The Third Line will be participating at the fair together with more than 180 of the world’s leading contemporary galleries. Frieze New York, now in its second year, has already established itself as a platform for forward-thinking galleries and experimental, thought-provoking art.

The gallery will be bringing works by a selection of artists who have a history of incorporating text and linguistics within their practice, exploring both visual aspects as well as conceptual and academic themes. This inquiry into the written and spoken word varies from exploring formal aspects of abstraction to investigating the intricacies of phonology. The selected works aim to present the diversity and complexity in this practice.

Inspired by the delicacy and intricacy found in Persian manuscript illuminations and Islamic architecture, Ala Ebtekar employs the image and metaphor of the portal, the gateway into the next, or the future. Using found works on paper from illustrated science fiction books, posters, and poetry volumes, Ebtekar isolates arches, windows and views of the cosmos. The text removed becomes a space for a field of infinite possibilities and moves beyond language.

Ebtisam Abdulaziz’s works on paper from her Diary series are autobiographical records that have been noted down in the form of ciphers and symbols that are significant to the artist alone. Following a systematic methodology, the artist narrates her story in a language decipherable only to herself.

In Top of the World, Farhad Moshiri works with his neo-pop style experimenting with materials that comprise of everyday found objects. Through candy colours and hybrid materials containing plastic pearls, crystals, glitter and glaze mounted on board, Moshiri provides a witty take on deeper matters of cultural dichotomies that can be found between Iran and the western world.

In her Convertible Series Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian employs a vernacular visual language through the use of Iranian mirror-mosaics as a medium that communicates with the viewer stories of cosmic reflection. These works can be rearranged into different formations, highlighting the infinite probabilities of geometrical formations – a primary aspect of exploration in Farmanfarmaian’s practice.

Pouran Jinchi, a trained calligrapher, uses the aesthetics of the script itself to explore the formal elements of abstraction and sculpture. In her work The Rose Quran, she expands upon the spiritual weight of the written word of the Islamic holy book, by re-writing the whole tome on sheets of plexiglass and creating an illusion of mystification through layering.

The collective Slavs and Tatars, devoted to the geographical area known as Eurasia, focus on the linguistic aspect of this region and how language and text have been used to either create barriers or build bridges between cultures. Their most recent body of work Khhhhhh explores the sacred role of language via the perspective of a single pesky phoneme, [kh].

About The Third Line

The Third Line is a Dubai based art gallery that represents contemporary Middle Eastern artists locally, regionally and internationally. The Third Line also hosts non-profit, alternative programs to increase interest and dialogue in the region.

The Third Line also publishes books by associated artists from the region. Books published to date include Presence by photographer Lamya Gargash (2008), In Absentia by Tarek Al-Ghoussein (2009),Cosmic Geometry, an extensive monograph on Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Karen Marta (2011), and most recently the self-titled treatise Huda Lutfi about the artist’s Cairo based practice.

Represented artists include: Abbas Akhavan, Ala Ebtekar, Amir H. Fallah, Arwa Abouon, Babak Golkar, Ebtisam Abdulaziz, Farhad Moshiri, Fouad Elkoury, Golnaz Fathi, Hassan Hajjaj, Hayv Kahraman, Huda Lutfi, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Laleh Khorramian, Lamya Gargash, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Pouran Jinchi, Rana Begum, Sahand Hesamiyan, Sherin Guirguis, Shirin Aliabadi, Slavs and Tatars, Sophia Al-Maria, Tarek Al-Ghoussein and Youssef Nabil.