Cool! I have a short quote in Kaelen Wilson-Goldie’s recent review of the massive Sharjah / Dubai art week that recently wrapped in The National.

“These cities are new,” says Shehab Hamad, who was born and raised in Dubai. “So the blank slate idea captures a certain truth. Dubai and the Gulf have been a blank slate. It’s time to start wearing that term as a badge of honour. But Dubai’s role in all of this is what it has always been. A trading port. A hub. An exchange. The explosion of commercial art spaces couldn’t have happened anywhere else in the region. But Dubai couldn’t have happened without the less-commercial groundwork that has been put in place in Tehran, Beirut and Cairo, or in the absence of Doha’s and Abu Dhabi’s massive macro-cultural strategies, or, more fundamentally, had the credit and oil-price boom not happened. Dubai is a participative city. It belongs at any given time to those actively engaged with it.”

Kaelen may be one of the first cultural commentators on the gulf that actually gets bits of this bit of the world. She engages with the region’s developments on their own terms with her customary intelligence and insight (her cultural commentary in The National is essential reading).

The collective work of this generation, which is more or less the age of the UAE itself, gives the place depth and imagination, and more trenchantly, a past and a future, both of which are usually absent from the standard-issue stories on art in the Gulf.

Lamya Gargash

My actual words in our email exchange were:

I am not so sure that the Cairene / Levantine experiences inform the new guns’ plans so much as inform the Cairene / Levantine analysis of Dubai / Abu Dhabi / Doha / Sharjah developments.
The blank slate term captures an important truth. These cities are new. There is none (or much less) of the historical baggage. These cities draw on global experience (or if feeling generous global best-practice). Bilbao, London, New York, Vegas, Venice, Guggenheim, Tate, Louvre etc are much more potent influences / inspirations to the new Middle East than Amman Beirut Cairo Damascus. There is none of the parochial circular-head-butting of cairo + beirut (which means big things get done speedily here). There is also much less of the corresponding intellectual grounding (particularly in laissez-faire, market-driven Dubai). The new middle east is its own thing. It’s unique context and circumstance are often ignored or misunderstood by critics (who often attempt to interpret it through their foreign frames of reference). Saadiyat, Sharjah’s Biennial, Ashkal Alwan, Townhouse; there’s no point comparing these to each other. They are all important maybe equally so in their own individual ways irrespective of size / money etc.
So Dubai (and the gulf) has been a blank slate. It’s time to start wearing that term as a badge of honor.

Dubai’s role in all this is what its role has always been. A trading port. A hub. An exchange. The explosion in commercial art spaces could not have happened anywhere else in the region. But Dubai couldn’t have happened without the less-commercial groundwork that has been put in place in Tehran, Beirut and Cairo or in the absence of Doha and Abu Dhabi’s massive macro-cultural-strategies or more fundamentally had the credit and oil price boom not happened. It’s an ecosystem, mostly symbiotic, with each component feeding into or off another.
I am tremendously excited about the art and cultural developments in the UAE and Qatar. Proud even that such bold steps are being made. Mistakes will undoubtedly be made but I am optimistic that the sheer momentum and energy being unleashed will have have immense, positive impact.

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