Enter the #LivingRoom with Lawrie Shabibi

Screenshot of clipping about Farhad Ahrania’s online content direct from his studio

Lawrie Shabibi, one of Dubai’s premier galleries has collated some fascinating online content into what they are calling the #LivingRoom - a series of artist, curator and art world interviews, studio visits, virtual exhibitions and walkthroughs, both new and archival, that aim to connect us in a more intimate way during the time of Covid-19.

They added the slogan: “From our living room to yours we hope that you stay safe, in touch and continue to be inspired.” I really like this concept, so I wanted to share some of the content here.

Posts are appearing on their instagram site of relevant content and “isolation responses” from their artists. These include a one-minute excerpt from an 8 minute video Archi Sickness, made in 2011 by Paris-based, Mounir Fatmi. Archi Sickness shows aerial views of the cities of New York and Las Vegas and images of medical autopsies taken from American police TV shows, combined in a rapid and halting montage and set to the sound of interspersed frequency modulations emitted by some communications device, progressively composing the ominous soundtrack of a thriller movie. The video addresses the treatment of violence in the media and on television and questions its nature and origins, as well as the relation of society and individuals to that violence.

Lawrie Shabibi’s instagram page showing the brand new work by Asad Faulwell’s Les Femmes d’Alger. Captured April 5, 2020.

There is also a new work by Los Angeles-based Asad Faulwell. A new work from Asad's series Les Femmes d’Alger made in March 2020 was shown exclusively on the instagram page. This series is characterised by patterned surfaces and collages, full of colour and texture and depicting female portraits that are an homage to the forgotten Algerian women who fought alongside their male counterparts in the war of independence from French occupation between 1954-1962. These portraits are taken from news clippings and periodicals researched by Faulwell that capture the politically charged events in their lives - such as their trials in French courts or the moments after their pardon.

There is also a text from art writer and curator Sara Raza who curated Clapping with Stones: Art & Acts of Resistance last year at the Rubin Museum in New York. In this exhibition, Raza included Shahpour Pouyan's 15 stoneware glazed ceramics - My Place Is the Placeless (2016–2019) illustrates Pouyan’s ongoing interest in documenting his personal origins, inspired by a DNA test he took in response to rigid perceptions of ethnic labels and identities. Pouyan received updates from the test in 2019, revealing discrepancies with the initial results, including a lack of ancestral ties to the Middle East which he documented with fifteen new ceramic domes representing places such as Manchuria, Korea, and the Caucasus Mountains. Pouyan’s objects reveal the paradoxical nature of returning to the idea of origins, whereby the language of art becomes a useful tool in questioning systems of power and truth. 

Lastly, the current exhibition in the Alserkal Avenue space is available through virtual reality on this link

Lawrie Shabibi Gallery, Unit 21, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1, Dubai. Sat to Thurs 10am to 6pm. Tel: (04) 3469906. lawrieshabibi.com