Abu Dhabi's billions: Soft power and an ambitious foreign policy agenda.

According to the Financial Times, Abu Dhabi is planning to spend $6bn on various cultural projects to diversify from oil. This is not a new strategy. After the emergence of Dubai as the playground of the Middle East in the early 1990s, the Abu Dhabi government set out to develop a vision that would transform the UAE into a world-class cultural powerhouse. Culture is thus a tool in a long-term political-economic strategy that aims to diversify revenues and address concerns around the eventual depletion of oil reserves.

The objective of the Saadiyat Island project is to create and maintain a sustainable geopolitical connection with Europe and the United States. To this end, grandiose franchise museums of historical brands like the Louvre and the Guggenheim have been identified as a powerful platform that can facilitate the negotiation and expansion of this network. So this is more of a soft power re-branding exercise than a cultural endeavour per se.

But before we get too excited about the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi finally breaking ground after years of delay, let us remind ourselves of the appalling working conditions of the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers. A report published in 2015 denounced the wide-spread practice of withholding wages, confiscating passports and providing sub-standard lodgings for the workers to live in. These underpaid labourers are locked in the stranglehold of the archaic Kafala system, and anyone daring to protest is reported to the police and expelled.

The issue of freedom of press should also be considered. In 2017, Swiss journalists filming the area where the labourers live were arrested, blindfolded, detained, interrogated and forced to sign a confession in Arabic. Culture can only go so far in supporting the UAE in their ambitions to become a major geopolitical player and the desired projection of a certain image of openness and tolerance continues to be marred by the endurance of a repressive regime.

#abudhabi #UAE #softpower #museums #migrants #workersright #humanrights #geopolitics #freedomofpress #blog #beyondthecanvasblog

Workers building Jean Nouvel's famous latticed roof at the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Richard Mosse - Displaced, Fondazione MAST

'Beauty is the main line to make people feel something.' - Richard Mosse

It's easy to be fooled by the alluring colours of the striking photo chosen for the advertising poster of this superb exhibition at the MAST Foundation, but anyone who may have been misled by that imagery soon realises what the show is really about. Mosse is interested in the themes of war, displacement and migration, and with his camera he captures beauty and tragedy where there's conflict and destruction.

For his Infra series shot in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo Mosses used Kodak Aerochrome, a discontinued reconnaissance infrared film developed for military use that registers chlorophyll in live vegetation. As a result, green turns to dramatic hues of pink and red, making the lush Congolese rainforest looks surreal, almost dreamy and psychedelic. The obvious association is with blood, lest anyone forgets that since 1998 over 5m people have died in this conflict the media never talks about.

In the Heat Map series, Mosse once again repurposes military technology to explore the plight of the refugees, bringing us what we cannot see. He used military-grade infrared technology that records contours in heat to capture camps, migrants of all ages in boats and as they go about their lives every day. This technology, normally used to identify and track human targets, renders skin and flesh oddly luminescent and washy, erasing all colour and expression. Everyone looks the same, everyone looks like they are no one. They are the invisibles.

This is an important exhibition that will stay with you for a long time. Mosse's work will push you away and it will draw you in. It will get you thinking about the stuff we don't want to see, the stuff we'd often rather not know about. Because it's ugly, because it's unsettling and uncomfortable. But mostly because it makes us look at the unspeakable suffering inflicted by fellow humans on millions of other fellow humans when we desperately want to look the other way. And now that we are hopefully edging closer the end of such a tragic time, with our hearts, minds and souls running on fumes, this is precisely why we need to see it.

#richardmosse #displaced #fondazionemast #MAST #photography #videoart #contemporaryart #bologna

Platon, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, 2012

Madonna and Child, North Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2012

Of Lilies and Remains, 2012

Remain in Light, 2015

Incoming (still), 2014–17

Incoming (video), 2017

All photos © Richard Mosse courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery

A lapsed reader's whinge

"I would like everyone to read, not so they become writers or poets, but so that no one is a slave anymore." - Gianni Rodari

I recently came across this quote by one of Italy's most celebrated and imaginative children's writers and I loved how it framed the argument. We don't read to become erudite bores, we read because when we do our world gets bigger and better, and because reading is a catalyst for freedom, intellectual and otherwise. This is really prosaically put and I am oversimplifying, but you follow.

Fourteen months into intermittent confinements and with more free time to spare, I have zero excuses for not having finished a single book, not one. Catherine Belton's wonderfully-researched Putin's People has been sitting on my nightstand for at least 8 months, but I've barely made a dent in it. Every day I look at the Russian leader's vulpine face on the book's cover and I KNOW I want to delve into Belton's findings, but it's just not happening.

Baseless as this theory may be, it's fair to say I probably have a shorter attention span than the proverbially ill-focused goldfish. Like many, I realise I switch off really quickly, unless I'm watching tennis, that is. Our new uber technological lifestyle is of course largely responsible for this shift. Too much passive digital media consumption has eroded my ability to concentrate. How do I find my way to freedom again? Maybe the secret is to drape oneself in a stylish dressing gown and sit in a paisley-decorated boudoir (with no smartphone or laptop in sight) like this delightful lady. Although now I observe more closely, I think she's just casually looking at the illustrations.

#reading #books #lockdown #attentionspan #goldfish #felixvallotton #painting #lesnabis #blog #artblog #beyondthecanvasblog

Félix Vallotton, La Liseuse (1922)

Private Collection