Cultured magazine published Janelle Zara's article on Abu Dhabi's evolving cultural identity and its emerging artists on 16 December 2021. Zara speaks with the curators Till Fellrath and Sam Bardaouil, who curated Beyond: Emerging Artists at that year's Abu Dhabi Art, a programme offering three local artists the opportunity and mentorship to create their own installations. Fellrath describes the radical transformation of the region over the previous decade, with the Louvre Abu Dhabi, cultural institutions and the fair all located on Saadiyat Island, and the homegrown art scene taking hold as a result.
The curators chose Christopher Benton, Maitha Abdalla and Hashel Al Lamki, three multidisciplinary artists whose sentiments are specific to living in the UAE and at the same time universal. Zara writes that Abdalla's work has a surrealist feel, invoking the folkloric imagery of Arab legends as well as more mundane memories of adolescence, and that her installation Too Close to the Sun, like all her work, explores female empowerment: the straddling of multiple worlds and the embrace of wild tendencies. Fellow Emirati Al Lamki uses his art to meditate on the rapid cultural and architectural development of his country; his installation Neptune considered the possibility of leaving industry behind and returning to a nomadic Bedouin way of life. Benton's The World Was My Garden examined date cultivation and forced labour.
Since then, Maitha Abdalla has shown at the Aichi Triennale and Hashel Al Lamki at the Sharjah Biennial and Gwangju Biennale. Both artists are represented by Tabari.
