Abu Dhabi – 
Warehouse421, the home-grown arts and design center dedicated to showcasing and nurturing creative production across the region, has recently launched its open call targeting creative practitioners and professionals from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia regions. Falling under the open call is the Curatorial Developmental Exhibition Program, which invites curators and encourages participants to develop a group exhibition and publication on ‘Future Perfect: Catastrophe and the Contemporary’. The deadline for submitting the applications is July 3, 2021. Catch Total Landscaping and Mina Zayed: Reflections on Past Futures on its final weekend at Warehouse421. Total Landscaping is curated by a diverse group of artists and focuses on investigating how plant life is commonly understood, encountered, represented and consumed in the Gulf and within similar emergent urban formations across the global south. The Mina Zayed: Reflections on Past Futures exhibition attempts to document Mina Zayed historically, anthropologically, and architecturally. Through the works of 11 artists, the exhibition sheds light on the context of Mina Zayed through the tools of narrative photography. Both exhibitions will end on July 4, 2021.
Curatorial Developmental Exhibition Program (FUTURE PERFECT: Catastrophe and the Contemporary)
Applications open: May 16 until July 3, 2021
The program will start in August 2021
Warehouse421 and the Bombay Institute for Critical Analysis and Research (BICAR) invite curators from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia regions to propose a group exhibition and publication on ‘Future Perfect: Catastrophe and the Contemporary’. Future perfect is a perspective of the future on what the past (our present) will have been if we do not think, act, and create in the here and now of contemporary catastrophe. The curatorial development program will entail rigorous study, artist and artwork selection, and writing on the future perfect, a tense introduced with modern science’s revolutionary break from ‘animism’ and the contemporary aesthetic turn to perspective.
The successful curator/curatorial collective will receive a curatorial fee of AED20,000, in addition to a fully produced exhibition. The selected curator/curatorial collective will participate in a structured program in the English language, which will take place from August 2021 until February 2022 with specific deliverables, including a weekly colloquium/workshop of reading, discussion, and presentation with invited and selected philosophers, historians, artists, curators, critics, and creative writers working on the theme of ‘Future Perfect: Catastrophe and the Contemporary’; and an independent collaboration with BICAR and Warehouse421 faculty and staff to hone the project and realize its publication and exhibition, scheduled to open in February 2022 at Warehouse421.
Colloquium Guest Speakers and Participants include Ala Younis, Bijoy Jain, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Raqs Media Collective, Rohini Devasher, and Walid Sadek.
Those who apply and are not accepted to exhibit and publish can choose to be considered for participation in the colloquium. Anyone from the humanities, social sciences or arts can apply to participate in the colloquium only.
The full application, including all supplemental materials, must be submitted online via https://warehouse421.submittable.com/submit. The deadline for submitting the applications is July 3, 2021.
Exhibition: Total Landscaping
Date: April 10, 2021 – July 4, 2021
Using an ethnographic approach, Gareth Doherty explores diverse forms of knowledge that constitute landscape architecture. Each of Doherty’s publications, including Paradoxes of Green: Landscapes of a City-State, expands the limits and scope of landscape architectural theory and design by considering human ecology alongside environmental and aesthetic concerns. Doherty’s research broadens discussions on ethnography and participatory methods by asking how a socio-cultural perspective can inspire design innovations. Consequently, his work challenges and expands the canons upon which we understand landscape architecture.
Total Landscaping investigates the ways in which plant life is commonly understood, encountered, represented and consumed in the Gulf, and within similar emergent urban formations across the global south. It focuses on instances when the unruly vitality of flora is arrested in the service of capitalism and politics, a process that abstracts and reduces it to a color, a verb and an image. Participating artists include: Layan Attari, Iftikhar and Elizabeth Dadi, GCC, Mohamed Khalid, Ho Rui An
Hind Mezaina (with Todd Reisz), Farah Al-Qasimi, Stephanie Syjuco, and Yee I-Lann.
Mina Zayed: Reflections on Past Futures
Date: February 6, 2021 – July 4, 2021
Mina Zayed: Reflections on Past Futures is produced in partnership with GPP as part of Warehouse421’s Exhibitions Developmental Program, which includes workshops that guide the artists through concept and creativity, execution and editing, installation and space consideration, as well as text production.
Participating artists include Aisha AlNoaimi, Augustine Paredes, Catherine Donaldson, Fatema Al Fardan, Lateefa Almazrooei, Lena Kassicieh, Lara Rudar, Mansour Al-Heera, Mazna Almazrouei, Maryam Al Huraiz, and Sandra Zarneshan.
