PARIS: With the end of Paris Haute Couture Week comes a chance to sit back and review the new collections unveiled by the world’s leading designers without the dizzying rush of endless events and runway shows.
This year, the official Haute Couture calendar featured four Lebanese fashion houses, including mainstays Zuhair Murad and Elie Saab.
Murad, who presented his Fall/Winter 2022-23 collection to a packed crowd, drew inspiration from the mystical arts such as Tarot, astrology, horoscopes and palmistry for his latest outing.
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The collection was divided into ten colorful chapters that reflected the atelier’s sublime beadwork and craftsmanship, with a strong focus on the signs of the Zodiac in one gown in particular. The signs of the zodiac were surrounded by crystal-studded applique on a long, floor-grazing gown with a cancer sign at the center as it is the astrological sign of the designer. Serpents also played a symbolic role in the collection due to their being “virtuous,” according to the fashion house, while other recurring symbols included the sun and stars.
A very sensual couture collection that featured high slits, wrap skirts, jackets, bodysuits, short dresses with removable trains, ball gowns, jumpsuits and capes, it was a varied line that encapsulated the opulence that Murad stands for.
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As for Saab, the designer pulled off a stellar showcase of both womenswear designs and — for the first ever time ever — a menswear collection.
Inspired by the pearlescent sheen of twilight, the collection was marked by shades of vermillion, pink, metallic gold and deep blue, mirroring the sky as the sun makes its hazy descent for the day. Showcased in Paris’s Le Carreau du Temple, the gowns competed with the dramatic surroundings and came out on top with their geometric embellishments, feathers, shimmering beads, crystals, gemstones and sequins.
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The men’s collection was majestic and featured capes and royal velvet suits that blended smoothly with the women’s line. The designer stayed true to his style and ensured the menswear offering was equally opulent with its embroidery and luxurious embellishments.
And the grand finale did not disappoint — Saab’s show-stopping wedding dress was a gown to be remembered with its fluttering veil of crystals that took the master couturier’s latest runway presentation into the realms of fantasy.
LONDON: In the early 1960s, France conducted a series of nuclear tests near Reggane in central Algeria. The first, called Gerboise Bleue, took place on the morning of February 13, 1960 and was four times more powerful than Hiroshima. A second, named Gerboise Blanche, followed nearly two months later, while a third, Gerboise Rouge, was detonated on December 27. A photograph of the latter, showing two rows of dummies propped up against the forthcoming blast, caught the eye of the artist Heba Y. Amin.
A miniature reconstruction of that image is at the heart of the Egyptian artist’s new solo exhibition. Confronting the painful topic of France’s nuclear experiments in Algeria, “Atom Elegy” emerged from a poem of the same name by Yvan Goll, which Amin discovered at the Center for Persecuted Arts in Solingen, Germany. “(It) was a sort of love poem to atomic energy, but written before we understood the full devastation of what an atomic bomb could do,” she says.
It was never published in its original form, but when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War it was rewritten and edited by Goll. “I was interested in this shift of perception around what we deem to be progressive technologies, and the ways in which we aren’t trained or accustomed to questioning them. The image on which my work is based does the same thing for me. It captures a very specific moment in time before the atomic bomb test is conducted, so you see these dummies propped up in strangely surreal detail and are somehow suspended in this moment.”
It was through the photograph’s reconstruction that Amin “better understood how cynical and disturbing this image is” and the extent to which the dummies were be made to look like humans. “There’s this kind of violence and gore that one imagines would have been the aftermath of the bombing at that site. It’s that one moment in between that I’m interested in, which was what was also somehow captured with Yvan Goll’s poem.”
Amin confronts other acts of imperial violence, too. With “The Devil’s Garden — Marseille’s Pyramid,” she focuses on a “region in northern Egypt where the Battle of El Alamein took place — a sort of turning point in the World War Two narrative.” She researched an area that was “dubbed the ‘devil’s garden’ by (German field marshal) Erwin Rommel because his forces implanted millions of landmines in the region. To this day the region remains the most landmine-infested territory in the world.” The pyramid is a reconstruction of one erected by the Nazis in the area in memory of fighter pilot Hans- Joachim Marseille.
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Both works are part of Amin’s exhibition “When I see the future, I close my eyes: Chapter II,” which runs at the Zilberman Gallery in Berlin until July 30. An exploration of the technologies of colonization, the solo show features a selection of new and ongoing work, including “Windows on the West” (2019) and an interview with the German singer and actor Roberto Blanco. The former is a hand-woven reconstruction of the first documented photograph taken on the African continent, while the latter questions Blanco’s role in “Der Stern von Afrika,” a biopic of Marseille.
First launched at the Mosaic Rooms in London in 2020, the second iteration of “When I see the future, I close my eyes” reflects on technology’s role in shaping what Amin refers to as “Western visuality.” In particular, the technologies of image-making and how they “emerged out of a colonial agenda.” She also investigates “the way in which that colonial narrative is inscribed within the tools of image-making.”
“As a person from the Global South, I’m hyper-aware of the structures that have been imposed through a colonial context,” she says. “So I’m interested in relaying the ways in which science and technology are often immediately associated with progress and in fact are imbedded with disparities in power and hierarchy.”
She also questions “our techno-optimism” and the ways in which “we’ve been sort of ‘trained’ to use technology to solve problems” without thinking of the long-term consequences.
The nature and scale of Amin’s work, with its extensively researched examinations of ways in which contemporary society engages with technology, often necessitates collaboration. For “When I see the future...,” she worked with academic and researcher Anthony Downey.
“Collaboration is integral to my work,” she says. “I can’t acquire knowledge without collaborating with others. So I do a lot of fieldwork — gathering material, gathering content, taking video footage, doing interviews… and it’s really important for me to have an understanding of the content that I’m dealing with.”
For this exhibition, Amin and Downey looked at the ways in which their methodologies can bring different kinds of knowledge to the fore. She previously stated that the exhibition was being used as a “tool through which we produce knowledge with others”.
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Why is this production of knowledge so important? “Because ultimately we’re dealing with systems of power, systems of oppression,” replies Amin. “But it’s also a process by which I try to understand the constructs of what we’re living today. Oftentimes when we’re dealing with global politics and the media, the contextualization of these narratives only goes so far, so I’m interested in looking at these systemic issues and looking at them historically, but through a lived experience, or an embodied experience. In that sense, the production of knowledge is important because it’s not just about observation or raising questions, it’s about revealing and presenting untold stories, unheard voices — different historical narratives that have not been addressed in the archives — and as a way to sort of complicate a contemporary narrative.”
Born and raised in Cairo, Amin is currently a professor of digital and time-based art at ABK Stuttgart. She is also the co-founder of the Black Athena Collective, curator of visual art for the Arab American journal Mizna, and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Digital War. She is arguably best known for her hacking of the US TV series “Homeland,” which saw her, Caram Kapp and Don Karl (known collectively as the Arabian Street Artists) pepper the show’s set with graffiti that criticized the show’s depiction of the Muslim world.
Hired to add authenticity to street scenes for the second episode of the fifth season, the artists instead wrote phrases such as “Homeland is racist,” “Homeland is not a series” and “#blacklivesmatter,” leading to an international media storm. The graffiti project was designed, says Amin, to reveal the ways in which Hollywood “dominates through cultural soft power”, and how the narratives of its popular films and series “impact international politics and political discourse.”
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“My intervention in the ‘Homeland’ series was simply to poke holes in the way in which a show that is being produced in collaboration with the CIA obviously has an agenda, and I needed to make that agenda clear. I never imagined that the intervention would work as well as it did and, more importantly, aside from people being fascinated with how I pulled it off, I was more interested in the way the critique I was making made it into major news outlets and it became a sort of global conversation,” she says.
“And that’s kind of the intention behind a lot of my work: How do we bring forward these very difficult narratives to have a conversation about them?”
DUBAI: As a testament to the country’s growing popularity, Time magazine has picked the UAE’s Ras Al-Khaimah as one of its World’s Greatest Places of 2022.
The annual list, which features 50 must-visit global destinations, highlighted Ras Al-Khaimah’s “stunning geodiversity” and “superlative outdoor adventure offerings.”
The magazine especially highlighted RAK’s adventure spots like Jais Sledder, the region’s longest toboggan ride which debuted earlier this year and is named after the highest peak in the Hajar mountains, as well as Jais Flight, the world’s longest zip line. The newly launched RAK Airventure, a tethered hot-air balloon experience, also got a mention.
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Later in the year, Jebel Jais will unveil Jais Wings, which allows visitors to paraglide above spectacular scenery. Adding to the thrills will be Jais Swing, which will offer a different perspective on the same views; and Jais Yard, a culinary village with food trucks, an open-air movie theater, and children’s play areas.
Other places featured on the prestigious list include India’s Kerala, Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, New Zealand’s Queenstown, Japan’s Kyushu Island, and Indonesia’s Bali.
DUBAI: The first season of “Only Murders in the Building” was a — largely unexpected — huge success. The comedy-mystery-drama was lauded for its ability to parody the ubiquitous true-crime docudramas and podcasts to often-hilarious effect while still managing to be a compelling, edge-of-the-seat whodunnit itself.
The second season — now showing in the region on Disney+ — continues to revolve around the trio of Charles Haden Savage (Steve Martin), an actor best known as the star of “Brazzos,” a 1990s detective drama; Oliver Putnam (Martin Short), a financially strapped theater director; and Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez), who is renovating her aunt’s apartment at the Arconia, the venerable New York building of the show’s title, where the two older men also live.
In season one, the three relative strangers initially bonded over their love of true-crime podcasts. And when a young man was murdered in the Arconia, the trio tried to crack the case themselves, while starting their own podcast. They wrongly accused a number of building residents (including penthouse dweller Sting) of being the murderer, eventually became suspects themselves, were exonerated, and eventually helped unveil the real perpetrator.
Season two picks up straight after the season one finale, which found the trio being led from the Arconia in handcuffs after the building’s board president, Bunny Folger, is found dead in Mabel’s apartment. They are interviewed and released and are free to once again attempt to solve a homicide while continuing their podcast. It quickly becomes clear that the real killer is trying to frame them.
So, season two involves the treading of plenty of similar ground, with the trio leaping to several poorly judged conclusions about who is responsible, Amy Schumer replacing Sting as the building’s resident A-list celeb (she turns out to be a huge fan of the podcast), plenty of bitching about neighbors behind their backs, and so on.
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Happily, more of the same is exactly what was needed. The magic of “Only Murders” lies mostly in the chemistry between the lead trio. Short and Martin, you sense, are having a joyous time showing off their considerable comedy chops, honed over decades. And Gomez appears to spark a fire in both of them. But all three are also capable of delivering emotionally hard-hitting performances too.
The writing is also superb — razor-sharp, never flabby. Each 30-minute episode is packed with beautifully observed insults, snarky comebacks, and general silliness, all balanced with some genuinely thrilling moments of tension and jeopardy. It all makes for a hugely enjoyable show.
BAGHDAD: In his apartment on Haifa Street in Baghdad — a short walk from the Museum of Modern Art, Iraqi artist Salam Atta Sabri has spread a selection of his recent works across a table.
Dozens of intricate abstract drawings in Atta Sabri’s trademark naïve style depict landscapes filled with palm trees, densely packed buildings, and figures with bright oval-shaped eyes, reflecting their ancient Sumerian ancestry.
The sounds of the call to prayer fill the room as he explains how these drawings resemble a form of therapy for him. Inspired by his own memories, the collective imagination of his homeland and the ancient and modern histories of Iraq, the drawings weave narratives that are at once magical and based on the challenging reality Iraqis have faced over the last few decades due to sanctions, wars, socio-economic upheaval and, now, climate change.
“Despite the death, devastation and neglect the palm tree has faced in Iraq, it resists and remains standing tall, just as our mother country does,” the artist said in a statement for Ruya Foundation, the Iraqi non-profit that facilitated the first public exhibition of Atta Sabri’s work at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. “Yet when I draw these palm trees, I feel pain and despair. Since the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, our palm tree orchards have been systematically destroyed (by) conflict, neglect and poor urban planning.”
In many ways, Atta Sabri’s drawings are like a cry for help not only for Iraq’s palm trees, but for the country’s rich heritage. His poignant drawings are his fight against the loss of collective memory.
“Saving palm trees in Iraq from extinction is, for me, a humanitarian issue; they are a fundamental part of our civilization,” he added in his statement.
Atta Sabri was born in Baghdad in 1953. He moved to the US in the early Seventies and studied art at the California State University in Los Angeles. He eventually returned to Baghdad in 1990 (“Right when Iraq invaded Kuwait,” he tells Arab News). A few years later he moved to Jordan where he was given a role at the university teaching ceramics, before returning to his hometown with his wife and two daughters in 2005.
“I returned to Baghdad because it is like a mother; it is the center of my life. Even if it is suffering, it is still my city,” he says.
At that time, it was hard for Atta Sabri to source the basic materials to continue his ceramics practice, so he turned instead to drawing.
“I believe it is my psychological therapy; I believe I am back to my childhood, and I love drawings, so I am drawing again,” he says.
His small, jewel-like works open a window into Iraq’s recent and ancient history, with visual nods to the civilizations that once inhabited the region. They deal directly with returning to a country marred by conflict; once a globally renowned hub for arts and culture, now offering little opportunity for artists.
He passed the COVID-19 pandemic in Baghdad, producing a series of works in response called “One Thousand and One Nights,” believing that the period of anxious uncertainty the world experienced at that time echoed the tale of Scheherazade from the eponymous classic story collection. When King Shahryar discovered Scheherazade’s infidelity, his anger led him to marry and execute a new woman every day Scheherazade devised a plan to save herself — telling the king a new story each evening but never finishing them. Finally, he gives up trying to kill her.
“Our world is upside down, challenging and constantly difficult, just like ‘One Thousand and One Nights,’” Atta Sabri tells Arab News. “But, like Baghdad, even when she is suffering, the city is still magical.”
Even during times of uncertainty, emphasizes Atta Sabri, there is still wonder to be found in everyday life.
DUBAI: Hollywood star Bradley Cooper reportedly has a new beau and the internet can’t get enough. The star has allegedly been quietly dating US political aide Huma Abedin for some months now, with some social media users evoking comparisons to celebrity power couple George and Amal Clooney. According to reports in the international press, Cooper and Abedin were introduced by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, a close friend of both parties.
As the rumors continue to swirl, with no confirmation from either camp, we take a closer look at Abedin.
Michigan-born Abedin, who is of Indian and Pakistani descent, has a close relationship with Jeddah, having moved there with her parents when she was two years old before she moved back to the US to attend college. In 2009, Abedin was appointed deputy chief of staff to Clinton in the US State Department and kept working with her throughout the former’s marriage to US congressman Anthony Weiner and the sexting scandal that followed in 2016. The scandal ended her marriage to Weiner and saw her file for sole custody of their son Jordan, now 10 years old. Meanwhile, Cooper, who split with Russian model Irina Shayk in 2019, shares five-year-old daughter Lea with the supermodel.