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Expo City Dubai Launches 10-day Festival of Emirati Light Art, Culture

Dhai Dubai runs at Expo City Dubai from January 26 to February 4 - WAM
Dhai Dubai runs at Expo City Dubai from January 26 to February 4 - WAM
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Expo City Dubai Launches 10-day Festival of Emirati Light Art, Culture

Dhai Dubai runs at Expo City Dubai from January 26 to February 4 - WAM
Dhai Dubai runs at Expo City Dubai from January 26 to February 4 - WAM

Dhai Dubai, the first-ever Emirati-led light art festival, has launched its illuminating 10-day program at Expo City Dubai.

The event celebrates the rich artistic tapestry of Emirati through a series of awe-inspiring artistic projections, interactive installations, enlightening talks and creative workshops.

The free-to-attend festival is created and organized by Expo City Dubai, in partnership with AGB Creative and supported by Dubai Culture and Arts Authority and will run from January 26 to February 4, state news agency WAM reported.

Meanwhile, Al Wasl Plaza’s iconic dome, spanning 130 meters wide and 67.5 meters tall, with a 360-degree projection surface, will come to life with a series of special projection shows titled Sisters of the Desert.

The show is inspired by the exceptional work of the late Emirati artist, Dhabia Juma Lamlah, who embodied the resilient soul of Dubai. Dhabia Juma Lamlah defied her inability to use her right hand and communicate through speech, by expressing herself through more than 200 remarkable artworks.

Reflecting Dubai’s spirit of multicultural collaboration, the show also features special guests, Australian artist Rene Kulitja and South African artist Dr Esther Mahlangu, who weave together a narrative of resilience and cross-cultural connectivity, using art to bridge people separated by seemingly vast distances.

In keeping with Dubai’s dedication to humanitarianism, and Dhai Dubai’s firm belief in the transformational power of light, the festival has collaborated with the Expo Live award-winning Liter of Light initiative – a global, grassroots movement that uses affordable, accessible materials to provide high-quality solar lighting to those with limited or no access to electricity.

The festival will be supporting light lanterns to be distributed to the floating villages of Agusan Marsh in the Philippines. Festival visitors will also have the opportunity to pledge to contribute toward Liter of Light’s mission in communities across the Philippines, Kenya, Cameroon, and India.

The festival also encourages visitors to not only immerse themselves in art, but to interact with it through a series of striking installations. As part of the festival’s people-powered activities, skating turns into an art form at the Speed of Light skate park by XDubai, elevated by illustrations from prominent Emirati artist, Aysha Al Hamrani.

 

 

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Culture

As Gaza War Rages, Palestinian Culture Stifled in Israel

A woman holds a key symbolizing the homes left by Palestinians in 1948, during a rally along the border east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on May 1, 2023 marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. (AFP)
A woman holds a key symbolizing the homes left by Palestinians in 1948, during a rally along the border east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on May 1, 2023 marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. (AFP)
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As Gaza War Rages, Palestinian Culture Stifled in Israel

A woman holds a key symbolizing the homes left by Palestinians in 1948, during a rally along the border east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on May 1, 2023 marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. (AFP)
A woman holds a key symbolizing the homes left by Palestinians in 1948, during a rally along the border east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on May 1, 2023 marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. (AFP)

Comedian Ayman Nahas said he has kept a "low profile" since October 7, fearing reprisals as an Arab artist in Israel while the country wages war in the Gaza Strip.

He is one of many Arab artists in Israel or annexed east Jerusalem who describe facing increasing hostility and harassment, and fearing looming funding cuts or arrests.

"You never know where your place is and that is not the right atmosphere to perform," said Nahas, who is also the artistic director at the Arabic-language Sard theater in Haifa, in Israel's north.

His theater depends on government subsidies "like 99 percent of cultural spaces" in Israel, he said, AFP reported.

But he fears the money could be cut, as happened in 2015 to Al-Midan, another theater in the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Haifa, after it put on a play inspired by the story of a prisoner jailed by Israel over an attack on troops.

One 25-year-old performer, who asked to use the pseudonym Elias to avoid a backlash, said he has put acting aside and became a swimming pool attendant because he was fed up with only getting stereotyped roles.

Other Arab actors say that since the war, they can no longer find work in Israel.

Elias has finally found a role in Berlin.

"I have had to go into exile to practice my art," he told AFP in a Tel Aviv cafe.

"I don't wear my 'Free Palestine' bracelet anymore and I take care about what I put on social media. I have friends who have been visited by the police."

Non-profit group Mossawa has documented an increase in human rights violations against Israel's Arab minority since October, including arrests, discrimination at work and harassment at schools, as well as curbs on the right to protest.

Singer Dalal Abu Amneh, who is also a neuroscientist, was detained for 48 hours for a social media post after Hamas's October 7 attack that said "the only victor is God".

Abu Amneh later said she had been harassed in her Jewish-majority hometown of Afula in northern Israel. Her lawyer said she had received hundreds of "death threats".

About 20 percent of Israel's 9.5 million inhabitants are Arab, and many of them identify as Palestinian.

They say they are frequently the targets of discrimination by the Jewish majority, and those complaints have grown through more than nine months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza.

Huda Imam, who promotes Palestinian cultural sites in Jerusalem, said that "a cultural silence has taken hold since October 7".

"There has been a shock, an inability to produce out of fear and respect" for the war's victims, she added.

"There was a Palestinian cultural life before the war, especially in east Jerusalem," Imam said, referring to the sector Israel captured in 1967 and later annexed in a move never recognised by most of the international community.

"Now people don't go out."

And it is primarily exiles "who give a voice to Palestine", said Imam, highlighting the rapper Saint Levant who played at the Coachella music festival in the United States in April, and the European-based singer and flute player Nai Barghouti.

Palestinians still express themselves through their "living heritage, like drinking coffee or dancing dabkeh," a traditional dance, said artist Hani Amra.

Some artists wondered about the relevance of their work now.

"You turn on the television and you see the war live. The reality is more powerful than any artistic work," Amer Khalil, the director of east Jerusalem's Al-Hakawati, also known as the Palestinian National Theater.

The theater, founded in 1984, "has been closed more than 200 times in 40 years" and is again in the crosshairs of Israeli authorities, said Khalil.

"Running a theatre is always difficult, but after October 7 things became even more complicated," he said, adding that Al-Hakawati was preparing a play about that day.

"It is a game, like censorship, it comes and goes."