Until October 16, 2022, you can visit “I SHALL NEVER TIRE OF FINDING AN ESCAPE”, a photography group exhibition curated by IRIS Art Advisory at XVA Gallery.
After the great depression, people were searching for an escape from the unpredictable reality. Families stayed home playing board games to try to forget their problems for a while. Some tried to “escape” mostly in a physical sense, but others chose “escapism”, a psychological strategy helping one cope with the world’s uncertainty. Many forms of media, where no sad news was mentioned, became a form of escapism.
“I SHALL NEVER TIRE OF FINDING AN ESCAPE” is divided into three chapters: From and to the self, Obeyed to essence, and Round we spin. It features the artworks of four photographers. Blurring the lines between story, form and technique, they explore the idea of escapism: escaping from our harsh reality — being taken into a safer mental place.
About the photographers:
Sarah Brahim (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) is a performance and visual artist. She holds a BS from Oregon Health and Science University and BFA (Hons) from the London Contemporary Dance School. Using her unique physical language, Sarah explores such themes as pain in the body, grief, and loss through performance, video, photography, textile, installation, and sound.
Maitha Hamdan (Ajman) is a self-taught conceptual artist and a filmmaker. She graduated from the Shaikha Salama Bint Hamdan Foundation program’s “Salama Emerging Artists Fellowship Program 2019” Cohort 7. She’s also the Founder and Creative Director of Maitha Media and the Founder and Fashion Designer of Decencia modest clothing line. The mediums Maitha uses in her art are performance and installations; the foundation of her artwork is fabric and textiles. She tells the stories faced within social boundaries and religion.
Menat El Abd (Dubai) is an Egyptian artist who established her art form of adaptation from great Egyptian films. In 2017, she founded a brand “Black and White Diary” focused on creating black and white visuals. In her photographs, Menat translates human’s emotions; she invites the viewer to remember the different forms of reality. Black and White Diary became a brand that transformed B&W artworks into a clothing line and a traveling gallery across the UAE.
Ammar Al Banna (born in Dubai, 1998) is a film photographer and an archaeologist. During his studying at the Sorbonne Abu Dhabi, film photography was an experimental hobby for him. Ammar’s love for this type of photography was initially inspired by old family albums. Now, he’s still been using film photography to create and document art, environment, and mundane life.
To learn more, please visit the official web page of the exhibition.
You might be also interested in reading about the photo exhibition From End to End.
