 1 of 1

Velour, lurex, pins

140 x 100 cm

2022

Gulnur Mukazhanova works with traditional Central Asian materials, like felt and brocade, subverting its conventional uses in domestic environments by using them to create complex installations and props for her photo and video projects. In her works the focus shifts from the material itself to its performative quality, catching the material in its transitional state. Her home country of Kazakhstan, which itself is in the process of transition, is often a subject of her research into the perspectives of globalisation and identity politics. The resulting works have a very strong physical presence and allow the artist to make powerful statements on the state of global affairs through the lens of her own country.

Notable recent exhibitions include Bread & Roses at the Momentum in Berlin (2018), Post-Nomadic Mind at the Wapping Project in London (2018), 4th International Biennale for Young Art in Moscow (2014) and Central Asia Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007).

Courtesy of the artist and Aspan Gallery

Ania Soliman

Poland, (b. 1970)

TF_tutu-largo-kayo_2

Colored pencil, encaustic, acrylic ink on paper

200 x 150 cm

2021

Ania Soliman is an Egyptian, Polish, and American artist who grew up in Baghdad, and currently lives in Paris. She makes large scale drawings based on digitised imagery and archival material, while also working with text, performance, video, and installation.

Her research-based practice focuses on processes of translation between different cultures and their representations. She is especially interested in how this determines our relationships, both real and imaginary, between nature and technology.

Through processes of tracing, desaturating, smudging, colouring, and embellishing, she transforms source materials into layered drawings that often repeat a motif since they represent the action of conflicting ideas working themselves out. Her works function as icons for unconscious negotiations between our bodies and the culturally determined languages that occupy our minds.

Ania Soliman’s work has been exhibited at Kunsthaus Bregenz (2020), the Drawing Centre in New York (2020), Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2018), the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg (2016), the Museum of Contemporary Art at Antwerp (2015), the Whitney Biennial (2010), the 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015), the Museum der Kulturen in Basel (2014), among other venues, and she has recently done lecture-performances at the Global Art Forum in Dubai and Singapore. She attended Harvard College and Columbia University before participating in the Whitney Independent Study Program. In 2010 she was awarded the Laurenz-Haus residency in Basel, Switzerland.

Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir Semler Gallery Beirut/Hamburg

Hamra Abbas

Pakistan (b .1976)

Construction Drawing 1 (Square), 2019
Marble inlaid with granite
121.9 x 121.9 cm

Lives and works in Boston and Lahore

Hamra Abbas’ Construction Drawings are a series of marble inlay works that repeat the process of rotating triangle, square and hexagon to create a complex circular web of straight lines. These works are meticulously hand-crafted from two contrasting colours of stone – white marble and black granite – to create the illusion of spinning lines that are expansive and boundless.

Hamra Abbas’ artistic practice draws from a myriad of sources and takes a diversity of forms. Her works originate from encounters and experiences – an image, icon or gesture – that are manipulated by the artist transforming its scale, function or medium. Her intention is to deconstruct the act of seeing by recreating images that form part of a collective memory. Unrestrained by subject matter or media, she takes an investigative approach to produce a diverse and holistic body of work addressing notions of cultural history, sexuality, violence, ornamentation, devotion and faith.

Alia Ahmad

Saudi Arabia (b. 1996)

From Places
2021
Oil on Canvas
200 x 280 cm

Graduating in 2018 from Kings College London with a BA in Digital Culture, she started to focus on research in Fine Art. Recently graduated with a master’s degree from the Royal College of Art, Alia concentrates on painting but uses a range of media to narrate the way that memory, place and landscape can converge within a written and visual practice.

Alia’s colour palette is influenced by an upbringing in Riyadh’s industrial/desert landscape. A majority of her paintings represent the different placid dreamscapes, with linear impressions of the Saudi landscape. The visual language of the paintings plays on the tense contradiction that exists between the extreme emptiness of place and its lush characteristics. Using drawings made in a specific place, she focuses on key aspects such as local flora in a chosen environment. She has recently been looking into a way to play with perspective in the landscape by placing an emphasis on the temporal nature of day and night. Her works examine the point at which light touches upon distinct parts of the land. Alia finds that by directing paintings towards the ‘linguistic’, through a use of motifs, she is able to steer the narration within the work.

Maha Ahmed

Pakistan (b. 1989)

Fish-bowl III, 2020
Gouache on paper
Painting size: 21 x 19 cm
Framed Size: 44 x 32 cm

Lives and works in Dubai

Drawing on feelings of isolation and wonder, Ahmed depicts the experience of identity as it is constructed and reconstructed through the narratives of others. Her intricate, otherworldly visions of fantastical creatures and distant worlds offer a poignant reflection on her personal feelings of unfamiliarity during a period of living and working in Tokyo.

Ahmed dreams up imaginary worlds in which her characters – often mythical or hybrid creatures – are in some way at odds from their surroundings. The worlds are as beautiful as they are potentially frightening, tackling the complex emotions we might experience in relation to the unknown, such as loneliness, claustrophobia, or liberation and belonging. Ultimately, the viewer is left to interpret the narratives through their own internal experiences and feelings.

Maha Ahmed

Pakistan (b. 1989)

Fish-bowl IV, 2020
Gouache on paper
Painting size: 21.5 x 16 cm
Framed Size: 44 x 32 cm

Lives and works in Dubai

Shaikha Al Mazrou

UAE (b. 1988)

Focal Point
2019
Wet coated steel
110 x 190 cm

Al Mazrou’s irreverent use of material and its apparent contradictions, using durable materials that are made to resemble something soft, pliable or ephemeral, is central to her practice. Focal Point, 2019, materializes as a simple gesture that emphasizes the representation of tension, weight and space, whilst borrowing formally from minimalism and intellectually from conceptual art. Recurring colours and varying geometric combinations engage the viewer’s sense of perspective and heighten the sense of illusion.

Moath Alofi

Saudi Arabia (b. 1984)

The Last Tashahhud,
2014-ongoing series
Framed Photographs,
Dimensions variable
Full series of framed photographs

Lives and works in Medina

Since 2013, Saudi Photographer Alofi has been documenting the changing landscape of the holy city of Al Madinah. To Moath, the holy city is both his studio and an open museum. He has embarked on a photographic journey to explore the fast-expanding holy city, documenting its urban, architectural, human and cultural transformations within its borders and its forgotten villages and barren terrain surrounding the city.

Kristoffer Ardeña

Philippines (b. 1976)

Ghost Painting (Cracked Category): Lucky Me Mami Spareribs, 2020
Acrylic on woven PVC fiber
180 x 150 cm

Lives and works between Negros Island and Madrid

Kristoffer Ardeña’s work mirrors the Philippines’ archipelagic permeability, whereas islands absorb elements around us and reconfigure them to the environment they take hold of. His paintings simulate the humidity’s decay by destroying/cracking the works after they’ve been painted, releasing an explosion of kinetic energy slamming the pieces against a concrete pillar on his rooftop.

Tammam Azzam

Syria (b .1980)

Untitled, 2020
Paper collage Mixed media on canvas on board
100 x 80 cm

Lives and works in Berlin

The initial phase of Azzam’s work was distinguished by a ‘hybrid form’ of painting with applications of various media that allowed him to arrive at tactile interactions between surface and form that multiply as compositions evolve. These semi-abstract works use unconventional materials such as rope, clothespins, and other found objects in order to accentuate the depth, texture, and space of laboured picture planes, creating a visible tension. Although outwardly different in appearance, the series that resulted from these early experiments were inspired by the artist’s changing perceptions of specific urban environments.

Rathin Barman

India (b. 1981)

Untitled III, 2019, GFRC board,
brass, graphite and charcoal

121.9 x 76.2 x 12.7 cm

Lives and works in Kolkata, India

Barman examines the nuances of the modern built environment as a tool for understanding socio-political history. Barman’s works often use architecture as an anchor to explore the consequences of the political and economic upheaval of some 50 years. Architecture is characteristically perceived as a fixed entity, central to validating history yet simultaneously existing outside it. To Barman however, architectural form has also served as an anthropological tool, in building a collective recollection of a place and its people.

Barman earned a BFA and MFA in sculpture at Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata after a degree in engineering. Over the last few years, Rathin has been interested in interventions in different urban spaces. These spaces are mostly physical, defining the fabric of a particular city. Through these interventions, he tries to highlight a subtle sense of wry helplessness that is born from its location between reality and illusion. He does this through his sculptures, drawings, and placements of other objects that he makes or collects, attempting to redefine modern spaces, both visually and conceptually.

Nicole Coson

Philippines (b. 1992)

Untitled, 2020
oil on canvas
150 x 130 cm

Lives and works in London

Nicole Coson aims to examine the concept of invisibility, not only as a passive position as a result of erasure, the problematic dichotomisation of culture but also its potential as an effective artistic strategy. She recently completed an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London. She has been selected as part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2020. Coson’s work operates between the anonymous and deeply personal, between a specific place in her personal history and anywhere at all. She creates works that seek to stretch and skew the viewer’s ability to detect cultural precursors as identity and location blend into seamlessness constructing a space which is both familiar and alien.

Amr El Kafrawy

Egypt (b. 1980)

AK 19, 2020
Printing and drawing on recycled paper
50 x 50 cm

Lives and works in Cairo

Amr El-Kafrawy was born in Cairo in 1980; he lives and works in the same city. He graduated from the faculty of fine art in Cairo in 2003 where he studied painting, also he received a poster design diploma from Warsaw University in 2007.

He has been awarded numerous prizes in the Egyptian youth Salon and participated in several Artist Residencies in Poland, Spain, Morocco and Switzerland. El-Kafrawy works with different mediums such as drawing, painting, illustration and graphic design and printing.

In addition to Egypt, he has exhibited in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Morocco, Qatar, UAE and Cuba.

Amr El Kafrawy

Egypt (b. 1980)

AK 17, 2020
Printing and drawing on recycled paper
50 x 50 cm

Lives and works in Cairo

He has been awarded many prizes in the Egyptian youth Salon and participated in several Artist Residencies in Poland, Spain, Morocco and Switzerland. El-Kafrawy works with different mediums such as drawing, painting, illustration and graphic design and printing.
In addition to Egypt, he has exhibited in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Morocco, Qatar, UAE and Cuba.

Lamya Gargash

UAE (b. 1982)

Drapes, 2014
Chromogenic color print
60 x 60 cm (unframed)
Edition 2 of 5

Lives and works in Dubai

Lamya’s practice has been concerned with the extensive study of identity and perception, and often documenting forgotten spaces in public and private realms in Emirati society. The images showcase the artist’s heightened sensitivity towards finding beauty in the mundane.

Lamya received her Master of Arts in Communication Design from Central Saint Martin’s in the UK in 2007 after graduating from the American University of Sharjah in 2004. She was the first Emirati artist to represent the UAE at the country’s first National participation at the 53rd Venice Biennial in 2009 where she showed Familial Series.

Katsumi Hayakawa

Japan (b. 1970)

M-01A2, 2021
Mix media / Mixta
60.50h x 43w cm

Lives and works in Tokyo.

Meticulously cutting each piece by hand, Katsumi crafts dense cityscapes where an interaction of line and primary colours coalesce with cubes and grids to create complex and vibrant rhythms. Katsumi Hayakawa’s three-dimensional paper works and installations make visual connections between the complex and unseen substructure of the information age and the increasingly dense landscape of modern cities. He believes that urban construction embodies “the absence of existence, the absence of nothingness and the absence of the absence of absence.”

Painstakingly hand-crafted piece by piece, Hayakawa plays with the compositional idea of void vs. solid to amplify spatial relationships between alternative realities and metropolitan spaces. While examining the impression of architectural density, his constructions maintain the delicate nature of the material at hand. Made of paper, glue, string, and model-making materials, these works “initially read as a whole – a pulsating arrangement of regular shapes and volume – then as an assemblage of individual components that make up the holistic sculpture, systems of patterns and motifs emerge from the collective.” His inclusion of metallic materials evokes images of microchips and circuit boards, probing the relationship between the real and the virtual, what is natural and what is fabricated.

Thilo Heinzmann

Germany (b. 1969)

O.T.,2019
Oil and Pigment on Canvas, plexiglass cover
148 x 138 x 8.5 cm

Lives and works in Berlin

Thilo Heinzmann’s Pigment Paintings are made with pure, unbound pigment. They celebrate the beauty and brilliance of colour, while an open directness in their composition is enabled due to speed. Originated by a gesture, they evoke sensations of detonation, energy and flashes.

Thilo Heinzmann attended Städelschule in Frankfurt from the early 1990s in the class of Thomas Bayrle. During that time, he also assisted Martin Kippenberger. A significant voice in a generation of German painters scrutinizing the medium and its history, his inventive, precise works are driven by an inquiry into what painting can be today. Using chipboard, styrofoam, nail polish, resin, pigment, fur, cotton wool, porcelain, aluminum and hessian, Heinzmann has for the last twenty-five years worked on developing new paths and an unique visual language in his practice. He is interested in the presence that each work creates, which is further enhanced by his paintings’ powerful tactile qualities. It invites the viewer to notions on some essentials: composition, surface, form, color, light, texture, and time. In 2018 he was appointed professor of painting at Universität der Künste in Berlin.

Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim

UAE (b. 1962)

Sitting Man (series), 2013
Oil on canvas
80 x 60 cm (each)

Ibrahim came of age as an artist in the UAE in an era in which the visual arts were not yet valued culturally or taught in university degree programs. In 1986, when he met the late artist Hassan Sharif (a founding member of the influential Emirates Fine Art Society), Ibrahim was pulled out of a secluded practice and carved out unshakable friendships and collaborations that have formed the foundation for the creative community that defines the UAE today.

In March 2018 Elements, a survey of works spanning three decades of his practice, was presented at the Sharjah Art Foundation, curated by Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi. Ibrahim’s recent solo exhibitions include Memory Drum (2020) and The Space between the Eyelid and the Eyeball (2019) at Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai, as well as a series of solo shows at Cuadro Gallery, Dubai (2018, 2016, 2015, 2013).

He received the first prize for sculpture at the Sharjah Biennial in 1999 and 2001 and has been a member of the Emirates Fine Arts Society since 1986, founding Art Atelier at the Khor Fakkan Art Centre in 1997.

JR

France (b. 1983)

R au Louvre et le Secret de la Grande Pyramide, Diptyque © Pyramide, architecte I. M. Pei, musée du Louvre, Paris, France
2019
Colour photograph, matte plexiglass, aluminium, wood (face mounted)
Installed : 220 × 120 × 9 cm | 86 5/8 × 47 1/4 × 3 Spacing : 3.2 cm
3/3 Editions + 2 AP

JR works at the intersection of photography, street art, filmmaking and social engagement. Over the last two decades he has developed multiple public projects and numerous site-specific interventions in cities all over the world: from buildings in the slums around Paris, to the walls in the Middle East and Africa or the favelas of Brazil. Recent solo exhibitions of his work include The Chronicles of San Francisco at SFMOMA, San Francisco (2019), JR: Chronicles at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn (2019) and Momentum, la mécanique de l’épreuve at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2018).

JR is also the director of two full-length documentaries: Women Are Heroes (2011) and, with Agnès Varda, the Academy Award-nominated Faces and Places (2017).

Moslem Khezri

Iran (b. 1984)

We Keep Reviewing 22, 2017-2019
Oil on canvas
100 x 120 cm

Khezri’s rather restrained color palette in his representational paintings and monotone drawings of scenes of school students within the familiar architecture of classrooms and courtyards evoke childhood memories, nostalgia and, on a broader level, point to the inherent power structure governing different stages and aspects of our social existence. The figures seem to populate the scene like actors both in groups and as individuals, mostly viewed from a distance, while the artist chooses to offer a more intimate portrait of certain characters here and there. The principal role, however, is played by light; natural light from the sky or coming in through the windows that defines spaces and brings volume and expression to the figures.

Mouteea Murad

Syria (b. 1977)

The Magical Carpet, 2008
Acrylic on canvas
180 x 180 cm

Mouteea Murad’s work sees a unification of spirituality and formalism, continuously drawing influence from the geometric forms and motifs of Islamic art. Murad began his career as a painter working on monochromatic, expressionist compositions that depict the anguish of modern man. In 2007, his work took on a renewed outlook that redirected his painting style, exploring relativity, spatiality, and the visual dynamic of geometric forms.

Murad’s work differs greatly from those of his contemporaries; his works present in pure abstraction and harmonious color. In his compositions, the artist builds on the breakthroughs of previous movements, experimenting with automatic brushwork, the illusionistic perspective of Op art, the symmetry of geometric abstraction, and the collapsing planes of Suprematism.

Murad continues to draw inspiration from Islamic art while employing forms and lines largely defined by algebraic functions, allowing for his work to see a unification of spirituality and formalism. Murad lives and works in Sharjah, UAE. He received a Bachelor of Art from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus in 2001.

Timo Nasseri

Germany (b. 1972)

I saw a broken labyrinth #14, 2017
Ink and pencil on paper
145 x 104 cm

Lives and works in Berlin

Nasseri’s work uses the means of natural science to open up a perspective for the poetic and fantastic. Inspired by Ibn Muqla, Nasseri started an in-depth research on Arabic writing and alphabet, giving particular attention to forms and aesthetics. His practice discusses the infinity and boundlessness, transcendence and metaphysics in a wider context and writing as the beginning and the end.

Rebecca Ward

USA (b. 1984)

Apparition, 2019
acrylic on silk
152.4 x 114.3 cm

Lives and works in New York

Rebecca Ward received a BA in Fine Arts from University of Texas in 2006, and an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 2012. Drawing inspiration from Minimalism, hard-edge painting, and Arte Povera, Ward’s banded, sewn, and deconstructed canvases explore the rich territory between sculpture and painting. Materiality and process are central to her practice and evoke architectural garments ripped, unwoven, and re-stitched from flesh-toned canvas, leather hide, and silk organza. Ward’s artworks reveal and obscure, and by their nature, entice viewers to closely investigate contrasts in line and material, modulations in color, and multi-dimensional layers.

Ishmael Randall Weeks

Peru (b. 1976)

Cooperativa, 2020
Grout 700, wood, glass, iron, corrugated steel ¼”
260 x 260 x 5 cm

Lives and works in Brooklyn, Lima and Peru.

Ishmael Randall Weeks’ practice encompasses site-specific installations, sculpture and video to works on paper. In these works, issues of urbanization, transformation, regeneration, escape, collapse and nomadic existence have been predominant. While the work in the drawing studio serves as a means for a more intimate exploration of these issues, the foundation of his larger scale work lies in the alteration of found and recycled materials and environmental debris, often on site (including such source materials as books and printed matter, empty tins, old tires, bicycles, boat parts and building construction fragments) that are often altered to create sculptural objects and architectural spaces.

Other Initiatives

See All Initiatives

The Collection

Elena Damiani

Ivan Argote

Shamma Al Amri

Gil Heitor Cortesão

John Torreano

Martín Soto Climent

Dickens Otieno

Xavier Veilhan

Dia Mrad

Dia Mrad

Elena Damiani

Marco Castillo

Gulnur Mukazhanova

Ania Soliman

Hamra Abbas

Alia Ahmad

Maha Ahmed

Maha Ahmed

Shaikha Al Mazrou

Moath Alofi

Kristoffer Ardeña

Tammam Azzam

Rathin Barman

Nicole Coson

Amr El Kafrawy

Amr El Kafrawy

Lamya Gargash

Katsumi Hayakawa

Thilo Heinzmann

Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim

JR

Moslem Khezri

Mouteea Murad

Timo Nasseri

Rebecca Ward

Ishmael Randall Weeks

Other Initiatives

A.R.M. & Art Dubai

A.R.M. Holding Children’s Programme

Prototypes for Humanity