ABU DHABI.- The NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery will launch its fourth digital archive, Permanent Temporariness, as part of its TRACE: Archives and Reunions, on Tuesday, July 7. First shown in February 2018 at The NYUAD Art Gallery, Permanent Temporariness was curated by Arab art historian and NYUAD faculty Salwa Mikdadi and The NYUAD Art Gallery’s former curator Bana Kattan. This marked the first institutional retrospective of the pathbreaking conceptual artists/architects Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti.

For this special TRACE event, artists Hilal and Petti will reunite with Mikdadi, Kattan, and Executive Director of The NYUAD Art Gallery Maya Allison, to trace the exhibition from the origins of the various installations, to their re-staging at The NYUAD Art Gallery in 2018, to the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven in 2019. Taking place on Tuesday, July 7 at 7:30pm via Zoom Webinar, the panelists will explore how the context changes the meaning and relevance of the exhibition, as well as its intention and message. In addition, the artists will talk about how the exhibition led to their latest publication of the same name, which accounts for 15 years of research and experimentation.




Tracing: Permanent Temporariness, will mark the launch of the exhibition’s digital archive on Tuesday, July 7, enabling audiences to access materials including an audio tour and a photo gallery, as well as the Youth Guide and the exhibition’s brochures.

Focusing on the exploration of the state of “refugeeness”, the exhibition departed from the depiction of refugees as victims and instead employed a wider interrogation of the present condition of impermanence and displacement affecting a vast number of people living as guests in host countries. The exhibition featured seven installations and two artworks specially created for the show, providing audiences with new ways to engage with a timely and critical topic.

Previous digital exhibition archives can be accessed by the public on TRACE: Archives and Reunion’s page.