Participants in a Summer Arts Camp at Jameel Arts Centre.

Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer

Jameel Arts Centre Dubai’s summer/autumn 2022 programme features more than 50 artists from 14 countries through group and solo exhibitions and site-specific and digital commissions.

It is accompanied by a new creative careers festival and educational programmes — plus the launch of the groundbreaking World Weather Network.

The roster of new group exhibitions includes proposals for a Memorial to Partition (till Feb. 19, 2023), a group show curated by Murtaza Vali, which brings together presentations by 20 artists and writers that revisit the traumatic shifts resulting in the modern nation-states of South Asia.

The exhibition features both highly established artists and emerging voices showing in the Middle East for the first time.

An Ocean in Every Drop (Sept. 21 — Mar. 26, 2023), the title of which is taken from a poem by Rumi, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are an ocean in every drop”, is also a group exhibition, occupying the first floor galleries at the Jameel, bringing together works by 11 artists from around the globe that explore human relationships to water through myth, spirituality, folk traditions and lived experiences.

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Artist’s Rooms (Nov. 9 — May 14, 2023) is a series of solo exhibitions by influential, innovative artists, with a particular focus on practitioners from the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Ayesha Sultana in Gallery 1 brings together recent works on paper and canvas; the exhibition explores her longstanding engagement with the materiality and everyday iconography of her home city of Dhaka.

Lahore-based artist Risham Syed in Gallery 2 offers an exhibition that comprises her major installation The Seven Seas (2012).

It is a series of large-scale quilts depicting 20th-century maps of various port cities that were strategically located on the colonial European trade route — including Ras Al Khaimah, UAE; Izmir, Turkey and Kandy, Sri Lanka, among others.

 Taking part in a workshop in Jameel Arts Centre.

Paris and Beirut-based multimedia artist Daniele Genadry in Gallery 3 is anchored around her painting Blind Light (2017), with new works based on her recent research in la Rochelle, France and the Grand Canyon, USA. Her practice focuses on the relationship between painting and photography.

Library Circles is a series of research, talks and experimental interventions by UAE practitioners in the Jameel Library and Jameel Arts Centre (from Sept. 14). The programme focuses on “thinking in public”.

For the Fall iteration of Library Circles, a research display by artist Rashed Qurwash is being presented. Qurwash investigates the Jaddaf neighbourhood in Dubai and the practices it had once held through images, documents and interviews conducted with people who have occupied the area in various capacities.

Jameel Library Commissions hosts Khalid Mezaina and the upcoming digital commission features a study of regional textile and talismanic practices with entries released fortnightly starting from July 15, on Jameel Arts Centre’s website.

The project explores themes and techniques on surface design, ceremonial textiles, costumes for the stage and the magical world of talismans.

Art Jameel joins 27 other arts organisations across the world to form the World Weather Network (June 21 — June 21, 2023).

Art Jameel’s station, located in the desert gardens, library and public spaces of the Jameel, explores atmospheric humidity (a central climatic marker of the Arabian Gulf), accompanied by on-site air-to-water generators, providing visitors with fresh drinking water and insights into daily humidity and weather conditions.

Narrative podcasts, released throughout the year, explore themes such as The Threshold, Sweat and Labour and Technofutures.

Learning plays a prominent part in Art Jameel’s initiatives and programmes begin at primary ages and continue through to post-graduate level, and include community events open to all.

The 2022 Summer Arts Camp (July 4 — 8) is a five-day programme that offers children aged 8-12 the opportunity for immersive hands-on learning and the development of new creative skills — from painting and ceramics to printmaking and performance — structured around maker mornings and animation afternoons.

Participants at the end of the week will have learned an array of art-making techniques with an animated film of their own on their phone or laptop, created via an exploration of creative thinking, storytelling and self-expression.

Creative Career Days: So, You Want to Work in the Arts? (Oct. 23 and 24) takes place at Jameel Arts Centre and is the UAE’s inaugural Creative Career Days festival.

It is devoted to exploring sustainable careers in the arts, designed to inform and inspire high school and university students to the breadth of possibilities in the arts and culture sector, match-making young people with the industry and its know-how.

The free programme includes meet-and-greet and booths manned by leading UAE arts organisations and universities; behind-the-scenes tours of the museum; practical and inspirational talks and workshops led by established artists and industry leaders; and information on career-enhancing residencies, internships and volunteer opportunities.

Day one is open to teens and students and their families; day two is for group visits by schools and colleges.

The ongoing Artist’s Garden, Desert is a Forest by Namrata Neog and Sunoj D, culminates with a new online hybrid platform, between a publication and a website.

It showcases the research conducted for the project, including interviews with experts in UAE botany, farming and local communities holding traditional knowledge of local fauna and flora.

Currently on view at Jameel Arts Centre are also Fahd Burki: Daydreams (till Oct. 9); Taus Makhacheva: A Space of Celebration (till Aug. 14) and Library Circles: Salma Serry (till Aug. 3).