As part of our Art Week 2016 programming, The Circle Game is a major new multi-form work by conceptual artist Mary Ellen Carroll that invites the public to interrogate the history, present and future of Dubai.
Two LED signs are to be installed high overhead asking, ‘When did you arrive?’ and ‘When will you return?’ These are familiar questions asked of people who live in Dubai. And they are questions that could also be asked of the city itself.
A 15 metre high tower erected in the central Yard gives visitors a unique vantage point, a view across the low-lying industrial buildings of Al Quoz towards “old” Dubai and further towards Deira, the original city-centre. The platform connects these two areas of the city and will serve as a space for public programming during and after Art Week, including talks on urbanism, music, poetry and storytelling that open up a dialogue with Dubai and its citizens.
Artist Talks on the tower:
Mon 14 March | 18:15-19:00- Colloquy: The Circle Game with Mary Ellen Carroll + Hunter Lee Soik, futurist and founder of SHADOW | Location: Elevated Platform in the Yard | Limited spaces, early arrival recommended
Weds 16 March | 18:00-19:00- Colloquy: The Circle Game with Mary Ellen Carroll, Iyad Alsaka and Reinier de Graaf , Partners at Office for Metropolitan Architecture | Location: Elevated Platform in the Yard
About the Artist:
Mary Ellen Carroll’s career as an artist spans over twenty years across a range of disciplines including architecture, public policy, writing, performance and film. The foundation of her practice is the investigation of a single, fundamental question: what do we consider a work of art? Recent examples include Public Utility 2.0, commissioned for the biennial Prospect. 3: New Orleans; and prototype 180, Carroll’s long-term opus that makes architecture perform as a work of art and employs land-use policy as its foundation. Carroll, who lives and works in Houston and New York, is the recipient of numerous grants and honours, including a Graham Foundation Fellowship, AIA’s Artist of the Year Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Pollack-Krasner Foundation Award, Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and was recently awarded a Robert Rauschenberg Residency during which she completed the series My Struggle.