Creating Spaces for West African Art in the UAE
Introduction
The Arabian Peninsula sits at a geographic crossroads between African, Asian, and European countries. This region is widely recognized by historians as a place where “so much of the world’s history has happened, either in [it] or through it.”1 Today, Gulf countries, with their respective cultural, social, economic, and political conditions, have emerged out of “deep historical patterns of trade and cosmopolitanism,” which have enabled them to become “[places] of encounters [and] of ‘cross cultural contacts and exchanges.’”2
While histories of commercial and cultural exchange along Gulf trade networks span centuries, this paper focuses on examining the contemporary cultural legacy of exchanges between the Gulf and West African countries, with a particular focus on the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Additionally, it seeks to explore opportunities for continued engagement between these two regions. Looking more specifically at exhibitions, institutions, and individuals who play leading roles in fostering these exchanges, this essay considers the past, and potential future, of the Emirati-West African cultural and intellectual scene. The insights presented in this essay are collected through my own fieldwork in Sharjah’s cultural scene, and through several interviews conducted with individuals and institutions working within the spaces of UAE-Africa relations.
Of the dozens of active cultural institutions and events across the UAE, the upcoming Sharjah Biennial 15 exhibition, as envisioned by the late Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor, stands out for its creation of a space to showcase West African curators, artists, and artworks. By presenting a brief history of the Sharjah Biennial’s representation of West African creatives, and through interviews with the Africa Institute, a Sharjah-based academic institute dedicated to the study of Africa and the African diaspora, and the Efie Gallery, a Dubai-based gallery specializing in the promotion of contemporary West African art, this essay aims to unpack webs of cultural, intellectual, and artistic exchange between the UAE and West Africa over the past decade.
Sharjah Biennial: Past and Present
Sharjah Biennial 15, set to open in 2023, draws on Enwezor’s lifelong mission to foster spaces for cultural production and dialogue outside of Western institutional models. As the first and longest-running contemporary art biennial in the Gulf, and the major biennial exhibition of West Asia, North Africa, and South Asia (WANASA), the Sharjah Biennial has served as a key space for discourse on the Global South for over three decades. Though the Sharjah Biennial exhibition is characterized today by its integration of historically, culturally, and socially significant sites across the emirate, such as the Flying Saucer, the Kalba Ice Factory, and the Sharjah Art Museum, the format of the exhibition looked quite different at its inception in 1993. By retelling the story of the Sharjah Biennial and providing a brief biographical history of Enwezor, I hope to shed some light on the context and influence of West African artists and curators in the UAE, and on the broader significance of their work in the global contemporary art scene.
The Sharjah Biennial was founded by His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan Al Qasimi, ruler of Sharjah, and originally organized by the Sharjah Department of Culture and Information.3 A decade after its founding, Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, the daughter of the ruler of Sharjah, returned from accompanying her father on a cultural trip to Germany where she visited her first international biennial. Famously, she attended documenta11, hosted in the German city of Kassel with installations scattered around the city, which was curated by none other than the late Okwui Enwezor.4 Enwezor, born in 1963 (d. 2019), was a Nigerian curator, writer, educator, and art critic with an academic background in political science. Despite his lack of academic training in the fields of art history, museum exhibition, or curation, “Enwezor paid insistent attention to contemporary art outside the predictable North Atlantic art circuit, knowing that his life experiences precisely embodied the peripheralism he promoted.”5
Enwezor was the first non-Western European curator selected to lead a documenta exhibition, one “widely considered as one of the most important exhibitions in recent decades, recognized for its postcolonial, geographic dispersion of art.”6 Whereas earlier editions of documenta sought to reconnect postwar, post-Nazi Germany to international art forms formerly considered “degenerate” by the regime, Enwezor’s exhibition aimed to connect “the North Atlantic to the global South…with a notable focus on artists from Africa,”7 in an effort to “[challenge] North Atlantic hegemony over the definition of contemporary art.”8
The documenta11 exhibition, as many interviews illustrate, has famously shaped Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi’s curatorial and and professional trajectory.9 Insisting that she would not interfere but only observe, Al Qasimi, having then recently graduated with a BFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London,10 was appointed in 2003 to the committee that oversaw the Sharjah Biennial.11 At 22 years old, Al Qasimi was the only female on the committee and the group’s youngest member.12
documenta11’s influence on Al Qasimi was visible in her desire “to seed projects throughout the city, bring in outside curators, incorporate performance and video, [and] make the whole thing more political.”13 Sharjah Biennial 6, which Al Qasimi organized alongside curator Peter Lewis and artists like Farhad Moshiri, sought to shift the exhibition’s curatorial focus from one where “artists [were] recommended by government ministries,”14 to one that “allocates further debate, neither inside, nor outside the terms of nationality, but along the borders.”15 The exhibition featured 117 artists and creative groups and was held in the Expo Centre and the Sharjah Art Museum. The choice of venue also indicated a physical departure from the rigid spaces of a trade-center-turned-exhibition-hall, foreshadowing the exhibition’s move into the crevices and historical spaces of the city of Sharjah. Some editions of the Sharjah Biennial have even diverged entirely from Sharjah-based venues. For instance, Sharjah Biennial 13, much like documenta11, featured projects and programs in 5 different cities: Beirut, Dakar, Istanbul, Ramallah, and Sharjah.
Entitled Thinking Historically in the Present, the upcoming Sharjah Biennial 15 seeks to “reflect on and contribute to the Biennial’s history and that of the overarching Foundation,”16 and to examine the role that these institutions play in amplifying voices from the Global South. In celebration of the 30-year history of the exhibition, Enwezor proposed commissioning 30 artworks that explore the historical contingencies and narratives that continue to impact our lives today. The artists selected for these commissions include John Akomfrah, Hassan Hajjaj, Kader Attia, and Mona Hatoum. Over a third of these commissioned artists originate from African countries, while 4 come from West African nations specifically. Of the 30 artists proposed by Enwezor, 8 had participated in documenta11: Amar Kanwar, Yinka Shonibare, Steve McQueen, Mona Hatoum, Nari Ward, Isaac Julien, Destiny Deacon, and Doris Salcedo. The map below depicts where each of the SB15 commissioned artists was born, though birthplace does not always correlate with where the artists currently work, nor what ethnic or cultural identity they may ascribe to or claim.
The Africa Institute in Sharjah
To better understand contemporary spaces for Afro-Arab cultural and intellectual dialogue in the UAE today, one must step back into the late 20th century, when Sharjah hosted the first Symposium on African and Arab Relations in 1976.17 Inaugurated by Sharjah’s ruler Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, the symposium gathered 45 Arab and African intellectual and academic figures18 for several days of “discussions on how to facilitate better understanding and closer cooperation between the African and Arab peoples.”19 The symposium sought to establish a “Documentation and Data Collection Center to be focused on Arab-African relations in Sharjah, an annual meeting to discuss Arab-African relations, and a proposed Arab-African Fund.”20 The Africa Hall building, which was constructed in the 1970s along with other modernist government buildings in Sharjah,21 was also inaugurated in 1976 as a space “for showcasing African cultures, theater, dance and musical performances,” but was later demolished in 2015.22 In June 2018, the Sharjah government established The Africa Institute, and opened the newly rebuilt Africa Hall, located in Sharjah’s Al Manakh neighborhood.23
At The Africa Institute’s helm is Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, who serves as its president, while art historian and curator Dr. Salah M. Hassan serves as its director. In September 2020, The Africa Institute announced that it had commissioned Ghanaian-British architect Sir David Adjaye to design and build the new Africa Institute campus,24 which will be incorporating the Africa Hall into its design plans.25 The Africa Institute, which is “dedicated to the study, research, and documentation of Africa and the African diaspora,”26 was conceptualized as a space for “thinking about Africa globally,” the director explains. Dr. Hassan continues, “[The Africa Institute] is a chance to do something new,” besides promoting “Afro-Arab solidarity and understanding. I also believe that [the Institute is] beneficial to thinking about African Studies in the postcolonial era and to think of it as a new way of studying Africa that can transcend the colonial heritage of what we call area studies. What we are hoping for is to decolonize the field, which is why, for us, Africa is defined globally, not geographically, because it has a great global presence.”27
In examining why The Africa Institute and its predecessor were established in Sharjah, Dr. Hassan explains, “[Establishing the Institute in Sharjah] is not a personal matter, it’s actually an intellectual matter, because Sharjah has a legacy as a place that has been open to many Arab and African immigrants who helped shape the intellectual scene in the early years of the country’s founding. The intellectual openness of the city and the vision of its ruler, who happened to be an intellectual and who happened to be interested in African studies, [fostered] an openness which enabled it to become a place of encounter.”28 When the symposium was hosted in 1976, Dr. Hassan adds, “there was a very frank discussion, at that time, with Arabs and Africans asking questions of each other on the legacy of slavery, on misunderstandings on both sides, and on stereotypes, all discussed in an atmosphere of exchange…building a legacy that made the Africa Hall become [a space] not only for issues related to Africa…Mahmoud Darwish read there, Nizar Qabbani read there.”29
As such, The Africa Institute has sought to carry on the mission and legacy of these early discussions by offering postgraduate degrees in critical African and African Diaspora Studies, as well as by convening academic conferences, hosting research fellows, curating art exhibitions, commissioning artists, and developing workshops and programs that are open to the broader community. Sataan Al-Hassan, Director of Research, Programming, and Publications at The Africa Institute, explains that a central tenet of the institute’s functions is “to collaborate with institutions in Africa, and not just look out onto Africa. For example, we program an annual season called ‘Country-Focused Season’ where we select a country in Africa, which includes scholarly conferences in two parts: one takes place in Sharjah and the second takes place in the country that we’re focusing on to give the opportunity for people in that country to attend and share their perspectives. We also host various cultural programs, music performances, and film screenings where we invite scholars, filmmakers, and experts on the subjects in the films. The first country that we focused on was Ethiopia in 2019, and the second, which we are currently focusing on, is Ghana. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, we could not travel to Ethiopia, but the intention was that we would travel to Addis Ababa and hold the conference there, for which we collaborated with the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. As a result of that program, we hired two of our current faculty members, who formerly worked at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies.”30 The Institute’s Global Ghana season, which was organized in collaboration with scholars Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Jean Allman, Carina Ray, and Joseph Oduro-Frimpong, was inaugurated with a series of talks and performances in November 2021, though its two academic conferences were postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.31 The first part, called Global Ghana: Sites of Departure/Sites of Return, will be held in Sharjah in March 2022, while the second part, Global Ghana: In Search of Africa’s Black Star, will be held in Accra later this year.32
Dubai as a Hub for West African Galleries and Practitioners
The Africa Institute is one of several institutions in the UAE that provides an ecosystem for cultural engagement and exchange with West African countries. In neighboring Dubai, the newly-opened Efie Gallery is another example of an art space that “[specializes] in the promotion of contemporary art from African artists within the continent and the diaspora, with a focus on West Africa.”33 Efie Gallery was co-founded by Valentina Mintah, Ghanaian technology executive and co-founder of Dubai’s All Africa Festival, and her two sons, photographer and filmmaker Kobi Mintah and art collector Kwame Nsiah Adomako Mintah.34 The Gallery seeks to “promote a true celebration of African art” and to “illustrate the symbiosis between the Middle East and Africa” through exhibitions, an artist studio, and a residency programme.35 In addition, it supports collaborations between artists from the broader region and African diaspora communities,36 while “challenging narratives around African art and art history to (wider) audiences.”37
As residents in Dubai, the founders chose the city as the first location of Efie Gallery “in recognition of its contemporary art scene, which offers the perfect terrain for further expansion and an added opportunity of innovation.”38 The Gallery Director, Afia Owusu-Afriyie, adds that choosing Dubai “was a fitting choice, not only because of its place as a global hub, but also because there was a gap in the market that needed to be filled.”39 In October 2021, Efie Gallery opened its debut exhibition in a temporary pavilion designed by Ghanaian architect Alice Asafu-Adjaye in Burj Plaza, featuring renowned artists like Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui alongside nearly 20 other emerging and established African artists. In March 2022, the gallery will be inaugurating its permanent space in Dubai’s Al Quoz neighborhood with El Anatsui: Shard Song, an exhibition highlighting the artist’s work.
Furthermore, individuals like Bayo Hassan Bello, an independent curator and artist based in Grand-Bassam, Côte D’Ivoire, have been at the forefront of supporting emerging artists in the UAE, through a social impact art platform called The AJALA Project, inspired by the travels of Nigerian journalist and globetrotter Olabisi Ajala. Bello, before moving to Côte D’Ivoire, lived in Dubai for over a decade working as a software programmer and curator. As a passionate writer, he sought to create a space for creatives and changemakers to interact in Dubai, a city that served as “a touching point with the rest of the world.”40 In 2016, he launched The AJALA Project to provide “artists with the opportunity to explore a theme or a topic that wasn’t necessarily commercial; it was about multiple narratives and getting artists to come together.”41 He adds, “the first few months were very much community-led and community-driven. We started by writing stories, myself and some other writers, and sharing them with UAE-based artists to develop illustrations out of these narratives.”42
Eventually, Bello explains, the focus of the platform shifted to highlighting the work of the artists themselves by collaborating with cultural and commercial institutions in Dubai like Sikka Art Fair, Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Jameel Arts Center, and Dubai Design District. In doing so, The AJALA Project worked to empower emerging artists in the UAE by providing them with opportunities to showcase their work, and to connect them with potential art buyers. Having spent years working in the Dubai art scene, Bello sees opportunities for independent art spaces and curators, whom he believes are “oracles of the art world,” to foster conversations on topics like race, gender, and migration.43 Teeming with permanent commercial spaces like Efie Gallery—along with several others that frequent Art Dubai fairs44—and individuals with intimate ties to West Africa, the UAE has become home to creatives and practitioners in the art world who actively carve out spaces for emerging and established artists from the region to exhibit.
Conclusions
Increasingly, in part thanks to its geographic proximity to dozens of neighboring countries, historic patterns of migration, and the diverse population that resides within it, the UAE has become a site for real cultural, intellectual, and artistic exchange. Since the early years of the country’s founding, with events like the Symposium on African and Arab Relations in 1976, artists, thinkers, scholars, writers, poets, and politicians from Africa and the Arab world have been actively involved in building bridges between the two regions. In addition to the country’s institutions and mechanisms for cultural promotion, it is the individuals whose dedication to celebrating African cultures, diasporas, and peoples that have made a lasting difference on the ground.
As the interviews presented here suggest, the interest in including and promoting African voices in the intellectual and cultural scene in the UAE runs deeply and is on an upward trajectory. The creation of many cultural initiatives and spaces in the UAE is oftentimes a result of organic, grassroots efforts as in Bello’s case, a software programmer from Lagos who lived in Dubai and decided to immerse himself in the city’s creative scene.
The growing focus in the country to empower creative voices from the Global South has enabled events like The Africa Institute’s Country Focused Seasons and the Sharjah Biennial as sites to engage intellectually and artistically with themes like postcoloniality and intersectionality. Moreover, in supporting artists and scholars from Africa and the Global South more broadly through residency programs, art commissions, research grants, and faculty positions, institutions in the UAE are placing local and regional voices at the forefront of global intellectual and creative production. In doing so, these individuals, and the institutions that support them, are rewriting local historical, cultural, and intellectual narratives that have long been dominated by voices from outside these contexts.
Looking forward, I anticipate that events like Sharjah Biennial 15, Art Dubai, Abu Dhabi Art, The Africa Institute’s Global Ghana series, and even Expo 2020 Dubai will continue to foster spaces for individuals in the UAE and West Africa to engage with one another, and with the world. Further, it is my hope that these large-scale events and institutions will continue to be complemented by small-scale galleries, exhibitions, spaces, programs, and initiatives—like Efie Gallery and the AJALA Project—that empower emerging artists, curators, researchers, and scholars to mobilize their far-reaching networks and interests to further advance Emirati-West African ties.
To access the endnotes, download the full report.
The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author, and do not represent Fiker Institute.
