Ten artists from across the Gulf have been nominated for the second Richard Mille Art Prize. The complete list is available here.
The artists’ works are exhibited at Louvre Abu Dhabi until March 19 and the winner will be announced on March 20.
The works of Afra Al Dhaheri at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Weigh line, shows fringes of rope hanging from a wall, each separating into a tangle of forked ends as they reach the ground. The similarity to human hair is intentional.
“Hair has a lot of meanings in different cultures,” she says. “I speak particularly from my point of view growing up in the United Arab Emirates where we [consider] hair is a private part of the body that we cover. I question these boundaries of privacy and that’s what led me to this work, where I look at cultural constructs and social conditioning. There are invisible boundaries that we collectively create and acknowledge their existence. The string curtain suggests these boundaries, and in other presentations of the work, visitors can wander around and below.
Al Dhaheri (b. 1988 in Abu Dhabi, UAE) began making hair art during a residency at Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, Cornwall. She adopted the bright colors of the modernists of the St Ives School, painting in blocks separated by wisps of her own hair. “They were colored because of my surroundings. But what I absorbed growing up in Abu Dhabi was [more muted, monotone] palette: it’s natural, it makes sense. This led me to start looking for my materials at construction sites and hardware stores. It is my environment. The rope she uses is thick and strong and is typically used in maritime industries.
The work is also a way of understanding the rapid transformation of Abu Dhabi. “Change is traumatic, whether good or bad. We need time to process it,” she said. “I wanted to slow down time in my studio by producing these long process pieces. It is a usual activity, like my grandmother who picked up the rice. Your mind isn’t really occupied with anything else. We spend three to four weeks untwisting the rope, but she remembers it being twisted. It has the ability to memorize shape, just like hair is still wavy after being distressed.
