ABU DHABI: On the morning of her birthday, a wild fox walked up to Noura Ali-Ramahi and sniffed her feet. Her life has not been the same since.

What began as a chance encounter in Abu Dhabi has become a daily ritual — and a profound source of inspiration.

For months now, the Lebanese Emirati artist has walked the edges of a golf course near her home not for peace of mind, but in search of Blue, the fox she has named, and who has become her muse.

“There’s something that completely changed in me since I met her,” Ali-Ramahi said. “I would almost consider the walk incomplete if I didn’t see her.”

Since that December morning, the accomplished artist has embraced a new ritual: meeting foxes at dawn, then creating art inspired by those encounters.

The creative, who was trained at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, has had her work exhibited at New York’s Art Club and at galleries in the UAE, including Abu Dhabi’s Twofour54 and N2N Gallery. 

Born in Beirut in 1976, the artist moved to Scotland at the age of 11 before settling in the UAE in 1989. In 1993, Ramahi returned to Beirut, graduating with a business degree from the American University of Beirut in 1997.

But it is the last few months that have impacted her the most. 

As she recounts her experiences, Ali-Ramahi springs out of her seat as if reliving a small miracle. She gestures animatedly, replaying each encounter with the foxes in vivid detail — not as distant wildlife, but as if they were old friends she shares breakfast with each morning.

“She looked at me,” Ali-Ramahi said, suddenly alert, motioning toward the ground as if the fox were right there. “And it’s as if she was saying, ‘thank you.’”

Her artwork, much like herself, bursts with energy and emotional charge. But she is not simply documenting wildlife; Blue has become a recurring motif and a vessel for expressing longing, grief, and resistance.

In her vibrant studio — a riot of color and creative force — Blue often appears superimposed over scenes of Gaza or alongside another of Ali-Ramahi’s defining symbols: a chair.

“For me, it’s (the chair) my own confinement … it’s like nothing, it’s doing nothing. It’s like emptiness, it’s no response, it’s nothing,” she said.

“Blue is the opposite of the chair.”

The chair — in a time of political paralysis surrounding Gaza and Lebanon — reflects both Ali-Ramahi’s personal sense of confinement and a broader societal powerlessness.

The fox, by contrast, is everything the chair is not: cunning, wild, disobedient. It represents movement, instinct, and the refusal to be tamed.

Since leaving her full-time job, Ali-Ramahi has embraced this liberated, intuitive energy in her art, using it as a way to process emotion and resist despair.

“When I superimpose her onto a destroyed landscape, she becomes more than an animal,” she said. “She becomes survival.”

 At no point does Ali-Ramahi pretend to understand why the fox chose her, and she does not need to.

“She makes me feel special … I’m not shy to admit it,” she said.

What she does know is this: like a fox hunting its prey, Blue arrived quietly in her life and became essential not just to Ali-Ramahi’s creative ecosystem, but to her emotional survival during moments of hopelessness.

“Maybe she trusts me because she sees me walking every day, sipping my coffee, never trying to hurt her,” she said softly. “I’m just ... there.”

And now, so is Blue.

DHAHRAN: Saudi Arabia is presenting “Good Water” at the London Design Biennale, which runs until June 29 at the UK capital’s Somerset House. 

The Saudi National Pavilion — commissioned by the Architecture and Design Commission supported by the Ministry of Culture, and presented under the leadership of commission CEO Sumayah Al-Solaiman — examines water systems, accessibility, equity and scarcity. 

“In a biennale that explores the intersection of inner experiences and external influences, ‘Good Water’ reflects the spirit of inquiry we hope to share with the world,” Al-Solaiman said in a statement. “With this pavilion, we are proud to support the next generation of Saudi practitioners and provide platforms that amplify their voices on the international stage.” 

Saudi artists Alaa Tarabzouni, Dur Kattan, Fahad bin Naif and Aziz Jamal worked as co-curators, collaborating across various disciplines. 

“In this team, we don’t have specific roles,” Jamal told Arab News. “We all collaborated on everything. For example, the video, we all shot together — we all wrote together. We all have different backgrounds in the arts sector but we’ve worked together (in the Saudi art scene) for the past five years; it’s more of a democratic process and there’s no strict guidelines.” 

At the heart of “Good Water” is the sabeel, a traditional water fountain usually placed and funded privately in a shaded outdoor communal space. It is meant for use by anyone in the community, free of charge.  

The sabeel is an enduring symbol of hospitality and generosity, deeply rooted in the Arabian Peninsula and found in many spots throughout the Middle East. 

“Growing up in Dhahran, you would see sabeels everywhere. Our house didn’t have one, but there was a mosque in front of our house that had one,” Jamal said. 

The London installation strips the sabeel of nostalgia and recenters it as a contemporary, working object. Visitors are invited to fill their cups as they pause to reflect on the often unseen systems, labor and energy that make the flowing “free” water possible. 

Stacks of paper cups will be provided, bearing the message “Good Water: 500 ml = one AI prompt” in vibrant color. There will also be refillable water bottles so spectators can have a “water-cooler moment” to chat, sip and ponder.  

The pavilion also features four short videos filmed at an old water factory in Riyadh, showing the painstaking journey of water from droplet to distribution. The screens trace the production process across different sizes of bottles. 

Jamal’s relationship with water has shifted since he started working on this project.  

“I have to say, going to visit the water factory (in Riyadh) and seeing the enormous effort that it takes to fill up one tiny water bottle, you don’t take that effort for granted anymore, because it’s not just a matter of getting the water filled up; it’s testing it, going through inspection, doing all the mineral checks,” he said. “Before, if there was a little bit of water in my water bottle, I’d just leave it, but now I make it a point to drink (it) all … to finish the bottle. It has made me more conscious of every drop.” 

Jamal’s aim is for visitors to the pavilion to reach that same realization. 

“What I really hope for is for people to interact with the piece,” he said. “We want that act of generosity to come through and we want people to drink the water.” He noted that the sabeel in London will dispense locally sourced water, not imported.  

A catalogue written by the curators will also be available, offering further context in the form of essays, research material and images of water infrastructure and sabeels from across the Middle East and North Africa region.  

Saudi Arabia is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world and the largest producer of desalinated water globally, supplying over 60 percent of its potable water, according to the Saudi Pavilion team’s research. 

“We thought (the sabeel) was a perfect symbol of the attitude and the general principle behind this concept of water as a human right and not as a luxury,” Jamal said. “It’s free drinking water, but it’s from a private source. So we felt it really encompassed this phenomenon of paying it forward and offering water to people who don’t have access to it.” 

With “Good Water,” the Saudi National Pavilion puts this scarcity — and the labor behind everyday hydration — center stage. 

“Our research was about water and access to water,” Jamal explained. “When we were first conceptualizing the piece for the London Biennale, we were looking at the infrastructure and water and access and what’s the hidden cost of free water in Saudi — and specifically looking at the objective of a sabeel: What does this act of generosity and act of making water into a human right mean? And what is the hidden cost of that?” 

Though the widespread distribution of plastic bottles has displaced the sabeel to some extent, Jamal emphasized its enduring relevance, especially in a country with scorching summers and sizeable outdoor workforces. 

“People are on the go, so they need something convenient,” he said. “I don’t think water bottles have killed off sabeels completely. A lot of the workforce in Saudi still use it all the time. It’s not just drinking water, it’s cold drinking water, and in Saudi that’s very important.”