Abu Dhabi: The NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Art Gallery is celebrating its ten years anniversary since with the opening of its spring exhibition, In Real Time. Opening today, 22nd February, the exhibition will continue to grow and change over the coming months, “In real time.”
Maya Allison, the executive director of the NYUAD Art Gallery, is in charge of the exhibition. Curator and research assistant professor Duygu Demir, who recently joined NYU Abu Dhabi, has made curatorial interventions. In the upcoming months, performers will activate a whole scenography that Demir and artist Gözde İlkin have installed together.
Maya Allison commented that, “Every time I embark on a new curatorial project, I ask the ‘why’ of art. This line of questioning is a bracing, uncomfortable process, but a very rewarding one because the answer changes depending on what is happening in the world. In Real Time emerges in response to a sense of urgency, today: perhaps art can offer something different from the news, from the scroll, and yet not distract us or make us forget.”
“As the show evolves, history unfolds around us. What do we need from a space for art in this particular moment, in this particular part of the world, in a university, in an academic gallery? I hope this exhibition allows for any number of responses,” Allison added.
During its first ten years of existence, the NYUAD Art Gallery has received several worldwide accolades and acclaim for its significant artist commissions, book publishing, and historical research exhibitions from all over the world. Additionally, it sponsors the Project Space, an exhibition laboratory open to the academic and local community, which showcases rising artists from the area as well as faculty-curated exhibitions, final projects for MFA and undergraduate programs, and student artwork.
Together, the areas of NYUAD’s Art Gallery function as a trial run for curatorial approaches that support creativity in the Gulf region’s exhibiting practices and in conversation with the international art scene.