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.
People are always curious to find out what the soft brown surface of Zeinab Alhashemi Camouflage sculpture series is made from. It’s camel skin, an unusual material that she says “introduces the idea of merchandise, the history of camels and the culture of camel herders into the contemporary art scene.”
Previous works in the series have been installed in spectacular locations: in the Saudi desert at AlUla and in front of the pyramids of Egypt. There the camel skin blends into the landscape – and may even be encountered by a passing pack animal – but at Louvre Abu Dhabi it stands out starkly. In the pyramids commission, Alhashemi created a wire-frame obelisk only partially covered in skin, a reference to the Aswan obelisk which cracked while being carved and remained unfinished. At the Louvre, she produced an equally incomplete column, The fourth pillarmatching those who support the gallery, a discordant combination of artificial and natural.
Born in the United Arab Emirates in 1988, Alhashemi lives and works in Dubai. Like many artists of her generation, she was inspired by the region’s turbulent transformation. She has “acquired an interest in all things industrial”, subsuming materials, color palette and construction techniques into her practice.
At Zeinab Alhashemi Camouflage: the fourth pillar (2022) at Louvre Abu Dhabi
Photo: Augustine Paredes – Seeing things. Courtesy of Department of Culture and Tourism, Abu Dhabi. Artwork © the artist
Alhashemi did not consider becoming an artist until a car accident rendered her unable to work. She was always creative but associated it with drawing and painting: an encounter with conceptual art validated her desire to create larger-scale works that did not need to be done by hand. She now uses multiple mediums in her installations, often requiring them to be made by multiple workshops. A previous work exhibited at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Metamorphic (2018), combine layers of reinforced wire mesh with delicate squares of stained glass.
