Madeline Yale
Current PhD
Image © Meera Huraiz 2011
My research explores the recent global proliferation of photographic artworks from the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC). Established in 1981, the GCC is a region of heightened economic and population growth, attributable to the discovery of vast petroleum reserves and its establishment as a tourist destination. Historically comprised of semi-nomadic traders, it now has one of the highest net migration rates and foreign-born populations in the world, yet it has closed citizenship policies. Governed by Islamic Law, the GCC is influenced by capitalist principles and economic incentives for the pursuit of personal wealth.
The practice of image making in the GCC articulates a fragmented region consisting of heightened individual and cultural negotiations. It is a geographical site where, through the medium of photography, contemporary artists describe their fluid perceptions about material and psychosocial conditions of belonging to and within that contested space. Certain areas within the region historically eschewed and censored the medium on religious and cultural grounds, thus the markedly spiked rise in photographic art production correlates with relaxing censorship restrictions, making photography a pertinent focus for analysis. Furthermore, contemporary fine art photographs from the GCC not only index a remarkable period of regional development, these tangible objects become part of trading systems they reflect, attesting to the commodification of diversity.
I am using this site to describe how economic and cultural intersections inform and influence this newfound photographic activity, and am questioning what visual referents portray the region’s identities, why its aesthetics and production are distinct within the context of contemporary art, and how this new Arab ‘art world’ is evolving in comparison to more established art practices worldwide. I am endeavoring to describe the conditions, mechanisms and implications by which emergent photographic practices, critical frameworks, and photographic art histories are established regionally, nationally and transnationally, and how this geo-specific example attests to a pivotal change in the history of photography.
