Mohammed Kanoo’s portraits aim to tease out our biases about the Middle East. Above is US President Barack Obama. In his solo exhibition Fun with Fen (fen is Arabic for “art”) currently on display at Dubai’s Meem Gallery, the Bahraini artist Mohammed Kanoo depicts international celebrities dressed in traditional Arab costume. Kanoo’s digitally enhanced photographs are […]
Guy Lougashi makes incredible sculptures entirely out of either colored or transparent tape. Eschewing the hardening or drying phase of many sculptural materials such as clay or paper pulp, the artist claims that tape is an incredibly versatile material that forms an excellent foundation for other design projects. And now it’s possible to glean some […]
Israeli Opera Festival 2012 will feature five performances of the classic opera, Carmen, June 7 to 11 at Masada. According to the Israeli Opera’s Artistic Director, Michael Ajzenstadt, 50,000 people from across Israel and all over the world are coming to experience opera at the lowest point on earth, beneath the mountain of Masada and […]
It may surprise many Iranians living in the country’s dense and sprawling desert capital to know that millions of cubic liters of water are wasted every day. But where? Underground mostly, although occasionally modern construction projects smack up against an ancient irrigation system called quanats, resulting in devastating water losses and other destruction. How to […]
Edgard Chaya and his family bring back ancient tile making practices and Lebanese “neo-traditional” architecture After being handed over a case filled with 12 brass molds and stumbling upon a jumble of colored tile fragments and exposed patterns in his family’s wrecked cement tile factory, retiree Edgard Chaya was destined towards a new chapter in his […]
Paying homage to a slower time, Turkey’s first nobel prize winning author Orhan Pamuk has immortalized the importance of everyday objects in The Museum of Innocence. Among the world’s most unique collections, the museum that opened last month in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district contains 83 cabinets full of bits and pieces collected in flea markets and antique […]
Spencer Tunick is one of the world’s most celebrated and controversial photographers with no fewer than 75 large-scale nude photo shoots under his proverbial belt. The New York-based artist has amassed thousands of volunteers to pose nude in dozens of symbolic locations across the planet, from Brazil to Ireland and most recently in Israel. To […]
The hugely popular DC-based Muslim hip hop group Native Deen have over 110,000 Facebook followers alone. And one of them, Aisha Ali, says she can’t go to sleep without listening to their songs. So when they release a new music video for a song called “Our Earth,” the diaspora is bound to listen. Taken from […]
Who would have thought that Iraqis and Kurds could start a green music and art event? Two non-profits, Nature Iraq and Development Now are holding the first Green Music and Arts Festival in Iraq tomorrow to honor Earth Day the day after. To be held in Sulaimani’s Azadi Park in Sulaimani, it will be the […]
Perhaps best known for their extraordinary 2009 solar-powered night garden installation in Jerusalem, or their creative street branding cooperation with Castro, Israeli designers OGE were entrusted as the creative directors of the largest flower exhibition to ever take place in Israel. 19 years after the original Haifa International Flower Exhibition, the self-described “Creative-Young-Workaholics” helped to […]
A new pavilion by A-Bureau takes back an area of downtown Bahrain overrun by traffic – even if only temporarily. Right in the midst of the worst government crackdowns in Bahrain last year, we interviewed Camille Zakharia – a talented photographer whose work has been shown all over the world. Recently he sent us images […]
Zahed Sultan is an internationally-celebrated musician from Kuwait who also happens to promote sustainability! Zahed Sultan is one of the most visible musicians in the Arab world. Not only does he enjoy a massive following on regional social networks, but he is also internationally recognized. One of his tracks was included in the Hotel Costes […]
eL Seed, a Tunisian artist who combines Arabic calligraphy and street painting, is making an imprint on the world street art scene. I can’t remember how I found him. One of those idle internet ramblings where a sound or image grabs you by the hair and pulls you smack up to the monitor to find out more. I […]
A powerful short film by Iranian-Canadian filmmaker Raha Shirazi, Acqua will make you look at water with new eyes. Raha Shirazi’s film Acqua is almost guaranteed to make you never take water for granted again. In it, a woman walks through snow in search of water with a jar on her back. Everywhere there is water, […]
The Bedouins are a group of skaters and artists who are empowering post-revolutinary Tunisian youth. When Nathan Gray and his posse of skateboarders and street artists collectively known as “The Bedouins” were scouting out the perfect place to build a skate park in post-revolutionary Tunisia, some of the locals suggested they inhabit Imed Trabelsi’s abandoned […]
Select pieces of recycled, eco friendly furniture will be sold at an auction house in central Israel next week alongside paintings and other fine art. Sustainable furniture design has been creeping into the Israeli art world over the past few years, with eco friendly furniture being exhibited at Jerusalem’s Design Week recently and other recycled […]
Can Sivan Askayo’s photographs convince us hang dry our laundry? What if art had the power to change our habits for the (environmentally) better? Could a photograph change governmental policy, or at the very least, some of our daily behaviors? Artistic photographers have tried, and acclaimed photographer Spencer Tunick’s naked Dead Sea shoot this year […]
Cyprus may have a long way to go in terms of being eco-friendly, but GreenGraffiti has brought it a little closer. Graffiti may conjure up images and smells of atmospherically harmful spray paints and underground punk rock enthusiasts, but it doesn’t have to. Well, the punk rockers can stay, but graffiti can be green without […]
Jerusalem’s second annual Design Week will generate awareness of climate change through design and show off some local sustainable designers. Jerusalem will host the grand opening of its second annual Design Week on December 4th, with a week of design exhibitions, conferences, master classes, cinema events and workshops planned for a variety of audiences. The […]
A team of two designers, Godspeed, will be creating furniture from raw and trashed materials in Jaffa within the framework of a single hour. Pop-up stores may not sound like the most sustainable ventures, but the pop-up shop that will open in Jaffa on December 1st and feature the work of the Godspeed design team […]
Kids can drum on pots and pans and sound good, and the RhythManiacs have found unusual items to drum with too (and keep out of the trash). Music is not usually something that you think of as being eco-friendly or not. Food, understandably, can be eco-friendly, and fashion can be green, but it takes some […]
When this mannequin free falls, low-carbon-footprint chairs with “human” form are made. Israeli designer Ezri Tarazi, the head of the Industrial Design Department at Israel’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, is no stranger to sustainable design. Some of his previous projects include eye glass frames made from wood, and home furnishings created from upcycled […]
Colorful plastic bags are both the canvas and the paints in Aviva Sawicki’s artworks. Plastic bags are a ubiquitous and un-eco-friendly material that many sustainable and upcycling designers have tried to reuse. One designer has turned plastic bags into shoes, another has made plastic bag wallets, and plastic bags can even be used as crocheting […]
Azad Nanakeli returned to his Kurdish home Erbil to find all of the wells contaminated with waste and chemicals. AU is one among many art pieces on display at Iraq’s first pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Fewer canvases are overflowing with pristine landscape scenes as unsustainable building programs throughout the Middle East encroach upon this […]
A starchitect from Japan? As Israel’s oldest and leading arts academy, shouldn’t Bezalel be a locavore when it comes to hiring architects? The Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, established in Jerusalem in 1906 as an institution that would help form a new visual language for the Jewish people, is now synonymous with Israeli art. […]