Even though I have been the Art Editor of Alef, an indigenous pan-Arab art and fashion magazine, since it began five issues ago, I had never been to Dubai until this week. The occasion - XVA, Dubai's foremost tastemaker space invited Alef to stage a show in one of the city's oldest houses, and after a little more than the usual preliminary nonsense and stress that accompanies curating a show, I set out to set up on Wednesday.
Because I assumed that sex and politics were cultural no-nos, I themed the show around food, which metaphorically can encompass both. The final menu of artists I've installed, each in a separate room off a sunny courtyard, consists of New York City Rivington Arm's Turkish artist Pinar Yolacan; American Jay Batlle, from Saatchi Online; Englishman Jonathan Gent; Iranian-born Sara Rahbar, from Saatchi Online; XVA curator and top Iranian artist Fereydoun Ave; Turkish-born Esma Pacal Turam (represented by Sara Tecchia Roma New York); Baghdad-born Iman Mahmud, from Saatchi Online, and Tehran-born Malekeh Nayiny, who currently has a project with Louis Vuitton in Paris.
Pinar Yolacan, Untitled, 2002
C-print, 40" x 32 3/8"
Included in my initial roster were Pinar Yolacan's photographs of women wearing bespoke garments which she makes from raw meat and Will Cotton's delectably dreamy paintings of candy and eye-candy cuties that exemplify the deeper underlying meanings of even the fluffiest food.
Also reflecting the theme was Jay Batlle. Jay and I became friends when I asked him to participate in "And Who Are You?" the show of Saatchi Online artists which I curated at Sara Tecchia Roma New York last December. Since then, I have become more and more of an admirer of his sharp, funny, smart work that plays on how food snobbery and food appreciation reflect class divisions. For this show, Jay wonderfully contributed a series of brilliant drawings that he made with wine, coffee, food coloring and ink on napkins, and added a sound installation featuring Tallulah Harlech, Lady Amanda Harlech's highly talented actress daughter, and himself.
Esma Pacal Turam
During my time with the Sara Tecchia Roma New York gallery, I also became smitten with Esma Pacal Turam's silicon sculptures, which resemble sugar when seen in natural light, and which cast charming shadows when strategically placed lamps shine on them.
Sara Rahbar, 'Oppression', 2007
Another incredible artist who I met through Saatchi Online, Sara Rabhar, made me very happy when she agreed to contribute four photographs of herself in traditional Iranian dress lying next to an open pomegranate, from her series titled "Oppression."
Amazingly, another ideal participant from my preliminary list, Malekeh Nayiny, was already an XVA artist. And although she has a Louis Vuitton show at the same time, her Hansel & Grentel series, which was perfectly matched for the theme, was already in the gallery and could be hung in one of the eight separate rooms reserved for the artists.
Malekeh Nayiny, from Hansel & Grentel series
With this artist list, and Herculean help from XVA and Alef's editor Paul de Zwart, Managing Editor Olivia Snaije and Mariam, our Editorial Assistant, I started to sort out shipping and the rest of the details. Up until the last minute, it was all a work in progress. At the last moment, Will Cotton's work could not be included, but Saatchi Online artist Iman Mahmud volunteered to send an installation.
Iman Mahmud
When Alef's Editorial Assistant booked my flight, I had to cut my post-Whitney Biennial recuperation time by a day in order to allow time to jet back to Oxford and hopefully pack enough conservative clothes to
keep me covered during the week.
All of my best clothes stay stored in New York, where I prefer not to look like a complete schlump, so most of my flight from home was spent stressing over what to wear to Dubai. Since I had spent the whole
previous week trying to convince my parents that Dubai was not Saudi Arabia, I had actually not understood that it is really closer in attitude to Rio or L.A. or even parts of France. So after my harrowing trip back to Oxford, I threw everything lady-like that I own, and that was clean, into my bag and headed to Heathrow.
While I was waiting to check-in to my Hyatt-like hotel near the Dubai airport, Jay happened to be doing the same beside me. I was so excited to see him that I hardly noticed his evident nervousness. "I have something to tell you," he says with uncharacteristic stiffness. I chirp some story at him and he tells me something benign and then we go to my room to chat while his room is made ready.
When we get in the elevator, Jay pronounces, with an evident effort to stay calm, "I have a lock on my bag." He then explains that he didn't have a lock when he left New York, and he was too suspicious of the lock
to actually confront customs, but he'd decided that the lock was not good.
We get to the room, put the bag on the bed, and both stare at it. It doesn't do anything. We don't either.
Then the phone rings, and I go to talk to reception and, in the meantime, Jay skillfully picks the lock, opens the bag (without the expected explosion) and starts shifting through his normal stuff. There's
nothing amiss.
When I get off the phone, I notice that I'm still alive. "It was like ripping off a band-aid," he explains. "I just got bored waiting."
But somehow we're still not completely settled. We call a cab and head off to the exhibition space to begin installing the art, but first I have to check out at my previous hotel, where I spent my first night. I leave my bag, laptop and friend in the car and tell him to wait. By the time I get out, either jetlag, early senility or sheer stupidity strikes and I forget that the car we'd taken was not a marked taxi but actually a tan sedan.
I decide that they might be driving around the block and stand at the hotel entrance waiting. Taxi after taxi after taxi pass. It is a moment that I will remember with awe and nostalgia every other day during my
trip, because taxis are actually impossible to find when one wants one. But for that moment, there was a torrent of taxis all pulling over to see whether I wanted to go somewhere else.
But I couldn't. My money, my passport, my computer and my friend/artist were missing. "They got Jay," was all I could think, though "they"remained vague in my mind.
I waited and stared trying to remember every movie I'd seen with anything close to a similar premise, from "The Man Who Knew Too Much" to "Hostel" and feeling greater and greater anxiety until I noticed the tan sedan to my left and went to the window.
Inside, Jay was desperately trying to engage the driver in a conversation about local cuisine and was much relieved to see me.
"I thought they got you," he told me. "I thought they got you," I replied.
Later, Sara and Olivia confirmed that the real deal was that we were both completely paranoid crazies. The "they" that actually got us was the American media's hysteria about the Middle East.
After we purged the paranoia from our systems, we found the most amazing, welcoming, festive and relaxed city imaginable. And started installing the show . . .
'Regional Delicacies: Alef's Art Mezze' is on until 31 March. For more information click here.
ANA FINEL HONIGMAN is a critic, PhD candidate in art history at Oxford University and Senior London Correspondent for the Saatchi Gallery's online magazine. She is Art Editor of Alef (alefmag.com/) and contributes regularly to such publications as Style.com, Grazia, Tank, Sleek and Harper's Bazaar.
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