Second solo show in Bahrain. Work will include paintings and sculptures. 

Expressions of love differ between cultures. In the Middle East, a sense of secrecy and shaming often underlies our experiences with romantic love, particularly in adolescence. For many, an internal struggle arises when conventions advocate the suppression of such a powerful and natural emotion, resulting in frustration, detachment and the development of code as a means to communicate it. This exhibition aims to explore the experience of first love, in many ways universally relatable. It is our teenage years that encapsulate our first desire to be loved and to feel wanted. It’s then that we learn that the only way we are able to test love is through the dramatic sacrifices we are forced to make in its name. And often, the shame we are taught to feel during such a pivotal time in our development, shapes our understanding of love in the present.

Crushed remains coated with a rainbow gradient of colour, represent the foundation of the work presented and it is through these objects that Aysha Al Moayyed explores these formative years. Diary entries written by an Arab teenage girl allow us to experience ones first introduction to life, death and drama.

Second solo show in Bahrain. Work will include paintings and sculptures. 

http://gallery21bahrain.com

ArtBAB 2018, Art Bahrain Across Borders, is Bahrain’s foremost international art fair with the mission to attract leading international galleries to the Kingdom, so powering the expansion of the art market whilst facilitating the development of local Bahraini artists. In this sense, ArtBAB is the bridge between Bahrain and the world, and the narrative of each fair will reflect this.

For more information press here.

#EXSTRANGE is a collection of artworks conceived by contemporary artists to be encountered, auction-style, by the passersby in one the largest global* marketplaces on the web

Have you ever thought that your art patron could be a stranger, a passerby in the realm of agglomerated commodities online? While browsing through the variety of categories offered by one of the pioneering online marketplaces in search for something to buy, this stranger might stumble across your artwork and pause her search.

Who will this stranger be? What form of exchange could take place beside the seller-to-buyer transaction, the fundraiser-to-backer association, or the peer-to-peer swap?

Over the course of a 7-day auction-as-artwork, the relationship with that stranger could take unexpected forms. She might become a more intimate figure to you, regardless of geographical location, class, education and belief system; or she might remain an anonymous onlooker.

The web-based platform on which you will present your artwork is plainly commercial, promoting quantifiable exchanges with clear transactional language. Yet this system made of categories, rating and feedback could be based on a different rhetoric; one that is countercurrent and goes beyond the celebration of the commodified digital artefact, or the mere promotion of creative practices hidden behind the mantra of sustainability.

What would you offer to that passerby? How would you talk to her?

The category you will choose for your auction will become your exhibition context; perhaps helping you with the dilemma of labelling your practice using the commonly accepted definitions of medium-specific, post-media or inter-media art for your public. The passerby, unaware of your art, will be navigating through the categories of the marketplace—from Tickets & Experiences and Pet Supplies to Wearable Devices or Wholesales & Jobs—, seeking for that something that they delineate and she wants to possess.

How would you define a relationship that takes place in this system of classification—as built on trust, fiction, or provocation?

The #EXSTRANGE website will function as an aggregator of all the artists’ work conceived to be encountered, auction-style, by the passersby of this online marketplace. It will be a database that will keep your artwork in the archives of the online public realm, preserving your exchanges with the strangers who browse for transactional commodities online.

We wish you best of luck with your auction-as-artwork, The #EXSTRANGE** team

* Please note that the ‘global’ operations of this marketplace are located in 27 countries only. More details at

http://pages.ebay.in/globaltrade/international.html

** #EXSTRANGE is organised to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the project eBayaDay, which was devised to explore the use of an online marketplace as a curated art venue. 

15/15
The Shaikh Ebrahim Center Celebrates 15 Years

Exhibition dates
December 2016 – March 2017 (exact dates to be confirmed)

- PROJECT BRIEF & INVITATION -

Background information
In January 2017, the Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Center for Culture and Research will be celebrating its 15th anniversary. On this occasion, the center will host the exhibition 15/15 – commissioning 15 artists to create individual site specific projects in 15 of the restored historical Bahraini houses belonging to the Shaikh Ebrahim Center. The exhibition will be the launch event in a series of events celebrating this important milestone in the history of the center.

Exhibition concept
The exhibition 15/15 is a unique opportunity to examine Bahrain’s cultural and architectural heritage through the prism of contemporary artistic practice. Located in traditional urban conglomerations of Muharraq and Manama, the houses of the Shaikh Ebrahim Center present a unique point of departure for examining the interplay between traditions and heritage, which form the bedrock of our identity, and contemporary practice, which probes, questions, and looks into the future.

Project details
Artists are invited to create new and site-specific artworks Inspired by the history of the individual buildings of the Shaikh Ebrahim Center, their architecture, or the personalities/missioms/crafts to whom the buildings are dedicated. The individual projects should have a direct connection to the building, forming a response or dialogue.

In general, houses should be left as they are, minimizing any movement of furniture and artworks. Removal of any items from the buildings is strictly limited and subject to approval on a case by case basis.
Once individual artists have responded to the invitation, each artist will be allocated a specific house. Unfortunately, requests for specific houses cannot be accommodated.