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Cultural Pretensions in Dubai

Desert Metropolis Reinvents Itself as Art Center

By R. Jay Magill, Jr. in Dubai

Part 2: The Business of Art

It’s this kind of cultural legitimacy that Art Dubai is hungering for. To help it along, taking place simultaneously is the Global Art Forum, from March 17 to 21, which has brought together 50 of the world’s most influential cultural leaders, including the architect Rem Koolhaas, artists Daniel Buren, Ai Wai Wai, and Anish Kapoor, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Glenn Lowry, director of New York's Museum of Modern Art. They’re here to talk about the role of the Middle East in the global art community and about how partnerships with businesses and private individuals can support art institutions. It’s the model that US cultural institutions have been built upon, and one that Dubai hopes to emulate.

“We run this like a business. You have to stay in the black and out of the red,” Martin says. “Red is bad. That’s about the extent of my business knowledge.”

Luckily, he has some experts on his side. Private equity firms are working in the service of creativity at Art Dubai, a partnership that Abraaj Capital, a private equity firm partnering with the fair, mirrors in its “investing in foresight” logo. Abraaj invests solely in the area dubbed MENASA (Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia). On March 18 it announced the Abraaj Capital Art Prize, which will provide an opportunity for up to five artists from the MENASA region to work with established curators to prepare work for Art Dubai 2009. “As the Middle East and Asia’s art landscape continues to develop exponentially,” says Frederic Sicre, executive director at Abraaj, “the timing is ideal to foster more international understanding about contemporary pieces being produced in the region.”

They’re not alone: Credit Suisse, the Swiss banking giant, has an entire room at the Madinat Resort called “Art and Entrepreneurship,” an exhibition that will go on tour to New York, Berlin, Moscow, Geneva, Milan, Madrid and London. Its purpose is to redefine artists as entrepreneurs, and 19 artists from 16 countries are participating. An auction of works will benefit a project called Room to Read, a charity for the developing world that builds schools, computer labs and libraries.

Simulated Paradise

Outside Art Dubai at the Madinat Jumeirah, decorative dhows float atop the crystal-blue fake lake surrounding Fort Island in the middle of the Jumeirah resort. Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, and a smattering of Southeast Asian guest workers -- the majority of the population in Dubai -- clean, cook, build and serve everything, including countless bottles of Veuve Clicquot champagne. They are immaculately dressed in varying duty-specific uniforms with a politeness that verges on the eerie. They walk straight-backed and swiftly among the 50-year-old palm trees that have been imported and neatly arranged surrounding the lake and cobblestone walking paths. A massive, souk-like mall made of stone-looking solid concrete sits at the far western end.

The entire Madinat Jumeirah is a surreal Disneyworld of the orient; the property looks as if belongs to an ancient Arabic land -- the “old Arabia” that Westerners imagine it would be. But the Madinat Jumeirah Resort was built just five years ago and took just 36 months from planning to frenzied completion. The complex features waterways, abras, wind towers and a bustling souk. There's also an Arab-themed Starbucks and Cinnabon. Even the restaurants in the pseudo-souk that serve Middle Eastern food are Arab-themed.

“I love the setting,” says Art Dubai director Martin. “That’s the main reason I wanted to do the art fair, because of the venue. It’s basically a 21st-century Arabian fort conference center. I love it.” He seems, with some small measure of irony, to revel in the exotic corporate sterility of the Madinat Jumeirah.

“All of Dubai is a mirage,” says David, a Belgian videographer who’s lived here for the past four years and who preferred not to give his last name. “None of this is real. And it’s based on an economy that is entirely unpredictable. Who knows where this place will be in five years?”

Some are trying to figure this out through art. Emirati students at the American University are involved in -- aside from Art Dubai’s admirable Start program for art education -- a documentary photography project in the Pakistani Pavilion (dubbed “Desperately Seeking Paradise”), located outside the Madinat building.

They gave 12 Pakistani workers digital cameras and told them to take pictures of their daily lives. “One of them was of a Pakistani worker’s one-room apartment, far outside of town, in designated labor housing,” says Julia Townsend, one of the students’ art professors. “On the wall above his bed was a poster of the Arabian-themed construction project in downtown Dubai he was working on. He was proud of that.”