Land Art as a Means to Negotiate Natural and Cultural Heritage in the United Arab Emirates

• Authors: Melanie Janet Sindelar
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article examines the practice of Land Art in the United Arab Emirates as a way to negotiate natural and cultural heritage discourses prevalent in the Arab Gulf. It thereby views artworks as cultural statements that possess the enunciatory power to make visible the negotiation and ambiguity inherent in art production. Since the heritage and art industries in the UAE are closely intertwined, heritage discourses have permeated art production and influenced artists’ assumptions about the ways in which nature has been, or should be, equated with the nation. The article argues that Land Art can reveal the ambiguities in artists’ negotiation of the relation between nature and nation – regardless of the artists’ prior intentions for the artwork.

Keywords

EN

Heritage; Arab Gulf; Land Art; United Arab Emirates; Third Space

Discipline

• ETHNOLOGY: ETHNOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Český lid: etnologický časopis (Český lid: Ethnological journal)
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 104
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 213-230
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Melanie Janet  Sindelar

• Český lid, redakce, Etnologický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic