5 Young Arab Designers Who Refuse to Blend In

The emerging cohort of designers transforming raw material into a living temperament

Eurovision, Samira Said, and Morocco’s Unreceived Love Letter

Revisiting Morocco’s choice to perform at Eurovision in 1980, the first and last Arab country to do so, reveals a complex web of forces at play in our history, and a legacy that stands in evidence of a confused national identity, much less healed from colonial violation than it purports to be

Okay, but who’s actually buying these Saddam Hussein watches? And why?

On the strange afterlife of Saddam Hussein watches and what their thriving resale trade says about nostalgia, myth-making, and a region's unresolved relationship with its strongmen

The sky held it, the earth remembered: A moving memoir of scale, loss and time

At Ishara Art Foundation, Rohini Devasher, Shahana Rajani and Sarker Protick trace ecological change from the cosmos to a drowned delta to the streets of Dhaka, asking what it means to grieve a landscape on a human scale

This Film Festival is Taking SWANA Cinema from Beirut to Rome for Its Second Edition

Half film festival, half fundraiser, Here & Elsewhere returns for its second year in Beirut and Rome with a programme built around memory

A Language Of Image: From Manuscripts To Meta-Algorithms

From Islamic manuscripts to Blender renders, the image of the Arabic language has always been built from overlapping histories and references. The designers pushing it forward today are proving that visual history is most useful when it becomes a tool for invention rather than nostalgia, and that the archive is not a repository of finished answers

Let the Majlis Be a Majlis

The majlis has historically been associated with governance, community, hospitality, and negotiation in the Arab world. In the last few years, it has also become an aesthetic object exhibited at biennials and museums. But what happens when a social form becomes a spectacle? What does it mean when a space deemed private is put on display?

Duette Studio One-Ups Itself with Duette+

The creative duo introduce a cultural clubhouse to Dubai Mall