This Larry's List collector interview, published on 27 June 2018, talks with Maliha Tabari about a collection of around 200 works and her wish to start a foundation and an open air museum for sculpture from the region.
She began collecting Middle Eastern art in 2001, after art school in the United States, and travelled to studios in the UAE, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan. In this conversation she names sculptures by Adam Henein among her first purchases, and, as recent additions, a seven metre work she commissioned from Hazem Harb, made with an archive photograph taken in 1942 in her hometown in Palestine, and a two metre sculpture by the Yemeni artist Nasser Al Aswadi for the garden.
The collection, she says, is shown in the Dubai house, in other homes and in storage, and is sometimes loaned to museums and foundations. She talks about supporting Palestinian artists who address identity and home, Egyptian artists who work with history, cinema and spirituality, and Saudi artists who take on political and religious questions. Asked who to watch, she names Adel El Siwi, Khaled Zaki, Hazem Harb and Lulwah Al Homoud.
The interview also points to the Dubai gallery as the place from which she works with artists from the region, commissions writing on their practices, and looks for a longer conversation with audiences abroad.
