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https://www.ft.com/content/166824be-8af8-4e09-80b6-012c5ebc7383
As the UAE allows more personal freedoms, a younger generation of local artists are seeking to work in ways not dictated by official institutions or commercial groups. Having recently announced significant social liberalisation, allowing unmarried couples and unrelated flatmates to live together for example, the United Arab Emirates also hopes to attract more cultural capital as part of efforts to diversify its economy. Pioneering Emirati artists are already represented abroad: the work of the late Hassan Sharif, credited with developing the UAE’s conceptual art movement, is currently on show at Sweden’s Malmö Konsthall in the largest European retrospective of his work. One of his collaborators, the early land artist Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, who works directly from the landscape with natural materials, will represent the UAE National Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale. At home, meanwhile, a new wave is surfacing, informed by earlier experimentation...
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