art dubai - experimenter.in · soumya sankar bose’s photographs imagine possible futures, and...

ART DUBAI2020

Art Dubai

Experimenter’s presents Remnants as Traces at Art Dubai 2020, an exhibition that underscores the position of the personal within political and geographical contexts in attempt to find residues of living through the works of Adip Dutta, Ayesha Sultana, Bani Abidi, Biraaj Dodiya, Julien Segard, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Naeem Mohaiemen, Prabhakar Pachpute, Praneet Soi, Radhika Khimji, Rathin Barman, Sahil Naik, Samson Young, and Soumya Sankar Bose.

Bani Abidi, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Ayesha Sultana and Radhika Khimji’s works engage the body and examine the personal act of how the body navigates its surrounding environment. Bani Abidi’s Security Barriers depict vector drawings of barricades in Karachi that question segregation and control in setting not only political and geographical boundaries but also psychological ones. Nadia Kaabi-Linke’s paintings are tactile, textural impressions on canvas, often impressions collected from wall surfaces around the world over several years depicting the ‘skin’ of cities we inhabit and how politics and geography form the residual identity of the individual and collective. Tactility is explored in Ayesha Sultana’s Miasms, ink on tissue paper paintings, that are intimate manifestations of sentience, corporeality, movement and consciousness of being. In a parallel strand, Radhika Khimji’s works are abstractions of body and form, expressed through fragments that are dimensional with materials such as photo-transfer on wood, cloth, handmade paper, thickened acrylic paint, and sewing. Khimji’s engagement with material resonates with a process that is built up over time with each image revealing visual realities that are constructed and deconstructed.

Biraaj Dodiya, Adip Dutta and Soumya Sankar Bose’s works explore notions of memory, loss, death, and the ephemeral nature of life. Biraaj Dodiya’s painting From the Roof is composed of layered references drawn from personal experiences and their complex manifestations in adulthood. Abstract landscape and form structure her paintings depicting textural depths and suggesting spaces where meanings meander, and realities merge within labyrinthine versions of truths. Notions of decay, sorrow, personal anxieties expressing the fragility of time, and disquiet regarding an uncertain future are investigated through bronze sculptures titled Relics by Adip Dutta depicting desolate branches of arid trees, resembling crucified form. In another body of work titled Rupture, Dutta explores traces of abandonment and desolation in the urban environment through a series of drawings. Soumya Sankar Bose’s photographs imagine possible futures, and re-examine traumatic pasts, through his subjects’ visions and anxieties. Where the Birds Never Sing, is a body of work on the Marichjhapi massacre, the forcible eviction in 1979 of Bangladeshi refugees on an island in West Bengal. Over the years, Bose has been researching and re-enacting memories of the survivors in specific locations, as there is very little written record of the incident. Through the intricate weaving of facts and fiction of existing oral histories of the survivors, he brings to light perspectives of the same narrative, forming a cryptic framework of a problematic history that is facing slow erasure from the memory of people.

Julien Segard carefully considers the urban environment, the crevices where the constructed meets the natural, and how the two become inseparable. His watercolor paintings feature an assemblage of found elements and architectural structures that exist because of humans, but are bereft of human presence. He discerns the intimate, symbiotic, and oftentimes destructive relationship between man, nature and architecture. Prabhakar Pachpute and Rathin Barman’s

Art Dubai

works question the significance of human life in social, political and anthropological landscapes of our inhabitable lands. Pachpute’s practice develops from a range of characters associated with the exploitation of land resources, through a narrative built with lived experiences and folk tales narrated by miners and farmers. The characters and landscape in his paintings sculptures and wall murals, galvanize the ethical issues of land and labor exploitation. Using built architecture, interwoven with anthropological surveys and personal narratives of people living in constantly expanding cities, Rathin Barman presents a monumental concrete wall-based sculpture, Restructured Living Space I. Barman’s works with construction materials using concrete, brass, and pigment, attempting to question the transforming nature of built spaces and the transient nature of human existence and memory.

Praneet Soi considers painting methods and weaves them with contemporary mediums such as photojournalism to create layers and juxtapositions between the narrative and the image. His practice emerges from a deep association with the circulated image, and its deconstruction. The work Hold Still alludes to the amalgamation of abstraction with spatial aspects of architecture in an attempt to subvert perceptions of conflict zones. Similarly, architecture as a complex cultural technology at the intersection of economic, technical, scientific, artistic, legal, media, religious, and political interests manifests in Sahil Naik’s Modernist Facades for New Nations, charting nation building projects of the twentieth-century in the overlaps of socialist republics, post-colonies, the Non-Aligned countries and the global south. A theme that while equally liberating remained routed in control

Samson Young’s Chopin series exploring ideas of openness, control and negotiation, is a series of drawings based on an abstract cluster of scribbles with a pen plotter by Frederic Chopin in his original manuscripts where he crossed out mistakes made in particular compositions. Naeem Mohaiemen’s The year 1973 created many problems for Imperialists are archival prints on paper exploring histories of failed utopias in an international context dominated by the bloc politics of the Cold War era. Mohaiemen cross-references narratives, myths, found footage and photographs, archives, news media materials, and text, while also revealing the research and methodology of the author as artist and historian.

Remnants as Traces probes beyond the surficial understanding of residues of living in a complex, conflicted world and uses human form, personal experiences, political philosophies and lived architecture as multiple points of entry in understanding our nuanced circumstances through the works of the artists on view.

Adip Dutta

Rupture 1-10Ink on paper

9 x 12 in | 22.9 x 30.5 cm eachSuite of 10

2014-15

Adip Dutta’s drawings of urban landscapes, especially of construction sites referring to built spaces, and a particular way of seeing one’s surroundings are often distressingly barren yet intensely textural. Dutta responds to the form of the site and the tools around him, and is interested in how things transform over time, not in just their physicality but also in relation to their surroundings.

2014-15Rupture 1-10

2014-15Rupture 1-10 Ink on paper9 x 12 in | 22.9 x 30.5 cm each

Ayesha Sultana

MiasmsInk on tissue paper

6.5 x 7.5 in each | 16.5 x 19.2 cm each2019

For Ayesha Sultana, navigation through the city becomes an exercise of understanding and finely balancing one’s own body in relation to the built environment, much as understanding the spatial occurrences and relationships between her works and their intrinsic mediums. Tactility is explored in Ayesha Sultana’s Miasms, ink on tissue paper paintings, that are intimate manifestations of sentience, corporeality, movement and consciousness of being.

2019Miasms

2019Miasms Ink on tissue paper6.5 x 7.5 in each | 16.5 x 19.2 cm each

Bani Abidi

Security Barriers (M-Z)Inkjet Prints

11 x 17 in each, 28 x 44 cm each2019

Bani Abidi’s Security Barriers are brightly colored and patterned drawings of the concrete and iron barricades found throughout Karachi. The works raise questions about safety and separation, demonstrations of state violence, and political strategies of demarcation. Out of context, against a white background, they resemble minimalist abstractions.

2019Security Barriers (M-Z)

2019Inkjet Prints11 x 17 in each, 28 x 44 cm each

Security Barriers (M-Z)

Biraaj Dodiya

From the RoofOil on linen

46 x 38 in | 116.8 x 96.5 cm2019

Biraaj Dodiya’s paintings, part funereal abstractions, part nocturnal landscapes, are primarily studies of uncertainty and distance. Moments of abrasion and resistance are hinged from slivers of light, balancing movement and stasis, form and vision. The intensely textured, tactile surface of her work carries a bodily, corporeal depth that manifests a story told through spatial means.

2019From the Roof

2019From the Roof Oil on linen46 x 38 in | 116.8 x 96.5 cm

Julien Segard

Julien Segard looks at the residual value of the discarded and refused, articles that we use and are close to at some time but let go of. Using a range of found items, Segard’s collages, paintings, and works on board such as Roadside Sculpture attempt to re-examine materials that have been foregone, to find a renewed meaning in the disused.

2019Roadside Sculpture

Roadside sculpture 1Watercolor on paper

82 x 70 cm | 32 x 27.5 in2019-2020

2019 - 2020Watercolor on paper82 x 70 cm | 32 x 27.5 in

Roadside sculpture 1


82 x 70 cm | 32 x 27.5 in2019-2020


76 x 70 cm | 29 x 27.5 in2019-2020

Nadia Kaabi-Linke

Santa MargaritaInk, wax, bronze, oil on canvas

90 x 230 cm | 35 x 90.5 in2009 - 2020

Growing up between Tunis, Kiev, and Dubai, Nadia Kaabi-Linke has a personal history of migration across cultures and borders that has greatly influenced her work. Kaabi-Linke’s painting Santa Margarita is a tactile, textural impression with wax, oil, bronze and oil on canvas. Kaabi-Linke’s works are often impressions collected from wall surfaces around the world over several years depicting the ‘skin’ of cities we inhabit and how politics and geography form the residual identity of the individual and collective.

2009 - 2020Santa Margarita

2009 - 2020Ink, wax, bronze, oil on canvas | 90 x 230 cm 35 x 90.5 in

Santa Margarita

2009 - 2020Ink, wax, bronze, oil on canvas | 90 x 230 cm 35 x 90.5 in

Santa Margarita detail

Naeem Mohaiemen

The Year 1973 Created Many Problems for the ImperialistsArchival print on paper | Edition of 3 + 1 A.P.

7 in x 9 in each | 17.8 x 22.9 cm each Suite of 12

2013

Naeem Mohaiemen’s research-led practice encompasses films, installations, and essays about transnational left politics in the period after the Second World War. He investigates the legacies of decolonization and the erasing and rewriting of memories of political utopias. Mohaiemen combines biography and family history to explore how national borders and identities shape the lives of people in turbulent societies. His work focuses on film archives and the way their contents can be lost, fabricated and reanimated.

2013The Year 1973 Created Many Problems for the Imperialists

2013Archival print on paper | Edition of 3 + 1 A.P.7 in x 9 in each | 17.8 x 22.9 cm each

The Year 1973 Created Many Problems for the Imperialists

2013Archival print on paper | Edition of 3 + 1 A.P.7 in x 9 in each | 17.8 x 22.9 cm each

The Year 1973 Created Many Problems for the Imperialistsdetail

When Worlds Collide

When Worlds Collide was commissioned by The Power Plant, Toronto, Ontario, in conjunction with solo exhibition What We Found After You Left (2020).

When Worlds Collide 1 and 2 imagine hybrid architectures conjured of fragments of six buildings featured in Two Meetings and a Funeral.

Revealing the various styles of ostentatious, masculinist architecture that served as vehicles for divergent ideologies in this period, the sculptures equally visualize a collision and intersection of these ideologies. In their form, the objects turn inside out the idea of a “pivot” moment of 1973-1974 that was central to Two Meetings positioning within its premiere at documenta 14 in Kassel.

1a: Luigi Moretti, Palais de Nation, Algiers, 1961.

1b: Beijing Institute of Architectural Design, Bangabandhu International Conference Center, Dhaka, 2001.

1c: Bazel M. Salune, Provincial Assembly of the Punjab, Lahore, 1938.

2a: Oscar Niemeyer, La Coupole, Algiers, 1975.

2b: Oscar Niemeyer & Le Corbusier, UN General Assembly, New York City, 1952.

2c: Oscar Niemeyer, Houari Boumediene University of Science & Technology, Algiers, 1969.

2020When Worlds Collide

When Worlds Collide 1PA12 Nylon 3D print, spray paint | Edition of 5 + 1 A.P.

Dimensions variable2020

2020PA12 Nylon 3D print, spray paint | Edition of 5 + 1 A.P. Dimensions variable

When Worlds Collide 1


When Worlds Collide 1details

When Worlds Collide 2PA12 Nylon 3D print, spray paint | Edition of 5 + 1 A.P.

Dimensions variable2020


When Worlds Collide 2


When Worlds Collide 2details

Radhika Khimji

Radhika Khimji’s works are abstractions of body and form, expressed through fragments that are made dimensional with materials such as cloth, handmade paper, thickened acrylic paint, and wood. Khimji’s engagement with material resonates with her process that is built up over time, with the image revealing visual realities that are constructed and deconstructed.

2018-2020Radhika Khimji

2020Oil and thread on photo transfer on paper20.6 x 26 cm | 8.11 x 10.2 in

Keep Plugging the Pipes Till They’re Over

2020Oil and thread on photo transfer on paper29.5 x 42 cm | 11.6 x 16.5 in

Some Landscapes are Internal

2019 - 2020Oil and thread on photo transfer on paper 20.6 x 26 cm | 8.11 x 10.2 in

To Build, to spill and carry

2019Oil and photo transfer on birch ply70 x 100 cm | 27.5 x 39.3 in

This House Ties its Ropes Tight

Parts float to the surface 2019Oil, thread, and gesso on photo transfer on paper20.3 x 25.5 cm | 8.1 x 10.2 in

Oil stains and liquids 2019Oil and gesso on photo transfer on paper20.3 x 25.9 cm | 8.1 x 10.2 in

In the belly 2018Pencil, ink and thread on paper20.5 x 26 cm | 8.1 x 10.2 in

Prabhakar Pachpute

Prabhakar Pachpute’s work is rooted in an investigation of mining labor and the way mining activity affects the natural and human landscape often combining field research around the world and personal experience. In sculptures such as, Under the Crust, Pachpute depicts anthropomorphic figures within the damaged ecological and urban landscapes under threat in our environment.

2017Prabhakar Pachpute

The Enigma of Arrival I & IIGypsum and epoxy

Dimensions variable for each2017

The Enigma of Arrival I & II 2017Gypsum and epoxyDimensions variable for each

The Enigma of Arrival I 2017Gypsum and epoxy19 x 9 in

The Enigma of Arrival I detail

2017Gypsum and epoxy19 in x 9 in

The Enigma of Arrival II 2017Gypsum and epoxy10 in x 3 in

The Enigma of Arrival IIdetail


Under the CrustGypsum and epoxy

12 in x 4 in2017

Under the Crust 2017Gypsum and epoxy12 in x 4 in

Under the Crust detail


Praneet Soi

Hold StillAcrylic paint, silverpoint on linen canvas

140 x 220 cm | 78 x 55 in2018

Over the years Praneet Soi has referenced and often subverted, conflict-zone images. He frequently merges such abstracted images with spatial aspects of architecture in an attempt to shift the imbalanced perception of conflict zones. Praneet Soi looks at traditional painting methods and weaves them with contemporary techniques like digital printing and silver point as a reference to the medium of photography itself creating layers and juxtapositions between the narrative and the image in works such as Hold Still. Soi’s practice emerges from a deep association with the circulated image, and its deconstruction.

2017Hold Still

2018Acrylic paint, silverpoint on linen canvas140 x 220 cm | 78 x 55 in

Hold Still

Rathin Barman

Restructured Living Space IBrass inlay on concrete and dry pastel96 x 192 in | 72 panels, each 16 x 16 in

2020

Rathin Barman examines the nuances of the modern built environment as a tool for understanding socio-political history. For over a decade, Barman, trained as an engineer and then a sculptor, has been working on understanding urban sprawl, memory, and how the built environment and architecture adapts itself to a growing influx of people over extended periods of time.

2020Restructured Living Space I

2020Brass inlay on concrete and dry pastel96 x 192 in | 72 panels, each 16 x 16 in

Restructured Living Space I

2020Brass inlay on concrete and dry pastel96 x 192 in | 72 panels, each 16 x 16 in

Restructured Living Space I detail

Ambiguous Living Spaces (VIII)Brass, painted steel and charcoal on GFRC board | 48 x 42 x 4.75 in

2020

2020Brass, painted steel and charcoal on GFRC board | 48 x 42 x 4.75 in

Ambiguous Living Spaces VIII

2020Brass, painted steel and charcoal on GFRC board | 48 x 42 x 4.75 in

Ambiguous Living Spaces VIII detail

Sahil Naik

Modernist Facades for New Nations (Proposition 1)Acrylic Emulsion and Archi Concrete paint on paper

42 x 59 in2019

Sahil Naik’s works explore continued interest in conflicts around the world. Naik works with occurrences, from which he is twice removed and constantly seeks correlations between architecture, myth, religion, history, facts and available information on the internet. Sahil Naik’s Modernist Facades for New Nations, charts nation building projects of the twentieth-century in the overlaps of socialist republics, post-colonies, the Non-Aligned countries and the global south. A theme that while equally liberating remained routed in control.

2019Modernist Facades for New Nations (Proposition 1)

2019Acrylic Emulsion and Archi Concrete paint on paper | 42 x 59 in

Modernist Facades for New Nations (Proposition 1)

Samson Young

Behind each project of Samson Young is an extensive process of research, involving a mapping of the process through a series of “sound sketches” and audio recordings. His drawing, radio broadcast, performance and composition touch upon the recurring topics of conflict, war, and political frontiers. Samson Young’s Chopin series exploring ideas of openness, control and negotiation, is a series of drawings based on an abstract cluster of scribbles with a pen plotter by Frederic Chopin in his original manuscripts where he crossed out mistakes made in particular compositions.

2019Chopin’s Mazurka, Op. 59 No. 2, Gesture #2 & Chopin’s Mazurka, Op. 59 No. 2, Gesture #4

2019Ink on Paper14 x 11 in | 35.56 x 27.94 cm

Chopin’s Mazurka, Op. 59 No. 2, Gesture #2

2019Ink on Paper14 x 11 in | 35.56 x 27.94 cm

Chopin’s Mazurka, Op. 59 No. 2, Gesture #4

Soumya Sankar Bose

Where the Birds Never SingArchival print on paper

30 x 24 in each Suite of 2

Edition of 5 + 2 A.P. 2017-2020

Soumya Sankar Bose’s photographs imagine possible futures, and re-examine traumatic pasts, through his subjects’ visions and anxieties. Where the Birds Never Sing, is a body of work on the Marichjhapi massacre, the forcible eviction in 1979 of Bangladeshi refugees on an island in West Bengal. Over the years, Bose has been researching and re-enacting memories of the survivors in specific locations, as there is very little written record of the incident. Through the intricate weaving of facts and fiction of existing oral histories of the survivors, he brings to light perspectives of the same narrative, forming a cryptic framework of a problematic history that is facing slow erasure from the memory of people.

2017-2020Where the Birds Never Sing

2017-2020Archival print on paper30 x 24 in each

Where the Birds Never Sing

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