The occidental tourists
Just as the fractious relationship between the Montagues and the Capulets electrified the romance between Romeo and Juliet, so combining the seemingly antithetical cultural viewpoints of the Middle East and the west can make for scintillating marriages in arts and design. From November 19, the inaugural Abu Dhabi Art fair will employ the city’s ancient position as a trading route crossroads to highlight the significance of the interaction of the two cultures.
Traditional Islamic design is renowned the world over for its use of elegant geometric pattern, technical innovation and artistic harmony. Now its thriving union with contemporary western practice is producing some eloquent work.
One such example is the textile designer Kevin Dean. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, his work features themes of flora and fauna. Dean’s career quite literally blossomed out of all proportion when he was commissioned by the late Sheikh of Abu Dhabi, Zayed Bin Sultan al-Nahyan and one of his sons, Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed al-Nahyan, to create a marble mosaic version of one of his floral designs for the 18,000 sq metre courtyard floor of Abu Dhabi’s Grand Mosque.
Completed in March 2008, the mosque is one of the largest in the world. Those of us who find it vexing to arrange so much as a bunch of tulips in a vase will sympathise with Dean’s initial trepidation at the prospect of arranging flower patterns over an area larger than a football field. But perhaps the true visionaries were Sheikh Zayed and his son, who was deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates at the time, for commissioning something other than a traditional Islamic floor design from a British craftsman.
read full article (FT)
read full article (FT)
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