This week’s editorial musings
from magpie’s nest
The quote: Theatre is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place | Martha Graham …
Gone, won’t be forgotten “It’s a big day today, as I close the chapter on 14 years at Alserkal” said Vilma Jurkute in her personal farewell post. It’s probably no exaggeration to say that she single-mindedly (albeit not single-handedly) created a creative quarter for Dubai in Alserkal Avenue in what was at the time a dusty, anonymous patchwork of furniture showrooms, car repair shops, and builders’ supply yards hidden away from the SZR and Downtown. True, there was an incipient arty vibe a couple of streets away in the form of the Courtyard building, but it was Vilma who had the vision and the chutzpah to convince first Abdelmonem Alserkal and then an initially sceptical audience that it made financial and aesthetic sense to use that block of warehouses for galleries, eateries, and the other essentials for a buzzy creative district. We wish her well for whatever she does next; Alserkal Avenue represents great placemaking, taken up now by the authorities to extend into the Al Quoz Creative Zone, and that will always be her legacy. As she put it, “Alserkal has become a global case study, and I am filled with gratitude to my colleagues and partners, with whom we have built Alserkal through a shared belief and collective ambition … Alserkal was never just a job for me. It was a mission, an obsession, and a calling. It was also the greatest school. And I will carry it with me wherever I go”. Her combination of passion, professionalism and leadership will be hard to replace …
Performing in Abu Dhabi Saadiyat is to get a performing arts centre called Dar Al Funoon, designed by Frank Gehry and provided with four theatres (main hall same size as Dubai Opera, studio theatre for 400, “jazz venue” for 250, open-air amphitheatre for 3,500) plus of course a whopping 5,000m2 of F&B and retail space. There are a few pretty renders but very little hard info; building has started, though, and the projected finish is 2030 …
Get in The third Sharjah Architecture Triennial – themed Architecture Otherwise: Building Civic Infrastructure for Collective Futures and curated by Vyjayanthi Rao with Tau Tavengwa – will open 14 Nov and run to 14 April 2027. There’s a full participant list of 32, too, with practices ranging across architecture, urbanism, art and design to anthropology, education and community initiatives. We’ll look in more detail at the programming, but in the meantime there’s more in the press release here …
Wear your preferred auction house Interesting to see Sotheby’s attempting to position itself as a lifestyle brand, teaming up with FRAME on a 31-piece capsule collection that includes a £970 cashmere sweater, a £185 tee-shirt, and unisex boxers with Sotheby’s logo on the waistband (£213). There’s also the rather smart blue-and-white-stripe Sotheby’s pyjamas at £677 but sadly the bottoms are out of stock …
Job opp 17A Art Consultants in Alserkal Avenue is looking for a senior manager to lead a small team, handle clients, and oversee delivery. Min five years’ experience in the UAE art community plus “a passion for shaping meaningful contemporary art projects”. CV and cover letter to 17arecruitment@gmail.com before 10 July …
Residency opp Artist collective Studio Thirteen is inviting applications for its first Residency taking place 8 Jul to 19 Aug at its studio space in Al Quoz. You get a dedicated semi-private space, critique and mentorship sessions, and exhibition opps. Apply to info@studiothirteen.art before 1 July …
Get away The UAE has lifted the ban on travel to Lebanon, allowing citizens to visit from this week. Flights between Tehran and Dubai have also resumed, but the ban on Emiratis traveling to Iran remains …
EcoAI? If you’re concerned about the ecological impact of using AI, try discode.ai – an EU-built AI router that allows access to 100+ models from one interface, shows you the CO₂, water, and energy burned by each prompt, then auto-routes simpler questions to a frugal model so you’re not wasting whole oceans on getting at a one-line summary. Free to get started …
SAF sounds Keeping up a hectic pace of announcements, Sharjah Art Foundation has launched SAF Radio – basically a podcast-style selection of music, artist playlists, “cultural deep dives” and live pop-up broadcasts that also includes archival recordings from the Foundation’s collection. It’s kicking off with a series of 12 hour-long music sets curated by Mohammed Abood under the title Aswaat (“conceived as a continuous listening experience, Aswaat is shaped by feeling and atmosphere rather than fixed genres … Each episode unfolds as a single uninterrupted mix shaped around a particular sensibility”). We’ve listed to several of them; they’re definitely interesting, covering a very wide range – griot to Tarek Yamani, Mashrou’ Leila to Bonobo. Bit light on Progressive Metalcore; more important, why isn’t it available from podcast stores?
Free wifi for art This is an interesting project: submit an artwork (anything goes: the current crop ranges from quick scrawls to quite detailed work) to get free local internet access (around Dalston Square in Hackney, East London). The ‘curator’ adds a title and inserts it into the gallery as part of the monthly online exhibition. Something Alserkal or similar could try? Check it out here …
Mingle Medina Creatives is having another of its networking get-togethers for creative types(“come ready to mingle, promote and potentially find the best collaborations of your artistic career) at One Life Kitchen in d3. 4 July, 4-6pm, music by the rather cool DJ Laila …
Park life Dubai Municipality has launched a competition intended “to harness the power of AI across urban planning, architecture, and park design” – redesign Al Safa 2 Park to show “how an integrated ecosystem of AI tools can augment the entire design journey”. Open to architects, urban planners, landscape designers, researchers, startups and AI innovators: total prize money AED 200,000. More here …
New season at LouvreAD Louvre Abu Dhabi’s 2026–2027 exhibition programme features four major exhibitions exploring board games (inc examples from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia: runs 18 Jul to Apr 2027); Spices and Wonders: Sailing the Indian Ocean (14 Oct – Feb 2027: really looking forward to that); contemporary art with the Art Here 2026 show (11 Nov – Feb 2027) culminating in the Richard Mille Art Prize: and Living Legacies. Protecting Heritage. Building Hope (23 Nov – Apr 2027), an important-looking show about preserving cultural heritage in challenging environments through artefacts, immersive projections and personal testimonies …
Be seen on the scene? SEEN/SCENE, Rizq Art Initiative‘s annual show for emerging artists, is back for a 5th edition with an open call for young contemporary artists “of and from” the UAE to participate in an exhibition early in 2027. Deadline: 30 Jul (actually some of the bumf says 1 Aug, but it’s the earlier date on the application form). Apply here …
Gallery watch Two summer group shows opening this week look well worth a visit: Ayyam’s Tangerine Dreams (“occupying a unique space between intensity and comfort, orange embodies both vitality and reflection”) and Artbooth’s In Transit (mixes past exhibitors with artists showing in the future) …
Useful app of the week Not all USB-C cables are created equal. They might all look the same, but
some can’t charge at full speed, some don’t carry video, others might just be failing on you. This free, open-source Mac menu bar app reads your USB-C cable’s actual specs and tells you in plain English whether the bottleneck is the cable, the charger or the port. Find it here …
Something for the weekend Chain Reaction is an online game in which you place ‘atoms’ on a grid; you can put them in empty cells or those you already ‘own’, and when a cell reaches its limit – two atoms for the corners, three for the edges, four for the middle – it explodes, spreading atoms to neighbouring squares and capturing them from your rival. Try it here …
Things we didn’t know no.94 Nomophobia is the fear of being without your phone (the name, somewhat crudely, is short for ‘no-mobile-phone phobia’). Seems the word can also describe the fear of being unable to use your phone because the battery is low …
Earworm of the week Casi : Eleven87
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