Home · Category
Forced to direct her actors from a production van in conservative Riyadh, Haifa Al Mansour keeps her sense of humour. She needs it: she still does not know how to screen her film where public cinemas remain illegal.
Not yet thirty, Sotheby's specialist Lina Lazaar Jameel has pushed contemporary Arab art to the fore of the global scene. Tunisian-born, Riyadh-raised and Geneva-schooled, she opens our conversation, improbably, with mathematics and the nature of truth.
From the Louvre to the Metropolitan and the Victoria and Albert, the great institutions have long guarded Islamic art's heritage. Now their gaze is shifting decisively towards the vibrant contemporary art of the region.
Founded by Saudi Arabia's deputy minister of defence, Prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Living Oceans Foundation devotes its time and resources to conserving and restoring our increasingly stressed marine life.
Before the stunning view of Jounieh Bay, it is Marwan Zgheib's Hussein Madi sculptures that arrest the eye, bold geometric folds of punched metal. We meet a collector whose passion shapes every corner.
You know that thrilling second before lift-off, when you seem to rise faster than your own body? Now imagine floating in it. We chase the weightless sensation you would expect only in orbit, on the Moon or Mars.
Decades ago, 1999 looked impossibly futuristic on screen. Yet here we remain, in jeans, eating ordinary food, still earthbound. A wry reflection on technology, prophecy and how stubbornly familiar tomorrow always turns out to be.
Borrowing Henri Nouwen's words on those who share our pain rather than offer cures, this tender reflection honours the friend who can sit with us in despair, tolerate not knowing, and simply stay through our grief.
Just as the Impressionists overturned painting and paved the way for the Cubists, trailblazers like Alain Senderens reinvented the kitchen. We trace how Nouvelle Cuisine's daring pioneers transformed fine dining into a creative movement.
Whilst the region's geopolitical upheavals dominate the headlines, Nadine Khalil turns to the ecological disasters too often neglected, from Cairo's perilous air pollution to Lebanon's mounting waste, toxic waters and unregulated quarrying.
Peace negotiator, biomass mapper, transformational economist and TED superstar, Juan Enriquez has worn many disparate hats. Asked how the strands connect, he answers with a riddle about American presidents and the flags that outlived them.
Art, one might argue, is ultimately the capturing of light on paper or canvas. In a much overlooked field, artists such as JanLeonardo Wollert go further, painting with light itself, an art born of happy accident.