‘Study of History III’
Subas Tamang
Art Jameel’s two-chapter group exhibition, “Global Positioning System” — currently showing at Jameel Arts Center in Dubai and at Hayy Jameel in Jeddah — features works from more than 40 artists from across the world that “engage critically with contested topographies and simulated landscapes to tell stories of speed, transport and trade, while also revealing the limitations and failures of modern mobility,” according to a press release.
“From fast cars and donkeys to spinning globes, street barricades, cosmic highways and broken bridges, the exhibition engages with contested terrains and disrupted transit routes, interrogating how navigation systems shape the ways space is organized, represented and experienced,” the release continues.
In this series, the Nepalese artist “reinterprets a 1948 photograph by German-American photographer Volkmar Wentzel, documenting a Mercedes-Benz being carried on bamboo poles by 60 porters along a mountain trail leading to the Nepalese capital,” as the Kathmandu Valley had no usable road connecting it to the outside world until 1956. So rich visitors’ cars would be disassembled and carried across the mountains by local porters.
