Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Dyala Nusseibeh Harnesses Art Population
Dyala Nusseibeh has always had a head for the arts. Her father, Zaki Nusseibeh, is a cultural adviser to Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the President of the UAE, and has been an adviser and interpreter for the leaders of the country since 1968. As his youngest daughter, she fondly remembers countless childhood road trips around the cultural capitals of Europe including Florence, Rome and Barcelona, and agrees that it probably played a vital role in shaping her future. Last year, she launched ArtInternational, an art fair in Istanbul aimed at harnessing the growing population of art collectors there and in the wider region. The fair’s second edition will open on Friday and it promises to be bigger and better than the first. Establishing an identitIstanbul is no stranger to culture or to art fairs. One of the regional heavyweights in terms of history and a hub for the arts, the city already hosts Contemporary Istanbul, which takes place at a number of venues each November, as well as the slightly smaller Artist-Istanbul, which concentrates on antiques and artifacts. So how did Nusseibeh go about making her fair stand out?
Hasan Hejazi The Fashion Designer For The Stars
Audi Middle East have collaborated with Fashion designer to the stars, Hasan Hejazi to bring his inaugural catwalk show this October at the Middle East’s definitive fashion platform Fashion Forward (FFWD). His catwalk show, will feature some of Hasan’s favourite archive pieces, famously worn by his celebrity clientele, as well as an all-new collection for Spring/Summer ‘15 that will feature a clean fresh colour palette in luxurious embroidered fabrics and silks. Hasan is renowned for specialising in glamorous luxury women’s evening wear, working with an enviable celebrity client list including Kylie Minogue, Jourdan Dunn, Eva Longoria, Jessie J, Cheryl Cole and Paloma Faith. The show’s highlight will be the premiere of a unique dress, inspired by Audi, to mark Hasan’s debut. Renowned for statement gowns that demand attention, the one-off piece has been inspired by Audi’s design cues of purity, intrigue, creativity, sophistication and originality.
Sophia Al-Maria's Film Turned Into Exhibition
Artist Sophia Al-Maria, who describes herself as ”Qatarican” – her father has a Bedouin background and her mother is American – got the world was at her feet. Her memoir, The Girl Who Fell to Earth (2012) had just been published to spectacular reviews praising her elegiac descriptions of a changing Gulf environment. Her essays and artworks looking at “Gulf Futurism” – a phrase she coined to express the importance of technology and consumerism to the area – had grabbed the attention of taste-making magazines around the world. And most intriguingly of all, the Girl with a Pearl Earring director Peter Webber was set to produce her directorial debut, a revenge action- thriller set in Cairo. Eighteen months later, however, and Al-Maria isn’t at the Venice International Film Festival discussing the snippets of the film she called Beretta. Instead, we’re in a gallery space at Manchester’s Cornerhouse arts venue and Beretta has metamorphosed into a sprawling art exhibition called Virgin with a Memory. There are video installations re-enacting proposed sequences from the film, adapted billboard posters used in the research, fragmented audition tapes, an Arabic translation of the script, imitation music videos and a short film made from the original rushes.
Artscoops Launches Middle East Contemporary Auction
Online auction house Paddle8 is pleased to present Middle East Contemporary, an auction featuring works by leading artists from the Middle East. The auction includes works by Khaled Takreti, Mouneer Al Shaarani, Raffi Tokatlian, Fadi Yazigi, Joe Kesrouani, and Abdullah Murad among other contemporary artists. Middle East Contemporary is presented in partnership with Artscoops, the Beirut-based online art platform that specializes in Middle Eastern and African art that we talked about last week. Highlights of Middle East Contemporary include: Mouneer Al-Shaarani, My Delicacy Refused All But Passion, Whereas My Resolve, But What Reason Demands, 2013. Gouache on paper. Estimate: $22,000-$28,000; Fadi Yazigi, Untitled,2013. Mixed media on canvas. Estimate: $12,000-$18,000 and Joe Kesrouani, City Highlights 20, 2011. Photograph. Estimate: $7,000-$9,000.
Complete auction at http://paddle8.com/auctions/middleeastcontemporary.
Complete auction at http://paddle8.com/auctions/middleeastcontemporary.
Palestinians Revolt Against War By Art
Palestinian filmmaker Khalil Mozayen’s latest work was already complexly layered — a movie within a movie about a director and screenwriter producing a film about an honor killing in the Gaza Strip. Then the latest Gaza war burst in to add yet another layer: An Israeli airstrike levelled the 13-story apartment tower where Mozayen’s office, studio and archive were located. So he filmed the mountain of rubble and used it for the final scene of his movie, “Sarah 2014.” Mozayen had hoped to create a film not connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But he and his screenwriter Naim Al-Khatib said they decided they couldn’t avoid addressing the war. “It is like, as a Palestinian, you don’t have the right to have your own dream, that everything in your life has to have something to do with war and (Israeli) occupation,” said Al-Khatib, who also plays the fictional screenwriter in the movie. “The occupation crashed our privacy ... and the war became an integral part of the film’s ending,” he said. The themes and reality of war impose themselves on Gaza’s small but vibrant arts scene, and the latest war has been a powerful inspiration for its artists in their new work.
Bassam Fattouh A Pioneer Beyond The Makeup World
As a young boy, Bassam Fattouh loved art, painting, design, and beauty and the way they opened the door to fantasy and the imagination. He could see beauty anywhere and could capture this attractiveness. He delighted in grabbing a pen and re-doing the make-up seen on models and celebrities in magazines. He knew this was his calling and so he went to study at the prestigious Paris Carita Beauty Institute. This marked a major turning point in his life and the start of his realizing his dream. It prompted him to develop a different approach and unique philosophy. And this eye-opening experience led him to open his first institute in Beirut, Lebanon in 1997.From day one Bassam Fattouh was a pioneer. He was the first make-up artist to launch a full-blown advertising campaign in the region. It was the talk of the town, and this move attracted people’s interest. But it was ultimately his talent and philosophy that established his solid reputation.
Artscoops Launches A Digital Market For MENA Artworks
May and Raya Mamarbachi have just made a scoop in the MENA art world by launching an online platform specialized in the buying and selling of regional art. Artscoops.com is a platform where you can purchase contemporary and modern artworks directly from artists and commercial galleries. Sabhan Adam (Syria) and Mohammad El Rawas (Lebanon) are part of the growing portfolio of more than 80 pieces that are already available online. No need to be a specialist to understand the huge potential of Artscoops’s market. Over the past two decades, the MENA participation in the international art world has boomed: producing, buying, and showing. Raya Mamarbachi witnessed first-hand the growth of Qatar into a major market maker, spending 25% of the region’s $11 billion art market (a figure set to triple by 2015 according to the NYT, “An Emirate Filling Up With Artwork”). MENA artists are some of its favorites. Creators from the Arab region in particular are everywhere today. They started by colonizing leading public museum and private collections, major institutions, biennials, art fairs, large-scale shows and coveted awards. The MENA region is now equipped with an impressive cultural infrastructure. The most visible part of the process is the emergence of star museums and art fairs across the Gulf. One dimension was still missing to achieve this unrelenting expansion: Artscoops provides Arab artworks with its own digital platform. Being a collector does not require you to fly around the globe or rank amongst the friends and families of glittering art fairs anymore. Artscoops makes it possible for any online user - local, regional and international - to discover the art production of the MENA region and become a collector. Artscoops is actually a double channel platform dedicated to both collectors and amateurs. Whether you are a collector or just getting started, you can learn, develop your own expertise, browse, buy or bid on artworks from both renowned and emerging artists on the platform. To fulfill its educational agenda Artscoops will provide its audience with original recommendations and content assembled by a team of local curators and art advisors, delivered on the website and through mobile applications. “It is about experiencing art”, asserts Raya Mamarbachi, CEO. May Mamarbachi, namely in charge of the relations with the artists and galleries, explains: “We believe in creating long-term value for our buyers, collectors and partners. We accomplish this by offering unique artworks accompanied by unbiased and independent information on the artwork and artist”. Artscoops’s technical agenda is potentially disruptive: a 24/7 platform that doesn’t limit its users by hours of operations or location, where they explore art and artists, and buy through a secure payment gateway – with a return and refund policy too. It seems that the job of “marchand d’art” has mutated. The first online auction is scheduled for the 10th of September in collaboration with Paddle8.com.
Sheikha Salama Foundation Nurturing Art Professional
As part of a national drive towards boosting arts and cultural programmes, the Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation put nine university students through an intense programme of visits, workshops and internships in the UAE this summer, which concluded with an educational trip to Copenhagen. After completing the Explorations in the Arts program, the participants are now set up to take their place as part of a future generation of innovators and creative thinkers, says Salvatore LaSpada, the executive director of the foundation. “Our mission is investing in the future of the UAE by investing in its people,” he says. “This is part of a much bigger shift in society – that is the amazing growth in the arts and culture of the UAE – and we hope we can contribute to that by working with people who will be the drivers of that sector.” Explorations in the Arts began last year as a smaller initiative called The Art Trip, in which high-school students were taken on a cultural awareness trip to Tokyo. This year, however, after evaluating the results of the initiative, the foundation decided to shift the focus to university students and to extend the program to cover aspects of arts and culture in the UAE.
Khaled Samawi's Life Is All About Art
Khaled Samawi is in a good mood. “my house is full of art. The most expensive piece I have is worth around $200k. But I have art everywhere in my house. I never get bored of it. Can you imagine a world without art? That would be terrible. I just can’t imagine life without art,” he says. So far, life with art has been pretty good for Samawi. His Ayyam Gallery is considered the benchmark for Arabic art. With galleries in Damascus, Beirut, Cairo and Dubai, the gallery is pushing the envelope in the promotion of top Arab art. Ayyam Auctions is also the first regional auction house with auctions in Dubai and Beirut. Ayyam Publishing has published more than 50 art books in the last five years. The recently inaugurated Ayyam Art Centre in Dubai is the first private museum in the Gulf dedicated to the exhibition of Arab art. “We have two big auctions coming up in October and they will be busy, maybe $1m worth of art will be sold at each,” he says. This is clearly a good time to be in the art business. Experts suggest that the market has really grown in the Middle East during the past five years, with prices rocketing close to 500 percent.
Elements Productions: Filmmaking Meets Entrepreneurship
Six years ago, after a typical 18-hour day working on a particularly long and tiresome production in Bahrain, Saleh Nass and Chaker Ben Yahmed, who were 23 and 28 years old at the time, respectively, found themselves contemplating starting their own company. Like many entrepreneurially minded builders, they realized they were doing a lot of work for others that they could have easily done for themselves. The pair decided to co-found Elements Productions with just their laptops and two hard drives for storing footage, and took it step by step from there. An initial investment later helped the two filmmakers purchase their first broadcast-quality camera. "Although they’re much cheaper now, at the time they could run up to BD 50,000 (US$ 132,600),” Chaker notes. Today, Elements has an impressive client portfolio including Porsche, Sky News, RedBull, the Bahrain International Circuit, and news outlets like MBC and The Associated Press. “We handle around 10-15 projects a month, from corporate documentaries to web content."
Designer Reem Buqais's Tip For Success
“Anyone can design,” says Reem Buqais during an interview after the 2nd Annual Leading Women in Business Forum at The Capital Club Bahrain. “But if you want to be original, getting the proper education” is critical to understanding what it takes to succeed in the fashion industry, in the MENA and beyond. After moving to Bahrain having graduated from fashion school in New York, winning the Bahrain’s Top Stylist competition gave this 24 year-old her start in the fashion business. The prize winnings included the opportunity to produce and sell her designs in a boutique in Bahrain; once she had this push, as she describes it to Wamda’s Nina Curley, she didn’t have a choice not to continue. Transitioning to the Gulf’s limited fashion infrastructure from the swirl of New York has been a challenge for the young designer, but having to adapt to difficult conditions has only made her stronger, she says.
Tanaz Dizadji Provides Art Education Via START
When Tanaz Dizadji was just thirteen years old, her art teacher gave her the bad news. “She said I wasn’t patient enough. I was more keen on math.” As it turned out, her teacher proved to be both right and wrong. Dizadji went on to become a hugely successful chartered accountant in the UK, before ditching it all three years ago to take over as director of START. “I’ve never looked back,” she says. Patience right now is a key part of Dizadji’s life. Established by partners Art Dubai and the Al Madad Foundation in 2007, START provides art education for over 1,000 underprivileged children every week across Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, India and the UAE. Practising artists, art professionals, art students and non-art professionals are given the opportunity to be part of an art education programme through teaching or mentoring children with special needs or those who live under difficult social circumstances. So far it has been a huge success, with close to 6,000 children reached since the programme was launched.
Oasis500 Invests In MENA Artists
The gathering of 20 Jordanian artists marks what may be an important first step towards investment funding for the country’s artistic scene. The local artists were showcasing their work for the launch of the Oasis500 Creative Industries Fund, a newly formed creative arm of the leading investment company, which, according to one of the launch event organizers, will aim to support “visionaries across MENA to transform their innovative ideas into thriving businesses.” Financial investments of at least JD 22,000 (just over $31,000 USD), along with a 100-day incubation period, complete with business training and in-kind services, will be granted to sustainable projects in the fields of industrial design, architecture, online media, and fashion, among others. Robert Carroll, a lead on the Oasis500 Investments team, says that he hopes the fund will provide “opportunities to scale the artists’ operations and expose their work to more people. That could mean investors, customers, or experts in the region.” Highlighting current trends and Jordan’s diverse art scene, the launch event also announced a platform for a creative entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Entrepreneur Muhammad Chbib Launches Citra Style
The world is increasingly recognizing the tremendous potential of the global Islamic economy — one that encompasses diverse sectors including but not limited to finance, food, and fashion. In 2012 it was valued at over $1.5 trillion USD and is poised to double by the end of the decade. In the same year the market for Islamic fashion alone was valued at over $200 billion USD (based on global Muslim consumer spend on clothing and footwear) and is expected to reach over $300 billion USD in 2018. With the recent launch of the Islamic Fashion Design Council in Dubai it is obvious developments in this market will continue to draw a significant amount of attention. Recognizing the evident consumer need and the tremendous commercial potential of the Islamic fashion market, one homegrown fashion label, Citra Style, aims to put modest fashion on the map. Launched in January 2014 by Muhammad (right) and Habibah Chbib, the brand caters to modern and style-conscious Muslim women worldwide who choose to wear the hijab, and aims to be the world’s premier online store for modest fashion. “Citra Style was created for the modern and fashion conscious women of faith,” say its founders.
Hassane Dennaoui Infuses Hip Hop In Saudi Arabia
Brash hip hop and conservative Saudi Arabia are two things that wouldn’t seem to be a natural fit. But Hassane Dennaoui, blogger at ReVolt Radio and Mix FM Jeddah radio show host, thinks hip hop has something to offer Saudi and the Arab world more generally. “It’s time for us as a region to elevate, to wake up,” he says. “Music could be a tool for that.” From his online platforms, on which he is known as Big Hass, he posts video performances and interviews he’s done with regional hip hop artists, including some based in Saudi, in an attempt to divorce the genre and culture from what he feels is the “wrong image, [that] of gangsta culture, violence, sex, and drugs.” Instead, he emphasizes the potential in hip hop for social justice and empowerment, and a form of expression for young Saudis. And young Saudis have responded, in force: Dennaoui has over 5,000 followers on Twitter, his blog attracts between 8 and 12,000 readers each month, a e-magazine he recently launched with his wife has garnered about 3,000 readers per issue, a series of events called The Beat aimed to give local artists a venue are routinely packed, and his radio show Laish Hip Hop?
Online Market Place Platforms For Handicrafts In MENA
If you dream of strolling the streets of Egypt or Morocco for a bargain on an traditional handicraft, you can now enjoy the thrill of the hunt without having to endure the heat. Online marketplace platforms have started popping up all over the internet to fill various gaps in the market. The overarching objective of the platforms is to allow artisans, artists, designers, and small business owners to showcase and sell their creations to a broader audience regionally and internationally. Here is a (partial) list of online market place platforms for handicrafts in the Middle East and North Africa. 1. Yomken (Egypt) Founder: Tamer Taha. Model: A hybrid crowdfunding and open innovation platform that combines Indiegogo and OpenIDEO as a one-stop-shop. Yomken (meaning ‘maybe’) allows artisans and artists to pre-sell their creations to the crowd. The craftsmen are also able to enlist challenges that they may be facing while making a new product and invite problem-solvers (the public) to offer innovative technical solutions. Yomken offers both technical consultancy and financial support to help local producers and artisans bring their products to market.
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