First edition of Bahrain Art Week – Paris opens its doors at the Grand Palais
“The Legacy and the Contemporary Memory”, the exhibition of Bahraini contemporary artists, takes places at the Grand Palais in Paris on September 13 – 15, 2018. The exhibition, making part of the Bahrain Art Week in France, presents a wide range of thematics, styles, and generations of Bahraini art: from religious art to contemporary social critique, from post-impressionism to digital art, from post-war generation to millennials.
Since its creation in 2016, Bahrain Art Week, created by Kaneka Subberwal ArtSelect , aims to promote Bahraini contemporary art to meet the needs of an international community of collectors discovering talent. The English, Russian and Indian edition of Bahrain Art Week have already had success in 2016 and 2017: a selection of 15 Bahraini artists has already been presented in London at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2016 and the Saatchi Gallery in 2017. In the same year, ArtBAB became the participant of the Cosmoscow contemporary art fair in Russia as well as in India during the 2017 and 2018 India Art Fair. Bahrain Art Week was launched soon after the creation of the Art Bahrain contemporary art fair.
Art Bahrain Across Borders (ArtBAB) contemporary art fair had been created by Kaneka Subberwal under the patronage of Princess Sabeeka Bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa of Bahrain. Curated by Jonathan Watkins and Alistair Hicks, ArtBAB aims at pivoting galleries, artists, and collectors towards the country, establishing a more pronounced connection between Bahraini art and the global art market. “ArtBAB is a platform that connects international galleries with established and emerging artists of Bahrain, widening the outreach to collectors in the region,” states Subberwal. In 2017, ArtBAB saw 60 participants from Bahrain, the UAE, India, Ukraine, France, the USA and others across its three categories: Gallery arena boasting a cluster of international galleries, the ArtBAB Pavilion Artists (with free entry for Bahraini artists), and General Entry Artists. The stellar line-up included New York-based artist Bradley Theodore, known for his paintings Queen Elizabeth and Pyramid, and a piece by Turner Prize-winning English artist Keith Tyson.
ArtBAB 2018 will also see the return of the not-for-profit exhibition space that featured the Floating World exhibition this year with 32 large-scale installations screening films by a great number of international artists. “Floating World made ArtBAB 2017 unique,” says Watkins. “It was a not-for-profit factor in the art fair equation, ambitious in its range of moving imagery by some of the most important international artists working today, with a strong visual appeal. A kind of landscape lounge, it was an environment for all visitors to enjoy.”
The Grand Palais is a large historic site and museum complex located in Paris. The Construction of the Grand Palais began in 1897 following the demolition of the Palais de l’Industrie (Palace of Industry) as part of the 
preparation works for the Universal Exposition of 1900. For the 2011 Monumenta exhibition, sculptor Anish Kapoor was commissioned to create the temporary indoor site-specific installation, Leviathan, an enormous (ca. 775,000 square feet) structure that filled half of the main exhibition hall of the Grand Palais.
Kaneka Subberwal invited Corinne Timsit Art Advisory (CT2A) to be co-organizer and co-curator of Bahrain Art Week in Paris.
Founded by Corinne Timsit and Eric Bonici in 2014 in Paris, CT2A is a media, events, and advisory company specialized in the contemporary art comprising two magazines, ARTPREMIUM and CORPORATE ART, an art advisory department, and an immersive online resource – artpremium.com.
17 artists on show at the Grand Palais
Aysha AlMoayyed – Balqees Fakhro – Dr Ahmed Ahmed – Faika Al Hasan – Hala Kaiksow – Sayed Hasan Al Sari – Jamal Abdul Rahim – Mayasa Al Sowaidi – Mohamed Al Mahdi – Nabeela Al Khayer – Omar Al Rashed – Othman Khunji – Rawan Al Hosani – Salman AlNajem – Lulwa bint Abdulaziz Al Khalifa – Marwa Rashid Al Khalifa