This exhibition surveys one of the most important artistic communities in the UAE’s history. Community has played a key role in every modern art historical breakthrough, with artists banding together around manifestos, or turning to one another for support when art institutions rejected their innovations. Art communities grow out of critical and creative exchange among peers and mentors.

But We Cannot See Them focuses on one community of artists, sometimes called “the five”, at an intersection of visual artists, writers, and filmmakers based in the UAE. Its members identified with a “new culture” of encouraging radical, formal and conceptual experimentation. Eventually, some of these artists founded the celebrated Flying House.

The exhibition is curated by Maya Allison, with Exhibitions Curator Bana Kattan, with research and program development by Programs Curator Alaa Edris. It includes archival material and videotaped interviews with members of the community, alongside artworks from the 1988 through 2008, as well as a reading room of work from other important members of the community, and contributions from Cristiana De Marchi, Adel Khozam, Nujoom Alghanem and Khalid Albudoor.

Artists include: Hassan Sharif, Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, Abdullah Al Saadi, Mohammed Kazem, Hussain Sharif, Vivek Vilasini, Jos Clevers, and Ebtisam Abdulaziz.

The title of the exhibition is drawn from a poem written by a key member of the community, poet and filmmaker Nujoom Al Ghanem. More details about But We Cannot See Them to be revealed closer to the time of the exhibition.

WHEN :

Mar 02 to May 25, 2017

WHERE :

NYU Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi

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