Mixed media installation
In 2007, Raad was asked to join the Dubai branch of the Artist Pension Trust (APT). As a private
company established in 2004 by entrepreneur Moti Shniberg and risk management guru Dan Galai. APT’s aims are to select and pool artists and artworks into investment and pension funds. APT, which has thus far established eight regional funds, is owned by MutualArt, a British
Virgin Islands registered company whose assets in part include the website by the same name. The website is a usercustomized database of information about the art world: it permits
its users to keep track of the art events that matter to them.
To determine whether to join, Raad embarked on a three-year inquiry that sought answers to the following questions: Who is funding APT and MutualArt? And why is APT launching a trust in the Middle East, the Dubai Trust? These questions prompted him to research technological
innovations in the areas of statistics, text and data mining, finance, the Israeli military and its complex links to the Israeli hi-tech sector. Moreover, they led him to further his ongoing examination of the emergence ofa new infrastructure for the arts in the Arab world.
Source: catalogue “Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: A History of Art in the Arab World”, T-B A21, Vienna 2011; page 2
*1967 Chbanieh, Lebanon