Two exhibitions that examine human-landscape relations as they appear in contemporary art practices are part of the NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Art Gallery’s new year’s programme. Maya Allison, the chief curator at the university and executive director of the NYUAD Art Gallery, stated, “We humans have a complicated relationship to our terrain, particularly in an era of catastrophic climate catastrophes. This year’s two exhibitions in our main gallery are a continuation of my curatorial investigation into this timely and vital theme in contemporary art.
“My thinking for our spring exhibition, The only constant, began with Tarek Al-Goussein’s Al Sawaber photo series from 2017, in which he captures the tension between a decaying sci-fi housing complex architecture, and its residents’ posters of a lost natural paradise. Alongside his project, I have selected a series of works in a range of media that speak to our fantasies and terrors around landscape: as refuge and paradise, as sustenance, as property, as energy source, as a threat, and as a register of our threat.”
The spring exhibition, the only constant, will run from February 22 through June 4 and feature pieces by Vivek Vilasini, Clifford Ross, Patty Chang, Gil Heitor Corteso, Sharon Lockhart, Taus Makhacheva, Haroon Mirza, and Tarek Al-Ghoussein.
The exhibition will have an opening reception on February 22nd and be open from 12 pm to 20 pm every day from Tuesday through Sunday.
Allison continued, “Then, this fall, the artist Blane De St. Croix will open a solo exhibition, for which he is developing new work that continues his dialogues with scientists, and considers the relationship of our desert to the arctic. Croix’s large-scale installations and artworks envision landscape through the lens of climate change. This exhibition follows on from a recent tour-de-force of De St. Croix’s work at MASS MoCA in the U.S., titled How to Move a Landscape. His method involves extended periods of research and exploration in places such as the Arctic Circle and the Gobi Desert. It is my hope that both exhibitions will be a place for reflection and dialogue that links to the larger context of 2023 as the UAE’s Year of Sustainability, as our country prepares to host COP28.”