Faces and Places: Huguette Caland
— The Arts Club, Dubai 24 February — 01 June 2021

The late Lebanese artist Huguette Caland’s organic, voluptuous, whimsical and feminist works – both abstract and figurative and traversing across the media of painting, sculpture, textiles and drawing – express the vibrant exuberance with which she lived: “My character is my biggest privilege,” said Huguette Caland in an interview in 2009, “because I am born happy.” Joy, coupled with humour and a sense of celebration of any subject she chose, emanate from Caland’s works, perhaps belying the ground-breaking, radical rebelliousness inherent to her practice and the considerable challenges she faced. In a career spanning 5 decades, Caland broke with traditions and spurned taboos, a feminist embracing and depicting the female form, including her own, with defiant gusto while also living her life with the same unconventional verve. On show at The Arts Club were examples of her Faces and Places series, among other works, which have featured in major museum shows. The show was made possible with the help of Kayne Griffin Gallery.

Huguette Caland (Beirut, Lebanon, 1931-2019) moved to Paris in the 1970s, where her artwork flourished. In 1987 Caland moved to Venice Beach, CA. Caland’s work has been exhibited at the 36th (1972) and 57th Venice Biennale (2017). In 2016 she was included in the Hammer Museum biennial, Made in LA. Most recently Caland’s work was included in the Sharjah Biennial (2019) as part of a group presentation curated by Omar Kholeif. She was also subject to a retrospective of her work at the Tate St Ives in May 2019—her first UK museum solo exhibition. In 2020, over 100 pieces covering Caland’s career were featured in an exhibition at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha. Huguette Caland: Tête-à-Tête at The Drawing Center, New York, in 2021, has been the artist’s most comprehensive solo museum exhibition so far, bringing together works on paper and canvas from the past five decades—as well as caftans, mannequins, sculptures, and notebooks on and in which she wielded her pen.