ABCAD Art Center and Albareh Art Gallery present “Displacement”, a group exhibition showcasing works by seventeen emerging Bahraini artists. The exhibition is the final result of a mentorship program held at ABCAD since January 2013, when curator Mo Reda began working with a select group of promising local artists. In the course of the program, through a series of workshops and individual mentorship, the artists were encouraged to seek further in their creative processes in order to stretch their own technical and conceptual capabilities, while at the same time confronting the concept of displacement. At the heart of this concept – both spatial and emotional – artists from Bahrain are enabled to explore the impact of displacement on a person’s identity and belonging, alienation in contemporary culture and the place we occupy in society as displaced individuals.

Bahrain serves as the laboratory for this investigative and creative project, being a country on the meeting grounds of different cultures, civilizations and ages. Young and old at the same time, countless peoples – and individuals – have passed through Bahrain, leaving traces in the place and shaping its identity in complex, unusual and often indescribable ways. Displacement could be not only a metaphor for the transformations of the common place in the course of the modern era, but also a challenge to the concept of place itself – What is a place in general? While contemporary art – and culture in general – has an emphasis on the experience of time, this in itself makes us realize how difficult it is to map a notion of place in reality and the insecurities associated with not finding one’s place in the world: We are all displaced, in one way or another.

The realities of migration and emigration between emerging markets and the third world, and the rise of the Gulf region as an economic power have significantly transformed places and living spaces in an otherwise traditional society, opening opportunities for reflection and introspection about our identity outside the margins of the established patterns. Perhaps identity is also an order of the imagination, a faculty of hope and a gaze into the future – Becoming what one could truly be. Displacement in general has a negative connotation but emerging here as neutral space in contemporary art, the next generation of Bahraini artists explore the singularity of the notion and present us the works in this exhibition, questioning not only us, but art in general, about the possibilities of finding a place for our self-appointed and shared destinies.  
“Displacement” will open to the public from March 27th through April 7th

Supported by Tamkeen and the Economic Development Board of Bahrain.