Mathaf: a space to challenge the story of Arab modernism

26 November 2010

BEIRUT: Patterns of art production and consumption vary the world over. It’s not unnatural to compare and contrast the arts infrastructure – institutional and critical, education and market – of Europe and America to what exists elsewhere. Usually discrepancies arise.

For the casual observer, for instance, “Arab art” or the “art of the MENA region” exists because in the 1990s Western curators began to exhibit a handful of artists from this region and, somewhat later, international buyers decided MENA art was worth collecting.

Partly because the late-20th century artists of this region have got so much more international attention than their forebears, interest in earlier, “modern,” Arab art has grown.

It has been the conceptual focus of artist Walid Raad’s first exhibition in the Middle East and the subject of an ongoing research project led by curators Rasha Salti and Kristine Khouri.

Yet a museum has never been established with the goal of collecting and showcasing this patrimony, leaving the work itself obscure, if not invisible, to the public.

So there are legitimate reasons for artists and art historians to be interested in the announcement that, on December 30, the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) will launch its Arab Museum of Modern Art, Mathaf.

Mathaf (Museum) is the latest project to be presided over by QMA chair Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. A well-known figure on the region’s cultural landscape, she has presided over the creation of Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art and provided the temporary institutional basis of the Doha-Tribeca Film Festival.

For the time being, Mathaf will be lodged in a two-story, 5,500-square-meter structure – formerly a school in Doha’s Education City – which has got a facelift by French architect Jean-François Bodin. The collection itself is comprised of over 6,000 works (mostly paintings on canvas and paper) generated from the 1840s to the present.

These works were originally assembled by Sheikh Hassan bin Mohammad bin Ali al-Thani, the vice chair of QMA, for his private collection. The product of over two decades of accumulation, the collection was adopted by the Qatar Foundation, until the QMA took up the Mathaf project.

Sceptical observers question how appropriate it is to locate a museum like Mathaf in a country whose contribution to modern Arab art is as marginal as that of Qatar.

Sheikh Hassan acknowledges that Qatar has not been at the forefront of contemporary artistic practice and says that one of Mathaf’s goals is to involve the younger generation of artists within that practice.

“Personally,” he says, “I’m not satisfied with the state of Qatari art. We have four good artists. But Mathaf is not just for Qataris. It’s for the whole of the Middle East because there is no museum that represents the whole of the region.

“So we are focused on the region as a whole but I’m also focussed on Qatar. We find the contemporary movement throughout the world, but in Qatar it’s still classic. What we’d like to create is an institution that teaches art.

“Truly this is something that’s very important to us. We’re involved very heavily in museums and in collecting, but art as a movement is quite weak in Qatar and we’re not comfortable with this,” adds Sheikh Hassan.

In the last decade or so, the oil-wealthy states of the Gulf have undertaken immense investment in cultural production and representation. Film festivals and art fairs have been launched in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Christie’s and Southeby’s auctions have become commonplace there.

The Emirati capital has also formed business relationships with the Guggenheim and Louvre museums and planned the Sheikh Zayed National Museum and a Maritime Museum, all destined for the cultural enclave called Saadiyat Island (“Island of Happiness”).

Casual observers wonder whether this investment is an expression of political ambition by a different means. Sheikh Hassan demurs.

“If there is a political agenda within culture,” he smiles, “it will be less than in any other sector. Abu Dhabi … in my opinion, is in a hurry to create culture. This is good. The next generation will see this culture and will learn from it. This is a positive thing.

“As for Qatar, I know the mentality of my country … The emir wanted to put culture on the government agenda. Museums are a particularly important part of culture. The vision is clear and the plan has been in place for a long time, since 1990, but it really started after Sheikh Hamid became emir in 1995.

Thankfully, in culture we have nothing to do with politics. Where politics separates people, culture brings them together,” he laughs. “Not like football!”

He says that at this time Qatar isn’t interested in cultivating any Emirati-style art fairs.

“We encouraged Arab art in Europe and we created a market for it … So now we have buyers and sellers but no museum. There aren’t any critics who discuss it properly. This is one of the goals of the museum … We’re not looking to become an art market. Southeby’s has started in Qatar … If people want to do this for monetary gain, we encourage them, but we have nothing to do with that.”

Mathaf will open in grand style at the end of 2010 with three separate exhibitions. The main inaugural show is “Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art.”

Comprised of highlights from the museum collection, the show will feature works by more than 100 artists that are seen as “representing pivotal experiments in aesthetics.”

The goal if “Sajjil” (literally the act of recording) is to contribute “to a renegotiation of the positions of Arabs to and in modernity. It acknowledges the multiplicity of experiences that form Arab modern art and emphasizes the several common moments that justify a collective identity. It is organized around several themes that overlap and intersect, where ideas cut across chronology, and discontinuity and rupture are part of the story.”

The show is the work of guest curator and consultant Nada Shabout (associate professor of art history at the University of North Texas and director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Institute), Wassan al-Khudhairi (Mathaf’s chief curator and acting director) and Deena Chalabi, Mathaf’s head of strategy.

“We’re not inventing a new canon,” Shabout said. “We’re challenging the old canon. We’re re-evaluating modernism, not modernism in the Arab world. We don’t believe in parallel modernisms.”

Alongside “Sajjil,” Mathaf will present two side exhibitions in a new temporary exhibition space on the grounds of the Museum of Islamic Art.

Also curated by Shabout, “Interventions” focuses on the work of five major modern Arab artists who have been “instrumental in introducing and negotiating modernism in the Arab world, and remain productive and influential today.”

The show places works from Mathaf’s permanent collection alongside newly commissioned work from each artist.

A third show, “Told/Untold/Retold,” curated by Sam Bardouil and Till Fellrath features newly commissioned work by 23 contemporary artists of Arab heritage.

“Through the central theme of storytelling, the exhibition attests to art not as a finished product for contemplation but as a site of navigation to be explored.”

“There’s a popular narrative of art in this region,” said Shabout, “based on emulation followed by self-exploration.

“Now we’re in a position to challenge that narrative.”