Le Salon Paris, 2010

Hassan Hajjaj
Le Salon Paris, 2010
Mixed media installation
Courtesy of the artist

Overview

Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) will present Chaos into Clarity: Re-Possessing a Funktioning Utopia, an exhibition that includes works that investigate the Aesthetic of Funk. The opening will take place on October 26, 2013 at 6.30pm in Building F at SAF Art Spaces.

Curated by Shannon Ayers Holden, this exhibition is an exploration of the radical power of transformation, the theme of transcendence and the presentation of a new world material culture as seen through the works of three artists from the African Diaspora: American textile artist Xenobia Bailey, Moroccan-born photographer and designer Hassan Hajjaj and British Trinidadian filmmaker and sculptor Zak Ové. Each artist has a shared ancestral link to the continent of Africa, which provides them fertile ground to address issues of identity, belonging and community.

The Aesthetic of Funk is an underlying theme in Chaos into Clarity: Re-Possessing a Funktioning Utopia and is fundamental to the work of all three artists. Each artist explores how the prisms of duality and multiculturalism repossess their view of the world in their own personal ways through video and installations. The works also explore the personalised yet multi-faceted nature of each artist’s African heritage.

This exhibition was developed as part of Campus Art Dubai 1.0 January – June 2013. Campus Art Dubai is held in partnership with Dubai Culture & Arts Authority (Dubai Culture).

  • Artist Biographies
    Xenobia Bailey

    Fine artist Xenobia Bailey’s textile interpretations explore contemporary mythology, African antiquity and the 21st century visual aesthetic of ‘Cosmic-Funk’ through the mediums of crochet, fibre and digital mixed media. Her recent work has focused on design, with particular emphasis on how a well-designed material culture can enhance and support a community.

  • Hassan Hajjaj
    Hassan Hajjaj

    Photographer and designer Hassan Hajjaj was born in 1961 in Larache, Morocco and moved to London in 1975. His work has been featured extensively in international solo exhibitions including My Rock Stars Experimental, Volume 1, Los Angeles County Museum, California, USA (2013), Vogue-Arab Issue, Middle East Film Festival, Aria Art Gallery, Florence, Italy (2013), My Beautiful Rubbish, Freies Museum, Berlin, Germany (2010), Kesh Angels, Rose Issa Projects, London, UK (2010), Dakka Marrakesh, 8th Bamako Encounters African Photography Biennial, Mali (2009). He has participated in group exhibitions at MuCEM - Musée des civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France, the National Museum of Damascus, Syria and Athr Gallery in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, amongst other institutions.

  • Zak Ové
    Zak Ové

    The son of a Trinidadian immigrant, British-Trinidadian filmmaker, photographer and sculptor Zak Ové defines himself as a man of the Caribbean. Since 2000, he has returned yearly to Trinidad to document Carnival. Based in London, UK, he earned a BA in Film as Fine Art from Saint Martin’s School of Art. He continues to pursue his own art projects, using mainly the mediums of photography, film and, more recently, sculpture grounded in found objects.