No Place Like Home
The annual community exhibition at Gulf Photo Plus explores notions of home and belonging with images that range from tender moments and landscapes to portraits and personal objects.
The Architecture of Spirituality
Marina Tabussum is one of the winner’s of the 2018 Jameel Prize. Here, I speak to her about her win and her other projects where she sees architecture as having an integral role to play in the community.
Streamlining Perspectives
Three curators from three continents will offer a broad but focused experience for galleries, artists and visitors at Art Dubai 2019
eL Seed: Building bridges with Arabic from Korea to Cape Town
As an artist focused on creating work for the public arena, eL Seed relinquished a conventional career in commercial art and instead focuses on the utopian vision of spreading peace and tolerance through art. With such bold ideas, he has taken his work all over the world.
Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim: Elements
A land artist and one of the UAE’s finest talents, Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim’s retrospective exhibition is still running at Sharjah Art Foundation. Read about my studio visit earlier this year.
Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti: Permanent Temporariness
For the past seven decades, the Palestinian condition of displacement and exile has been ongoing, altering how refugees feel about the nature of their built environment. Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti refer to this state of a airs as “permanent temporariness,” which is also the title of their most recent exhibition at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Paul Guiragossian: Curtain Call
Even 25 years after his death, Paul Guiragossian remains one of the region’s most prominent and most loved modernists. The most recent exhibition of his work in the UAE gathered several of his most poignant works. Here, I write about that and his enduring influence.
Digital Lives, Digital Art?
Fear of digitisation of our lives is real as we enter into the AI age. Does the answer lie in visual art? Here are some thoughts on that topic.
Abbas Akhavan: Recently
Abbas Akhavan talks site specificity, gardens and security in this podcast interview that I did for Alserkal Avenue in light of his latest exhibition at The Third Line
In the studio with Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim
Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim is one of the UAE's great artistic geniuses. I had the pleasure of visiting his studio recently and I wrote up this personal piece about it.
Barjeel Art Foundation collection to go on permanent display
Whilst the Barjeel Art Foundation's schedule of hosting regular international and domestic exhibitions will be coming to a close, the work will be on permanent display in the Sharjah Art Museum.
Dubai - Welcome to the happy city
Is Dubai a future city? Which role will cultural soft power play in achieving the strategic plan ‘Dubai 2021’? For Julius Baer, I investigated these questions with a spotlight on Dubai Opera and Art Dubai.
Cultural Narratives from across the Middle East
Selections publishing house have commissioned a series of small 20x20cm artworks from artists across the Middle East. It is now being exhibited in a non-profit exhibition in Dubai and offers a current insight into the art scene from across the region.
Six cool cultural events to check out this month
A round up of just some of the cool, cultural happenings in Dubai this month.
Arab women featured in London exhibition
Perpetual Movement explores the relationship between migration and memory in connection to the Arab world and its diaspora. As part of the Arab Women Artists Now (AWAN) Festival 2018 in London, these dialogues take on new relevance.
eL Seed's call for unity on the borders between the Koreas
Want to hear the full story behind eL Seed's installation on the border between North and South Korea in the DMZ? Listen to this podcast.
Mahmoud Khaled's proposal for an unprejudiced world
At the 2017 Istanbul Biennial, Mahmoud Khaled proposed a future in which private actions are protected from public scrutiny.
An Alternative Alexandria: Ahmed Morsi's ode to his home city
Ahmed Morsi is one of Egypt's great modernists but is also a contemporary artist still practicing today. His work has recently gained traction in the region and is also being recognised internationally.