Continuing the Whitechapel Gallery’s programme opening up rarely seen art collections for everyone, a series of four chronological displays launching this September and concluding in January 2017, highlights works from the Barjeel Art Foundation’s rich collection. Artists from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and elsewhere in the region tell the story of Arab art from the modern to the contemporary period.
The Barjeel Art Foundation is based in the UAE and was founded by Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi in 2010. It holds one of the most extensive collections of art from the region, dating from the 1900s to the present day. This series of exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery features over 60 artists and 100 works of art from the collection, and explores four different themes, which examine ways of defining Arab art from its early modernist beginnings and geographies.
8 September – 6 December 2015
Debating Modernism I
15 December 2015 – 17 April 2016
Debating Modernism II
26 April – 14 August 2016
Mapping the Contemporary I
23 August 2016 – 8 January 2017
Mapping the Contemporary II
The first in a series of discussions on art and visual culture in the Middle East.
Display one explores the emergence and subsequent development of an Arab art aesthetic through drawings and paintings from the early twentieth century to 1967, an important historical period in the region.
Display two focuses on figurative works of art in the Barjeel Art Collection produced between 1968 and 1987.
Display three presents photography and video works made between 1990 and 1998.
The fourth and final display explores how artists using various media artistically engage with the cities where they either live or work.
Read the Press Release here.
