The Brooklyn Rail

Sunny Rahbar is the co-founder of The Third Line, a contemporary art gallery in Dubai. Anuar Khalifi is an artist who lives between Barcelona and Tangier and makes figurative paintings that address questions of identity, place, and society. They joined Dr. Omar Kholeif in a conversation about what it means to create community, how imagination plays a role in the process, and the shifting nature of perception from one culture to another.

Omar Kholeif: I want to talk about an idea of community. I’m currently curating a show about what it means for a group of artists to have their homecoming. What does it mean to bring artists together who should be together but who are rarely put together perhaps because of a lapse in imagination. And what does it mean to not feel represented in spaces where you maybe should belong? What would it mean to claim that space?

All of these questions about community got me thinking about Third Line as a gallery that is now in its twentieth anniversary. And I was thinking of Anuar as a kind of a representative artist for me, because you’re someone who is an artist, who's a painter, but also someone who lives between two cultures—Spain and Morocco— literally sixteen kilometers apart, who is interested in all forms of culture, from music to fashion to food, to walking, to dreaming, to literature.

I wanted to reflect together about where we are now in terms of our sense of community, our sense of working and being together. To begin, maybe I'd give a question to you. How did you two first meet?

Anuar Khalifi: I think I have one version, and Sunny another one.

Sunny Rahbar: Let's start with your version.

Khalifi: We all remember things in different ways. I discovered Third Line on the internet and I thought, “Wow, this place is amazing! And the artists here are amazing.” And I was just really like, “What is this?” I think from there we started to follow one another on social media. Sunny liked one of my paintings and I thought, I have to contact Sunny. I sent her a green catalog of my exhibition with a little drawing. I don't know if you got it? if you still have it? No, it was a drawing.

Rahbar: I don't know, I don't remember the catalog.

Khalifi: But I sent it to you and maybe it never arrived. And then you did a studio visit with me in Barcelona. I didn’t know what to expect, and I was very nervous the first day that we met.

Rahbar: My sister was living in Ibiza at that time, so I was spending a lot of time going to Ibiza via Barcelona. And you said, “if you're coming to Ibiza, you must be stopping through Barcelona. Maybe you can stop for a studio visit.” That's what I remember.

Khalifi: And here we are now, being friends. But I think in terms of community, it's always a hard question for a kid of immigrants. But really, it's us: It's Omar, it's you, it's our little community. Because to be an artist is to be very singular and independent. I still feel that I'm alone, in a way.

Kholeif: In a sense, maybe the Third Line was a way to create community. Would that be fair to say?

Rahbar: There was an art community in Dubai. The Third Line was an extension of what I was doing before, which involved a community of creatives and people who had just come back to the UAE and who were excited to do things that were not happening here, such as hosting exhibitions or club nights or bringing out important DJs. It was just that there was very little. And that's why when we first started, we did a lot of events that were not just art exhibitions. We hosted talks. We screened films. There was a lack of places to go and watch films that were not blockbusters. We used the place as a meeting point, and it became a place where people could come and speak to each other and feel connected through the art or the conversation.

Kholeif: You have worked with some individuals who came to define what we refer to in inverted commas as “contemporary Arab” or “Middle Eastern art”— artists who broke records in sales, artists who went on to be the first from their countries to have major museum retrospectives at places such as the Guggenheim, to enter collections such as MoMA, Tate, and who were the first to have major survey publications.

Rahbar: I suppose the first reason for the community was that we felt that there was underrepresentation in the Middle East and North Africa—this whole region that we inhabited. Bidoun magazine was probably the first attempt to put all these people who do exist in one place. I guess the first step was saying, “No, we do have artists, and we don't have to shy away from that. We can all be together.”

That's how the Third Line became the gallery for these artists. Many of them didn't have galleries. We became the gallery that represented artists who didn't have representation. And then they grew, like you said, some went on to do great work in the world and to be shown in all these Western institutions. Before that, it was very unusual to go to an art fair and see a gallery or artists from the Arab world. Now it's so normal. Even to see an Arabic name on a Western gallery’s roster is no longer unusual. Now the ecosystem has flourished and is supportive.

Kholeif: And for you, Anuar: you live in these two different places, and you glean energy from both. In Tangier you may be more with your family, and in a different headspace than when you’re in Barcelona. But I want to ask you about your formative years, when you started painting. You grew up a little bit outside of Barcelona, in a kind of tourist area, so there's a very particular foreign gaze, and I wonder how that gaze that you noticed and experienced, how that affected how you came to look at art and work later on in your life?

Khalifi: It's more how I was looking at the human experience. When people are on holiday, and they have one week to interact, they try to live a life that is different from their own. People were coming to the beach and acting very theatrical, but the world was not that uniform, so you couldn't recognize from their appearance, where they were from. Now you're going to find the same kid in Paris that you're going to find overseas—you're going to find the same guys wearing the same clothes.

I think I've always been a bit of an observer. I will always be an outsider-observer everywhere, I think. And it's not this idea of belonging, it's this idea of observing the world, how it changes, how it gets more repetitive or uniform. And then there's another journey, in terms of art, to visit museums and see the story of art from classical to contemporary architecture. The world is becoming more uniform. I get a sense of almost melancholy when I see all these images about the old Arab world or Morocco or all these places. I'm melancholic for something that I didn't even have.

Rahbar: I think there are two different kinds of longing. One is like, you live in your hometown, but you don't feel like you're from there, you live in the region but you're not from the region. The second is when you're outside—for instance, I had cousins who are Iranian and they called themselves Persians because they have this idea about Iran, which is very different from how it really is. I would go to Iran and be like, “Oh, it’s not like how you're imagining it is.”

Anuar, you had the opportunity to go back home often. You would see that side; I also had the same opportunity. I was also studying in New York, and at some point, in London. But it's true, I think the longing is more from not really being where you're from and trying to understand it whether it's through your parents’ stories, or films or television. In the end, I think we all connect because we all have a similar reality, so only we can understand that if I met someone from Iran who grew up in Iran when it was one hundred percent Iranian, they would have a very different reality than me, even though they're from my home country.

Khalifi: For me, at an early age, I was attempting to somehow confirm that every space is the same and the human experience is the same. I don't want to use the word, but it is a vestige of capitalism. I was going to Fez, which is the most traditional place in Morocco. It's like a dream when you go there. Now it is absolutely changing. Even in a piece of art, when you do a painting, it's just meant to be in a space, but it can change. It depends on where you put it. Once you put it in a different country, it changes. Maybe it's more fluid, the idea of trying to claim a certain space, you know?

Kholeif: That's what I think painting can do: help us negotiate our sense of longing. One of the aspects that draws me to Anuar's work is that it is continually changing depending on context. I saw it online first, and then I saw it in person, and then it changed again in the different places that I saw it. But it was always contextualized by a reference to something that was in the orbit of what might be deemed the familiar. Yet, what you create is also, most often, drawn from the imagination somehow. With that, I wanted to think about how imagination plays a role in creating a site of belonging. I believe that we all need to feel like we belong—for at least a moment in the day. How do you feel about the idea of the imagination's role in that space of belonging?

Khalifi:I think whatever you can imagine, at the end of the day, it is still a form of reality. I always apply the idea of how imagination works to the thinking about ideas of color. If you try to imagine a new color, you will never go too far because one is confined by what has been created before in terms of color and hue. I do think a lot about museums and how they present a version of reality that doesn't represent us. And how we don't want that to be the version of us that remains in the world.

Kholeif: I wonder if we could talk about a specific work, for example, like Mirror Ball? It's like a painting from 2022 that someone could look at and see as a violent painting—a fight scene. But when people are told that it is a loose reconstitution of Matisse’s painting Dance (I) from 1909, they're like, “Oh, yes, it's a peaceful painting about play and dance.” I find that rather problematic, but also one of the eureka aspects of the work. It's like somehow it allows you a way in. It shows the biases that people hold towards men of a certain disposition, dress, color of skin, in a collective.

Khalifi: It is just a playful thing. You see it in any street of the Arabic speaking world, grown men doing that type of wrestling game. I saw my father and my uncle doing it when I was growing up. And it has something to do with that image. The background of the painting is very important. It is impossible to capture the two colors I use on it with any photograph. Of course, there is nothing violent in the subject. It's a negotiation painting about grown men being playful and wrestling.

Rahbar: I think perception is reality. I think when people see Mirror Ball here in the UAE, they do not see it in the same way that someone sees the painting in London or Berlin. I think that is a profoundly interesting and important aspect of the work. The difference created by setting. People resonate with your work because they see his paintings of men, young and older men, and are like, “Oh my God, we've never been represented,” you know? I think it's interesting because I don't think there's been this kind of representation. I think that's what's so captivating about them.

Kholeif: Indeed. Very few artists represent brown and Black male figures in acts that are non-violent, that are emotional, that are affective, that are about play and joy and celebration and prayer. It is about a kind of ritual or process that is embedded within certain cultures that can move from Tangier to Lahore, to a part of China. Because Dubai and the UAE, I'll just say, is a country where more than seventy percent of the community is diasporic and has come in and out from different places. There is this very polyglot awareness. People are resonating and clicking. So, you have a Syrian father and a Masri [Egyptian] person and the Syrian and Egyptian person all in the room seeing themselves. And that's really something.

Khalifi: Thank you. I think that if you put racism in the center of your work, in the end, it is going to be the core of your work. And it's going to absorb your life. I think the most political thing to do is just, in my opinion, use the tools that I must do what I am doing. I am conscious that when painting we always tread a very thin line. Things can go wrong when I'm dealing with an image that is supposed to be iconic, or how something non-political can become political. There are certain symbols that I use that people find common from all several places of existence, even if they are material things, but I am always thinking about these motifs and how they make me feel, interrogating what it means, and what it will do to the work.

Kholeif: There is a show that is opening in London at the end of May, Finding My Blue Sky, where I have asked you to make several new works. At the core of them is a triptych that you have conceived in response to the concept of pattern, movement, and change, as well as, perhaps oddly, the very concept of the church. I mention the church because, for many, the museum or the gallery is the church, but also, it is the site where many of us first encountered the iconography of visual art. What is the title of your work?

Khalifi: It is worth noting that I think there is a pattern to names, like your name is Omar—it doesn't mean the Omar next door is going to be like you nor that they pronounce their name the same way as you. Each pattern begins in the naming, and then this materializes in painting. With this specific triptych that I have created for Finding My Blue Sky one might consider that the pictures are anchored by the various patterns across three different tiled floors. They look the same, but they are not. I constructed the painting as an act of constant movement. That is because when you look at the painting, you can choose to focus on the sea, or the steel; one day our gaze takes us from one place to another. It's you, the spectator, who is always moving. The painting is still. I'm playing with this idea of patterns as well as Christian notion of the Holy Trinity. The way meat is observed in the Western world; how an animal in one place can be seen as aggressive, but for me, it might be reminiscent of new life, maybe something joyful.

Kholeif: I am curious as to what it will mean for different people. If the slaughter of a lamb as a metaphor of birth, will hold stronger than as a metaphor for Francis Bacon considering the venue’s location just off the Edgware Road at Lisson Gallery, London.

Khalifi: There's nothing more beautiful and existent and real than a child being born. There are certain patterns that are real. They are real and there are traditions that confirm this type. When you perform a certain ritual, you feel like you're doing something your ancestors have done, that you're still in an unbroken chain, no matter what's happened in the space where you are.

Kholeif: I like that you touch on people, because in the end, for me, the Third Line is about a people. It's about family and relationships. There is a necessity to continue to engage with people who will be empathic to our work. I think, Sunny, I applaud you because when I first asked you why you work with specific artists, you said just that. Returning to communal spaces, and how we build them.

Rahbar: I follow Anuar’s lead regarding community. It is where you feel and find comfort. Where you feel safe, where you feel you don't have to act in a different way, you can be yourself, you can be true to who you are within. And of course, to work with artists, this has always been my thing as well. There are so many artists who I didn't work with whose works are amazing to me formally and conceptually, but I don’t think we might necessarily connect on a personal level. It is important that you do spend your time with those who nurture. I've spent so much of my life and time working, but I also consider this an education and an ongoing, evolving friendship.

Khalifi: Relationships. But also, the Third Line, I think not only for me, I'm sure for the artists that work with you, is a place of, let’s say peaceful relaxation, because you don't have to struggle with certain things.

Rahbar: I see it as an extension of myself, as my house, my home. I want people to be comfortable, I want people to be taken care of. It's like if I invite you to my house, I want you to do well, eat well, be comfortable. I think that's probably it. We never really ran it like a business.

Kholeif: Maybe after twenty years, we could all write up business plans for our lives so that we could make enough money to go on vacation.

Rahbar: Exactly, so we could all buy a nice house in Marrakech or Mallorca! Anyway, I think we're all very lucky also that we found each other. I think that's why we've met, I think, energetically, we understand what each one of us has to do.