SOFT POWER: Hawazin Alotaibi’s Pink Rebellion

Through a playful palette of pinks and pastels, the Saudi artist reimagines Khaleeji masculinity, challenging the conventions of gender, power and self-image with an unexpected softness

What It Takes to Be Mister Lebanon

As opportunities shrink in Lebanon, contestants are pouring increasing amounts of time, money and effort into the country’s most famous male beauty pageant, and the possibilities it might unlock

Salam, El Mehdi!

Pop star, filmmaker and now leading man, El Mehdi talks gatekeeping, going home and the peace that comes with choosing yourself

Aestheticised Violence and The Spectacle of Political Slop

How a war became content, and why the exhaustion is the point

Worlds of Their Own Making

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

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

At SeeDjerba, the Tunisian Island Becomes the Gallery

At its 2026 edition, See Djerba turned a Tunisian island's fortresses, shrines and craft villages into a gallery that asks you to look at the place as closely as the art

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