"It's not you, it's me", the title for of the pavilion, is a cliché expression not to be taken at face value. Tirdad Zolghadr, the Berlin-based curator chosen to organize the exhibition reminds the audience that we use the term with a dollop of guilt and embarrassment however the mal intentions can be sniffed out immediately. At conflict in participating in a nation building arena like the Venice Biennale with an audience of 900,000 conflicts are expected and it seems the UAE went in with eyes wide open. The title suggests that maybe the art is the problem and not the audience or perhaps just the opposite. Maybe it means "it's not about Venice, it's about the Emirates. Ultimately, Zolgbadr intimates the title "couples guilty apologetics with their polar opposite, shameless, self assurance. [That it is] a peculiar power play that reflects the mood and methodology of major art shows of the late zeros."

One of the first and major obstacles Zolgbadr faced was the sheer size of the venue. Resisting the obvious temptation to fill the space with art it was instead redesigned into smaller viewing areas thereby creating a large hallway for resting after what can be a long day on foot about Venice. Redesigning the space left the opportunity to curate a poignant and restrained pavilion, where a few artists’ works showed leaving ample space to educate and build the UAE reputation as a cultural hub.

Much of the pavilion was entrusted to educating visitors about the UAE and promoting the local art scene. Models representing the future and existing plan for cultural affairs are encased in large vitrines. They include the Louvre, Guggenheim and Sharjah Art museums (but truth be told these displays have nothing on the exhibit at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi). In an intimate viewing area there were 4 videos projected for visitors to watch and learn about UAE art history, culture and future planning.

I was personally frustrated after viewing a lengthy chat between Mishaal Al Gergawi and Dr. Anna Klingmann discussing how the UAE will manufacture its own artist community as though it is entirely plausible to say “you can make are here” or “you can’t make THIS art here now you must go!”… follow by a pat on the back that sounds something like “yes, this is just like the East Village of yesterday or the Williamsburg of today”. However confident and almost cavalier this sounded I found it reassuring that they conveyed a smidgen of self-reflexivity and understood the struggles they will face trying to develop this plan.

I was thrilled to discover a tremendous female talent serving as the featured artist of the show. Lamya Gargash, honored with representing the UAE on such a prominent international stage grapples with space, time and memory in her work. I am been following her career since I caught her show, Presence, in 2008 at the Third Line Gallery in the Art Center in Souk Waqif, Doha, Qatar. She also participated in a much-needed series of panel discussions hosted by Bidoun Magazine, Arab Modern Art Museum Qatar and Third Line, which covered topics surrounding the production, commoditization, and education of art in the Middle East. She spoke about the unique moment in UAE history within which she works and how she chooses to focus our attention to her point of view with her photographs and films.

Showing in Venice is familial, where Gargash has photographed the interior spaces of one star hotels that reside exclusively in the Diera area. I especially enjoyed this series as I have had the pleasure of patronizing one these hotels on a visa run from Qatar about two years ago with my brother in toe. The vast selection of multiple starred hotels were beyond our reach at the time and it was actually quite comfortable and amusing to get away from big, anonymous hotels. It felt like we had every meal chatting with the charming Egyptian serving up shwarma across the street. Bumming it with the other less affluent folks and backpackers allowed us to buy into the gimmick that is the Sky Barat the Burj al Arab hotel with the money we saved. The extremity of the two locations gave us a firm sense of the disparity and dichotomy that Dubai is.

Keen to show the world that art isn’t just about the new and up-and-coming in the UAE, conceptual artist Hassan Sharif grounds the UAE art reputation both established and thriving. Digging, 1983, Nylon Rope, 1983, Walking 1983 Untitled, 1983 are all pieces that belong to the Arab Modern Art Museum's collection in Doha, Qatar. (I had a great couple of months volunteering there. I actually participated in archiving these pieces into their collection and found it oddly amusing by how we perceive objects differently when their context changes. In my white-gloved hands versus the stark white walls of this sanctioned art space- my relationship to the object altered my perception of it.)

Finally the pavilion rounded things out with Ebtisam Abdul Aziz’s Four Possiblilties, 2004, digital print on wood and a performance by the Jackson Pollack Bar, a performance group founded in 1993 by Christian Mattiessen. Opening, 2008, was a reenactment of the first UAE pavilion press conference. Actors played roles of Dr. Lamees, curator Tirad Zolghadr, and the journalist "John Smith". The performances explore "theory installations". Essentially you are seeing actors reenacting the press conference with the original audio recording.

Overall the pavilion didn’t fall into any obvious traps by curating a bespoke variety of talents while taking the opportunity to promote the cultural credits of the UAE. By owning their self-awareness and restraint and offering full exposure, I couldn’t be sure if the lack on organization and poor training of the exhibition staff was another piece of performance art. You can throw all the money at a project/problem but is in the execution that is most telling of real progress. One may think they had been snared after all but I believe it to be a perfectly honest representation of what the UAE is today- a developing, self-aware, cheeky, hot bed of artistic discourse.

reviews the national the guardian saatchi online TV & magazine Bidoun official UAE pavilion website UAE Art Archive