“A year ago, we began working on the Performance Programme for Art Dubai 2020 and we had no idea – of course – what was coming our way. We came up with a programme that would look into healing as an act of togetherness and art; healing as a gesture of poetically restoring experiences, processes and memories which are part of our human existence, besides borders, power asymmetries and any other “temporal” conventions. Who could imagine that just before the opening we would be confronted with an unprecedented “temporal convention” such as the one we are living through now?

The programme would had evolved in two connected parts: the onsite (the venue of Art Dubai) and the online. The online section was intended and remains to be a curatorial experiment on how to enlarge the “corporeal” – within the realm of contemporary art performance – in ways that go beyond any kind of physical restrictions. During these extraordinary times, with the online being humanity’s window to the world, On(line) Healing takes a new dimension. Selected artists Angelo Plessas, Bahar Noorizadeh, Imaad Majeed, Tabita Rezaire and Tiago Sant’Ana and have been invited to engage their bodies and minds, as well as diverse communities and viewers in rethinking society. Taking into account the current constantly evolving readings of what healing means, the programme aims to give rise to unexpected relationships among diverse and heterogeneous knowledges and to establish a medicinal space for our collective therapy to exist. With solidarity and love, Marina Fokidis, Curator of the Art Dubai Performances Programme”