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From a nondescript backwater Trucial state under the tutelage of Britain the emirate of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates has grown into a city state with ambitions to rival Singapore -- and Hong Kong before the Chinese embrace. This has implications for the evolution and development of culture and art in the entire region and poses new challenges to the rulers

Sajid Rizvi

A Bridge of Creativity? The Rise of Dubai as a Cosmopolitan Melting-Pot

Updated from Vol IV No 3. ©1996-1998. All rights reserved

© Eastern Art Report 1996-1998. All rights reserved.

UNTIL about a decade ago, Dubai was seen to be no more than an oil-boom town, vying with Abu Dhabi, capital of the young United Arab Emirates[1], for pre-eminence in the southern Gulf. This was a significant departure for Dubai, which was "a mere dot on a near empty coastline" when British traveller Ronald Codrai first experienced it in 1948.[2]

When we first visited Dubai in the 1970s, it had the hall marks of a petroleum-fuelled 'instant city' -- oversized American cars in narrow streets, hurriedly built up apartment blocks, South Asia-style concrete-and-tin markets romanticized as souqs. These were quite unlike the images of the traditional brick-domed and arched labyrinthine alleyways of cool shades, trickling fountains, skinny cats, rotund bearded merchants and gold aglitter in plenty that, thanks to European writers and painters of the 18th and 19th centuries, had nourished our imaginations.[3]

True, glimpses of five-star splendour could already dazzle a visitor in Dubai's nebulous 'downtown.' But the magic potion concocted from the discovery of oil two decades earlier and an almost simultaneous expansion of Dubai as a trading hub had yet to be handed down by the ruling family. Dubai was growing on the map, but not yet as a contender to the status formerly enjoyed by war-ravaged Beirut or by Tehran before the 1979 fall of the shah[4] -- and certainly not as a metropolis that one day would be compared with Singapore or with Hong Kong before its imminent handover to the Chinese. Certainly Dubai was pivotal to the maritime traffic in the Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, mainly due to its strategic location, its liberal commercial policies and its political pragmatism. It became also the provider of welcome relief to the tired postwar economies of both combatants -- and a refuge for people of all nationalities escaping the political and economic fallout of the conflict. But, nowhere along the line was the second most important emirate in the UAE mentioned as the future regional centre of culture, a magnet for artists and collectors alike, a seat of patronage and an estuary for a confluence of corporate interests and creative impulses that would herald a new beginning for art in the Middle East.

Abstract by Abdel Qader al Rais

This happened at a time when cities with years of artistic history and tradition behind them lay exhausted -- debilitated by war, state oppression, chronic poverty or a combination of all three. Baghdad and Cairo, two of the most prolific progenitors of artists in the Arab world, had too many problems to be able seriously to take lead. Baghdad under Saddam Hussein battled for breath in the overprotective embrace of the Ministry of Culture. Cairo produced excellent artists who struggled for morsels of patronage.

In Beirut, amidst its paroxysms of death and destruction, creative people worked furiously to redeem themselves through virtually unbridled expression -- and waited desperately for the civil war to end so they could once again show and sell their paintings, ceramics and sculptures. Elsewhere -- in Amman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Muscat, Riyadh -- artists worked in small groups and largely depended on government largesse or the patronage of mostly western expatriate colonies. Tehran, isolated by revolution and war, changed direction, became inward looking, and prescribed crippling do's and don'ts for its creative populace.

Turkey keened westward and looked east only to pour scorn on those its art pundits saw as mere Muslim calligraphers masquerading as painters. In neighbouring South Asian centres such as Lahore, Karachi and Bombay, with their resilient and historically valid artistic traditions, artists found plenty to express, but very little that would support their pursuits or help propel them onto the international stage.

The scene in Dubai appeared to be no different at first -- with the all too familiar patterns of patronage, the stereotypical forms and images produced in art and the unquestioning praise accorded the artists in the absence of a critical discourse, an art school or even an art library. Unbeknownst to most observers of what passed for Dubai's art scene, profound change was coursing through its works. As in most cases before Dubai, the change was being effected by the onset of prosperity. An average five per cent growth in the emirate's economy over several years was helped in no small measure by the rise of service industries, trade, shipping, tourism and finally manufacturing. Larger oil-producing states awkwardly grappled with costly endeavours to minimize their dependence on unpredictable oil revenues, while Dubai pushed ahead on several fronts as an entrepôt, a major re-export centre, a watering hole for the long-distance traveller and a leisure destination for the not-so-poor -- and above all as a place where gold could be bought cheap by the kilogram while in transit between Asia, Africa and Europe.

Dubai's growth was helped immeasurably by the decline of Baghdad, Beirut and Tehran and by its proximity to major sources of cheap yet skilled labour in South Asia and the Arab world. The extent to which South Asia has permeated Dubai's popular culture can be gauged by the most remarkable of its social phenomena -- the currency of Urdu as the lingua franca of the people of nearly all races except the Americans and Europeans. Despite the linguistic inroads by South Asian peoples, Dubai's cultural agenda is still being set by the government and by foreign workers with disposable incomes -- most of them westerners. Most government moves so far in the direction of promoting art are tentative or exploratory, unlike the strides made in neighbouring Sharjah under its proactive ruler, but the 'discovery' of a capable artist in the Maktoum household (see interview with Sheikha Hessah) has electrified the artistic community.

Trained by Tina Ahmed, an outstanding Bangladeshi artist who has lived in Dubai for 20 years, young Sheikha Hessah (b1972) is being looked upon as a standard bearer and as a potential catalyst for the establishment of much needed exhibition spaces and educational facilities. As the owner of a commercial gallery in Dubai remarked, "Almost overnight, she has given weight and legitimacy to the pursuit of art alongside the pursuit of wealth and fortune." The laudatory and uncritical comment lavished upon the art of the Ruler's daughter, and indeed on herself, by the media has offered few clues as to whether she would play a role similar to the one assumed by the Sharjah emir to promote art, art education or art history in Dubai. Much, of course, would depend on how far the unmarried sheikha is able to continue her activities after a match is solemnised, but most observers of the art scene in Dubai believe the foundations of a new period of patronage and development have been secured. A greater clarity in governmental policy towards the arts would reassure the community, but of larger significance would be the fruits of the 'melting-pot' effect.

Dubai society is multicultural but remains multi-layered with social contact limited to absolute minimum in certain cases. Recent government measures have removed large numbers of families of small-income expatriates from this milieu, with the bread-earners left behind in Dubai to fend for themselves. Social integration across the ethnic spectrum is at work, but its momentum is determined by Dubai's economic growth, in which foreign labour of varying racial, educational and cultural backgrounds continues to play a large part. This has a direct bearing not only on who collects what art, but also on what kind of work is created by the practising artists in Dubai.

The few commercial galleries that exist and are run mostly by brave and enterprising people, nearly all of them expatriate women with one or two notable exceptions, represent oases where artists of all nationalities and disciplines converge, exchange ideas and promote their work. In that sense the galleries mirror a Dubai in flux but largely postponed until day after tomorrow, since most communities in the city still tend to stick to their own kind. Although authorities aspire more and more towards a cosmopolitan progression, economic and social realities take time to change. Resistance to a melting-pot ideal is not unheard of amongst the foreigners themselves. Europeans, some of whom often express strident views about the way their own societies back home have gone multicultural to their dismay and disappointment, are least enthusiastic about change.

"To some Europeans, Dubai represents an outpost where it may still be possible to re-enact the Raj in the privacy of their homes or immediate surroundings," said one Dubai-based European writer. Nearly all domestic servants are immigrants from the poorer countries of Africa, South and Southeast Asia or the Far East. In the event it is not unusual to hear Asians and Arabs complaining of exclusion from some public leisure places patronised largely by Europeans. Most Dubai nationals maintain a sort of benign distance from these social oddities.

On the artistic level, most are pleased when aspects of their bedouin or seafaring past are adopted as themes of art produced by expatriate or native artists. Individual patronage of the artists is becoming the norm, with the wealthier native collectors in the forefront, but corporate sponsorship of artists or events remains very much in its infancy. Most government departments likewise maintain and demonstrate a surprising ambivalence towards initiatives for popularising the practice and understanding of art, whether traditional or modern.

But with Dubai's business community expanding rapidly, the future for contemporary artists looks promising. The evolution and development of art practices and connoisseurship since Princess Wijdan Ali surveyed the scene in her ground-breaking work is remarkable, perhaps without parallel. Hotels, banks and international corporate offices have emerged as 'bulk buyers' of modern art, albeit mostly for decorative purposes. "An interior decorator, bank manager or hotel decides they need paintings with local colour, and some artist or gallery gets lucky, but not often enough," said a gallery owner.

By all accounts, the art community is growing in response to this new window of opportunity, drawing practitioners from distant parts of the Arab world, Europe, India, Iran, Pakistan, the Philippines, and even China and South Korea. A Chinese artist, Hu Zhen De (see separate article), has gone back to teaching in China after a well publicised and apparently successful stint in Dubai, and a Korean artist, Pung Kun Choi, has opened a gallery.

This is just as the Mughal emperors in Delhi, the shahs in Tehran or the caliphs in Baghdad or Istanbul would have wished. After all, those potentates of yesteryears attracted hordes of artists and artisans from distant lands to the royal ateliers. Dubai may not lay claim to being the centre of an empire, but the scent of its economic prosperity has drawn seekers of fame and fortune from all corners. It would be a great pity indeed if this opportunity to coalesce techniques, disciplines and trends and give a new meaning and identity to art in the Middle East was missed.

Notes

1. United Arab Emirates, comprising the seven emirates of Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al Qaiwain, came into being on 2 December 1971.
2. Dubai: An Arabian Album, Ronald Codrai, Motivate Publishing, Dubai 1992.
3. Traditional markets -- souks or bazaars, depending on their location -- that retain most of their original architecture and ambience still survive in Fez, Morocco; Damascus, Syria; Tehran, Iran; Istanbul, Turkey, as well as Israel and the Occupied Territories and Central Asia. When we revisited Dubai in July 1996, South Asian workmen were busy erecting traditional-style carved wood arches in the Gold Souq.
4. Iran under Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was the first Middle Eastern state to put serious effort into promoting contemporary art and his wife Empress Farah founded a contemporary art museum in Tehran in 1977, still the largest institution of its kind in the Middle East outside Israel.
5. Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammad al Qasimi, Ruler of Sharjah since 1972, was educated at the Universities of Cairo and Exeter, England, and has a PhD from Exeter.
6. The Gulf Countries in Contemporary Art from the Islamic World, Wijdan Ali, ed, London/Amman 1989.
7. Pung Kun Choi, reputedly the only Korean artist in Dubai, shows his work at OGT Trading in the Galleria complex.

Bibliography

• Atlas of the Arab World: The Geopolitics and Society, Rafic Boustani and Philippe Fargues, New York/Oxford 1991.
• Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa, Trevor Mostyn, ed., Cambridge 1988.
• Major Political Events in Iran, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula 1945-1990, Trevor Mostyn, ed., New York/Oxford 1991.
• Major Political Events in Iran, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula 1945-1990, Trevor Mostyn, ed., New York/Oxford 1991.
• Oil and Development in the Arab Gulf States: A Selected Annotated Bibliography, Walid I Sharif, London 1985.
• World Development Report 1996, World Bank, Washington DC.

Wilfred Thesiger: Talking of Times Past and a Present ImperfectSajid Rizvi talks to the legendary British traveller, explorer and photographer

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