The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

151 ARTISTS Top: Cutting and tying no.2 2015 Cotton rope and wool / 275 x 650 x 50cm / Courtesy: Estate of Hassan Sharif and Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai / Image courtesy: Estate of Hassan Sharif; Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai; Alexander Gray Associates, New York; gb agency, Paris / © Estate of Hassan Sharif Below: Hassan Sharif, 2015 / Photograph: Maaziar Sadr / Image courtesy: Estate of Hassan Sharif and Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai Born 1951, Bandar Lengeh, Iran; died 2016, Dubai, United Arab Emirates Lived and worked in Dubai Hassan Sharif wanted to democratise art. The Emirati artist’s early performative and conceptual works from the 1980s — such as walking in the desert ( Walking no.2 1983) and throwing stones into an outdoor expanse ( Jumping No.2 1983) — consisted of actions that could be undertaken anywhere by anyone. 1 Sharif’s approach to art was in stark contrast to the nationalist calligraphic abstraction that dominated the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at the time. 2 In order to broaden people’s understanding of art, Sharif wrote articles for newspapers, translated conceptual texts in English into Arabic, circulated his own manifestos, co-founded alternative art spaces and mentored younger artists. 3 As a result, he is revered as one of the founders of the UAE art scene. Sharif’s oeuvre can be summarised as a series of simple, systematic actions. Using the premise of cutting rope and tying it with wool, Sharif built up the textured surface of the abstract composition in the large-scale wall hanging Cutting and tying no.2 2015. In this work, Sharif sets up the order of the factory against the irregularity of the handmade. The trace of the human hand can be seen in the way the wool has been irregularly wrapped around the rope, while the rope itself was machine-made, and this is evident in the precise and even twists of its woven strands. These everyday materials and actions imbue the work with a distinctive fluxus spirit. Many of the artist’s sculptures — or ‘objects’, as he called them — take the form of large mounds of mass-produced items. Sharif applied a logic to his works that incorporated a methodical action — wrapping, cutting or knotting — which was also open to chance. For instance, Small Objects 2012 consists of a pile of commonplace objects, such as razors, forks and hairclips, wrapped in colourful string. As a display mechanism, the ‘pile’ references heaped goods seen on the ground and on tables in marketplaces in the UAE. Sharif was interested in the random arrangements and juxtapositions found in markets, in contrast to the ordered displays found in museums and galleries. 4 Sharif purchased his art materials — shoes and combs, rugs and buckets — from the Souk Al-Markazi (Central Market) in Sharjah. These piles of ‘stuff’ as artworks were created as a response to a moment when low-cost products made from cheap labour and materials in China and India started appearing in West Asia, particularly in major cities like Dubai, where bazaars became major movers of cheap imported products. In the UAE, most of this material arrived through the Jebel Ali, one of the world’s busiest commercial ports connecting the United States to West Asia, and Asia to Africa and Europe. With his works, Sharif put the production line in reverse. In the studio-as-factory, he — and later his small team of workers — took away the functional aspect of everyday items. He also explored the irony of the art market — as a place in which consumers seek out useless-items-turned- artworks — by taking factory-produced readymades and weaving them into unique, handcrafted works of art. 5 In Cardboard and Rug 2005, pieces of machine-made rugs no longer provide a covering for the floor or act as decoration; instead, they are cut into small pieces, wrapped around cardboard and secured with knotted pieces of cloth. The waste from rapid consumption — of buying what you do not need or buying products that do not last — was a deep concern for Hassan Sharif. Cutting and tying objects en masse, weaving them together and displaying them in museums and galleries was a way for the artist to bring attention to the absurdity of the desire to consume. Ellie Buttrose Endnotes 1 Hassan Sharif, interview with Ellie Buttrose, Dubai, 20 November 2014. 2 The UAE was only formed in 1971, and these artists were trying to establish a national artistic identity. 3 Many of these texts were encountered by the artist during his studies at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London (now Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London) from 1981 to 1984. 4 Pauline Kolczynska, ‘Hassan Sharif: A rare bloom in the desert’, in Catherine David (ed.), Hassan Sharif: Works 1973–2011 , Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, 2011, p.56. 5 Weaving is the term that the artist used to describe his methodology; see Hassan Sharif, ‘Weaving’, Hassan Sharif , <http://www.hassansharif. com/uploads/publications/39. weaving1374834539.pdf>, viewed May 2018. HASSAN SHARIF