Sabrina Amrani welcomes the new year with ‘ Common Grounds ’, an exhibition by Saudi artist Ayman Yossri Daydban, who has never been shown in Spain before. 

Our next exhibition, a solo show for contemporary Lebanese artists Ziad Antar, opening on January 22. 
Ziad Antar  (born 1978 in Saida, Lebanon) is a Lebanese filmmaker and photographer. He studied Agricultural Engineering at the American University of Beirut before turning to video and arts with a residency at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and a post-diploma of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

Après un premier jour prometteur, l’édition 2013 d’Abu Dhabi Art a été victime d’un violent orage qui l’a obligée à fermer temporairement ses portes.
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Saudi Arabian artist Nasser Al Salem’s work similarly experiments with the momentous power of the written word. His large-scale calligraphy pieces explore new forms of meaning within text and play with the relationship between medium and message.

While Zoghbi’s stay in Holland clearly informed his work, travel has also altered the vision of Nasser al-Salem. A Saudi who lives in Jeddah, he was tutored for 13 years in the classical strictures of pure calligraphy by a master in Mecca. Then, in 2009, al-Salem attended the Abu Dhabi Art Fair. “I was shocked, amazed,” he says. “I realised there was freedom, there were concepts to be explored rather than just systems to be learnt.” Now his work is a radical reinvention of what calligraphy can do, both literally and conceptually. One piece at the V&A shows a line travelling across graph paper; it suggests both the tracing of a heart monitor, and a believer’s prayer: in the spirit of the prize, a display of cross-pollination and successful porosity between different worlds and positions.

   ÙŠÙ‚ام الأسبوع المقبل في متحف فيكتوريا وألبرت بالعاصمة البريطانية لندن، يوم الثلاثاء الموافق 10/12/2013Ù…ØŒ مؤتمر صحفي خاص لإعلان نتائج جائزة جميل العالمية التي تأتي هذا العام كاحتفالية خاصة بفضل تمكن الفنان السعودي ناصر السالم من التفوق والدخول في منافسة مع تسعة من نخبة الفنانين والمصممين العالميين. وعلى الرغم من أن النتائج لم تعلن بعد إلا أن عمل السالم استطاع أن يخطف اهتمام المسئولين في المتحف حيث اختير دوناً عن البقية لطباعته على كل مطبوعات وشعارات المسابقة التي ستنشر في كل مكان.

The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture- AFAC is pleased to launch a series of filmmaking workshops for filmmakers in Saudi Arabia. Join us for the first masterclass on creative documentary, held in Athr Gallery , Jeddah on December 3rd and 4th, and moderated by 4 international and Arab film experts.

Inspired by the many censored figures that have been inked-out or scribbled over on products and magazines across her home country, Al-Saud creates manually altered photographic images that transform familiar, friendly scenes of men and women into ghostly collages of face-less beings. The artworks possess the faint qualities of a snapshot you'd frame and hang on your wall; images of friends slouching for group photos or kissing companions on the cheek, and yet they remain physically devoid of any identifying qualities. The haunting works of art mysteriously conflate the roles of artist and censor.

Magnetism, the work of the talented  Ahmed Mater , was represented in a mayor exhibition in the British Museum dedicated to the Hajj. One of the Five Pillars of Islam requires every Muslim to perform the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in his or her lifetime if able to do so. Multiple parts of the Hajj require perform a series of rituals: hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to walk seven times around the Ka’bah in a counter-clockwise direction. 

A Beirut-native living in Dubai, Nadine Kanso studied Communication Arts and Advertising Design at the Lebanese American University. Nadine nurtured her visual artistry and developed her lifestyle brand Nadine K, which features home accessories, apparel and art works. Her new jewelry line, ‘Bil Arabi,’ is considered a work of art and was displayed at Athr Art Gallery in Jeddah. We had a chance to meet Nadine and ask about her beautifully golden and calligraphic jewelry line.

Not all the art is ‘clever’ like this, for a lack of a better word. Sometimes, a visual representation of text creates rich new symbolism. So, for example, Saudi Arabian artist and calligrapher Nasser Al-Salem was inspired by a verse from the Qur’an, “And Whoever Obeys Allah — He Will Make For Him A Way Out” which he translated into a blue maze made of the acrylic material corian. He explains it by saying: “Although you could say my work is very much inspired by my religion, I by no means have a specific audience, and hope that my messages have a spiritual or historical significance for everyone.” That is exactly what the museum hopes this exhibition will achieve.

Nasser Al Salem and Ahmed Mater’s participate in "Calligrafitti: 1984-2013", at Leila Heller Gallery along side Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jackson Pollock, Keith Haring and Csy Tombly and prominant contemporaries Elseed, Rachid Kourashi, Sherin Neshat and many others.