Exhibition “In Search of Lost Time” at SOAS

The exhibition In Search of Lost Time (not the Proust novel), which runs at the Brunei Gallery, in the School of Oriental & African Studies until the 19th of March, “presents work by 13 artists who seek to reframe conventional interpretations of time in the Gulf.” The  Arabic title of the exhibition, Urgent Memory is apt, as the exhibition

“explores the complex relationship between image, speed and time in the Gulf, questioning the chronological and territorial notion of the region and the paradigms of its underlying identity.”

In part, the exhibition examines  the tensions between nostalgia and notions of tradition and authenticity and narratives of utopia, prosperity and the construction of a Gulf modernity.

Sophia Al Maria, coined the term “Gulf futurism,” which

has since been used as a byword for the way that a generation, forced indoors thanks to the intense heat, developed a view of the future informed almost exclusively…