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03/17/2008: "The Flying House has landed"
If you have been reading this blog regularly you will know that I have tended to moan that it's hard to find Emirati artists Well ... I am delighted to say that a whole house full of them turned up in January. Apparently they were also annoyed that nobody seemed to know who they were and so they created the Flying House. http://www.the-flyinghouse.com/index.asp
This is the private house of Abdul Raheem Sharif and it contains the archives and ongoing work of several generations of contemporary Emirati artists. Abdul Raheem, a former businessman, has spent a lot of his own money and time establishing the Flying House after despairing at how much of the work of his two artist brothers, Hassan and Hussain, was getting lost or damaged in the absence of any appropriate storage or display space.
He regarded them as a national archive that there seemed to be no desire to help document or preserve. Anywhere else this house would be a unique but additional art space. In Dubai it is effectively the national museum of contemporary art. However, because of its size and the fact that it's a house rather than a permanently staffed institution, visiting is by appointment only.
The only indication that the Flying House isn't just another private residence is the top of a tree wrapped in coloured ribbons visible above the high perimeter wall. Tree wrapping was an early speciality of another of the house artists, Mohammad Ahmad. Once the metal gate closes you see straight through an exterior glass wall into a room filled with paintings, collages, photographs and objects on the floor. The steps and some of the paving slabs leading up to the house are also made of glass and filled with objects, as are the interior doors. It's a bit like visiting a fairytale candy house, but it also makes me think of Gaudi's house and Guell Park in Barcelona. 
There are currently nine artists displayed at the Flying House and there are references here to almost everything in contemporary art history. Hassan Sharif, for example, has drawn, painted, photographed, performed, experimented, installed and at some point probably happened! In the end he decided that he was something between a painter and a sculptor but could not find an existing category that was appropriate. So he no longer makes sculptures, paintings or installations but 'objects'. Lots of them. Out of string, cardboard, metal containers, plastic containers, raw cotton, flip-flops. The unremarkable assembled in ways you could never imagine until you see more than a hundred of them stacked on a steel shelf in front of you. Another shelf above that is full of different objects and suddenly you realise you're in a whole room full of objects on shelves like a perfectly normal storeroom, but one with a distinct personality of its own.
Hassan is always working. He says that he 'mass produces' objects that have no function other than as art. Although unease with mass production and conspicuous consumption is definitely a feature of the work, there is a clear element of irony in almost everything he does. This makes perfect sense for a man who started life as cartoonist in the 1970s and then went to the UK in the 1980s to study art and design.
His brother, Hussain also has a body of work that includes painting, drawing, collage and installation. As you walk into the Flying House you are greeted by his 'Strike', a wave of iron wire figures on the floor that seem to be marching toward the door. 
All of the artists at the Flying House have been very prolific in a number of disciplines. Mohammed Kazem who is now one of the curators of the Sharjah Biennale, http://www.sharjahbiennial.org/en/ has photographs, paintings, installations and etchings on display. Apart from tree wrapping Mohammed Ahmed does sculpture, painting, photography and objects. He also does land art in and around his hometown of Khorfakkan, a mountainous coastal strip near Dubai.
The Flying House is absolutely full of stuff but somehow doesn't feel crowded. It seems to alter your perception of both space and place and seems much more real to me than the world I walk in from! Its fantastic and raising the profile of UAE artists in such a spectacular way assures their involvement in the current creative boom. It has already had results. The Flying House is now included in Art Dubai, http://www.artdubai.ae/ the megabucks fair in March and it is also part of the lower key and more local Creek Art Fair http://www.creekartfair.com/ where it's participating in a discussion entitled 'Who are the UAE artists?' Abdul Raheem says the house has already had visitors from a US and Japanese gallery so it will be very interesting to see where the house flies next!
