Dana Al-MojilStill from the film "Wonderland: A True Story"Courtesy of The Mosaic Rooms[/caption]Following the highly successful and inspiring debut of Shubbak: A Window on Contemporary Arab Culture two years ago, this biennial festival continues to fling the window wide open on Arab arts in London. The Arab presence in London has grown significantly over recent years, so that the diaspora from all over the Middle East numbers around 30,000, not to mention that London hosts over a one and a half million tourists from the region every year. Yet this triumphant celebration of Arab contemporary culture is not just for them, but for everyone who will be in London during the fifteen-day festival over this summer.
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Master Nubian frame drummers NubaNour. (EL MUSTABA/RICHMIX)[/caption]
“This programme is an open invitation to everyone in London to glimpse the dynamic state of Arab culture today,” says Eckhard Thiemann, the artistic director for Shubbak. “It’s youthful, experimental, generous, daring—a shot in the arm for London, and a chance to celebrate the best of the arts from all over the Arab world.”
The superabundance of diverse talent and creativity from new as well as established artists this year makes it hard to choose what to attend. Visitors will be spoiled for choice, with over forty events representing sixteen countries, covering visual arts, architecture, music, literature, story-telling, theater, film, family events and more, at venues across London.
Visual arts range from traditional art exhibitions, including the first major exhibition of the work of Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi at the Tate Modern from July 3–September 22, featuring work from more than five decades of his international career. The Rich Mix Gallery in Shoreditch will host Culture in Defiance: Street Art from Syria’s Uprising from July 4–13, which charts the protests through motifs, poetry, calligraphy, photos, posters and other forms of artistic expression.
For music fans, there is plenty to get stuck into, from Algerian rock at the Barbican on June 22, in the shape of musical rebels Rachid Taha and Souad Massi, the latter of whom is known as the Maghreb’s Tracy Chapman. Cairo-based NubaNour will perform a rousing show including Nubian dancers, singers and master frame drummers at Rich Mix on June 28.
Many of London’s major cultural institutions are getting involved, including the Institute of Contemporary Arts, which on June 29 is presenting an evening of short films exploring social and political conventions as part of the Points of Departure exhibtion. They are also collaborating with the Arab British Centre and the Dubai International Film Festival in showcasing the UK premiere of the Syrian film Round Trip. Director Meyar Al-Roumi and actor Ammar Haj Ahmad will attend a question-and-answer session on July 4.
The Mosaic Rooms in Kensington is one of the main hubs for the festival, and is presenting everything from art exhibitions to theatre and spoken word, including the fascinating New Writing from Kuwait showcase on July 4. Kuwait prides itself on a level of freedom of speech unrivalled in the Gulf region, and the showcase will offer a diverse range of new voices in both English and Arabic, such as Nada Faris’s Slam Poetry and Dana Al-Mojil’s award-winning film Wonderland: A True Story.
For those seeking something a little different, the London College of Fashion is hosting a special event on June 25 as part of the Faith and Fashion series, Arab Design on the International Modest Market, where Emirati designer Rabia Zargarpur will be in conversation with Professor Reina Lewis on the importance of fashion in cultural, as well as commercial, exchange. Zargarpur launched her label, Rabia Z, in 2007, a pioneering step in providing conservative-but-chic clothes to young Muslim women. They will be joined by world-renowned hijab fashion blogger Jana Kossaibati of hijabstyle.co.uk and filmmaker Soniya Kirpalani, who will be sharing excerpts from her film DoBuy: The Fabric of Faith.
There is also plenty of interest for the family, including three consecutive weekends of free events and the ground-breaking theatre production Seven + 7, which offers enchanting traditional Lebanese shadow puppetry and hakawati (Arabic story-telling) with a modern twist. On June 25, Nadine Touma will spin the magical, adventurous tale of the terror spread through a village when the moon breaks and disappears, in a bewitching show of light and shadow.
To round off the festival with a bang on Saturday, July 6, everyone is invited to the closing party hosted by a new touring collective named Borderless Beats. The collaboration brings together four incredible Palestinian artists from the USA, UK and both sides of the Jordan River in a quirky celebration of music and dance, through which they aim to transcend cultural and physical borders. There will be not only traditional Palestinian debka dancing to dub beats, remixed folk songs and poetic hip-hop MCs, but also Moroccan gnawa dance music, Mozambican and Caribbean grooves and DJs spinning the latest in underground African/Middle Eastern dance cuts. The event will be raising awareness for the Gaza International Music and Arts Festival, a fitting end to what promises to be an exhilarating ride through the very best of contemporary Middle Eastern culture.
Full details of the programme can be found at www.shubbak.co.uk.
