Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai is about to open No Trespassing, the foundation’s first summer exhibition, curated by Priyanka Mehra.
Comprising six artists, three are UAE-based and three are South Asian, each piece redirects the energy of street art into a traditional gallery space. The exhibition will open on July 4.
Rather than trying to define street art, No Trespassing is about celebrating its contradictions: disciplined and improvisational, disordered and intimate. The exhibition invites viewers to connect with the street beyond its function as backdrop, but as a living canvas inscribed with narratives transmitted through building matter, scrapheaps, street signage and graffiti.
Artists Fatspatrol (Fathima Mohiuddin), H11235 (Kiran Maharjan), Khaled Esguerra, Rami Farook, Salma Dib and Sara Alahbabi pose the question of how art exists on the street. Their work, ranging from large-scale wall interventions to floor-based installation, shatters institutional vs informal dichotomies, occupying gallery space in the form of street tagging and mark-making.
Curator Priyanka Mehra brings with her her background of public art and urban renewal to the exhibition, connecting gallery walls with city facades. Past projects of hers include those such as St+art Delhi and Yas Bay, Abu Dhabi commissions.
No Trespassing invites the public into a dialogue between the street and the institution, pushing against cultural hierarchies and asking who gets to leave their mark.
