Ideas are born out of our disposition to receive them. Looking at art fuels our ability to innovate.
To identify with artists you need to give freedom to your imagination. The best way to do this is to develop your intellectual creativity from a young age. The most basic thing a child can do is to read a lot. The world of words opens young minds and creates images of the stories read.
I joined as collection and exhibition manager at the Farjam Collection in February 2009. (The Farjam Collection is a privately owned art collection; it showcases artwork from the private collection of Farhad Farjam, an art collector based in Dubai). Our space in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) (The Farjam Collection @ DIFC) opened in March 2009, as a permanent venue dedicated to showcasing a series of curated exhibitions drawn from Farjam's collection.
At the Farjam Collection we are deeply committed to education. We feel that we can contribute the invaluable experience of learning from original artworks.
It can be very humbling to be in front of a 1,000-year-old work of art.
It's a feeling you can't get from a reproduction. The latter doesn't have the same presence and authority.What we want to do is to offer that experience to an increasingly large and diverse number of children, students and adults.
Along the way, we are perfecting methods of teaching and, we hope, fostering new standards for art education in Dubai.
I grew up in Paris, which is the fountainhead of all things creative and artistic. In fact, most of our school trips would be visits to museums or art galleries. This is where the seeds of interest were sown. I not only had access to art but also grew up to make art.
I studied studio arts - sculpture, as a degree at university. I received a BA from Harvard in 2003 and a Masters in cultural policy and museum studies from Sciences Po (The Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris) in 2006. What I learned then I still apply in my current role: how to tell a story, how to make something that is meaningful to you, relevant to others.
Across the board in the creative industries, whether you make art, curate exhibitions or teach art, what you do is suggest new ways of seeing. This goes back to the idea of creativity - looking at art is not the end in itself, it's what it allows you to consider as possible.
I find considerations of space, volume, and mass, satisfying. The materials I worked with as a sculptor were malleable; I enjoyed that tactile aspect and the experience of giving form to something [which had] weight.
Architecture fascinates me.
I built a one-room house as my final project as a sculpture student, in 2003. But I also did a number of smaller, more ephemeral works, works that were made for a given space and time only... sculptures in sand and honey for example that crumbled when they were moved. I find there is a certain beauty in site-specific works - I like the stubbornness their immobility implies.
My interest in dance goes hand in hand with my interest in architecture. I did a lot of ballet as a child and as a teenager. Later on, reading about architecture made me reconsider, or at least consider in a new light, the manner in which we approach and inhabit space, which led me back into thinking about movement - and dance.
Both art forms are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of impact on the physical environment: architects leave marks that require bulldozers to erase, while dancers leave a mark only in the memories of the spectators who have seen them perform at a brief moment in time. Architecture makes a statement about the ways we are to live in the physical world, while dance suggests trajectories and ways to move in it (or around it). I find imagination in both architecture and dance reassuring. After all, it is reassuring to be reminded that there are as many markers as there are escape routes.
The most memorable learning experiences for me as a child took place outside the classroom, when we would go on class visits to museums. These opportunities anchor learning in a forceful way. When I came to Dubai (in February 2009) I realised that there was a gap in this area of creative learning. We wanted to play a role in schooling by introducing such opportunities for young minds.
On Wednesdays we run guided tours of the exhibition on display. We have round-the-year school and university programmes for students starting from the age of six - teachers book a time to visit with their class. Upon arrival, the children are given an introductory talk about the exhibition on view, and are given a set of activities to complete both in the space and once they are back in the classroom. This summer we ran Art Camp, which was a more intensive version of the same programme for children ages six to twelve. Art Camp ran every day for four weeks.
Our programmes for universities take the form of a tailor-made guided tour. Depending on what the students' subject of study is, the tour can be about museum studies (how to curate an exhibition, what information goes into a catalogue versus a label, conservation standards, etc…) or focused more on art history. The exhibition, The Story of Islamic Art in 99 Objects, was the fruit of a six-month collaboration with Zayed University.
The art scene in Dubai is still in the nascent stage. There is new ground to test and there is a sense of unpredictability, which is a good sign in itself. Moreover, women lead the art world in Dubai. The types of ideas, content and leadership they give to the field is distinct from that which has been. And to be a woman and share this legacy with the people and take this learning forward is a privilege in itself.
As told to Ruqya Khan, a Sharjah-based freelance writer.
