Among the most affecting pieces in this retrospective of work by Emirati conceptualist Hassan Sharif (1951–2016) was Images on Tracing Paper (2015), a simple book of drawings on translucent paper bound with cardboard and sewn together by hand with brightly colored thread. It is one of the artist’s last pieces, completed while he was in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy. Filled with abstract scribbles and illustrations of objects like bicycles and cooking utensils, the book conjures an affecting picture of an artist so dedicated to his practice that he continued working until his last moments.
With its shaky renderings and loose stitching, Images on Tracing Paper invites reverence, appearing like a modest relic by an artist with a mythical reputation in the United Arab Emirates. But the actual history is more complicated. Sharif’s last work was, in fact, the gargantuan Colors (2016), a jubilant wall hanging comprising tiered rows of colored strings. A tension between history and hagiography was evident in this landmark survey of Sharif’s prolific career. Covering more than forty years, the massive show demanded repeat viewings, with over three hundred works as well as supplementary archival material. Selections spanned from the artist’s earliest days working as a satirical newspaper caricaturist in Dubai (criticizing those in power was eminently possible in the freer media climate of the 1970s) through the assemblage sculptures composed of commonplace objects for which he is best known internationally.
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