Firetti Contemporary Gallery, Dubai
Located within Dubai’s hugely popular art and culture centre, Alserkal Avenue, Firetti Contemporary showcases a vast range of works from established and emerging artists around the globe.
Firetti Contemporary is a gallery where art and creative concepts align from the region and beyond, encouraging global engagement through creating meaningful and sustainable collections. By representing both established and emerging artists from all over the world, Firetti Contemporary strives to build a multidisciplinary art space with a strong identity to an international platform. Bringing together like-minded individuals and pioneers of the artistic and expressive future, the gallery assembles a dynamic curation of works that encourage the importance of individuality and establishing collective alignment.
See below highlights from my recent visit to the gallery located in Dubai’s popular Alserkal Avenue art district during the city’s 2021 design week.
Fatiha Zemmuri / Eltjon Valle / Helidon Xhixha
Introducing earthy hues into the gallery, Fatiha Zemmuri’s work takes inspiration from construction, deconstruction, regeneration and transformation. The artist develops an elaborate work in which natural elements such as water, fire and earth are fused with additional materials such as wood, coal, and dirt, having an essential place in her creations. A collection titled ‘Mother Earth’ is reminiscent of the swirls and lines left on agricultural land.
A range of work by Eltjon Valle fills the gallery space - highlights the pressing need to combat the exploitation of land and the pollution that it causes, inspired by the political and ecological turmoil he witnessed in his hometown of Kurcova, specifically the Patos-Marinza Oil Field. Valle has used his art to document and depict this specific area of oilfields in Albania, while also reflecting the limitations and challenges imposed by the geological and geographical context. Through a variety of artistic visions and techniques, Valle expresses and explores the significance of land in his work. One of the most striking creations is the selection of children’s toys, covered in black matter to present the uncertainty of life for future generations and our failure to protect them from a polluted world.
The mesmerising works by Helidon Xhixha immediately catch the eye; through a highly skilled intervention on steel in which perfectly flat, seamless planes become suddenly distorted and disturbed, Xhixha is, in fact, creating a visual commentary on the interplay between steel and light, between the physical and the intangible; whilst simultaneously touching on powerful philosophical concepts.
Ghizlane Sahi
Sahli tells of an interior and organic journey, where she embroiders, sculpts and draws. With the help of ancestral techniques and the know-how of the women artisans who surround her, she develops her contemporary ideas.
Through her acts of recycling, re-energising and re-use, Sahli draws attention to critical environmental issues while also evoking beauty that potentially lies underneath. Carried by a universal dimension, Sahli’s artwork is immersed with the theme of nature, which is embedded seemingly everyday. These pieces represent the need for durable progressions in development and also the future of the planet.
Rachel Libeskind / Irvin Pascal
In Praxis of Change, Libeskind presents us with an installation of words all relating to our planet and environment. The phrases we are confronted with make us question our relationship with the earth and nature, both collectively and individually. “Nature owes you nothing”, “Terror of Territory” and “You are not on Earth” are a few of the encouraging statements within this installation – all engaging the viewer to question the certainty of our future on Earth.
Pascal’s innovative practice is affiliated with the legacy of functional design and its potential to invoke universal dialogue. Pascal participates in the revolutionary practice of making to explore new concepts within the African-Caribbean context.