Hassan Sharif

Best known as a pioneer of conceptual art in the Middle East, Hassan Sharif began his artistic career working as a caricaturist, making political cartoons critiquing everything from the United States’s foreign policy in the Middle East to the economic and political challenges in Dubai after its unification. “My work as a caricaturist honed my sardonic perspective; at the time, I was immersed in the tumult and the ‘culture of revolution’ and the sloganeering that have, for a long time, been used as a stick to keep the Arab people in line, and that have hindered their ability to make any conclusive existential decisions about their collective fate.” In Press Conference (2008), Sharif depicts a monstrous politician howling as two individuals stand silent behind him. Instead of microphones, however, the speaker is shown screaming into an assortment of household items like scissors, a funnel, a spoon, highlighting the emptiness and inanity of his words. In Sharif’s words, “They are so confident that, in the end, they go mad. They think that when they talk there are bombs coming out of their mouths.”