Art and Cultural Production in the Gulf Cooperation Council

Suzi Mirgani, Suzi Mirgani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351142182
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

State-driven investments in art and cultural production in the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are an important part of the search for longer-term alternatives to the longer-term unsustainability of the hydrocarbon-based economic development model. They also are an element in the search for soft power and status, and intersect with the nation-building project. The long-term planned––and unplanned––effects of such cultural initiatives include a necessary opening up to a future of unexpected and often undesired cultural encounters, whether in the classroom, the art gallery, the sports stadium, or the labor office. As states driven by a desire to raise both their regional and international status, but needing to satisfy their domestic conservative constituencies, their greatest test will be their judicious negotiating of the conflicting sociocultural elements of an increasingly globalized world. This volume offers a comprehensive multi-disciplinary analysis of this complex arena and the state of art and cultural production in these Gulf societies, through original studies on identity formation and an emerging museology; the aesthetics of censorship; the question of authenticity; cultural projects as state-driven soft power efforts; the phenomenon of public art; and artistic engagements with migrant labor communities.

The chapters originally published as a special issue in the Journal of Arabian Studies.

Introduction:
Art and Cultural Production in the GCC

SUZI MIRGANI

Abstract: The long-term unsustainability of a hydrocarbon-based economic future has become a major concern for the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and is one of the main driving forces underpinning the search for alternative modes of economic development. Towards this end, some of the GCC states have been making record, headline-grabbing investments in the fields of finance, healthcare, education, sports, and, as concerns this paper, art and culture. The long-term planned — and unplanned — effects of state-sponsored art and culture initiatives are yet to be seen, but are moving these nations onto a more public and international stage. A side effect of the GCC states’ cultural investments is a necessary opening up to a future of unexpected — and often undesirable — cultural encounters, whether in the classroom, the art gallery, the sports stadium, or the labor office. As nations driven by a desire to be among the region’s leading powers but needing to satisfy their internal conservative components, their greatest test will be their judicious negotiating of the incompatible elements of an increasingly globalized world.

1 Background

Over the past few decades, the GCC states have been strategically working towards diversifying their economies by translating abundant natural resource capital into other areas of investment and institutional infrastructure.¹ The governments of these countries have crafted their nation-building masterplans according to the cadence of oil and gas prices and the rise and fall of wealth accrued from their hydrocarbons industries. The long-term unsustainability of a hydrocarbon-based economic future has become a major concern for the GCC states, and is one of the main driving forces underpinning the search for alternative modes of economic development — ones that attempt to create, then tap into, what is termed “human capital” in the creeping market-centric parlance.² Towards this end, the GCC states have been making record, headline-grabbing investments in the fields of finance, healthcare, education, sports, and, as is the concern of this special issue, art and culture.³ This collection of articles attempts to look beyond the headlines, and to examine critically a number of institutional and social engagements with these state-driven efforts.

As relatively young nations emerging onto the global scene, the GCC states have invested strategically in the hallmarks of the modern nation state, and are defining themselves according to the visions and missions of their leaderships, many of whom, but especially those of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), are giving unprecedented importance to the cultural sector. These states have invested in creating small — but economically-powerful and rapidly-growing — GCC-wide art markets and regional cultural hubs, driven in large part by wealthy individual collectors, many of whom have direct familial links with regional ruling families.⁴ Like so many other sectors of GCC rentier economies, art and cultural institutions are being created and promoted as state-driven industries, and according to particular nation-building and branding objectives that have been in place since their inception. State patronage of the arts captures the institutional significance of the culture industry for the national project, and as an integral force provides domestic as well as international benefits — both financial and reputational. For their efforts, Doha was designated 2010 “Arab Capital of Culture” by UNESCO,⁵ and Sharjah has been named as both “Cultural Capital of the Arab World” in 1998 and “World Book Capital” for 2019 by UNESCO.⁶ Both Qatar and the UAE, especially, are using the fields of art and culture as means of symbolizing their ambitions on a global scale,⁷ in the process influencing, and being influenced by, leading regional and international art and culture markets. However, the twinning of the arts and state politics as a key feature of the GCC’s cultural strategy has meant that the cultural sector is often directly affected by what happens at the state level — as evidenced by the 2017 GCC crisis, and the setbacks emanating from the fragile nature of regional political integration.⁸ Despite committed efforts at cultivating the arts in, and across, the GCC nations, these are ultimately tied to political dynamics.

Such regional disputes notwithstanding, and with many countries of the Arab world themselves debilitated by a variety of economic and political setbacks, GCC nations have been using their wealth advantageously to carve out a space for their symbolic and hegemonic leadership roles in the region, and beyond. By taking their cues from the rich history of Arab cultural conquests, the GCC states have seized the opportunity to fill the regional cultural power vacuum by re-articulating the meaning of Arab identity through a revival of Arab-centric and Islamic cultural products and practices — with organizations such as Qatar Museums aiming to “be a cultural instigator for the creation generation”,⁹ and with its Chairperson, Shaikha Al Mayassa, consciously evoking “the soft power that Joseph Nye has spoken about” regarding her vision in which Qatar’s cultural sector acts as a regional and global force.¹⁰

The success of the “soft power” of these GCC states lies in their ability to attract, accommodate, bankroll, and own some of the world’s most respected cultural institutions.¹¹ Making waves with their competitive acquisitions, the UAE and Qatar boast a variety of international educational, sporting, and culture institutions.¹² These projects range from fully- or partially-funded GCC-based branch operations,¹³ as well as partnerships with some of the world’s most highly-regarded universities,¹⁴ with respected international film festivals and art institutions,¹⁵ with renowned sporting events, and with international museums and auction houses dealing in some of the world’s most exclusive and expensive artifacts and artworks.¹⁶ If cultural influence is taken to be a powerful component of economic might, then the GCC states, and especially the UAE and Qatar, have found extraordinary amplification of their voices through these state-sponsored projects.

While there are various different reasons motivating Gulf nations to pursue these cultural trends, and while each institution, whether museum, institute, or gallery, has its own mission that falls under the larger grand vision instructed by the state, an underlying key component of international cross-cultural communication has emerged. One of the many rationales offered by the GCC states for these projects

is the desire to create a bridge between Western and Arabic art and a platform for retelling the histories and stories of the region, some of which have remained undocumented so far. This is all whilst finding a balance between modernization and Islam, between an increasing urbanization and a need to preserve the cultural heritage of the region.¹⁷

Qatar’s now defunct partnership with the Tribeca Film Festival, for example, was inspired to create better connections between Arab, particularly Muslim, societies and the rest of the world. Similarly to “how the Tribeca festival began — as a neighborhood response to the attacks of 9/11 — the Doha festival has a subtle resonance beyond mere film-going”,¹⁸ in the way it functions “as a platform for international dialogue and understanding”.¹⁹ In Karen Exell’s contribution to this special issue, she examines at length some of the epistemological tensions arising from the Gulf states’ investments in what are deemed to be “universal” cultural institutions, but which exist according to predominantly post-Enlightenment Western principles and practices. As the GCC countries emerge from, and continue to grapple with, twentieth-century imperial influence, their art and culture sectors become shaped in a manner that simultaneously adapts and adjusts the dominant Western canon. While these epistemologies might sometimes be incompatible, they are continually negotiable.

2 Market strategy and creativity

The high-stakes connections and partnerships forged between Gulf and international cultural institutions is a manifestation of the GCC states’ global ambitions and a natural extension of their neoliberal economies that are geared towards operating within the global market. As a means of gaining international relevance, influence, and audience, Qatar and the UAE have already begun to motivate other countries in the vicinity. Lesley Gray’s article in this special issue examines how Azerbaijan has used the success of the GCC states as encouragement for its own investments in the contemporary art sector. Mapping contemporary art’s emergence in a largely Western sociopolitical context, she argues that, in the aftermath of the Cold War and 11 September 2001, the focus of the global art scene could no longer disregard the pertinent issues being played out in regions of the world that were previously ignored, and once considered peripheral. With the spread of, and access to, global capital, travel, and technology, artists, art critics, and the media are shifting attention towards non-Western parts of the world in general, and the Middle East and the GCC in particular.

Within this newly reconfigured power balance, the GCC states “are increasingly seeking to capitalize on already established brand names and harness their power in order to quickly gain prominence, legitimacy and credibility”,²⁰ for example, with the UAE reportedly purchasing the Louvre brand name for $525 million. For many established Western cultural institutions, “expansionism and corporatism are some of these growing trends that are shifting the role of museums, and reconfiguring the power dynamics between developed and developing countries, between established and new museums”.²¹ As Btihaj Ajana notes, “until 1993 the Louvre was entirely state-funded. Now the museum has to self-fund 30% of its yearly operating costs”.²² Such institutions have long been adept at, and are under constant pressure to, seek out alternative sources of funding, and the GCC’s many financial contributions go some way to keeping them afloat at home, making these trading arrangements mutually beneficial. However, as has been the case in much of the international media, the bulk of the criticism is lobbied at the GCC states for importing institutions that are not indigenous to the culture of the region, and therefore “inauthentic”. There is relatively little critique of the parent organization despite the fact that both receive mutual benefits from the arrangement — one directly monetary and the other largely symbolic.

In her contribution to this special issue, Elizabeth Derderian examines public discussions — especially those circulating in the international media — that criticize the Gulf nations’ importation of international expertise in the arts and culture sector. The majority of these accounts are journalistic, and often depict the Gulf region as a “tabula rasa”, a place devoid of culture and history, where cultural industries only came into being with the formation of the nation state — or, more tellingly, with the introduction of Western institutions. The notion of “authenticity” is a lucrative signifier, and one that is politically entangled in relations of power, privilege, and capital. Even those invited to erect some of the most iconic buildings in the region have alluded to the Gulf as being a blank slate upon which their designs can be drawn in order to create, finally, some kind of real or lasting culture. For example, in a discussion of his design for the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, I. M. Pei notes that “Doha doesn’t have much of a history…. There wasn’t anything there”.²³ These simplistic — and often Orientalist — accounts are circulated and cited, and enter into the international public consciousness, thereby eliding any history of the region that does not live up to standardized Western conceptualizations of value. In an era defined by ever-intensifying connectivities underpinning all forms of global exchange, Derderian grapples with a simple,...