Gallery 8
16 Feb 2024 - 24 Mar 2024
Presented by Barjeel Art Foundation & Curated by Sama Alshaibi and Amir Hazim
The Barjeel Art Foundation presents The Circle Was a Point, a mediation of its photography collection curated by Sama Alshaibi and Amir Hazim on view at the Foundry. In the spirit of photography’s defiance of uniformity, the exhibition articulates Middle Eastern and North African artists’ expression beyond political, geographical, and cultural boundaries.
Participating Artists: Arwa Abouon, Ahmed Mater, Akram Zaatari, Al-Moutasim Al-Maskery, Alfred Tarazi, Ammar Al Attar, Bashar Hroub, Charbel-Joseph H. Boutros, Farah Al Qasimi, Fouad ElKhoury,, Huda Lutfi , Ibi Ibrahim, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Lara Baladi, Larissa Sansour, Latif Al Ani, Manal Al Dowayan, Mohammed Kazem, Mona Hatoum, Mous Lamrabat, Nedim Kufi, Serge Najjar, Tarek Al Ghoussein, Van Leo, Walid Raad, Yoriyas Yassine Alaoui, Youssef Nabil, Yto Barrada, Zineb Sedira
The works showcase Photography’s diversity, including its use as three-dimensional and time-based media, its collaboration with sunlight and neon, and its testimony in archives. The exhibition questions Photography’s intimate relationship to space and time, demonstrating the medium’s powerful ability to introduce, manipulate, or remove the presence of these dimensions. Demonstrating how artists can interrupt our expectations of stillness and continuity, the images transform the inanimate into the performative, and the body into the architectural. The Circle Was a Point invites its viewers to engage in Photography in the spirit of the title: a central origin permeating the whole. Through showcase, the works of these thirty artists tell a new story, one radial and ever-evolving.