THE EMPTY QUARTER

The Empty Quarter is a project from an artist, teacher and researcher questioning their position in the classroom.

‘The Empty Quarter’ was a colonial term for a vast desert region in the southern Arabian Peninsula, constituting the largest portion of the Arabian Desert. The Rubʿ al-Khali is the largest area of continuous sand in the world.  It covers an area of about 250,000 square miles (650,000 square km) in southeastern Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.

One of the driest regions in the world, the Rubʿ al-Khali is virtually uninhabited and largely unexplored. However, vast reserves of petroleum are present beneath its sands. The area also offers a rich eco-system for flora and fauna.

 The Empty Quarter reimagines this construction of space and environment in our region as a metaphor for contemporary art education. The aim is to establish communities of young artists and those working in Art education.

 The Empty Quarter offers opportunities for discussion, debate and reimagining which can liberate and grow from colonial models of Art Education.

So far we have:

• Created a directory of artists which are categorised by the heritage of the students I have taught.

• Formed a collective of artists aged under 25 to inform the research.

• Collated research from friends I have made that have been also been exploring this topic in the region.

The population of the UAE is made up of Emirati 11.6%, South Asian 59.4% (includes Indian 38.2%, Bangladeshi 9.5%, Pakistani 9.4%, other 2.3%), Egyptian 10.2%, Filipino 6.1%. (Index Mundi). The diversity of the population provides an opportunity for a truly decolonised Art Education where European voices sit at the margins.

In International Schools can we ever move on from a place where the artists in our curriculum present Art as a European invention, with regional tokenism? Is curriculum itself censorship? If it is how do we function as an institution without this construction of learning?