Panel Discussion on Shifting Sands
London, 6 June 2024.
The Sunderland Collection Art Programme arranged a panel discussion about Shifting Sands, the body of work created by Fathi Hassan in response to the Collection.
The panel was held at Frieze No. 9 Cork Street in London. This conversation was moderated by the Art Programme's curator Beth Greenacre, and featured Gilane Tawadros, Mark Rappolt, Melissa Gronlund and Hammad Nasar.
Watch the Discussion
About the Artist, Fathi Hassan
Fathi Hassan was born in Cairo.
His family had been forced to leave Nubia when the Aswan High Dam was built in 1952. In his early twenties, he obtained a grant from the Italian Cultural Institute and moved to Naples, where he enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti. He graduated in 1984 with a thesis on the influence of African art in Cubism and he continued to live in Italy for many years.
Fathi was one of the first African and Arab artists to exhibit in the Venice Bienniale in 1988 and has participated in numerous solo and group shows internationally.
Fathi's Nubian heritage is a core feature of both his personal identity and his artistic practice. His lived experience also plays out in his works, which literally layer on Nubian icons such as the extinct ibex, warriors, houses, pots, and boats (feluccas); fabric from his family members' clothes; and ephemera from his travels, such as train tickets and super market receipts.
Fathi continually examines his own identity as a person existing between and among cultures. White or black, Christian or Muslim, Nubian or Arab: the artist has been confronted with this parties demanding that he assume or explain a particular identity, as well as his personal questing to decide what he is or is not, and whether it matters.
Meet the Panellists
Hammad Nasar
Hammad Nasar is a curator, strategic advisor and writer based in London. He is best known for his collaborative, exhibition-led inquiry. He advises numerous arts organisations, and is currently a Board Member of the Henry Moore Foundation (UK) and Mophradat (Belgium), and also a Council Member of Asia Forum.
Nasar was co-founder of Green Cardamom, a pioneering art space in London (2004-2012). He was also previously Head of Research & Programmes at Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong (2012-2016); Executive Director of the Stuart Hall Foundation, London (2018-2019). He also previously held Senior Research Fellowships at University of the Arts London’s Decolonising Arts Institute, and Yale University’s Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
In 2013, he was awarded an MBE for services to the arts.
Melissa Gronlund
Melissa Gronlund is a writer based in London. Her writings on contemporary art have appeared in peer-reviewed books and art journals such as e-flux and Afterall, as well as outlets such as the BBC World Service, the London Review of Books, The Financial Times, The Guardian, and The New Yorker, among other places.
She wrote the script for Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s-1980s, the film by the Barjeel Art Foundation accompanying their exhibition of the same name (2020). She is the author of Contemporary Art and Digital Culture (Routledge, 2016), the editor of Reference Point: A History of Tashkeel and UAE Art (Tashkeel, 2018), Art of the Emirates II, and managing editor of Portrait of a Nation II: Beyond Narratives (both ADMAF, 2022).
From 2007-2014 she lectured on contemporary art at Oxford University. During that time she also co-edited Afterall at Central Saint Martins. Originally from New York, she studied Comparative Literature at Princeton and Film Aesthetics at Oxford.
Mark Rappolt
Mark Rappolt is an influential freelance writer and art critic. He is the Editor-in-Chief of leading contemporary art magazine, ArtReview, and formerly the Senior Editor of Contemporary Magazine (2003-2004). In 2013, he founded ArtReview's sister publication, ArtReview Asia.
Mark's writing has appeared in a multitude of art publications, including The Times, Die Zeit, i-D and Citizen K, and he has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues and artist books such as artists such as David Cronenberg, Bharti Kher, Vaughn Spann, Yuko Mohri and Liu Xiadong, and monographs on architects Greg Lynn and Frank Gehry.
In addition to this, Mark has also curated and co-curated a number of fantastic international exhibitions, including Like a Moth to a Flame (2017) which was cocurated with Tom Eccles and Liam Gillick - a two-part exhibition at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and the OGR, Turin; Now or Never (2018) at Galerie Crone, Vienna; Sometimes You’re the Hammer; Sometimes You’re the Nail (2019); and Zhu Jia: Faraway Friends (2020) both at Modern Art Base, Shanghai; and (with Eccles and Gillick) Before the Cockerel Crows at the Palazzo Re Rebaudengo (2021).
Gilane Tawadros
Gilane Tawadros is a curator, writer and art historian based in London. She is the Director of Whitechapel Gallery (2022 - present).
She was formerly the Chief Executive of DACS, a not-for-profit visual artists' rights management organisation (2009-2022), the Co-Director of the Art360 Foundation which she established in 2016 with Mark Waugh, and the founding Director of the Institute of International Visual Arts in London (1994 – 2005).
Tawadros has written extensively on contemporary art and curated many celebrated international exhibitions. She was the first art historian to be appointed to the Blanche, Edith and Irving Laurie Chair in Women’s Studies, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, USA. She is Chair of the Stuart Hall Foundation (2015 – present) and Trustee of the Stuart Croft Foundation (- present). She has advised leading international cultural organisations including Tate, Sharjah Foundation, Mathaf, Rotterdam City of Culture, Arts Council England, and Fondation Evens.
Her anthology The Sphinx Contemplating Napoleon: Global Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Difference was published by Bloomsbury in 2021.
Beth Greenacre
Beth Greenacre is an art advisor, curator and consultant. Beth builds art collections with personal, cultural and critical meaning as well as market significance. Soon after graduating from The Courtauld Institute of Art, Beth Greenacre became the curator of the David Bowie Collection.
As well as co-curating numerous exhibitions with Bowie, she oversaw the sale of work from his collection at Sotheby’s in 2016. From 2000, Greenacre was Director of Bowieart, an online platform to support young emerging artists. From 2004 to 2017 she was co-director of ROKEBY, a commercial gallery in London. Greenacre is Chairperson of the Courtauld Alumni Committee, sits on the Executive Committee of The Association of Women in the Arts, and is an Advisory Board member of She CURAtes: The Residency.
Find out more about Beth's role as Curator of the Sunderland Art Programme here.
Fathi Hassan, Beth Greenacre, Helen Sunderland-Cohen and Hammad Nasar during a gallery tour for Shifting Sands, 1 June 2024.
About Shifting Sands
During his immersion in The Sunderland Collection, Fathi Hassan contemplated the global confluence of ideas and peoples, the tides of cultural encounters, and his own personal history.
Moving back and forth in time, Fathi produced a visually arresting and richly coloured tapestry of memories, concepts, historical figures and text, using his distinctive and expressive style. To accompany this new body of work, historical works were selected and displayed to provide context and illustrate his broader practice.
The physical exhibition of Shifting Sands was held at 9 Cork Street from 31 May - 15 June 2024, during London Gallery Week. You can enjoy the full online exhibition here.
Installation shots of Shifting Sands by Kristof Jeney
