Talks Across Borders
Venue: Unfold Brics
Creative conversations that transcend borders
The expression of creativity and culture serves as the foundation for Art Select’s functionality. This expression finds its truest meaning through the words and tone used to convey it. The landscape of creativity has no borders because art cannot be confined; it is limitless and unifying. Art is a language, an instrument of knowledge, and Art Select believes that communication forms the chassis for its exposition.
Talk Across Borders promotes cross-cultural dialogue and idea exchange, which not only empowers but also broadens the creative landscape.
“Communication, cross cultural dialogue and interaction is the spine of growth, collaboration and success”
– Kaneka Subberwal
© Video Courtesy of Unfold Brics
Talks@ArtBAB
The 2nd Annual UNFOLD Art XChange took place from March 7-9, 2019 at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre as part of the talks programme for the 4th edition of ArtBAB, Bahrain’s international art fair, under the patronage of Her Royal Highness, Princess Sabeeka Bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa, Wife of His Majesty, The King of Bahrain, President of the Supreme Council of Women, in collaboration with Tamkeen.
This was the first Art + FinTech summit to be launched in the global art market. A community of over 40 cultural leaders, Fintech, Blockchain, AI, and VR specialists from 20 countries across the globe came together through a series of panel discussions, interviews, and debates over the course of 3 days to foster greater knowledge-sharing and future collaborations.
Speakers @ArtBAB 2019
© Image Courtesy of Unfold Brics
Virtual Reality Space At ArtBAB, 2019
As part of the technology focus for the second edition, UNFOLD launched a dedicated Virtual Reality space at ArtBAB to further the empowerment of arts education. This was done in partnership with DSL collection, The Kremer Collection, and Khora Contemporary, and was powered by VIVE Arts and MSI.
The visiting public were able to embark on three different private museum journey experiences across Europe via VivePro headsets that were presented here in the Middle East for the very first time.
The first museum journey experience took the visitors into the virtual reality museum of the DSL collection in Paris, known today as one of the top 5 Chinese Contemporary Art collections in Europe. Visitors were able to immerse themselves in one of the most interesting and diverse collections of over 350 leading Chinese avant-garde artists, including Cao Fei, Tang Song, Ge Guanzhong, Jia Aili, and Chen Wenbo.
Visitors then continued their museum journey experience to The Kremer Museum in Amsterdam, designed by architect Johan van Lierop, Founder of Architales and Principal at Studio Libeskind, where they were able to stroll through the corridors of the Kremer Museum and immerse themselves in the spaces surrounding over 70 works of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings, including masterpieces by great masters such as Gerrit Dou, Pieter de Hooch, Frans Hals, Jan Lievens, Rembrandt, Michael Sweerts and Gerrit van Honthorst. Each work comes with a button to click on for a written or audio description. Some of the descriptions were recorded by the collectors, George Kremer and his wife. Also different from a brick and mortar museum is that visitors can see the backs of the paintings and their unique stamps for tracing provenance from 300–400 years ago.
Visitors then end their journey with Khora Contemporary, the first virtual reality art production house based in Copenhagen, where they will be provided with the opportunity to explore virtual universes created by Christian Lemmerz, Paul McCarthy, Yu Hong, Tony Oursler, and Erik Parker.
© Image Courtesy of Unfold Brics
Creative Interactions by Kaneka
Kaneka talks about the creative landscape of Bahrain and the business of art. These interactions, while related to art and design, are not limited to them.
The Art Brew
This limited weekly Instagram talk show had Kaneka conversing with Canadian artist Mazarine Memon about borders—the ones that are contained, and also the ones that lie within us. Kaneka dug deep with Mazarine about how communication plays an important role in the post-COVID world because it promotes cross-cultural dialogue, exchange, and collaborative exercise.
