As the ongoing pandemic across the world ensures that most of us are confined to our couches, the art world is finding creative ways to deal with the situation. Since we can’t go to museums, galleries or fairs, they are being brought to us instead. Here are our top five recommendations for art that you can view safely and virtually.
1. Alserkal Online
More than 15 galleries in Dubai’s art district Alserkal Avenue got together to take Alserkal Art Week online. The platform, alserkal.online, was launched on 23 March 2020 with a virtual vernissage, or #VernissageFromHome, with over 10,000 hits on their website. Allowing viewers to navigate through 360-degree views of ongoing exhibitions in gallery spaces, zoom in on artworks, read descriptions and even click through to Artsy for pricing information, this tool is the next best thing to actually being able to visit the gallery, and they promise new content and interviews regularly. Current exhibitions include Indian artist Amar Kanwar’s Such a Morning at Ishara Art Foundation and Tapestry of Fading Gardens at 1×1 Gallery featuring artists from Pakistan.
2. Nalini Malani and the #MalaniNotebooks
Recently exhibited at the Goethe Institut in Mumbai, #MalaniNotebooks are an ongoing series of animated iPad drawings that Nalini Malani started in 2017 and has offered online — available for free downloads — ever since. Not only is this an interesting experiment on ownership and an example of Free Art, her animations are also highly relevant and inspired by, according to the artist, “daily politics, other people’s writings, or something mundane I might have just experienced.”
3. A Digital Retrospective on Frida Kahlo
Although not new, there’s never been a better time to view the comprehensive online exhibition Faces of Frida on Google Arts and Culture. With works from more than 25 museum and gallery collections, it is the “largest collection of artworks and artifacts related to Frida Kahlo ever compiled,” and took years to curate. It also includes works and lesser known sketches from private collections that were never before seen online.
4. Performance Art curated by Marina Fokidis
Art Dubai recently launched its performance arts programme online, titled On(Line) Healing. In its original avatar the programme was intended to contain both on-site and online elements, with the latter being “a curatorial experiment on how to enlarge the “corporeal” – within the realm of contemporary art performance – in ways that go beyond any kind of physical restrictions,” according to curator Marina Fokidis. Now solely online, the programme takes into account “the current constantly evolving readings of what healing means,” and “aims to give rise to unexpected relationships among diverse and heterogeneous knowledges and to establish a medicinal space for our collective therapy to exist.” Featured artists include Bahar Noorizadeh (Iran/Canada), Imaad Majeed (Sri Lanka), Tiago Sant’Ana (Brazil), Angelo Plessas (Greece) and Tabita Rezaire (France).
5. #MuseumFromHome
Numerous museums globally have come together on Instagram to bring art knowledge to people through the hashtag #MuseumFromHome on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Playfully implying that the word “museum” is a verb, it is a constantly updated collection of images, videos and articles from top museums such as MoMA, the Smithsonian, the Louvre and the V&A.
Cover image: A screenshot of Amar Kanwar: Such a Morning at Ishara Art Foundation’s virtual gallery.
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