Few artists of their generation have left a global mark as French-Tunisian artist eL Seed. At thirty-five years old his monumental canvases are instantly recognizable and can be seen in cities across the world. Walls in cities as varied as Montreal, Sao Paolo, Paris, Doha, New York and Sharjah have been transformed with his magic spray can into open air galleries. Much like Banksy one never knows where next eL Seed artwork will appear. The world is his canvas. Read more »
Arts & Culture
A Dubai architectural gem worthy of a museum
The Dubai Petroleum’s HQ must be preserved for the future of this country when it is vacated, and what way to better honour a building that has literally fueled the development of Dubai into a global city than turn it into a public institution, an art museum for the people. Read more »
Arab Art in a Virtual World
Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, columnist on Arab affairs, MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow, and Founder of Barjeel Art Foundation, took the main stage at STEP2016 to talk about the increasingly important role of technology as a platform to disseminate art from the Arab world and the challenges that come along such as censorship and the lack of intellectual property protection, and what Barjeel Art Foundation has been doing to introduce art from the MENA region to the world. Read more »
Mona Hatoum: The First Contemporary Arab Artist?
Attempting to pinpoint a specific date in which modern Arab art gave way to the contemporary is bound to raise more questions than answers. I propose that Arab contemporary art timeframe begins with artists who have come of age in the decade between the early 1980s and the early 1990s due to their general readiness to adopt the latest technologies and concepts in their work. In my opinion the artist that best embodies this definition is Beirut born British-Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum. Read more »
“A sliver of history”: Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi and Suheyla Takesh on Barjeel Art Foundation
In this interview, Art Radar speaks with Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi and curator Suheyla Takesh to learn the story behind the Barjeel Art Foundation’s most “iconic” masterpiece and one of the organisation’s most recent acquisitions. Read more »
Why the Arab world must embrace placing art online
Unfortunately, many collectors in the Arab world shy away from placing their art collection online. But art institutions and collectors in the Arab world need to make a giant leap into the present day and invest in creating online portals for the region’s art. We can all play a part in countering the negative narrative of extremists in the region by virtually displaying our arts and culture. Read more »