This week’s editorial musings
from magpie’s nest
The quote: We hardly ever realise that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye | Carlos Castaneda …
SB17 first look Sharjah Art Foundation has announced the title, curatorial framework, and artist list for Sharjah Biennial 17 (runs 21 Jan to 13 June 2027). Title is ‘What remains, sits restive’; the co-curators, Angela Harutyunyan and Paula Nascimento, have chosen as their theme the capacity of the past to animate the present, and each is organising their own approach to this – with 55 artists for Harutyunyan and 54 for Nascimento …
AI all over The UAE plans to deploy agentic AI across 50% of federal government sectors, services, and operations within two years, making it the first government in the world to operate such systems at this scale. (Agentic AI means systems that can make decisions and execute tasks without requiring human intervention at each step) …
Works on water The Jameel is inviting just five participants to join The Water Diviners, an immersive storytelling project by Palestinian artist Jumana Emil Abboud that explores the magical and spiritual significance of wells and springs. There are five sessions between 12 May and 14 June (and commitment to all five is mandatory). Info here …
Intern op Rizq Art Initiative in Abu Dhabi is looking for “dedicated interns to support our work in Arts Management, Production, Curatorial Practice, and Sales … Develop your skills within a dynamic environment at the intersection of art and industry”. Interested? Send your CV to info@rizqart.com …
More Adobe alternatives Adobe’s Creative Suite ruled the design roost for some years, but maybe that’s changing. We’ve extolled the virtues of Affinity, a free but very comprehensive Photoshop/InDesign/Illustrator alternative from the Canva people. Now comes DaVinci Resolve 21 from Blackmagic Design, a direct competitor to Adobe Lightroom and Capture One: most features are free. And while After Effects remains the deepest, most integrative compositing and industry-standard tool, it is definitely heavier and slower for some motion‑design tasks (and costs money) so let’s hear it for two new recently announced freebie alternatives: Cavalry is from the Affinity stable, and Maxon has revived the much-lauded but previously pricey Autograph. (And if you want an alternative to Canva, check out Avnac: free, open-source, local-first design in the browser for layouts, posters, and graphics) …
… More beach The property boom may have slackened a bit but developers seem to be betting that demand will pick up quickly – especially for luxury beachfront properties. No beachfront left? No problem. Palm Jebel Ali is adding another 90km of coastline to Dubai; and this week, the government-owned Nakheel awarded contracts worth AED 3.5bn for 544 villas there – completion by 2028 …
Summer studio space For the summer NIKA Project Space is again giving its Al Khayat Avenue gallery over as studio space to three artists. You get it 8 Jun to 28 Aug, there’s a modest stipend for materials, and NIKA will put on an exhibition in Sept for you. Apply by 17 May …
Wartime spirit Open call for Creating in Times of War: Responses from the UAE – AED 5,000 + resource support to produce a new work (any creative medium) that responds to the war through your own experiences: work to be completed during June 2026. A Fiker Institute / Dirwaza Lab project. Apply by 14 May …
Numoo named Following an open call, the Arts Center at NYUAD has announced the 12 participants for the fourth edition of Numoo, its professional development accelerator for UAE-based performing artists. It’s a satisfyingly broad mix: definitions are inimical, but we count four from theatre, two singers, two dancers, two musicians, one from film and one storyteller …
OPEC exit After 60 years’ membership, the UAE will quit OPEC on 1 May – “the time has come to focus our efforts on what our national interest dictates” says the official statement. This is a big deal; the UAE is currently the fourth largest oil producer in the group, and reportedly it has long chafed at Saudi Arabia’s restrictions on global prices and production volumes. Saudi wants to keep prices high and volumes restricted: the UAE has been keen to expand production (from the OPEC-mandated 3-3.5m barrels a day to more like 5m by 2027) and sell more at lower prices. There’s also talk of a new Hormuz-bypassing pipeline across the desert from Abu Dhabi’s oilfields to Fujairah port to speed the flow …
Sockpuppetry Apologies if you’ve been trying to register on the website to post comments – we’ve been spam-bombed again with several hundred bot registrations so temporarily we’ve turned off the facility. If you want to comment on something, or just to reach us, email editor@magpie.ae ..
Useful app of the week Sinceerly is an anti-Grammarly tool, a Chrome extension for Gmail that makes your writing sound more like a real person rather than AI-generated. Choose from three levels of adaptation (subtle/human/CEO); Sinceerly fillets em dashes, undoes those annoying phrases that AI uses, and can even add some typos (“because humans make mistkaes”). $4.99 a month. Try it here …
Something for the weekend With Wordsnake you find the words by dragging a ‘snake’ around the grid of nine letters. Really quite hard (well, it was for us). Try it here …
Things we didn’t know no.94 There are approximately three trillion trees on Earth — more than stars in the Milky Way …
Earworm of the week Sprints : Need
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