When it comes to art, Dubai is the Mecca of the Middle East, with the Madinat Jumeirah replacing the Kaaba. For the past few years, the world’s art buyers have been coming to take in the sumptuous exoticism of the city’s art fair, ArtDubai. The region’s hottest of its kind, ArtDubai is becoming an ever more popular destination for art world luminaries. Francois Pinault, Les Rubells, Hans Ulrich Obrist are just a few of the VIPs that paid a visit to the sandy Emirates to see something besides its oil wealth and obscene malls.
But let’s get back to photography.
This year sees relatively few photographs on display, with a handful of standouts, like Kader Attia’s fabulous Harragas, les damnés de la mer (Krinzinger, sold for 50,000€). The photograph is a reinterpretation of Géricault’s Raft of Medusa, composed, in the style of Rashid Rana, of thousands of small images showing African immigrants seeking paradise in Europe. In Géricault’s time, Europeans had just discovered their own paradise in Africa…
You can read the full text of this article by Arthur Guéret on the French version of La Lettre.
