Father of Conceptual Art: Hassan Sharif’s Lasting Impact on Global Art

Hassan Sharif is a name of wide significance beyond the borders of UAE, going to create an eternally fresh mark on the global art scenario. Enounced as the father of conceptual art in the Gulf he brought innovation in making art and that would change the perceptions of UAE towards contemporary art forever. Sharif’s work has been loaded with a quality of complexity and polity along with humour excised from the traditional methods of art which have welcomed a new wave of experimentalism and conceptualism.

Sharif died in 2016; however, the work lives on. His work is exhibited in most of the world’s leading museums, including Guggenheim New York, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, and the Sharjah Art Foundation. In fact, it’s not only his works that he’s created in the process which have left their marks but the very pioneering vision and passion for art education he inspired which now finds its way to new generations of artists across the Middle East and beyond.

Throughout the 1970s, his artistic journey involved work as a political caricaturist, capturing the changing dynamics of the UAE and the larger Middle East. His early cartoons in newspapers depicted the rapid urbanization and commercialization and politically impactful changes that occurred in the region. In fact, by 1979, Sharif saw a need to progress beyond mere caricature art. In rejecting mainstream calligraphy and nationalist art practiced in the Middle East, he left the UAE to formally study at the Byam Shaw School of Art, London, under the tutelage of Tam Giles. In this period, Sharif was introduced to British Constructionism as well as the abstract conceptual practices of Kenneth Martin. He came to refer to what he produced as the “Semi-System,” wherein he would create artworks through repetitive, arbitrary processes. His methodology focused on the process of creation above the end product-an approach that presented a radical departure from traditional forms of art.

Upon returning to the UAE in the 1980s, Sharif set about transforming the local art scene. He began to organize the first modern art exhibitions in the Emirates and, in 1984, founded Al Marijah Art Atelier that became a setting for young artists to experiment and learn. But Sharif was not only an artist; he was also a teacher, publishing hundreds of essays and translating international manifestos of art so that he could reach the audience and explain the message beyond the conceptual action of art. His works often took the form of constructing everyday things like combs, ropes, newspapers, and coir into large-scale assemblages. His pieces showed his scathing attacks on consumerism and speedy industrialization in the UAE. Sharif was inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s philosophy of readymades- the intellectual idea that everyday objects are transformed into art just by changing their context and meaning-Sharif made this mundane object into a leading piece.

While Sharif’s art was no ‘only within the frame,’ he enjoyed equal fame for his performances of absurd acts in public. So, one day, right in one of his first performances, Sharif would be jumping in the desert, tying ropes between rocks, or munching bread while discussing politics and art. His performances were just as much about the process and gesture as was his physical artwork, often working in irony to challenge the seriousness of the political and social discourse of the time. His work within such influence by British Constructivism and absurdity would show how Sharif viewed art: a process-based activity. He focused on the action of making, rather than the meaning of the resulting artifact, often turning mundane processes into acts he ritualized by repetition. His work, therefore, is a simple critique against the consumerist culture, laying bare the overconsumption of modernity.

Hassan Sharif is not only remembered by his vast production, but he has changed the life of the following generations of artists in the UAE. His influence exists throughout the region, from the Flying House-a space founded by Sharif’s brother to showcase Hassan’s work-to the international recognition that Emirati contemporary art has received. Sharif’s works remain visible today in museums like the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art, and in Sharjah Art Foundation. And so, his art remains available to this world and inspires thinking in its beholders, and starts movements.

In conclusion, Hassan Sharif was not only an artist but also a forerunner who made the most important steps toward the formation of the UAE’s artistic identity. Indeed, his work reminds us how art can be used to challenge the status quo, provoke questions in people, and mirror all the complications of life around us. Today, Sharif’s legacy continues to be alive in the conceptual art scene that continues to boom in the UAE because of the pioneering efforts he put in.