Abu Dhabi diary

Lost for art

Local art is hard to find

“YES, yes, I turned left at the light, and passed the big pink house. Roundabout? What roundabout?” Once again, I'm lost. I am on my way to an exhibition of two Iraqi artists’ works at Qibab Art Gallery, one of the city’s few, which is located in a nondescript suburban villa.

Getting there proves a challenge. Not all roads have names, which means not all houses have addresses, which makes navigating the unknown blocks of suburbia difficult. This problem is exacerbated by a new crew of taxi drivers, part of a government-sponsored expansion of the city’s fleet, who don’t yet know the city. I struggle for about 20 minutes on the phone with the gallery’s owner, making U-turns and looking for unmarked streets as the taxi driver grumbles.

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When I finally find the gallery, its owner, Lamees Bazirgan, a stout Iraqi woman, welcomes me into the villa’s main floor, where the exhibition is taking place. Koranic verses emblazoned on wall hangings flutter above colourful ceramics decorated with Arabic script in the three rooms comprising the ground floor of the gallery.

Mrs Bazirgan owned a hair salon in Iraq, where she displayed works by her husband and his brother. When she emigrated to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in January, she decided to open a gallery here: not, she says, as a business, but as a symbol of her family’s appreciation of art, and the respite it has given them from the turbulence of Iraq. Simple enough—but in the UAE's tiny art scene, a commitment to local talent is exceptional.

Though exhibition centres and hotels host international art-exhibitions with increasing frequency, there exists no culture of nurturing or appreciating local artists. This is one of the only galleries showing the work of artists like Sarmed, a potter from Dubai who walks me through his collection.

The museum’s business manager, a gentle, young Iraqi woman, offers dates stuffed with dried apricots. I accept and realise a French couple has entered the gallery, along with a few Arab women. Mrs Bazirgan tells me the gallery sells works, but interest from the Emirati community is limited.

Given the government’s commitment to development, particularly in the arts (the Louvre and Guggenheim are both building branches here), the country will almost surely become a regional centre for art and culture. But the gap between that future and the current realities of this struggling art gallery are stark.

As I make my way out, Mrs Bazirgan tells me that she’s planning to put a sign on the main street to alert people of the gallery (and presumably help visitors like me find our way). I head to that street, a highway lined with palm trees, and realise the gallery is only a short walk from my apartment. Abu Dhabi could surely use more signs, and more galleries such as this one.

Monday

“HEYYA ‘alas-Salah” (“Come to prayer”), calls the muezzin from a mosque one street from my apartment. He rouses me from sleep: it is five in the morning. I toss and turn until his short, captivating call ends, and I fall asleep again.

When I finally rise from bed, I slip on some light clothing—a pair of capris, sandals, and a high-cut t-shirt and head out of my apartment building and into my neighbourhood, Khalidiya. Now that it is winter here in Abu Dhabi, the sleepy capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the sweltering heat has finally subsided, making it possible to walk around on foot without sweating profusely. The sky is clear, as usual.

In this urban part of Khalidiya, with its high-rise apartment buildings, the contrasts are vast. The sweet smell of nargili, or water pipes, seeps through the tinted windows of Ghawar Coffee Shop, where Emirati men dressed in dishdashas—white, traditional garments that somehow always manage to look crisp—watch football on big screen TVs. A high pitched whine from a carpentry shop almost blocks out the honking war between two SUVs, battling nose-to-nose over who will reverse and who will continue forward on my narrow street.

ShutterstockAusterity, UAE-style

I pass my laundrette, where Yousef, the Pakistani man who recently bleached my pink-collared shirt white, charges about 3 or 4 dirhams (around $1) for each piece of clothing he dry-cleans. A crowd of Sri Lankan men loiter outside their favorite eatery near the heavily irrigated grass where a group of construction workers rest. They spend most of their time hard at work in an open pit behind my apartment building, which will soon be home to yet another skyscraper.

Signs advertise women’s salons on the buildings above me, but only men’s salons occupy the brightly-lit stores at ground level, open to the gazes of those who pass. Indeed, I still draw stares walking unaccompanied and uncovered through this neighborhood. The only other women I pass are a Filipina worker, and a woman wearing an abaya, a long black garment, and a sheila, a headscarf that rests loosely on the head, which most Emirati women wear.

I hail a taxi and head for the Hilton Hotel, on the Corniche. I pass mounds of sand, which signify the beginning of yet another development project along the Arabian Gulf’s beachfront. An enormous, colorful billboard of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the UAE’s first ruler, dominates the road. I arrive at the Hilton a few minutes and a dollar later.

Inside the hotel’s beach club, expatriate Arab and western families lounge around in bathing suits, swimming and eating hamburgers and shawarma from the hotel’s outdoor restaurants. With a couple of American friends, I rent a small motorboat and head out into the water, guided by a Sudanese man named Omar.

The skyscrapers of downtown Abu Dhabi, dominated by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority building—a large, blue structure that houses the world’s largest sovereign-wealth fund—recede behind us as we make our way towards some of the UAE’s roughly 200 tiny islands in the Arabian Gulf.

Ahead of us, a strip of reclaimed land houses Marina Mall, one of the many shrines to air-conditioned shopping on a grand scale here in the Emirates. Also on the peninsula, Heritage Village, a small cultural centre that depicts life here some 50 years ago, sits near the largest flagpole in the world (literally), a testament to this country’s obsession with size and grandeur.

We curve west around the reclaimed land, revealing a host of newly developed, luxurious villas on the water. Emirates Palace (pictured), the government’s $3 billion baby, with its pale pink archways and purple domes and archways, dominates the west side of Abu Dhabi. Compared to everything else in view, it looks almost austere.

The shores pass further and further from view, and we come upon deserted islands, some protected by the government, some open to the public, some studded with the palaces of sheikhs. A lonely yacht or two passes us as we anchor for a swim in the shallow, greenish-blue water.