New publication on the work of Hassan Sharif accompanies ‘I Am The Single Work Artist’ European tour

Overview

“I enjoy repetition. One can say that if artists engage repetition, they come to create a single work over their entire lifetime ... If you were to leave the artist to sit in a corner, wrapping thread around scraps of jute, you’d witness him or her immersed in repetition, and repetition is not prohibited. The individual would wrap lengths and lengths of thread on a Sunday, and then more lengths of thread on a Wednesday or a Thursday; but we can’t call this ‘repetition’ because the days are different”

– Hassan Sharif, I Am The Single Work Artist, Al Bayan Al Thaqafi, 1989

Recognised as a driving force in the transformation of the regional art community, Emirati artist Hassan Sharif was a pioneer of conceptual art and experimental practice in the Middle East. Moving between roles as artist, educator, critic and writer, Sharif worked to encourage the engagement of local audiences with contemporary art through his Arabic translations of historical art texts and manifestos, as well as the founding of informal art spaces and ateliers.

Hassan Sharif: I Am The Single Work Artist began as the largest exhibition of the artist’s work staged across Sharjah Art Foundation’s venues in 2017-18, curated by Hoor Al Qasimi. The European tour of this retrospective has been organised in collaboration with KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden. Featuring 150 works from artist’s diverse oeuvre, including early newspaper caricatures and comic strip drawings, paintings, sculptural installations, and assemblage, the exhibition is a culmination of Sharif’s long and storied history with the Emirate of Sharjah and be on view at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, from 29 February to 3 May 2020, before travelling to Malmö Konsthall later this year.

Accompanying the exhibition tour is the eponymous publication which presents the Foundation’s research into Sharif’s multidisciplinary practice. It includes lost works, original English translations from his journalistic and experimental writings alongside archival materials from ephemeral exhibitions and happenings as well as dialogues and reflections by Sharif’s contemporaries in the UAE. It is not a typical exhibition catalogue or a chronological book, but an experimental work that reflects Sharif’s practice and weaves a personal narrative from the various threads of his career. The publication serves as a vital resource for scholarly and curatorial interest in contemporary art practice, and as a reference for how cultural ideas travel and, in the process, are transformed.

The publication is edited by Hoor Al Qasimi and co-published by Sharjah Art Foundation and Koenig Books, London.

This publication will be available at the Sharjah Art Shops in Al Mureijah Art Spaces, Al Mureijah Square and Arts Square in June 2020 and can be bought online here. For more information, contact publications@sharjahart.org.

For more information about the exhibition in Europe, visit www.kw-berlin.de and www.konsthall.malmo.se

Publication information

Hassan Sharif: I Am The Single Work Artist
Edited by Hoor Al Qasimi
Published by Sharjah Art Foundation and Koenig Books, London
Hardcover with Vellum Jacket
17 x 24 cm (6.69 x 9.44 in) (portrait)
320 pages, 250 illustrations
165 AED / 45 USD / 39.80 EUR
978-3-96098-801-4