This Emirati visual artist is representing UAE at the 59th Venice Biennale

The Emirati visual artist Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, an influential member of the UAE’s now-historic avant-garde, is representing the United Arab Emirates at the 59th Venice Biennale that opens to the public on April 23 and runs until November 27.

The world’s most prestigious and longest-running survey of contemporary art dates back to 1895 when the mayor of Venice decided to give exhibition space to artists meeting at Caffè Florian on St Mark’s Square. The first nation to build a pavilion at the Venice Biennale was Belgium in 1907, followed by Great Britain, Germany and Hungary in 1909. One hundred years later, in 2009, the UAE became the first Gulf nation to present a national pavilion.

For decades, the international art fair in Venice has been a fundamental indicator of new developments in the contemporary art field. The celebrated arts extravaganza spreads from the Arsenale — a complex of former shipyards and armouries — and the Giardini, a meandering garden anchored by its Central Pavilion. Eighty National Pavilions can be found within the two venues and sometimes in palazzos farther afield. This year, five countries participate for the first time: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman and Uganda.

Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim has been picked to fill the UAE Pavilion in the Arsenale — Sale d’Armi. He was born in Khor Fakkan in 1962, nine years before the UAE was founded in 1971. A significant influence on the UAE’s art scene, he belongs to the group of experimental and conceptual artists formed in the early 1980s when he started his groundbreaking artistic career. His inspiring practice is bound to various mediums, ranging from painting to sculpture, from installation to land art.

I find enchantment in Mohamed’s work, a spontaneous art expressing a sense of wonder and admiration for the natural world and the creatures inhabiting the environment. That is also deducible from his new Venice Biennale art installation titled Between Sunrise and Sunset, curated by Maya Allison, Executive Director of New York University Abu Dhabi Art Gallery and also curator of the National Pavilion UAE 2022.

The show title references Mohamed’s hometown, Khor Fakkan, located on the east coast of the UAE between the Shumayliyah Mountains and the Arabian Sea. Rising to an altitude of 1,023 metres at Al Jebel al Hilqah, Khor Fakkan is a hidden paradise surrounded by mountains on three sides and the ocean on the fourth.The artist tells wknd. about his deep connection with Khor Fakkan and the influences that have shaped his art.

You said that the Venice exhibition demonstrates “the tension between Khor Fakkan’s colourful bright mornings, when the sun rises over the ocean, and the disappearance of colours in mid-afternoon when the sun drops behind the mountains that loom over my hometown.” You never see the sunset in Khor Fakkan. “Still, we can imagine it on the other side of the UAE,” you said. Can you further explain how Khor Fakkan affected your creativity?

My work arises directly from my environment, wherever I am. As Khor Fakkan is the home where I have lived my whole life, it’s a primary source for my work. There’s no doubt that Khor Fakkan was my main inspiration for this exhibition. However, my art derives from each environment I am in, wherever I might be in the world.

What does it mean to you to represent the UAE at the Venice Biennale?

My appointment is a great honour and comes with great responsibility. I am thrilled to be engaging with some of the world’s most intriguing artists and concepts. The Venice Biennale is the ultimate platform where artists from all the different fields of the art world come together to showcase, discuss and be part of meaningful global cultural discourse. I look forward to representing my country alongside curator Maya Allison and being part of this dialogue.

This year’s edition of the Venice Biennale takes us on an imaginary journey through metamorphoses of the body. You present colourful papier-mâché sculptures and new works of human-sized, abstract, and organic sculptural forms. Could you anticipate a message behind those pieces? Are they related to some of the Biennale’s main themes, such as ‘Bodies and Their Metamorphoses’ or ‘The Connection between Bodies and the Earth’?

Yes. I was glad to see the resonance between the themes of the 59th International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia, titled The Milk of Dreams — a name borrowed from a book by Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington. The new work I present is a cluster of biomorphic forms suggesting a transformation process. Because they are similar in size to human bodies and made from earthy materials, they share many points of thematic connection with the Biennale. There will be multiple sculptures that make a single work. The installation colours move from rich saturation to black and white, an effect that resonates with the exhibition’s title. It will mean something different to each person; the message is for the viewer to discover. I am interested in understanding other people’s interpretations of my work, so I like to leave my work open-ended. That said, often, my work derives from my connection to the local environment of Khor Fakkan and the local materials I have worked with for almost four decades. It evolves from what I see in the space between the pupil and the eyelid.

You work with local materials — rock, copper wire, Earth, clay, leaves, wood, stone, etc. Nature from Khor Fakkan helps you trust yourself more, you said. Can you explain this concept?

It goes back to my learning to be honest with myself as I create my work. The materials of my environment are part of that. Honesty leads to trust.

Does your oeuvre evolve through defined conceptual units that strive for harmony?

The harmony is already there in the materials. From the materials, my concepts emerge as units that express that harmony. There is no lost harmony.

When you create, do you make a world of symbiosis where man is not at the top of the pyramid?

The artwork may have forms that reflect nature or other references from my surroundings. I create my symbols, shapes, and structures, so that people themselves can interpret them.

Your mother country is an ultra-modern society. Through your art, how do you express the dichotomy of nature and a hypermodern world?

This duality exists everywhere — in Venice, we also have the traditional and the modern. Where I live has always been open to the world, as a port town with traders passing through for centuries.