E-Issue 09 –– RUH/JED
Spring 2025

By Global Art Daily Editorial Board

Published on May 17, 2023
Updated May 25, 2023

Starting May 23rd, 2023, UAE-based artist Christopher Joshua Benton will premiere a new series of limited-edition, collectible, lightboxes with an installation entitled Mubeen, City as Archive presented at The Third Line Shop in collaboration with Global Art Daily.

1. Christopher Joshua Benton + Faisal Abdu, Mubeen, City as Archive, 2023. Installation view at The Third Line Shop, May 2023. Photo by Ron John. Courtesy of Global Art Daily.

Recently awarded the 2022 Meta Emerging Visionary Grant, and having just completed his Masters in Art, Culture, and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Benton, a UAE-based artist known for his large-scale installations and research-based practice, returns to Dubai with new limited-edition lightboxes exploring the city’s archive of commercial graphic design.

Presented by The Third Line Shop – The Third Line gallery's in-house shop focusing on local and regional makers – in collaboration with Global Art Daily – a digital publication and agency amplifying the UAE’s contemporary art scene with multicultural perspectives – Mubeen, City as Archive is an installation materializing commercial and utility-led design methodologies to celebrate small businesses that make up the vibrancy of Dubai.

Mubeen, City as Archive is an installation materializing commercial and utility-led design methodologies to celebrate small businesses that make up the vibrancy of Dubai.

2. Christopher Joshua Benton, Shawarma Slicer, 2023. Lightbox. 42 x 29.7 x 10cm. Edition of 10. Courtesy of the artist.

Based on a poem called "Pravasis" from Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People (2017), Benton has picked a series of job titles, ranging from ‘barber’ to ‘dressmaker’ to ‘carpenter’ to ‘shawarma slicer’ to produce specially-made lightboxes based on each profession’s inherent business line. Designed by Faisal Abdu from Mubeen Calligraphy, an advertising studio based in the neighborhood of Satwa, Dubai, Mubeen’s lightboxes contain the same graphics used otherwise for commercial functions of the same businesses. Presenting this installation at The Third Line Shop, a retail space, highlights the material as well as the symbolic value of commodification and commercialization, in line with Dubai’s vernacular graphic design typologies.

3. Faisal Abdu from Mubeen Calligraphy, Dubai, UAE. Image courtesy of the artist.

Presenting this installation at The Third Line Shop, a retail space, highlights the material as well as the symbolic value of commodification and commercialization.

Mubeen, City as Archive will be on view at The Third Line Shop starting May 23rd, 2023. Its series of 10 limited-edition lightboxes will be available to purchase both on-site and through The Third Line Shop’s online store. Priced reasonably, the lightboxes are meant to be accessible to first-time collectors.

Christopher Joshua Benton comments, “If you’re an artist and your friends can’t afford to own your work – what’s the point? I’m blessed to create a network that connects The Third Line Shop with Mubeen Calligraphy to redistribute their archive of shopfront designs. Everyday they are designing the aesthetics of street life in Dubai–and this installation is about giving visibility to their process, labor, and creativity.”

4. Left: Christopher Joshua Benton, Tea Boy, 2023. Lightbox. 42 x 29.7 x 10cm. Edition of 10. Courtesy of the artist. Right: Christopher Joshua Benton, Cafeteria Worker, 2023. Lightbox. 42 x 29.7 x 10cm. Edition of 10. Courtesy of the artist.

If you’re an artist and your friends can’t afford to own your work – what’s the point? I’m blessed to create a network that connects The Third Line Shop with Mubeen Calligraphy to redistribute their archive of shopfront designs.

- Christopher Joshua Benton

For the occasion, Global Art Daily Agency has reprinted a previous interview with the artist, conducted by editor NiccolòAcram Cappelletto in 2021 for Benton’s solo exhibition entitled “Worked (So and So and On and On and So On and So On)” at Art Space in Al Jimi Mall, Al Ain. Originally published for Global Art Daily E-Issue 03++, “The Labor of Art and the Art of Labor: Christopher Benton on His First Exhibition in Al Ain”’ will be available in print as a part of the continuous GAD Print Publications: Artist Interview series, with 15 first-edition copies available to purchase at The Third Line Shop.

5. Christopher Joshua Benton + Faisal Abdu, Mubeen, City as Archive, 2023. Installation view at The Third Line Shop, May 2023. Photo by Ron John. Courtesy of Global Art Daily.

Key informationInstallation Title: Mubeen, City as Archive
Artist: Christopher Joshua Benton
Dates: Opening May 23rd, 2023
Presented by: The Third Line Shop in collaboration with Global Art Daily
Address: The Third Line Shop, The Third Line, Warehouse 78, (Exit 43 off Sheikh Zayed Road), Street 8, Al Quoz 1, Alserkal Avenue Dubai, UAE, PO Box 72036
Opening hours: 11am - 7pm, Monday - Saturday
Shop here.

About Christopher Joshua Benton
Christopher Joshua Benton is an American based in Abu Dhabi and Cambridge, working in artistic research and installation. His exhibitions have been presented at museums, biennials and art fairs around the world including the Fikra Graphic Design Biennial (Sharjah, UAE), Abu Dhabi Art: Beyond Emerging (Venice Biennale) and Dubai Design Week. Further projects have been exhibited at Jameel Arts Centre (Dubai, UAE); Warehouse421 (Abu Dhabi, UAE); Aicon Contemporary (NYC, USA); and BLOCKHOUSE (Tokyo, Japan), among others. His art and research have been televised on the BBC and CNN, and in print on Dezeen, GQ, and Architectural Digest.

Christopher is a graduate of University of Georgia and has completed programs and fellowships with University of Oxford as a Gilman Scholar and Rhode Island School of Design. In 2023, he will graduate from his master's degree in Art, Culture, and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology through the generous support of the Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation.

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About The Third Line Shop
Launched in December 2018, The Third Line gallery's in-house shop focuses on local and regional makers. Stocking exclusive limited edition prints, artisanal crafts, artists multiples, books, design and more.

The Third Line Shop also hosts a program of talks and workshops with the aim to continue to foster ever-important dialogues with its community and audiences.

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About Global Art DailyGlobal Art Daily (GAD) was founded in 2015 as a living archive of UAE’s growing contemporary art scene. It counts two printed magazine issues, six digital E-Issues, and over a hundred articles and interviews published both in print and online. GAD has maintained a local-meets-global approach throughout its publications, highlighting multicultural voices for contributions and features, and creating cross-cultural dialogues and cross-pollination between young artists and curators based in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, New York, London, Istanbul, and Tokyo – amongst others.

Born on the Internet, GAD established its physical presence in Dubai in 2023 with Global Art Daily Agency FZ-LLC, a contemporary art agency with publishing and curatorial activities, and the launch of GAD E-Shop, an online destination to purchase art and design objects curated by our network of editors and featured artists.
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Christopher Joshua Benton to Debut Mubeen, City as Archive at The Third Line Shop in Collaboration with Global Art Daily

Mubeen, City as Archive is an installation materializing commercial and utility-led design methodologies to celebrate small businesses that make up the vibrancy of Dubai.

Presenting this installation at The Third Line Shop, a retail space, highlights the material as well as the symbolic value of commodification and commercialization.

If you’re an artist and your friends can’t afford to own your work – what’s the point? I’m blessed to create a network that connects The Third Line Shop with Mubeen Calligraphy to redistribute their archive of shopfront designs.

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E-Issue 09 –– RUH/JED
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