Tammam Azzam, “The Syrian, I,” 2012. (Photos courtesy of Abu Dhabi Festival)

By India Stoughton| The Daily Star

ABU DHABI: A woman walking briskly through the gallery’s snaking exhibition layout, paying scant attention to the work around her, stopped suddenly in her tracks at the sight of Saudi artist Ahmed Matar’s photograph “Let It Be Passed,” forcing the lady behind her to swerve wildly in order to avoid a collision.

“Wow,” the first woman could be heard to exclaim.

Then, “I love it. I love it!”

A dramatic reaction to a photograph, maybe, but one that suggests “View from Inside: Contemporary Arab Video, Photography and Mixed Media Art” is managing to reach its viewers. The image, an enormous color shot of two young boys pressed up against a fence on a hill overlooking the Islamic holy city of Mecca – a sea of minarets lit up like candles in the night – was part of an exhibition originally dreamt up by FotoFest.

A smaller version of the show, conceived by the nonprofit organization based in Houston, Texas, is on show at Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace as part of the annual Abu Dhabi Festival. A selection of work by 49 Arab artists was exhibited under the same title in Houston last year, as part of the 15th International FotoFest Biennial.

The Abu Dhabi version of “View from Inside” features a diverse selection of work by 38 artists. Curated by Karin Adrian von Roques and Wendy Watriss, the show provides a broad overview of contemporary photographic and new media practices throughout the Arab world.

A small showcase of work by local artists from the UAE, entitled “Emirati Insights,” is being staged in parallel to the show. Commissioned by the festival, it forms a counterpoint to the main exhibition, which is laid out in long, winding corridor, the pieces grouped loosely according to subject matter.

The show opens with a moving series of photographs by Kuwait-based Palestinian artist Tarek Al Ghoussein. Exploring notions of space, borders, boundaries and home and their relationship to the individual, the photos, from the artist’s “D series,” capture a man with a green tarpaulin and metal scaffolding rungs trying to set up a shelter in the desert. After a number of failed attempts, he appears to give up, photographed from a distance walking away down a long, straight road.

Next to them hang a series of black-and-white shots by Lebanese photographer Samer Mohdad. The photographs are taken from the series “My Arabs,” (1994 to 2003), for which Mohdad traveled to 12 different countries in an attempt to capture the region’s diversity, commonalities and contradictions.

In Dubai, a man clad in a traditional thawb and keffiyeh walks beside a long, narrow swimming pool. A lead in his hand connects to a bridle on a camel, swimming along beside him in training for a race. In Yemen, children play football amid the ancient ruins of the Sun Temple of the Sabaen Kingdom. In Saudi Arabia, a Bedouin woman wrapped in flowing scarves carries bowls full of camel milk.

Matar’s photo, which elicited such a dramatic reaction from the smitten lady, is hung further into the show, with a selection of works focused on Mecca and the dramatic effects of a sweeping wave of modernization and urbanization on the city.

Alongside “Let It Be Passed,” Matar is exhibiting “Stand in the Pathway and See” another nighttime shot, this one showing a dark, winding alleyway in the foreground and the towering form of a minaret, lit up in green and ornamented in gold, in the background. The striking photographs are part of series called “Desert of Pharan,” which aims to show Mecca not as a timeless symbol, a site of pilgrimage, but as a living, evolving city with typical urban problems.

Nearby hang three colorful pieces from Saudi artist Shadia Alem’s series “The Supreme Ka’aba of God,” which explores the transformation of the area immediately surrounding the pilgrimage site, now a bristling forest of skyscrapers and cranes. Overlapping elements of multiple photos to create semiabstract geometric designs, Alem pits history against modernity to show how construction comes only in the wake of destruction.

Reem Al Faisal, a member of the Saudi royal family, provides a third perspective in black-and-white shots from her series “Hajj,” which capture thousands upon thousands of white-clad pilgrims praying and perambulating around the Kaaba. Faisal captures not only the inner sanctum, inaccessible to most photographers, but also the surrounding city, showing how tower blocks seem to press in from all sides, their facades looming close to the domes and minarets of the central mosques.

Other sets of images explore subjects from the Egyptian revolution, to the vanishing desert landscapes of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to the ongoing violence of the Syrian civil war, to the Israeli separation wall.

Palestinian photographer Rula Halawani’s atmospheric black-and-white shots of the apartheid barrier, which runs through the middle of her hometown, Qalandia, capture the bleakness and ugliness of the towering concrete structure and the desolate land abutting it.

By contrast, fellow Palestinian Hazem Harb’s tongue-in-cheek series “Me and the Other Half” is a gesture of defiance. Harb photographs a section of wall in a studio. Over the course of three photographs, a man places a ladder in a suitcase and uses it to scale the wall, over which he glimpses the moon.

Nearby, Hazem Taha Hussein’s series “Facebook-Napoleon” captures the events in Egypt immediately after former PresidentHosni Mubarak stepped down, overlaying an image of the French emperor atop a rearing horse with imagery of police violence toward peaceful protesters, pro-revolution graffiti in the streets and the logo of Facebook, which played an instrumental role in mobilizing the demonstrations.

Beside his photograph, a pair of installations by fellow Egyptian artist Huda Lutfi identify with both sides of the divide. “Occupying the Midan,” a series of portraits of young soldiers, torn between their obligation to follow state orders and their loyalty to their own families and friends who participated in protests, hangs on the wall. On the floor beneath lies “Cactus Walk,” an installation of hollow human feet, painted to look like cactus plants, symbolizing the protesters’ harsh environment.

A highlight of the show for local audiences who have not yet had a chance to see it is Moroccan artist Mounir Fatmi’s “Save Manhattan 01.” The installation consists of a selection of books arranged in a seemingly random pattern. A spotlight shining directly onto the display casts a shadow onto the rear wall, which recreates the skyline of pre-9/11 New York.

The piece highlights the way in which the shadow of the destroyed World Trade Center has cast itself over U.S.-Arab relations since the attacks. Each of the books used to make up the installation relates in some way to this topic. The two tall tomes that stand in for the Twin Towers are inscribed with gilded Arabic titles, while other books in English and French are academic analyses of international relations, the 9/11 attacks and Islamophobia.

“View from Inside: Contemporary Arab Video, Photography and Mixed Media Art” is a wide-ranging and fascinating show that encompass the richness and diversity of contemporary art from the region. The selection of 38 artists might not be all-inclusive – and in fact excludes a number of artists originally selected for the Houston exhibition, among them Lebanon’s Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige – but it is broad enough to suggest something of the extent and variety of regional production.

“View from Inside: Contemporary Arab Video, Photography and Mixed Media Art” continues at Emirates Palace Gallery until April 20. For more information please visit www.abudhabifestival.ae.