Accented

Accented, curated by Murtaza Vali, works out from the premise that the accent is an enduring sign or figure of cultural difference in the age of globalization. While the processes of globalization promise homogenization, transparency and translation across cultures, the accent is the residue or remainder that challenges those claims, that resists and exceeds acts of intercultural translation.

The exhibition conceives of and presents the accent as not a purely linguistic phenomenon and the processes of intercultural translation examined extend beyond the limits of language into the realm of images, sounds, smells and tastes. And so the accent can also be understood as an embellishment that emphasizes difference, as an accessory, in terms of fashion or interior decor, through which culture is expressed on bodies and introduced into spaces.

Finally, Accented will use this theoretically enriched notion of the accent as a lens through which toexamine the particular type of cosmopolitanism indigenous to the U.A.E., where social and cultural space is, arguably, always already accented.