H E Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani, Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of Qatar Museums Authority, during the inauguration of Golden Age exhibition. Below: An installation by Adel Abdessemed at the exhibition.
Doha: An exhibition of shocking art pieces by renowned artist Adel Abdessemed was launched at the Arab Museum of Modern Art (Mathaf) yesterday.
H E Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani, Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) inaugurated the exhibition titled L’âge d’or (Golden Age) that explores violence through different mediums of art.
The exhibits, that aim to denounce violence, consist of several videos, including one that shows a line of chickens against a wall on fire (Printemps) a video showing a baboon spelling out ‘Tutsi’ and ‘Hutu’, referring to the opposing ethnic groups in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The artist also employs the percussive device of a bare human foot repeatedly crushing objects of high symbolic significance, including a white rose (Ayai) and a human skull (Histoire de la folie).
Abdessemed, who is based in New York and Paris, is also the creator of the controversial ‘Coup de Tête’ sculpture that was recently installed by QMA’s Public Art Department on the Corniche.
The five-metre bronze sculpture refers to the moment when French football hero Zinedine Zidane head-butted Italian player Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final.
Talking to the press yesterday Curator Pier Luigi Tazzi said the artist wanted to show that our world was very ‘noisy’ and that we were surrounded by violence.
“The vessel, which is used to contain items, and the weapons, which break things, are put together in this piece,” Tazzi said, explaining the ‘short-circuit’ type nature of the piece.
The exhibition, which was designed and created strictly for Mathaf, also includes an object that contains several weapons as the base of a vessel. The main atrium of the exhibition space houses Le Vase abominable (2013), a 5/’2 metre sculpture, which consists of a tall brass pot positioned on top of an explosive device, a carefully crafted replica bomb.
Interestingly, one of the items of the exhibition depicts the sufferings of modern-day slavery and forced labour. The large-scale clay wall relief, entitled Shams and created in situ, depicts and explores the unseen workers of this world.
Tazzi said that Abdessemed was not trying to depict the conditions of a country in particular through that part of the exhibition but wanted to highlight the hard labour of those who construct the structures in which we live.
Mathaf’s Director, Abdellah Karroum, said: “Adel Adel Abdessemed’s exibtion is the firt major curatorial project produced by Mathaf I have the pleasure of opening since my recent appointment as the Director.”
Karroum said that L’âge d’or was a challenging show in many ways and one that will resonate with visitors from Qatar and around the world.
In the exhibition, Abdessemed transforms materials and imagery into unexpected and sometimes provocative artistic declarations, using a wide range of media, including drawing, video, photography, performance, and sculpture.
His inspiration comes from many sources — personal, historical, social, and political — and his work is sensitive and controversial, radical and mundane.
New works presented at Mathaf include the eponymous L ‘age ti’or, a bas-relief work of gold-plated brass depicting the artist’s four young daughters, and Julie, a life-size sculpture of the artist’s wife made from both salt stone from Siwa and a rock local to the region of Qatar.
A large-scale clay wall relief, entitled Shams and created in situ, depicts and explores the unseen workers of this world. Other new sculptures include La Chine est proche, a bicycle fashioned from camel bone; and East of Eden, groupings of knives thrust into the ground.
The Peninsula
