60 T wo days after Ed Dolman, Execu- tive Director and Acting CEO of the Qatar Muse- ums Authority (QMA), announced his resigna- tion, on 8 April the now-private entity unveiled East-West/West-East , Richard Serra’s awe-inspiring commissioned steel monoliths placed in the Brouq Nature Reserve, followed by the American minimalist artist’s works at the Al-Riwaq exhibition space and the QMA Gallery in Katara. “It was hard for Ed to keep commuting between London and New York to be with his family,” said QMA’s Direc- tor of Public Art Programmes Jean-Paul Engelen, who, like Dolman, is an ex-Christie’s rep. QMA has since appointed Mansour Al-Khater as CEO – a Qatari national whose previous work experience includes top positions at Qatar Telecom and Qatar Petroleum. “[Al-Khater] doesn’t have an art back- ground, but he’s here to manage the running of things,” commented a senior QMA staff member. Doha does it again with rousing exhibits from East and West. Myrna Ayad reviews two blockbuster shows by Lebanon’s Etel Adnan and America’s Richard Serra. The shift in high-ranking officials at QMA comes amidst rumours of budget cuts in an or- ganisation, which ArtReview reported spends ap- proximately $1 billion on art annually and is led by HE Sheikha Al-Mayassa Al-Thani. “The budget is already enormous, so a 15 per cent cut isn’t all that dramatic,” said a senior QMA employee. This year is the Gulf state’s partnership with Bra- zil as part of its annual Year of Culture initiative, for which Doha will stage an exhibition of Brazil- ian and Qatari artists in September at Al-Riwaq. The big shocker came in early March when the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Doha, citing “the protection, security and stability” of their nations following allegations of Qatar’s close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. Politics aside in what has been a harmonious relationship between Gulf states, cultural protagonists wondered how this may affect 2015’s Qatar-Saudi Arabia Year of Cul- ture. “I am working on next year’s exhibitions as planned. No one has told me to work differently,” said Engelen, who is managing the project. In- deed, however alarming these changes are in the Gulf’s diplomatic relations, in Doha it felt like business as usual. “There’s no stopping Al-Mayas- sa,” commented another senior QMA rep. “Noth- ing will affect her cultural mission.” TREASURE TROVE It is always a joy to walk into Mathaf: Arab Muse- um of Modern Art, which has put on stellar shows curated by top notch curators, among them the indefatigable duo Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath as well as Pier Luigi Tazzi and Hans Ulrich Obrist; the latter who curated the current Etel Adnan In All Her Dimensions . It is unfortunate though, that THE POET AND THE SCULPTOR REVIEW 61 This page (left) and facing page: Installation views of works by Etel Adnan. Right: Excerpts from Adnan’s writings. since its inception in 2010, Mathaf has showcased Modern Arab treasures from its vaults all but thrice. Its director, Abdellah Karroum, confirmed a long- awaited show in September “curated by all of us [Mathaf staff] and it will include new acquisitions”. Mathaf’s ground floor is occupied by Turbulence , Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum’s largest-ever show in the Arab world, reviewed in the March/April issue of Canvas . The top floor is consumed with Lebanese-born Adnan’s works – or as the exhibition title suggests, her ‘dimensions’: cartographies, drawings, films, leporellos, novels, paintings, plays, poems, tapestries and more. There is a sweet-and-sour, chalk-and-cheese kind of feel- ing at Mathaf’s two exhibitions: however deli- cate and beautiful Hatoum’s works are, one’s reaction to them is gut-wrenching, whereas Adnan’s vibrant colours and poetry are laced throughout her oeuvre , leaving one, simply put, happy. PAINTINGS OF PROSE As per an excerpt from the show’s catalogue, it was on Christmas Day in 2012 that Adnan, in con- versation with Obrist in Carteret, New Jersey, de- cided on her exhibition’s name. “We won’t use the word painting,” she had said. “We can call it Etel Ad- nan In All Her Dimensions. ” Though the 89-year-old artist has not seen her exhibition as she has been advised against air travel by her doctors, Adnan’s presence could be profoundly felt, beginning with her voice, which narrates excerpts from her many books. It is the voice of an old woman but it is the spirit of a young girl. The show, say Mathaf’s Assistant Curators Tamar Hemmes and Leonore- Namkha Beschi, was “done over Skype” as Obrist suffered an ear infection while Adnan’s Beirut/ Hamburg dealer Andrée Sfeir-Semler oversaw the hanging. “I think they did a a wonderful job and they gave me so much space,” said Adnan over the phone from Paris, where she is now based. The first gallery features paintings from as early as 1959, displayed against a wall with Adnan’s delicate black-and-white works on paper of New York bridges. “I like paper. Canvas is more expensive than paper, but it shouldn’t be,” says Adnan. “Paper absorbs, it’s dainty, you feel like paper is a person, it drinks the ink, and the Chi- nese and Japanese understand this more.” The paintings, say Sfeir-Semler are “light and poetic in front of those which are strong and dry”. It would have been impossible, she says, to have staged a complete retrospective of Adnan’s work, because neither the artist nor her dealers kept “images or track” over the years, though this exhibition is “ret- rospective in character”. In the first gallery is one of Adnan’s tapestries, a medium she first experiment- ed with in the 1960s while teaching philosophy at the University of California. “I always felt like I was missing something and I realised that in the Mid- dle East, when I grew up, even the non-rich people had rugs in their homes. So my feet were missing them,” she says in the catalogue of her tapestries, which were never based on existing paintings. VIVACITY AND VIGOUR Another gallery features more of Adnan’s trade- mark abstract paintings, all small in size, ren- dered in vibrant colours with a palette knife, which she has used since the 1960s. Size doesn’t matter with these gems, their energy is intense, even gripping. “They are small, yes, but their spirit isn’t,” says Adnan. Some feature a hallmark 62 REVIEW of the artist’s painting practice: the red square. “When I don’t know what to do with a canvas, I draw the red square. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s half a century old,” muses the artist. “I must like that colour; it talks back to me.” And then there is a cluster of watercolours of Adnan’s beloved Mount Tamalpaïs in Califor- nia, which she began painting in the 1970s and which became the subject of her 1986 book, Journey To Mount Tamalpaïs . “She once said that Mount Tamalpaïs is the most important person she has ever met,” commented Hemmes. Adnan must miss her mountain while in Paris. “It’s not in front of my eyes, but once in a while, it comes on its own,” she admits. A room features two films, one of Adnan and the other, Motions , by her, of snaps of everyday life shot with a Super-8 camera. Poignantly, a wall in the exhibition is plastered with verses from Adnan’s writings, an aesthetic element also installed in the artist’s show at Sfeir-Semler’s Beirut branch in 2013. In fact, the Mathaf show greatly resembles the lat- ter exhibit through the dedicated rooms, inclusive of one with Adnan’s leporellos – Japanese folded books in which she drew, painted and wrote. “I love Hans,” she says. “He lives in a commercial world but he’s not commercial. He is a free mind and I just let him make all the decisions.” NATURE’S DECREE As far as decisions go, it was the landscape that dictated the placement of Serra’s East-West/West- East – “a kind of logical understanding without imposing any geometry on it because the land defines where the pieces have to be placed,” said the artist to Canvas . The Serra-Qatar relationship, like those of Hirst, Guo-Qiang, Murakami and oth- ers, is not new. It was Chinese architect IM Pei, who was brought out of retirement to design the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, who reportedly introduced Sheikha Al-Mayassa to Serra. By the time Engelen joined QMA in 2011, Serra’s projects in the Qatari capital were already confirmed. Soon after the 2011 installation of his tallest steel sculp- ture 7 – comprised of seven plates and inspired by 12th century Afghan minarets – Sheikha Al- Mayassa, said Serra, suggested that he create a work for the Qatari landscape. “What landscape?” asked the artist, who was then taken by Faisal Al- Nuaimi from QMA’s Archaeological Department on a recce around the country. Incidentally, the location of East-West/West-East – about 60 kilo- metres from Doha – is the site where Sheikha Al-Mayassa’s father, HH Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, was taken as a child to see the Arabian oryx, Qatar’s national animal. East-West/West-East is arresting – in sight, scale and in situ . Set in a natural corridor formed by gyp- sum plates, the four monoliths – at 14.7 metres and 16.7 metres tall – cross the peninsula of the Brouq Nature Reserve connecting the waters of the Gulf. It took five days, said Serra, to install East- West/West-East and over a period of three weeks, he had missed visiting it all but four days. “I think anyone going to the desert realises that their life is a nanosecond and they have to contemplate their existence,” he says. “One thing that I found strange – as soon as it went up, it looked very old. It looked like not only it belonged there, but that it had also been there.” In addition to Sheikha Al-Mayassa, art world illuminati – among them Larry Gagosian, Saleh Barakat, HE Sheikh Hassan Al-Thani and Ger- mano Celant (the latter rumoured to be working on a project for Doha) – were present at the unveil- ing of East-West/West-East and together walked to This page: Richard Serra. East-West/West- East. 2014. Four weatherproof steel plates. 1670 x 400 x 1350 cm and 1470 x 400 x 1350 cm. Facing page: Installation views of Richard Serra’s Passage Of Time. 2012. Weatherproof steel in two parts, each comprised of two identitcal conical/elliptical sections of four plates inverted relative to each other. 410 x 665 cm. Photography by Myrna Ayad. 63 and from the structures, that run over a kilometre in length. The thing with Serra’s works is that they compel engagement – people walked up to and touched the columns, or stood in awe before each. Many present did not want to leave so soon – the tranquillity there is unparalleled. “Probably coming out here alone would be better,” smiled Serra. A similar serenity can be felt within Double Torqued Ellipse III , the artist’s 1999 work placed on the grounds outside Katara. The circular maze-like piece has an almost maternal, shielding feel to it in the way that it draws one in. “People find it very sheltering,” added Serra. “You cannot just watch; you have to go around and understand the piece. Live with it. Understand it. Measure it with your body. It is a very interesting process,”says the shows’ curator Alfred Pacquement, former director of the Musée National d’art Moderne, Centre Pompidou. In the QMA Gallery are sculptures by the artist from as old as 1969 up until 2013 as well as paintings “which he calls ‘works on paper’,” laughed Pacque- ment. The paintings are covered with a thick coat of black paint stick that Serra then pushes onto the paper. The non-chronological exhibition surveys various aspects of the artist’s practice and offers a view into his evolution. Early lead works, such as the One Ton Prop (House of Cards) lent by New York’s Museum of Modern Art features four plates that lit- erally hold onto each other. SIZE MATTERS One would be hard-pressed to identify which of Serra’s three venues – Al-Riwaq, the Brouq Nature Reserve and the QMA Gallery – holds the pièce de rèsistance , but Passage Of Time at Al-Riwaq is largely in the lead. However many times one has attended shows in the 5000-square-metre hall, no exhibition or artwork swallowed up the space the way the two 66.5-metre-long 4.1-metre-high German-fabricated steel curves do. Passage Of Time is intimidating, welcoming, provocative and enchanting all at once and took nine days to in- stall. Upon entry, the space unwinds as one walks through it and also, says Serra “implies a certain kind of disequilibrium”. The first half leans to one direction and closer to the centre, swings to an- other. Things are not physically or mentally as they seem in Passage Of Time , which, as its name suggests, toys with the concept of time through a bodily interaction with it. “You are being impli- cated and pulled through in a flow of space,” says Serra. “It changes its shape and you have to take a counter step to keep up with its unfolding.” Bought by the Fairholme Foundation in the USA, no prices for Passage Of Time as well as East- West/West-East were disclosed. Finance informa- tion often leaks from an organisation with sub- stantial budgets with such gargantuan projects, but Serra’s was one that was “buckled between his lawyer and QMA” said a representative of QMA. An actual figure is almost irrelevant – one can assume that #SerraQatar, as the venture has been dubbed on Instagram, is QMA’s most ex- pensive to date, for sheer size, weight, scale and celebrity alone. Protagonists of Middle Eastern art can only hope that the region’s artists will one day get a fraction of such sums. “Public art projects take time. The Middle East is very much part of this pro- gramme and there are plans to work on its growth,” confirmed Engelen. We wait with bated breath. Etel Adnan In All Her Dimensions and Richard Serra run until 6 July. For more information visit www.qma.com.qa “Public art projects take time. The Middle East is very much part of this programme and there are plans to work on its growth.” Jean-Paul Engelen