Scholars have persuasively argued that the spectacular cultural megaprojects in the Gulf region are instruments of soft power (Kazerouni 2017), and the timing of Saudi Arabia’s announcement of the Misk Art Institute awkwardly coincided with widespread criticism of the state’s brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Yet how do Arab Gulf states, either directly or through proxies, deploy art outside the region? This paper explores their growing use of touring art exhibitions as a form of cultural diplomacy, specifically examining two recent exhibitions that reveal quite different representational and diplomatic strategies. The first, Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s-1980s, features artwork from the Barjeel Foundation (UAE), displayed at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery (January 14 – April 4, 2020). The exhibition then tours four other university art galleries. The first of its kind, the exhibition and its resulting catalogue make a compelling case for the inclusion of Arab abstractionists in the canon of modern art. This paper argues that Taking Shape represents one path of cultural diplomacy, wherein organizers marshal Gulf resources and leverage cultural infrastructures to advocate for serious scholarly attention to the region’s art scene. With its focus on university museums and cultivating relationships with art history faculty, the exhibition is explicitly designed to write Arab and Gulf artists into the canon of modern art, and thereby legitimize the region’s cultural production. I contrast this exhibition with Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011, held at MoMA PS1 in New York City (November 3, 2019 - March 1, 2020). Much more spectacular and oriented at an international contemporary art elite rather than university audiences, this group exhibition features the works by over 300 artists. While the exhibition does showcase the work of artists in the region, it also includes mainstream contemporary art names – thus embedding Arab and Gulf artists in a broader mainstream of contemporary artists such as Richard Serra and the Guerrilla Girls, rather than isolating them in their own category. Weaving together ethnographic observation, interviews, and visual analysis, this presentation looks at the representation of Arab and Gulf artists and the region in these two exhibitions, and analyzes the ensuing critical and popular reception of these two exhibitions to gauge these different modes of asserting legitimacy and cultural importance, and the effectiveness of art as a mode of cultural diplomacy in the contemporary US.

Contemporary visual artists have produced a remarkable body of work dealing with present and future socio-economic and political challenges in the Gulf. Often, these artists have done so by referring to specific time frames – situating and addressing the past and present, or speculating about the future. Based on both ethnographic fieldwork, and the analysis of art through visual methods, this paper seeks to understand why artists have referred to such time-frames in their work, and which tropes and themes have been invoked as a result. Focusing on the artistic practices of artists Sophia Al Maria (also known as Sci-Fi Wahabi) and Monira Al Qadiri, this paper suggests that the themes these artists address emanate from the unique sociopolitical and artistic contexts in which these artists produce their work. These themes include the relation between heritage and nation-building, capitalism, consumption and labor, as well as dystopian and utopian visions of the Gulf. Their work responds to the intellectual concerns and interests of anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and philosophers who theorize heritage, futurism, object-oriented ontologies, speculative realism, and accelerationism. This paper, therefore, not only provides an overview of the oeuvre of their artistic output – but shows how it connects to some of the most pertinent intellectual concerns of the present. As such, this paper suggests that researchers should not view artists’ work solely as objet d’analyse. Instead, they should take into account that artists actively shape scholarly discussions and contribute, through their own artistic research trajectories, to academic debates in and about the Gulf. By analysing this body of artistic work and its contributions to such current debates, this paper contributes to a better understanding of the Gulf’s creative class in the 21st century.

Over the last decade, the United Arab Emirates, has emerged as cultural power, whose galleries and museums draw global attention while challenging the West’s cultural hegemony. In Abu Dhabi, oil wealth and neoliberal economic policies have been employed to instrumentalize the arts for tourism and business—often at the expense of overseas workers. Indeed, the conditions of these works have been so poor that they have sparked intense protests by organizations like GULF Labor, a coalition of mostly Western artists. In Sharjah, by contrast, galleries have also created controversies while drawing worldwide attention but through a series of discussions that engage the place of art in social debates. This paper will analyze how two artists—Ali Cherri and Ammar Al Attar—and other projects, supported by Sharjah, engage with histories that do not conform to UAE state narratives. Although the UAE was formed as a state in 1971, archeological projects situate the emirates within a much longer history. Cherri, Al Attar, and others have documented inquiries into these complicated and often unresolved histories through documentary film and photographs. Ali Cherri’s _The Digger_ (2015) investigates the lives of the two Pashto caretakers for the archeological excavations in Sharjah that contain evidence of the emirate’s deep history of connection to the Indian Ocean World. Comparably, Ammar Al Attar’s _Cinemas in the UAE_ (2018) is a series of photographs of some of the UAE’s first purpose-build cinemas, many of which have closed and been demolished. Alongside the photographs, Al Attar places evidence of the disappearing history of a film culture in the UAE that embraced films from Egypt, India, Pakistan, Britain, Hollywood, Lebanon, Bangladesh, and even Palestine. These projects invite us to reflect critically on documents and documentary, as they assemble evidence of complicated histories in open-ended ways. Importantly, they reject the commodified counterparts that serve tourism (often, a mix of orientalism and self-orientalism) and the exceptionalist counterparts that facilitate global business (safe ports in the Middle East) that are more visible throughout the UAE. This paper attempts to think through Sharjah’s commitment to art, film, and culture beyond the dominant discourses of “art-washing” or “soft power” to understand ways that art can engage debates on histories.

Since the 1970s, Saudi Arabia’s government has used its petrol wealth and Islam as potent tools of soft power, shaping cultural and religious discourses throughout the Muslim world. After King Salman ascended to the throne in 2015, Riyadh adopted culture as a new tool of soft power. Not only is culture an integral part of Vision 2030—Riyadh’s strategy to wean itself from its traditional dependence on oil exports—but it is also a central part of Saudi foreign policy. In 2020, the Saudi state and other national actors linked to it supported exhibits of the country’s artists at leading museums and film festivals around the world while funding new domestic art institutions. This paper explores how and why the Saudi government has turned to art as a vehicle to promote its goals at home and abroad. Building on my knowledge gained over fifteen years working in the country’s creative industry, I will argue that the state, through its work with McKinsey and other global consulting firms, identified art as a tool to “rebrand” the country as a modern, open society ready for the twenty-first century. We can see these goals in the creation of a Ministry of Culture (in 2018) along with the work of MiSK, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s non-profit, promoting arts at home and with the country’s foreign partners. I will also focus on the response of the Saudi contemporary artistic movement which, as a number of Western scholars have noted, was undergoing a renaissance in the 2010s. How have male and female creatives responded to Saudi government’s interest in their work? How have they managed the benefits along with the drawbacks of working closely with the government. Finally, I will investigate the limits of the new soft power strategy and ask whether other ways of promoting art could yield better results—both for the artists and for Saudi society as a whole. Is it possible for works to emerge from the grass roots, such as the film Theeb in Jordan, while also meeting the development goals of the government? Can Saudi artists, some of whom have developed global reputations, retain their integrity and the power of their work if they are widely perceived as being co-opted?