The Latest Art from the Arab World

Mori Art Museum

Despite being planned long before the ‘Arab Spring’, the Mori Art Museum’s ambitious exhibition Arab Express: The Latest Art From the Arab World, featuring 34 mainly young and upcoming Arab artists, couldn’t be more timely.

Commemorating as it does not only the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and the United Arab Emirates, the Sultanate of Oman and State of Qatar, as well as the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Kuwait, it also neatly dovetails with the advent of satellite branches of both the Guggenheim and Louvre in Abu Dhabi, and the late 2010 opening of Doha's Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art.

Encompassing an eclectic range of media from Mounira Al Solh’s 7-minute video Rawane’s Song, to Abel Abidin’s plexiglass lightbox I’m Sorry; from Sadik Kwaish Alfraji’s The House That My Father Built (once upon a time), a multimedia installation of painting, photography, fashion and animation, to Ebtisam Abdulaziz’s ghostly illuminated white acrylic shapes Re-Mapping, the exhibits are divided into three sections covering firstly the environment and reality, then stereotypes, and lastly memories and the future.
 
Inevitably, in light of the current regional tumult, the works are politicised whether intended or otherwise, but with only a few days left to run, there really is nothing like it in Asia. Make sure you’re on the Arab Express.