Special Olympics Garden: Six internationally renowned artists commissioned by Special Olympics World Games Abu Dhabi 2019 for public art legacy project.
The Olympics Sports team Abdul Rahim and Muhammad Saeed, Abu Dhabi, March 16, 2019: Six major public artworks commissioned by SOWG 2019 to celebrate people of determination were unveiled at Manarat Al Saadiyat in Abu Dhabi, as part of the legacy of the Games, today.
Developed in partnership with the Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi, the works have been created by six internationally renowned artists in a commissioning process managed by Abu Dhabi Art.
The works include a specially created wall mural made of ceramic tiles by Paris-based artist Etel Adnan, a sculpture by Korean artist Noh Jun featuring two figures holding the Olympic Torch together and a mirrored bridge crossing over a stainless-steel lake by Mehmet Ali Uysal.
The artworks will form part of a permanent exhibition, in the newly named Special Olympics Garden.
The exhibition is designed to be a lasting reminder of the message of unity and inclusion that Special Olympics World Games Abu Dhabi 2019 helped to share across the UAE and the region.
This historic moment for Abu Dhabi will see the World Games held in the Middle East for the first time.
Tala Al Ramahi, Chief Strategy Officer, Special Olympics World Games Abu Dhabi 2019 said:
“Our aim is for the World Games to act as a catalyst for change, raising awareness of what people of determination can achieve and changing perceptions in society.
“It is vital that the legacy of the Games lives on long after the sports competitions have ended, ensuring inclusion and unity becomes a feature of everybody’s day to day lives.
Special Olympics Garden: “These public artworks will be a permanent reminder of the importance of the Special Olympics message, ensuring generations to come benefit from the legacy of hosting these global Games in the Middle East for the very first time.”
One of the participating artists Wael Shawky, who has created a carved wooden wall for the site, said: “I have always been fascinated by history – who frames it, who narrates it, the notion that there are multiple histories in any one moment but always one version that rises above the rest.
“The joy in Special Olympics is that everyone who participates is already a victor.Every single participant, in choosing to be part of the Games or part of the community behind the Games, conquers challenges, defines how their battles are framed, whilst recognising they are part of a far greater story – one of human determination, progression and bravery.”
The commissioned works also include a specially created wall mural made of ceramic tiles by Paris-based artist Etel Adnan, widely recognized as one of the foremost authors, poets and playwrights of her generation.
She said: “The World Games held in Abu Dhabi is an extremely important reminder that a human being is primarily a soul, a mind, a spirit, unified with a body, of course, and that both need equal attention.
These athletes with their special determination give us hope for human nature.
They give us more than they know. I designed this ceramic wall to celebrate the energy, the joy that we want to share with them.”
Korean sculpture artist, Noh Jun, has created a series of playful characters at the centre of which stand a young boy and girl holding the Flame of Hope together.
Noh Jun said: “I hope my work can be a happy and heart-warming one for athletes from all over the world participating in the World Games and wish that the sculptures may be true friends and guardians for the athletes and all visitors to Abu Dhabi.”
Turkish artist Mehmet Ali Uysal has created a steel mirror lake with a bridge across it entitled Affinity.
He said: “I’m so honoured to have been given the opportunity by Abu Dhabi to build a bridge between the Special Olympics athletes and to reflect, both metaphorically and materially, their inclusion as drivers of local identity within the Abu Dhabi community.”
Other artists commissioned to create works for the Special Olympics commemoration site at Manarat Al Saadiyat include Pascale Marthine Tayou and Nadim Karam.
During the Games, the artists involved will also run workshops for people of determination to support inclusion and share with them ways to express themselves through art.
Special Olympics Garden Special Olympics Garden,
Special Olympics Garden Special Olympics Garden
Special Olympics Garden Special Olympics Garden
The Artists biography:
Etel Adnan
Etel Adnan (b.1925 ) lives and works in Paris. She is widely recognized as one of the foremost authors, poets and playwrights of her generation.
Writing across languages and continents, she has long been a singular voice in the cultural discourses of the Middle East, and painting has always been a key component to her artistic work.
She wrote: “Abstract art was the equivalent of poetic expression; I didn’t need to use words, but colors and lines.
I didn’t need to belong to a language-oriented culture but to an open form of expression.”
Her canvases and works on paper portray landscapes in provocative palettes verge on abstraction, while her abstract color studies suggest a kind of interior landscape.
The intimacy of her small canvases, her direct, straightforward paint strokes and lucid swaths of color work to make her devoted investigation of painting a truly fresh, poetic, avant-garde practice.
She has had solo exhibitions at Zentrum PaulKlee, Bern, (2018), UNAM, Mexico City (2017), Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London (2016), Institute du Monde Arabe, Paris (2016), Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2015), ATHAF, Doha (2014) and Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2013).
As well as group exhibitions at Castello di Rivoli, Italy (2017), MoMa, New York (2017), Sharjah Biennial 12 (2015), the 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015), Whitney Museum of Modern Art (2014), and dOCUMENTA 13 (2012).
Etel Adnan has created a site specific wall mural to commemorate the Special Olympics World Games.
Pascale Martine Tayou
Pascale Martine Tayou is a Cameroonian artist born in Yaounde in 1967.
He began his career as an artist in the 1990s and has participated in Documenta 11 (2002) in Kassel and at the Venice Biennale (2005 and 2009).
He has had several international exhibitions in Germany, France and Belgium amongst other places.
His work explores various mediums as he seeks to redefine postcolonial culture and raise questions about globalisation and modernity.
Tayou collects ephemera from his journeys, including train and airline ticket stubs, restaurant and shop receipts and labels or wrappings for socks, batteries and plastic bags.
Tayou’s insistent reuse and recycling of these objects reminds us that contemporary life is inextricably linked with economics, migration and politics.
In his commissioned wall for the Special Olympics, tree branches of various distances and dimensions grow horizontally from the surface, inverting the usual experience and traditional relationship we have with trees.
Rather than leaves, the bark bears brightly coloured plastic bags on its edges.
The simplicity of the plastic bags evoke the many stories of our everyday lives.
While the work reflects on the effects of pollution and consumerism on the environment, ‘plastic tree’ also investigates the artistic qualities of plastic as a medium, its incorporation with natural materials and the simple joy that can be found in even the most humble of materials when perspectives are changed.
Wael Shawky
Born in Alexandria in 1971, Wael Shawky’s work tackles notions of national, religious and artistic identity through film, performance and storytelling.
Shawky frames contemporary culture through the lens of historical tradition and vice versa.
Based on extensive periods of research and enquiry, Wael Shawky’s work tackles notions of national, religious and artistic identity through film, performance and storytelling.
Mixing truth and fiction, childlike wonder and spiritual doctrine, Shawky has staged epic recreations of the medieval clashes between Muslims and Christians in his trilogy of puppets and marionettes – titled Cabaret Crusades:
The Horror Show Files (2010), The Path to Cairo (2012) and The Secrets of Karbala (2015) – while his three-part film, Al Araba Al Madfuna, uses child actors to recount poetic myths, paying homage, rather than mere lip-service, to the important narratives of yesteryear.
Wael Shawky was born in Alexandria in 1971 where he lives and works.
Recent solo exhibitions have held at ARoS, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark (2018);
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Yinchaun, China (2017); Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy (2016);
Fondazione Merz, Turin, Italy (2016); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2016);
Fondazione Merz, Zurich, Switzerland (2016); MATHAF, Doha, Qatar (2015) and MoMA P.S.1, New York, NY, USA (2015); K20 Düsseldorf, Germany (2014-15);
Serpentine Galleries, London, UK (2013-14); KW Contemporary Art Institute, Berlin, Germany (2012); Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2011);
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA (2011); Delfina Foundation, London, UK (2011) and Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, Italy (2010).
He has participated in the 14th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (2015); the 11th Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2013);
Documenta 13, Kassel, Germany (2012); the 9th Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2012); SITE Santa Fe Biennial, NM, USA (2008); the 9th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (2005); and the 50th Venice Biennale, Italy (2003).
Recent awards include the inaugural Mario Merz Prize (2015); the Award for Filmic Oeuvre created by Louis Vuitton and Kino der Kunst (2013); the Abraaj Capital Art Prize (2012);
the Schering Foundation Art Award (2011), as well as The International Commissioning Grant and an award from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, in 2005.
and the 50th Venice Biennale, Italy (2003). Recent awards include the inaugural Mario Merz Prize (2015); the Award for Filmic Oeuvre created by Louis Vuitton and Kino der Kunst (2013); the Abraaj Capital Art Prize (2012);
the Schering Foundation Art Award (2011), as well as The International Commissioning Grant and an award from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, in 2005.
In 2010, Shawky founded the educational space MASS Alexandria.
For Special Olympics World Games Wael Shawky will create a wall with carvings.
He will attend the Games and run workshops for the athletes and the wider community, discussing the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the participants.
Inspired by their stories he will then complete unique carvings on the wall that commemorate this historic occasion.
Noh Jun
Noh Jun (b.1969) is a Korean sculpture artist, who gained much of his work experience in the entertainment industry.
Working at a children’s cable channel at Daekyo Broadcasting Station, Noh was able to create unique and child-friendly characters such as Clo and Dappy and worked with clay animation for television for a long time.
Noh’s work has exhibited in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and USA and has won multiple awards.
For the project, Noh Jun has created ‘Light of Love and Hope’ comprising of two figures, a boy and a girl, each holding each other’s favorite doll and at the same time together holding the Olympic Torch.
Surrounded by five other characters playing Olympic Sports, the artwork components together symbolize that Abu Dhabi is full of love and happiness and a safe place for people of determination.
Through the workshops Noh Jun will teach the participants to use clay to create a character of their own, their own ‘guardian’, continuing the concept of the public art work.
Mehmet Ali Uysal
Mehmet Ali Uysal (b. 1976) has participated in numerous exhibitions and his works house in major collections in Sweden, Belgium, India, Turkey and France.
Playful and contemplative, his work makes use of common objects or images. Mehmet Ali Uysal then alters its purpose or use in subtle but profound and often humorous ways.
Whether it’s a giant clothespin pinching the earth or slabs of dry wall peeled off the gallery walls, his work reveals the playful potential in mundane places and things.
For the project in Abu Dhabi, Mehmet Ali has created a mirrored bridge that can cross over – made over a stainless-steel lake.
Nadim Karam
Nadim Karam (b. 1957) is a multidisciplinary Lebanese artist, painter, sculptor and architect who fuses his artistic output with his background in architecture, to create large-scale urban art projects in different cities of the world.
With Atelier Hapsitus, the multi-disciplinary group he founded in Beirut, he has realized urban interventions internationally, both temporary and permanent, in cities as diverse as Melbourne, Prague, Dubai, Beirut, London, Tokyo and Nara, Japan, exploring the use of public art as an instrument of urban activation and regeneration.
His artwork features two figures sculpted to celebrate diversity and what humans will do to strive and achieve. These sculptures interact to embody acceptance, building and strengthening relations, support, communication and accomplishment. Together they highlight the unlimited potential of people of determination. —- SOWG2019
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