page_title: Hassan Sharif
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Hassan Sharif / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Hassan Sharif during his studies, 1983
context_page_description: Hassan Sharif was an Emirati artist who lived and worked in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. His work is represented in major public collections, such as the Guggenheim New York, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Centre Pompidou, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, and Sharjah Art Foundation.
context_section_description: After a foundation year studying in Leamington Spa, Sharif enrolled at the Byam Shaw School of Art (today part of Central Saint Martins) in 1980 and came under the influence of artist Tam Giles, head of the Abstract and Experimental Department. This led to an interest in British Constructionism and particularly Kenneth Martin’s notion of ‘chance and order’, which Sharif developed into his own ‘Semi-system’ way of working – based around arbitrary or over-elaborate systems that are then followed to create works, often on a grid, from ‘Body and Squares’ (1983) to meticulously recording sentences read in a newspaper at points along a journey to Sharjah, to long sequences of black lines showing transformations of a line within a square. "I think of these markings as more of an engagement than an arrangement […] The important thing is the process."
  Art as absurdist, process-based activity also fed Sharif’s early performances enacted in London and on return trips to the UAE during summer holidays – jumping in the desert, tying rope between rocks, and discussing art in the toilets of Byam Shaw School of Art with a member of the faculty. "For instance, I speak while my mouth is full of bread. I take a sip of water. I eat more bread, speak, drink some more water, and so on, recording all the sounds. All the while I'm talking about serious things like politics and art, but it's an ironic delivery, imitating politicians and lecturers."
  Sharif graduated in 1984 and set about staging the first exhibitions of contemporary art in the Emirates. He founded Al Marijah Art Atelier in Sharjah in 1984, a meeting place for a generation of young artists in the country, and assembled several interventions around the city including ‘One Day Exhibition’ (1985) and an impromptu exhibition in the city’s central market. In this period, Sharif also penned numerous articles in the UAE’s nascent press about the history of art and translated into Arabic excerpts of 20th-century art manifestos and texts (notably about Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, Orphism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism, Constructivism, Fluxus, Arte Povera, Minimalism and Conceptual Art) so as to provoke a local engagement and show that his work is grounded in a discourse. "I didn’t only make art but I made my audience too. I had to contextualise what I was doing."
  In addition to his own practice, Sharif encouraged and supported several generations of artists in the Emirates. In 2007, he was one of the co-founders of The Flying House, a Dubai institution for promoting contemporary Emirati artists. He was a founding member of the Emirates Fine Arts Society (founded 1980) and of the Art Atelier in the Youth Theater and Arts, Dubai.
  Sharif’s works are held in notable institutional collections including M+, Hong Kong; Guggenheim New York; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; and the Sharjah Art Foundation. Sharif died on 18 September 2016 in Dubai.  He was 65.
caption: Sharif in London, 1983
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