CANVAS

"I never wanted to be just a Middle Eastern gallery,” admitted Yasmin Atassi, the director of Green Art Gallery. “Our mission is much broader, to bring together artists from all over the world who might not otherwise have the opportunity to meet.” An excellent example of this ethos in practice was the recent exhibition, Remnants (17 September–26 October), curated by Paris-based Cuban art historian Sara Alonso Gómez, which found synergies among artists working from Cuba to the Middle East around the concept of waste. Although Atassi is careful to insist that her approach is less about country specificities than it is about linking artists who are all grappling with our collective contemporary moment, regardless of where they are from, the mapping was not haphazard. “We have been interested in Latin American art for the last few years,” she explained, “and have represented Venezuelan artist Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck since 2012 and Brazilian artist Ana Mazzei since last year. The creativity emerging from South America chimes loudly with much of what’s going on in this region, both socially and aesthetically.”