NEW DELHI: India’s biggest art fair opened in New Delhi this week with a focus on homegrown artists and exhibits inspired by contemporary themes such as the worst floods in the Kashmir region in more than a century.
A smorgasbord of works by 1,100 artists lured art lovers, gallerists and gawkers to a cavernous exhibition space in the capital, cementing the annual fair’s reputation as one of South Asia’s top cultural events.
Each year, an estimated 100,000 visitors flock to the four-day fair with entry tickets that cost no more than $6.
The city’s glitterati strolled past exhibits by 85 galleries at Thursday’s preview clutching glasses of red wine, with several displays sold before the seventh edition of the fair opened for public viewing on Friday. The show runs until Sunday.
“We’ve had five or six sell-out booths and several galleries have done exceptionally well,” founder Neha Kirpal told Reuters.
India’s art scene has been expanding for the past few years, with auctioneer Christie’s second Mumbai auction in December generating sales of $12 million. A report by analysts ArtTactic said confidence in the market was at its highest since 2007.
For four days each year, New Delhi becomes a center for the visual arts, with the India Art Fair at the hub of several spin-off events such as museum shows, seminars and glamorous parties.
“Beyond the fair itself, the effect it has on the art scene in Delhi at large ... and almost collaterally, the rest of Delhi programs its art agendas,” said artist Jitish Kallat, who said he would be lucky to attend half the events on the schedule.
A life-size wooden replica of a typical Kashmiri house lies on its side at the fair’s entrance, a reminder of the destruction wreaked by floods in the Himalayan state last year.
Kashmiri artist Veer Munshi, who lives in Delhi, took nearly three months to complete the house, and said he would use proceeds from its cost of about 3 million rupees ($48,500) to rehabilitate artists and writers from his native land.
Inside the fair, among an array of paintings, sculpture, video installations and photographs is another wooden exhibit — one inspired by a militant assault on the city of Mumbai in 2008.
Mumbai artist T V Santhosh’s installation tilts the city’s historic railway station at an angle, with several digital clocks on its walls counting down time in the Mumbai landmark.
Elsewhere, metallic beads take the shape of four men hanging on for dear life on a Mumbai train while an army of giant ants, with their bodies sculpted from motorbike parts, bask under the winter sun.
Like other years, customs duty and red tape threatens to temper the enthusiasm of Western gallery owners attending the fair.
“I was told that a lot of the galleries from the United States stopped (coming) because of all the taxes and all the paper work involved,” said Clarita Brinkerhoff, whose Florida-based gallery is exhibiting for the first time in India.
Brinkerhoff’s metal sculptures of peacocks, India’s national bird, studded with Swarovski crystals found favor with the Delhi crowd, with five of her exhibits sold on the first day.
She wants to be back next year, but said she hoped “the process would not be so complicated.”
It may be years before New Delhi can hope to match art fairs in Hong Kong or Dubai, but director Kirpal is unperturbed. She describes India as an emerging market in contrast to several art markets that have stagnated.
“The good news is that we are at the beginning of our growth curve for the market,” she said. “There’s only one way to go.”
Art fair turns India’s capital into art hub
Art fair turns India’s capital into art hub
Hail museums: Treasure troves of history and heritage
- Samia Suleiman Al-Jabri: Museums play a vital role in preserving heritage, protecting it from extinction, and connecting generations to their civilizational and cultural legacy
- Al-Jabri: They (museums) provide an information-rich environment that enhances historical and scientific knowledge for both international visitors and tourists
Hail’s museums offer visitors a journey through time, bringing to life the ancient stories of the region’s ancestors.
A number of museums in the city highlight historical ways of life, traditional craftsmanship and an array of archaeological artifacts.
“Museums play a vital role in preserving heritage, protecting it from extinction, and connecting generations to their civilizational and cultural legacy,” Samia Suleiman Al-Jabri, associate professor of modern history at Hail University, told the Saudi Press Agency.
“They provide an information-rich environment that enhances historical and scientific knowledge for both international visitors and tourists, including students, researchers and cultural enthusiasts.
“Moreover, museums are key tourist destinations that promote cultural tourism, offering visitors access to diverse collections of rare heritage artifacts, which in turn significantly boosts the local economy.”
Al-Jabri said that Saudi Arabia’s leadership was committed to enhancing the role of museums nationally, which strengthened national identity by showcasing the Kingdom’s cultural heritage.
The Authenticity Museum is one of the most prominent cultural, heritage and tourist landmarks in Hail.
It features a diverse collection of artifacts and tools that provide insight into the past.
The museum also highlights traditional furniture, from historical majlis (sitting rooms), heritage seating, and intricately hand-crafted cabinets once used in traditional homes.
Ali Bakhrisa, owner of the “Asalah” Museum, said: “Among the most notable items on display are ancient heritage tools, including pottery, cooking implements and hunting gear.
“The museum also showcases a collection of traditional clothing worn by the region’s tribes, featuring men’s garments such as the sadiriyya, dagla, kut and bisht, alongside women’s attire, which is hand-embroidered and woven, including the dagla, sabah, burqas and dara’a once worn by Hail’s women.
“In addition, the museum proudly exhibits a selection of classic cars from various manufacturers.”
The museum, which Bakhrisa said took 20 years to curate through extensive research trips across the Kingdom and beyond, boasts a rich collection of traditional weapons, including swords, daggers and antique rifles.
It also features an exquisite array of traditional jewelry and ornaments, historically worn by women on social occasions and renowned for their authentic heritage designs.
The museum also highlights traditional architecture once common in the region, showcasing distinctive architectural styles and locally sourced building materials.
One of the most renowned museums in Hail is the Found Influence from the Past Museum, housed in a clay structure more than a century old.
Its owner, Khaled Al-Matroud, has carefully transformed this historic home into a museum that showcases a remarkable collection of more than 2,000 artifacts, elegantly arranged across its wings and corridors.
A standout feature is the heritage majlis, known for its soaring ceilings — reaching up to eight meters — and its impressive 15-meter width, reflecting the region’s architectural style.
This majlis was ingeniously designed to adapt to seasonal needs, with distinct shapes for summer and winter.
The museum also preserves the charm of a traditional Hail house, featuring numerous rooms and an open courtyard that facilitates natural ventilation, further enhanced by the lush greenery of palm, orange and lemon trees at its entrance.
Fadi Al-Abdullah, a passionate admirer of historical artifacts, praised these museums for preserving and documenting the intricate details of a past era.
Antar Al-Kilani, an Egyptian resident, views these museums as a gateway to discovering the cultural and historical heritage of the region.
Saudi content creators win big at TikTok Awards in Dubai
DUBAI: Two Saudi content creators made a mark at the TikTok Awards ceremony on Wednesday.
Mohammed Hemex was honored with the Sports Creator of the Year Award, while Emad Ramen earned the title of Food Creator of the Year.
The event drew a star-studded crowd, including US-Iraqi entrepreneur and fragrance mogul Mona Kattan, accompanied by her co-stars from Netflix’s “Dubai Bling.” Among them were Ebraheem Alsamadi, who decorated the venue with centerpieces from his brand Forever Rose, Safa Siddiqui, Danya Mohammed, Marwan Al-Awadhi (DJ Bliss), and Jwana Karim. Also in attendance were “Love is Blind Habibi” stars Mohammed AlKiswani and Nour El-Hajj.
The Creator of the Year award was presented to Yara Aziz. Ahead of her win, Aziz, who boasts 6.5 million TikTok followers, told Arab News: “I started everything on TikTok. It’s been five years now, and this is my first award ever with them. I am nervous, I am excited, I am happy, I am content and I am grateful.”
Originally a medical student, the TikToker attended the event wearing a dress handmade by her grandmother, a process she documented on TikTok for her followers.
Reflecting on the experience, Aziz described the process as “extremely stressful.” She explained, “Honestly, it was stressful for my grandma, she felt like she was under pressure to make something quick and fast. But honestly, it turned out perfect.”
Before the announcement, Aziz mentioned that winning this award would mark the most memorable moment of her social media career — and it did.
The night included performances by Haitian-French artist Naika, known for the viral hit “Sauce,” and Egyptian rapper Marwan Moussa, a TikTok favorite, who thrilled the audience with tracks such as “Tesla,” “Batal Alam” and “Hob Khenaa,” joined by co-singer Nourine Abouseada for the latter.
The night celebrated other talents including Syrian Canadian Osama Marwah, who won the Video of the Year, while Egyptian singer Tul8te was named Breakthrough Artist of the Year. Lebanese chef Abir El Saghir received the Visionary Content Award, Abdullah Annan was honored as Changemaker of the Year, Shihab Al-Hashemy won Education Creator of the Year, and Nouran El-Sayed took home the Fashion & Beauty Creator of the Year award.
Qatar exhibition explores relationship between AI and humanity
DOHA: The Media Majlis Museum at Northwestern University in Qatar launched “Ai or Nay? Artificial vs. Intelligent,” a thought-provoking exhibition exploring humanity’s evolving relationship with machine learning.
Running until May 15, the exhibition brings together over 20 works by international and regional artists.
Directed by Alfredo Cramerotti, the exhibition emphasizes interdisciplinary dialogue, he said. “For me, it’s important as a curator to combine arts with something else and have a foot in art and a foot in something like technology or media,” Cramerotti told Arab News.
“We’re embedded in an environment of communication, technology, and media and (in this exhibition) we bring in artistic elements… to tackle themes that are relevant for society now.”
On display are installations from international creatives such as Jan Zuiderveld (Netherlands), Patrick Tresset (France/Belgium), and Adnan Ayub Aga (UAE/Portugal), alongside interactive and visual works by Amr Alngmah (Yemen/Egypt), Farjana Salahuddin (Bangladesh), graphic designer Hind Al-Saad (Qatar), Hadeer Omar (Egypt) and Bilge Emir (Turkey/Germany).
“We thought, let’s bring in in different voices — from the region and internationally, from different sectors of society and cultures — to help us understand the different pinch points of AI to make the general public more aware of certain issues,” explained Cramerotti.
The exhibition also addresses the tension between digital and physical experiences, he added: “This hybridity is central to the show. It’s about being aware of how AI and information flows shape our identities and impact our lives.”
As an example, Cramerotti highlighted the work of Al-Saad and Omar, which features screen walls offering a glimpse into how AI works in our everyday lives.
“The idea of how computers see us is actually quite central, but it’s completely invisible — like facial recognition,” he said. “It is integrated in your life flow. You don’t notice it. But there is an incredible amount of ‘bio-politics’ behind it.”
Italian sculptress Arianna Palmieri contemplates world’s cyclicity at Tuwaiq Sculpture
RIYADH: With the theme “Then and Now: Joy in the Struggle of Making,” the sixth edition of the Tuwaiq Sculpture symposium has brought together 30 sculpture artists from around the world.
Among them is Italian artist Arianna Palmieri, whose piece “Motion of Revolution” was inspired by the movement of the solar system around the sun. Depicting the inevitable cycles of birth and death, the work contemplates the notion that birth is conditioned by assured fatality.
“It’s all about the circularity of life — you are born, you are a child, then you are an adolescent, then you grow older, and then you die. But your life will continue after this, and we give life to other things. So it’s more about how everything is connected and a circularity of life; as humans move within the planets, the planets are moving around the sun,” Palmieri told Arab News.
Originally from Milan, Palmieri moved to Carrara, a town known worldwide for its white marble, to study sculpting. She graduated in 2023 and the 26-year-old is one of the youngest artists amongst the group at the symposium.
She says it is an opportunity to learn and grow as an artist.
“It’s like a dream. I didn't think they would choose me because I am so young,” she said. “The last edition was more about people that had experience. This edition, they tried to concentrate more (on) the artwork and the background of the artist,” she said.
The finished works will be exhibited from Feb. 12-24 and moved to various locations across the city as part of Riyadh Art’s initiative to beautify the capital.
“Public art is the main thing that our sculptures can achieve because you can do big stuff and they will be like a journal in some way. I’m really, really happy that I can do something so big that will stay there so much longer than me,” she said.
Palmieri’s work is not merely a reflection of planetary movement but contemplates the existence of the human race and its role within a larger picture. Her work itself is a representation of this thought: As every human diminishes, remnants of them and their work on earth will be set in stone — waiting to be discovered by another.
“I thought about nature a lot, and all of humanity. I hope at least that my art can get through this idea, to connect all the people,” she said.
Ian McDiarmid, Hideo Ishikawa to headline Middle East Film & Comic Con 2025
DUBAI: Scottish actor and director Ian McDiarmid, known for his portrayal of Emperor Palpatine in the “Star Wars” saga, has been announced as the first confirmed celebrity guest for the Middle East Film & Comic Con (MEFCC) 2025.
The region’s largest pop culture event will take place from April 18 to 20, 2025, at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC).
In addition to his role as the “Star Wars” saga, McDiarmid is also known for his performances in films such as “Sleepy Hollow” and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” as well as his extensive work in theater, including his Olivier Award-winning role in “Faith Healer.”
Anime fans are also in for a treat with the announcement of Japan’s leading voice actor, Hideo Ishikawa, best known as the voice of Itachi Uchiha from “Naruto.”
His notable roles include Toyotomi Hideyoshi in “Samurai Warriors,” Kyo-ya Onizuka in “Aesthetica of a Rogue Hero,” Ray Penber and Hideki Ide in “Death Note,” and Squall Leonhart, Auron, and Cait Sith in the “Final Fantasy” series.
Loy Pinheiro, show director of MEFCC said in a statement: “MEFCC 2025 is set to be our most diverse and engaging event yet. From casual fans to devoted collectors, we’ve created an experience that celebrates every aspect of pop culture with something for everyone.”
The event is organized in partnership with the Department of Culture and Tourism in Abu Dhabi.
