Artistic Intervention as Practices of Care. In Conversation with Emiliano Valdes.

How can art facilitate an empathetic container for nuanced, complex discourse around some of the most contentious topics and events of the day? In times when the norm feels more often than not of utter chaos, constant overwhelm and overstimulation, and acute grief and fatigue, why does artistic and curatorial intervention (still) matter and how does it invite us to meaningfully re-engage with one another? In our conversation with Art Dubai curator Emiliano Valdes, we delve into these reflections, perhaps posing more questions than answers just as art often does, as we explore this year’s theme of Sanación / Healing and Valdes’ curatorial practice.

Joanna Pottle: In your curatorial statement, art is described as a “place of reckoning, healing, and coming together” in relation to providing critical discourse of today’s socio political landscape and social justice. How do you feel 2024 Art Dubai serves as a uniquely poignant opportunity for implementing such a complex theme of Sanación / Healing?

Emiliano Valdes: Obviously art is a place for many things, it allows for ideas and processes that would be unthinkable in almost any other field to be touched on and developed. Among them is dealing with difficult subjects such as political issues which can be very sensitive for many countries, peoples, communities… The Middle East is no exception and I think regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, art can provide spaces where we can discuss, enunciate, address the things that affect us. I’m hoping Bawwaba might be a reminder of this possibility and generate spaces for reflection as well as for contemplation and introspection about our nature as human beings and our relationship with ourselves –our primal political positions– and our impact on the world but also about where we stand in that global (and local) political arena. I don’t expect that an art presentation will resolve long-standing conflicts and crises but I do think that discussing pressing issues while at the same time providing for spaces of wellbeing might help us address and better understand our stance/participation in those conflicts. Because of what is happening in the region, I would want this section to be a safe space for reflection and expression into what is most important, which is the lives and wellbeing of people. 

JP: How do you define and navigate your curatorial role in this particular instance of 2024 Art Dubai as well as in your other vast curatorial work?

EV: I used to think that art was about the production and the display, about the history of art and about “big exhibitions.” Now I think it’s more about the care. As you know, the word curator comes from the latin curare which is precisely to care; I feel that we should honor the etymology of the word not only in relation to the artworks (the objects or the processes which of course also applies) but more importantly in regards to people: the artists, colleagues, audiences of different types, so called “communities,” etc. To curate also means “to provide” and “to undertake” which takes us to action: actually make sure something makes it, survives, thrives despite the challenges or obstacles. I am interested in healing processes and while I don’t think art has a therapeutic responsibility (although it can be a tool for that), I do tend to believe that it is a place where you can find whatever it is that you need to come to terms with this experience of being alive, which is so magical and and the same time so challenging at times. Over the past few years I have been expanding the field in which I work, or rather, the tools with which I think: I recently completed a master’s program which combines urban planning, ecology, public policy and work with communities and feel that art has such an important place in all of those disciplines or, better put, that it is aligned with them. Meaning, they share this idea that we can collectively work on making peoples’ lives better and I think that is what being a curator should be about. And also about making exhibitions and all that but that fundamentally, there is a human responsibility in this profession.

JP: As stated by the Art Dubai 2024 page, The Bawwaba Section (the Arabic word for gateway) features “traditional craftsmanship, folklore and ritual [as] running themes.” How do you see the materiality and themes showcased in the selected artworks as resonating with the exhibition topic “Healing.”

EV: I believe art is embodied thought so materials are the carriers of ideas, but they also have their own history, experience, and consciousness. The way an artwork comes to be is a negotiation between the artist’s intentions and the knowledge of the matter so understanding each material, each technique, each medium means that you are able to negotiate with it and with its own history, with its possibilities. It’s a dialogue between the world of ideas and the world of matter which in certain spiritual traditions is the same. I like the idea that each artwork has one and only one possible form/materiality because they are one and the same. The section recognizes that, beyond craftsmanship, there is intelligence in making even (or especially when) the processes are not standardized or industrialized. That carving wood, or making pottery, for example, are a way of putting thoughts into matter so each of the objects carries not only the ideas it “represents” but also the knowledge it intrinsically possesses through its materiality and fabrication process.

JP: Many of the selected artists’ hail from India and Latin America with new, innovative generations of artists and galleries represented from the Global South. What were some particularly exciting and fascinating insights you gained cooperating across all these collaborators?

EV: I was very keen on presenting artists from Latin America, which is where I come from and where many of these ideas spring; I also wanted to include artists from the Middle East because I didn’t want the presentation to feel alien to the local audience, which is a priority to me; and I was also keen on including a strong group from India because of its relevance in spiritual traditions, especially Buddhism and Hinduism; and yoga which is personally important and, as you will see, is very present in the section through works that reference it or depart from it. I found out that there are many shared concerns across these regions: histories of colonialism and oppression, a deep concern for the so called natural world and human impact on it and the necessity to recuperate local and situated knowledge as a way to counter the deep and often homogenizing effect of Western influence on them. I believe the global south is emerging as the source of an ancestral and now recuperated way of understanding the world that is more coherent with a holistic understanding of the world.

JP: What is a question you wish someone would ask you about your work, approach, or process? How would you answer?

EV: I think the best questions are ones that you haven’t thought about so all are welcome precisely because they make you think about issues that you haven’t thought about or angles you hadn’t considered. But I am particularly excited when people outside of the artworld become interested in my work because I feel it is for them that I am working most. One of my teachers says that yoga makes sense when it adapts to your life, when it makes your life better and not the other way around: when you have to change your way of life to incorporate yoga. I think something similar applies to art: it is best when it makes your life better, when you can access it with your own experience and knowledge rather than having to “fill in” all the supposed voids to, for example, see an exhibition. I hope that people will see how art (and yoga) can be a part of their lives with whatever experience/knowledge/expertise they have rather than feeling insufficient for the experience. 

JP: What unexpected findings have you encountered so far in your curatorial practice for Art Dubai so far that sets it apart from others?

EV: I’ve been very lucky in that Art Dubai has allowed me to pursue a line of research that I had been interested in for a long time and hadn’t found the opportunity to develop because I was either engaged in other ideas or projects or because I hadn’t found the right context. I feel that the solo presentations in Bawwaba and the performances and activations in the Commissions program speak to this time and this place and I honestly hope that people will feel the same. That they will accept my invitation to look inside while at the same time thinking and engaging with the current social and political circumstances of the region and the world at large. I’ve met great artists in the regions which comes as no surprise, but it is a privilege because they expand my own understanding of art and the way it relates to a particular context. I am particularly excited about articulating artists from the regions we discussed above because it speaks not to the things that make us different but rather to what we have in common. And that, I think, is the first step towards empathy, understanding and hopefully, even if on a small scale, to peace and wellbeing.

Be sure to visit this year’s compelling edition should you have the opportunity, on view from 1-3 March 2024.