The new collective exhibition at ICD Brookfield Place in Dubai ironically questions what the Arab future would look like through five works ranging from installations to iconographies and textile compositions. The name of the exhibition is directly inspired by Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", better known by its new title "Blade Runner".
The exhibition features Lebanese illustrator Tracy Chahwan who presents "Resembling Resilience", a series of covers in which she uses traditional codes and symbols to reinvent an Arab future far from Western stereotypes which too often associate the Arab world with misery and disaster.
Then there is the installation by Algerian artist Walid Bouchouchi, entitled "Fono-type", which introduces 45 posters, each displaying a letter. The installation evokes a post-independence Algeria where three main languages are mixed - Arabic, Tamazight and French -, therefore shaping a diverse & open post-colonial nation-state.
The works of Meriem Bennani (Morocco), Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme (Palestine) can also be discovered.
Photo: "Typo-Fono" by Walid Bouchouchi, copyrights The National.