Ammar Al Attar
ABOUT
His shift into performance art has given his work new depth, as it encompasses his gaze as both the subject and the observer. By using performance to translate interactions with his daily and natural environment, Al Attar widens the scope of possibility, providing a window into experience, perseverance, endurance, and ultimately creation.
Ammar recently participated in projects with COP28 held in UAE, Out of Range in 421 and the exhibition Past, Borrowed, a collaborative exhibition between Warehouse421 and Gulf Photo Plus, curated around the theme of the Year of the 50th and the National Day celebrating the UAE’s Golden Jubilee. Before that for ‘Place I Call Home’, British Council and Foto Gallery 2019-20, Abu Dhabi Art 2018, ‘Al Haraka Baraka’, Sharjah Art Centre 2018, ‘Place and Unity’, Abu Dhabi 2018, Shara Art Fair, Jeddah KSA 2018, Emirati Expressions IV, Abu Dhabi 2015, ‘Accented’, Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah 2015, Emirates Fine Arts Society Annual Photography Show, Sharjah 2015, ‘Past, Forward’ UAE Embassy to the United States, touring show 2014, ‘The Other Me’, Sharjah Art Museum 2014, and in the Sharjah Biennial in 2013.
He has also been recognized with various prizes, including by the Emirates Fine Arts Society 2014, Emirates Photography Exhibition 2014, and Art Abu Dhabi Commision 2018. His pieces are held in public and private collections throughout the Middle East at Sharjah Art Foundation, Barjeel Art Foundation, Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation, as well as internationally at the British Museum and Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art in China.
Ammar currently works from a studio in the Sharjah Art Foundation collection building.
BIO
Ammar Al Attar is a self-taught, Emirati mixed-media artist. Al Attar’s practice seeks not only to document and translate, but also methodically research and examine aspects of regional ritual, material culture, and geographic orientation that are increasingly elusive in his rapidly globalizing society. Al Attar often incorporates retro photographic equipment into his shoots. He hoards everything from slide projectors to large format cameras, dog-eared postcards and orphaned negatives—and meticulously catalogues these clues to the past on the shelves of his Sharjah studio. His ongoing research project, Reverse Moments—a collaboration with various long time studio photographers, collects stories and artifacts that compose the history of photography in the UAE, and curates these flashes into a critical emerging narrative.
IG_ https://www.instagram.com/ammaralattar/