ArtDayMe: Lesley Ann Gray is a Dubai-based curator and researcher specialising in contemporary art and museums in the Arabian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions. 

Part of Lesley Ann Gray’s writing in the exhibition catalog: 

exhibition is thus an act of experimentation and learning from the natural world. The works offer a glimpse into what the plat can it can be used and heing it as art but this is only one way to see how it can be used and how the resources around us can provide not only solutions but also beauty and healing.

Tayara-Baroudy used the natural elements to shape the work - sunlight, heat, humidity.

Tayara-Baroudy's practice links to a larger synergy across the world of artists exploring connections between humans and nature.

Referencing the Arte Povera movement and in particular the work of Giuseppe Penone, Tayara-Baroudy joins her peers in investigating these intersections of humanity and nature. The exhibition takes us through the artistic process - a repetition of harvest, breaking down and rebuilding.

The name of the exhibition has been taken from the BBC series and subsequent book Ways of Seeing' by John Berger that explores the ways in which things are portrayed and why. This references not only the positioning of Calotropis Procera as invasive and toxic (which is then dismantled through the artworks) but also the way in which this process encouraged the artist herself to focus on exploring the resources that exist within her immediate environment to make art. Curatorially, the artworks in the exhibition invite us to think further about the relationship between art and nature as a tool for expression. As we trace the journey from seed to plant to visual and physical representations, the mediums themselves transform with the materiality. The intention behind the grouping of the artworks references oscillation between inner and outer worlds - the interiority of the act of artistic creation and its facilitation through the exterior natural environment and the implicit understanding between the two that this oscillation facilitates. Photographs and drawings represent the visual processing of the shapes and textures of the plant through the mind, which evolve into mixed media on paper, fibre and textile, manipulated by hand. As the massing of material grows, it culminates in the installation of the shelter, where we are ensconced in the branches of the plant. As we emerge, we too have transformed through awareness.

To return to the larger global context, we are now living in a world under enormous environmental strain. Our movement across geography has reshaped our social and economic interactions to the detriment of our ecosystem. We require a revolution in thinking to meet these challenges. Through this exhibition, Tayara-Baroudy shows that art offers opportunities to rethink how we see, use and interact with the world around us. The natural world offers us so much, so long as we allow ourselves to be open to what it is telling us and see the possibilities that already exist in front of our eyes.

Art offers opportunities to rethink how we see, use and interact with the world around us.

Jamal Tayara Baroudy solo exhibition is in Designs Gallery by Tashkeel until November 28, 2023 at FN.