This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest
The quote This present moment was once the unimaginable future Stewart Brand
Today’s the day Happening today (Thursday): Xposure, the region’s biggest and best festival of photography, running till next Wednesday in its hew Aljada home … a celebration of the embroidery crafts of Freej Al Murar at NYUAD’s Project Space … the brilliant Jesse Eisenberg movie A Real Pain at Manarat al Saadiyat for one night only.
Openings Two gallery shows opening this week that we’ll be checking out: Nadine Ghandour at Bayt AlMamzar, Hady Boraey at Fann à Porter …
Abu Dhabi on Sotheby’s board Last Autumn Sotheby’s announced a $1 billion investment from ADQ, an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund. Part of the deal stipulated that three seats on the board would go to ADQ nominees; ARTnews has confirmed that these are Mohamed Hassan Alsuwaidi, CEO and MD of ADQ as well as UAE Minister of Investment; Murtaza Hussain, formerly ADQ’s chief investment officer and now a managing partner at Abu Dhabi-based investment firm Lunate (which is majority-owned by Sheikh Tahnoun’s private investment firm Royal Group); and Aziz Moolji, also a partner at Lunate and formerly the director of ADQ’s M&A business. Members of Sotheby’s nine-person board vote on the auction house’s financial decisions, not day-to-day operations …
Learning creativity The second Al Quoz Creative Entrepreneurship Forum had more than 700 attendees, and those we spoke to were enthusiastic about its value – especially but not exclusively for networking. A somewhat mixed bag of start-ups won the pitch contest, with first place going to Maysoon Al Shamsi for sustainable skincare brand Creams Botanics. Ghaleya Al Mansoori won second place for the UAE’s first mobile art and crafts workshop, Kenaz Art Studio. And Rory McLoughlin took third for his Like Minds creative community …
Skate away Dubai’s JLT has a brand-new Skate Park, handily placed in Cluster O and well provided with ramps, half pipes and transitions. “Good but not great” said our skateboard correspondent, who probably wants dope Olympic-scale landscaping but will settle for a well lit, well laid out fun space with the shapes that form the JLT logo and cool graphics by Maddy Butcher. It’s open 8am to 10pm …
Top Arabic Fiction The six-strong shortlist for the 2025 Arabic Fiction Prize includes authors from six different countries (Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Mauritania, Syria, UAE) – “a shortlist to savour”, said the chair of the trustees. The UAE contender is Nadia Najar’s The Touch of Light, a sensitive story of a young blind woman exploring her senses while at the same time offering a panorama of the Gulf before and after the discovery of oil …
MFA at SPAA Sharjah Performing Arts Academy has introduced a new Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Theatre and Live Performance. Its a two-year course with five specialised pathways: Costume Design, Directing, Producing, Sound Design, and Lighting Design. Fees are AED 90,000 per year but we’re told loans and bursaries are available …
Art history NYUAD’s Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art is hosting an online symposium on 26 February under the title Generative Archive II: Art and Transformation; sessions will focus on conversations with artists who transform archives into artworks, blurring the lines between academic resources and artistic expression. The symposium runs 4-9pm GST, and registration is free here …
We are here As of December 2024, the population of the UAE stood at 12.5m according to Global Media Insight – about 3.8m for each of Dubai and Abu Dhabi (with the latter adding a couple of million in a single year, presumably implying improved counting as well as a sudden influx of NYUAD students). Only 11.5% of them are Emiratis, with Indians predictably representing the largest single national group at 38%. There’s a 70:30 male:female gender split, and nearly 9m fall in the 25–54 age group. Lots more fun stats here …
Understanding AI Keen to get up to speed with AI? This is one of the best “how does AI actually work” primers we’ve come across. It is long — yep, three and a half hours — but it is both really understandable and really deep, which is hard to pull off. And it’s free …
Something for the weekend Shuffle the rows and columns to find a word on one line. Do it here …
Things we didn’t know no.94 Americans bet more than $140 billion on sports last year (only 60 of the 212 countries listed by the World Bank have a GDP higher than $140bn)
Earworm of the week horsegiirL : materiaL hor$e
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