In line with its format of residence exchanges, the Milan-based organization FARE has started a collaboration with Maraya Art Centre (United Arab Emirates). Last March, Italian artist Eva Frapiccini presented her work in progress Dream’s Time Capsule in Sharjah and Dubai. It’s now the turn of UAE artist and musician Jumairy to come in Italy and work in a new project at Frigoriferi Milanesi, from September 1st to 25th 2016, under the direction of curatorial team Francesco Urbano Ragazzi.
Born in Dubai in 1992, Jumairy develops his own research connecting his studies of psychology and marketing (Middlesex University) to an intense experimentation with sound. The combination produces a range of sensory experiences, traces more than closed works, that spread from real space to the Internet. The artist infuses his imagery with a dark psychedelia that is expressed through performative acts, scientific experiments and mysterious rituals which happen on stage, the big screen and smartphone apps. The same can be said of his approach to music production, in which the Arabic electro-pop is intertwined with sounds à la Marilyn Manson.
But Jumairy is not just a teen idol who speaks to the new generation of Emiratis. Many of his works are indeed conceived to process traumas, both personal and collective. Just this year for example, the artist, commissioned by Art Dubai and Delfina Foundation, has dedicated a project to insomnia as an expression of social anxiety in competitive, market-oriented environments. It isThe Sleepless Pe-Tal, a clinic for treating sleep disorders through sound frequencies. The work took shape in a series of habitable installations between the halls of the art fair, a workshop at Rashid School for Boys, and an online platform: www.thesleeplesspetal.com.
During his stay in Italy, Jumairy will explore the city soundscapes, getting to the heart of the art and music scene in Milan. In the months following his departure, the inspirations and impulses of the residence will be processed remotely in an online diary that the artist will share from Dubai. FARE residency program thus puts the bases for an organic production process in which the artist’s personal research opens up to the discovery of the urban context and its mediatic propagation.
Following this approach, FARE has entrusted the curatorship of the program to Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, who will weave a network of relationships and narratives around Jumairy’s work. The duo, not new to these working methods, will then trace the path by hosting Jumairy’s diary on the social channels of The Internet Saga, the research platform the curators initiated in 2015 with a solo show by Jonas Mekas on the occasion of the 56th Venice Biennale.
The grand finale will be in December 19th 2016, when Jumairy will return to Milan to present the results of the residence.
Jumairy is an artist and musician from Dubai (UAE). Coming from the study of Psychology at Middlesex University, he is interested in issues related to the mind: memory, language, perception and trauma. He explores auditory, visual and tactile strategies while using digital means (e.g. websites and social media) to exhibit his work. Thus he challenges the boundary between the physical and the digital, activating all the levels of attention, sharing, contextualisation, discussion and feedback that performance and art on the Internet involve today. Jumairy’s work has been recently exhibited at Art Dubai as part of the A.i.R Dubai 2016 run by the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority, Delfina Foundation and Tashkeel. It has been collected and supported by Barjeel Art Foundation and Maraya Art Centre.
www.facebook.com/jumairy
www.instagram.com/jumaiiiiiiiry
Francesco Urbano Ragazzi is a curatorial duo willing to experiment new and collective forms of writing, exhibiting, producing and researching. Its primary lines of interest are the history of experimental cinema and the digital aesthetics. Among the collaborations with public and private institutions: Institut Français, Cité internationale des Arts (Paris), Ruya Foundation (Baghdad), Emirates Foundation (Abu Dhabi), Futura – Centre for contemporary art (Prague), Frise Künstlerhaus (Hamburg), Sinopale (International Sinop Biennial), Galeri Mânâ (Istanbul), National Gallery of Palazzo Arnone (Cosenza), Fondazione di Venezia (Venice), Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation (Venice), Museo di Villa Croce (Genova), Swiss Institute (Rome – Milan).
Francesco Urbano Ragazzi lectured in academic spaces and museums. Among them: MAXXI (Rome), François Pinault Foundation’s Teatrino (Venice), Zurcher Hochschule der Künste (Zurich), Macro (Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome), IUAV and Ca’ Foscari University (Venice). The duo has collaborated with the following magazines: Purple Fashion, Nero, L’Uomo Vogue, Peeping Tom’s Digest, Flashart, South as a State of Mind. In 2011 and 2013 the team curated The Internet Pavilion by Miltos Manetas. Two years later, on the occasion of the Venice Biennale, Francesco Urbano Ragazzi has been the founder of The Internet Saga project with a solo-show by Jonas Mekas.
www.e-ven.net
FARE was founded in 2008 with the aim to enhance and promote contemporary culture in the field of visual arts with an interdisciplinary perspective. It interacts with public and private entities in a vision of networking and by sharing of interests, projects, strategies. The result are the articulation and management of national and international networks in the field of training and mobility for artists, curators and cultural professionals. In 2010 FARE has created AIR – artinresidence, the only Italian network of artist residencies, becoming in Italy the reference body for the mobility of artists. Besides working with the traditional format of the residence, FARE develops exchange programs in collaboration with international partners. These programs are based on interdisciplinary research, sharing of knowledge, exchange of experience and they investigate different areas of interest: the know-how of residential practices; the relationship between art and the public sphere; audience development.
www.farearte.org
www.artinresidence.it
Maraya Art Centre is a three storey non-profit creative space, established in 2006, located in Sharjah, UAE. Since its inception Maraya has offered the public an innovative curated exhibitions programme with leading Middle Eastern and international artists, multi-media facilities, video archive, art library and regular public programme of workshops and events designed by its in house team and guest curators. Maraya also has several public art park sites within its local vicinity that feature interactive projects and sculptures. In March 2015 Maraya Art Centre opened 1971 Design Space on The Flag Island in Sharjah.
www.maraya.ae