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Lot Essay
Hassan Sharif stands as a pioneering and visionary figure who challenged artistic conventions and reshaped the creative landscape of the Gulf region. His multidisciplinary practice encompassed painting, sculpture, installation, performance, drawing and assemblage, through which he explored the intersection of art and everyday life. Across his career, Sharif examined themes of consumerism, mass production, repetition and the changing social realities of the United Arab Emirates, developing an experimental practice that fundamentally questioned conventional definitions of art.
Sharif began his career as a cartoonist for the weekly news magazine Akhbar Dubai before moving to the United Kingdom to study fine art. His early cartoons addressed political and social issues, including American foreign policy in the Middle East and the rapidly changing realities of life in the United Arab Emirates following its formation in 1971. This early engagement with satire and social commentary would remain an important thread throughout his practice. In the Press Conference series, Sharif employs satire to undermine the conventions of political representation. Dead-eyed politicians, overshadowed by sinister-looking secret-service figures, appear as redundant entities speaking into the void. Their gaping mouths become almost black holes, suggesting the emptiness and absurdity of political rhetoric. In the present composition, the speaker’s mouth is held open while his eyes appear unfocused and misaligned, leaving him caught between speech and incoherence. Sharif thus departs from conventional representations of political leaders and public speeches, which traditionally emphasise composure, grandeur and authority. Instead, the figure becomes unstable and exaggerated, his physical appearance seemingly betraying the hollowness of his rhetoric.
The objects positioned before the speaker further undermine the conventions of the press conference. At first glance, they resemble microphones, yet their elongated forms also recall spoons and ladles. By transforming the apparatus of public speech into familiar domestic objects, Sharif strips the political performance of its expected grandeur and introduces an element of absurdity. Their mundane associations reinforce the emptiness of the speaker’s rhetoric, while their displacement from their conventional context reflects Sharif’s broader practice of reconfiguring ordinary objects and gestures to reveal their unexpected symbolic and conceptual potential.
Press Conference No. 2 was included in Christie’s Summer exhibition Emirati Art Reimagined: Hassan Sharif and the Contemporary Voices in 2023, which explored the pioneering artist’s career alongside the work of a younger generation of Emirati artists shaping the UAE’s contemporary creative landscape, demonstrating the enduring influence of Sharif’s legacy.
Born in Dubai in 1951, Hassan Sharif was a pioneering Emirati conceptual and experimental artist whose practice profoundly influenced the development of contemporary art in the Gulf. He studied fine art in the UK, graduating from the Byam Shaw School of Art, London, in 1984. A founding member of the Emirates Fine Arts Society in 1980, Sharif played a central role in establishing experimental and conceptual art in the UAE.
His work was the subject of major exhibitions, including Hassan Sharif: I Am The Single Work Artist, organised by Sharjah Art Foundation in 2017–18 and subsequently presented at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and Malmö Konsthall. He participated in major international biennials, including the Venice and Sydney Biennales, as well as eight Sharjah Biennials. His work is held in prominent collections including Guggenheim Museum, New York and Abu Dhabi; Centre Pompidou, Paris; MAMCO, Geneva; Tate, London; Sharjah Art Foundation; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; and Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.
Sharif began his career as a cartoonist for the weekly news magazine Akhbar Dubai before moving to the United Kingdom to study fine art. His early cartoons addressed political and social issues, including American foreign policy in the Middle East and the rapidly changing realities of life in the United Arab Emirates following its formation in 1971. This early engagement with satire and social commentary would remain an important thread throughout his practice. In the Press Conference series, Sharif employs satire to undermine the conventions of political representation. Dead-eyed politicians, overshadowed by sinister-looking secret-service figures, appear as redundant entities speaking into the void. Their gaping mouths become almost black holes, suggesting the emptiness and absurdity of political rhetoric. In the present composition, the speaker’s mouth is held open while his eyes appear unfocused and misaligned, leaving him caught between speech and incoherence. Sharif thus departs from conventional representations of political leaders and public speeches, which traditionally emphasise composure, grandeur and authority. Instead, the figure becomes unstable and exaggerated, his physical appearance seemingly betraying the hollowness of his rhetoric.
The objects positioned before the speaker further undermine the conventions of the press conference. At first glance, they resemble microphones, yet their elongated forms also recall spoons and ladles. By transforming the apparatus of public speech into familiar domestic objects, Sharif strips the political performance of its expected grandeur and introduces an element of absurdity. Their mundane associations reinforce the emptiness of the speaker’s rhetoric, while their displacement from their conventional context reflects Sharif’s broader practice of reconfiguring ordinary objects and gestures to reveal their unexpected symbolic and conceptual potential.
Press Conference No. 2 was included in Christie’s Summer exhibition Emirati Art Reimagined: Hassan Sharif and the Contemporary Voices in 2023, which explored the pioneering artist’s career alongside the work of a younger generation of Emirati artists shaping the UAE’s contemporary creative landscape, demonstrating the enduring influence of Sharif’s legacy.
Born in Dubai in 1951, Hassan Sharif was a pioneering Emirati conceptual and experimental artist whose practice profoundly influenced the development of contemporary art in the Gulf. He studied fine art in the UK, graduating from the Byam Shaw School of Art, London, in 1984. A founding member of the Emirates Fine Arts Society in 1980, Sharif played a central role in establishing experimental and conceptual art in the UAE.
His work was the subject of major exhibitions, including Hassan Sharif: I Am The Single Work Artist, organised by Sharjah Art Foundation in 2017–18 and subsequently presented at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and Malmö Konsthall. He participated in major international biennials, including the Venice and Sydney Biennales, as well as eight Sharjah Biennials. His work is held in prominent collections including Guggenheim Museum, New York and Abu Dhabi; Centre Pompidou, Paris; MAMCO, Geneva; Tate, London; Sharjah Art Foundation; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; and Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.