Welcome board at the entrance of the Wyndham Hotel |
The artists at the Sealine camp. Image credited to Wyndham Grand Regency Hotel. |
The recent first edition Al Asmakh Fine Art Symposium; a week-long cultural excursion/workshop/brainstorming session held from the 16-21 of March has those sealine inspirations right by immersing its participants in a wholly creative setting at the south of Qatar where the Sealine Beach meets the dazzling Arabian Sea. The symposium concluded on 21 March with a culmination of pieces by its 22 participants - contemporary artists from 14 countries including Qatar, Iraq, Italy, Sudan, Sweden, the Netherlands, India, Bahrain and Morocco. The 40 works of art are now on permanent display at the Wyndham Grand Regency Hotel in Doha, Qatar.
A visitor peruses through the official brochure complete with artists' profiles and backgrounds |
Among the newly created showpieces filling up the Wyndham Al Qasr ballroom turned art gallery; were two mixed media paintings by Iraqi author and artist Ashna Ahmed Dawlat who grew up in Kurdistan Iraq and is currently stationed in Sweden. “These depict the diaspora of my people. Wherever they go for however long a period of time, they are always welcomed back,” Ashna said. “I've also mixed sand from the Sealine into the paint for a raw and natural finish that brings out the definition of the desert.” I found her paintings particularly pleasing; with jewel tones and smooth curves that could very well set an appropriate base for fabric print.
On a more playful note, Netherlander Alik Assatrian goes the bubbly direction with his cartoon-like figures and carefully etched Arabic writing in his two-piece copper toned work. His work depicts a unified, global take on the symposium as the Armenian born artist and filmmaker goes the extra mile with some translation assistance from a fellow participant to incorporate a part of all 22 participants with their names written in Arabic despite not knowing the language himself. After a quick chat on inquiring our perspective of the exhibition, Alik was quick to ask for a photograph of us and not the other way around as I would have done so many other times. I thought that was a rather amusing moment seeing as we were the visitors and he, the artist.
Al Asmakh marks the start of new international melting of creative minds in Qatar and hopefully will inspire more artistic forums to follow suit. Baby steps but there's potential here surely. There’s no denying that a burgeoning interest and demand for contemporary works has been steadily arising from the Middle East. While Qatar is making headway as the largest buyer of contemporary art; there’s still much to be done for the gas-rich state to successfully assert itself as a force in the art market. Perhaps we'll see an Art Doha soon? Fingers-crossed.
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