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DUBAI: Joining the extensive line-up of designers to create exclusive collections primed for Ramadan, Milan-based fashion brand Off-White has launched its new capsule collection in celebration of the ninth month of the Islamic calendar.
With the idea of modest dressing and comfort at the forefront of the collection, the 17-piece offering was made with the Middle Eastern consumer in mind.
The collection is available online and in select Off-White stores in the region. Supplied
Keeping in line with the holy month, the collection offers different interpretations of long hemlines and relaxed silhouettes for its modest-dressing customers, including rhinestone-embellished hoodies and T-shirts, track jackets and pants, satin shirts, knitwear and emerald-tone pajama sets that are equal parts stylish and comfortable.
The capsule also features accessories in the form of a Swarovski necklace and matching earrings in Off-White’s ubiquitous arrow cross motif, glitter-infused slippers and satin bags.
Those who wish to shop the new capsule collection can purchase pieces online and in select Off-White stores in the Gulf Cooperation Council, including in Riyadh, with prices ranging from $700 to $1850.
The 17-piece offering was made with the Middle Eastern consumer in mind. Supplied
Off-White’s new Ramadan collection signals the growing focus luxury brands have in the burgeoning Middle Eastern market.
Other luxury labels that have recently created collections specifically for Muslim consumers during Ramadan include Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors, Tory Burch and more.
This is not the first time that the cult streetwear label celebrates the holy month. Last year, the late Off-White founder Virgil Abloh, who died from a rare type of cancer in November, designed a homeware collection exclusively for Ramadan.
VENICE: A large 40-meter-long form that seems to writhe gently like a living being takes up the entirety of the pavilion of Saudi Arabia. The organically formed structure is covered in palm fronds painted in black and moves, ever so slightly, powered by pneumatics.
Titled “The Teaching Tree” and by Muhannad Shono, the artist selected to represent the Kingdom in Venice this year, the work is, in his words, “the embodiment of a living imagination, the resistance and resilience of the creative mind. It encompasses a journey, not only of myself, but of the resilience and irrepressible creative scene that is emerging now in Saudi Arabia.”
As the country continues to forge its voice on the international art scene, Shono has become a strong advocate for a new generation of artists from Saudi Arabia.
When beholding Shono’s work, the viewer becomes aware of rays of outside light that cast shadows on the floor, serving a role in the aesthetic and performance of the artist’s work.
Muhannad Shono is the artist selected to represent the Kingdom in Venice this year. (Supplied)
“I wanted the work to be connected to outside light; I wanted the work to change as the natural light changed prompting how people experience it. Lighting became very crucial in the end and shadows that were made became very important in how they wanted to manifest,” Shono told Arab News.
Muhannad Shono, “The Teaching Tree,” 2022. (Supplied)
Curated by Reem Fadda, the director of the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi, and assistant curator Rotana Shaker, Shono’s enigmatic form explores ideas of resilience, regeneration, nature, creation, and mythology in the natural world and in the human imagination. The work was entirely assembled by hand in Riyadh by a team of Saudi and international artists and mounted in Venice.
Fadda said: “There was a big community alongside Muhannad of artists, supporters, and creators and the curation was divided between me and Rotana. Photographers, designers, and creatives of all kinds came together and supported him in the creation and manifestation of the work.”
Reem Fadda is the Director of the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi. (Supplied)
Underpinning the work are the concepts on which Shono has long based his art, namely the practice of questioning truths, ontologies, and basic ideas regarding human life. Of note is the artist’s investigations into the drawn line — the origin of “The Teaching Tree” and the basis for all aesthetic forms — an act of creative agency itself.
“Here we find this massive installation of a line that becomes an embodied thing, a living thing, throbbing, breathing, and coming to life as a force of absolute creative resistance and imagination.
Rotana Shaker is the assistant curator. (Supplied)
“This is not an industrial thing. It is a structure and there is pneumatics that are inside. The palm fronds were hand dried, treated, and died and they are all waste palm fronds from the trimmings that were then hand inserted each and every one,” Fadda added.
The stories of Al-Khidr, the legendary Islamic figure endowed with immortal life who is described in the Qur’an as a righteous servant of God possessing great wisdom or mystic knowledge, have had a profound influence on Shono’s personal and creative life.
According to several myths, wherever Al-Khidr sat a garden would grow — symbolizing, similar to Shono’s work at the Biennale, healing, regeneration, and rebirth.
Muhannad Shono, “The Teaching Tree,” 2022, Sculptural installation with palm fronds, pigment, pneumatics and metal structure, overall dimensions variable. (Supplied)
“The Teaching Tree” thus reflects also on the idea of hope for rebirth, particularly when faced with the present warning signs of past and future ecological and human struggle.
Shono said: “The work is the embodiment of the living imagination. It is an act of creative resistance. Despite attempts to restrict human imagination, and in fact, thanks to those restrictions, more fertile ground is created for stronger expression.”
The 59th Venice Biennale runs until Nov. 27.
DUBAI: US singer and songwriter John Legend is set to perform his first concert in Egypt in July, show organizers have announced.
The 43-year-old music sensation will meet fans in the North Coast at the Playa resort on July 22.
The “All of Me” singer is among other A-list stars who have recently added Egypt to their tours.
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US rock group Maroon 5 will perform at the Giza Pyramids on May 3, while American Grammy-winning band the Black Eyed Peas will hit the historical site’s stage on Oct. 2.
Legend, also famous for songs “Glory” and “Green Light,” previously performed in the UAE in 2020 at Dubai’s Coca-Cola Arena.
In 2018, he headlined the 16th Emirates Airline Dubai Jazz Festival, playing alongside Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin and English pop band Duran Duran.
And in 2015, Legend won the Golden Globe Award for co-writing “Glory” from the film “Selma.” He is also an actor and received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his role in NBC’s musical “Jesus Christ Superstar,” which he also produced.
The last album he released was “Bigger Love” in 2020.
BEIRUT: From the polar bears of the Arctic to the tigers of India, few animals have escaped the eagle eye of Lebanese photographer Michel Zoghzoghi.
Zoghzoghi has been traveling the world for more than 15 years chronicling its natural beauty and highlighting endangered species. His latest exhibition, “Other Nations: A Journey Through Threatened Kingdoms,” which was hosted by the Dar El-Nimer gallery in Beirut earlier this month, carried a double appeal, though. Through the show, Zoghzoghi raised funds for the American University of Beirut Medical Center to help cancer patients in Lebanon.
Zoghzoghi’s work highlights the perfect balance of nature, and shows us what we are in danger of losing. “I want to show how beautiful predatory animals are and how extraordinary the nature in which they live is,” he told Arab News. “But my aim is also to send out a warning that all the species represented are endangered and that many are on the brink of extinction.
Zoghzoghi’s work highlights the perfect balance of nature. (Supplied)
“Today the uncontrolled development of modern civilizations has called everything into question. Man has become the alpha predator, but unlike other predators he has not kept (nature in) balance and is threatening himself.”
The exhibition includes photographs taken over the past 12 years in Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Norway, the US, Canada, Dubai and Brazil.
The photographer refers to his expeditions as “missions,” adding that the journeys can be “far from easy,” and explaining that he often spends hours concealed in hides while waiting for an animal — sometimes to no avail.
“I traveled to the border of Pakistan and India to immortalize the snow leopard and I failed. I also remember taking a trip to South Africa to see sharks, and — no photos,” he said.
The title of the exhibition was inspired by US author and naturalist Henry Beston’s 1928 book “The Outermost House,” in which he wrote: “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals … They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”
Here, Zoghzoghi discusses some images from the exhibition.
I was in the Masai Mara last November. It was empty, as many visitors had cancelled due to COVID. We left camp by 5:15 a.m. and we had been driving for half an hour when we spotted Kaboso, a beautiful female leopard. She was very relaxed as there were no other vehicles. I asked (the driver) to stop in a little ditch in order to be at eye level with her. By the time he’d stopped, she was almost upon us. I took the shot and she disappeared in the bushes.
This was taken in India’s Bandhavgarh National Park in 2011. We had been looking for a young male tiger that had been sighted in the area the evening before. When we finally found him, he was up on a hill looking at us through the bush. We positioned the car a bit lower on the hill as I wanted to be at eye level and I took the shot focusing on his eyes.
‘Just Around the Corner’
I have a few unforgettable wildlife moments. This encounter with a serval was definitely one of them. It was toward the end of my trip to the Mara in November. As we were making our way back to camp one evening, I decided to stop and stretch my legs after a long day in the vehicle. The temperature was ideal and I felt like staying out a bit more. As I was enjoying the cool breeze, I noticed a serval looking at us as he was walking towards the mud road. He seemed totally relaxed. I quickly grabbed my camera with a 500mm lens and laid flat in the mud hoping to get a low angle photo as he was crossing the mud road. He stopped on the road, looked in my direction and then started walking toward me. He stopped a few times, even groomed for a bit. When he decided he’d done enough checking me out he just left the road and disappeared in the savanna. The light was low, the air was cool, the mood was peaceful.
We left Longyearbyen in Norway on the M/S Origo on March 15, 2019, in the middle of a snow storm and headed north along the western coast of Svalbard. Early one afternoon as we were making our way through a beautiful fjord we spotted a bear sleeping in the snow. We immediately got into the zodiac and headed his way. After a freezing two-hour wait, he finally decided to come our way and started to walk along the ice edge. He disappeared behind an ice mound and as he appeared again on top of the mound, I took the shot.
I was in Pantanal, Brazil, in September 2016. We reached Corixo Negro, off the Cuiaba River, before sunrise. The mist was very thick — giving this eerie yet magical atmosphere. As the first colors of the sun were starting to faintly appear I saw a heron sitting peacefully on the side of the river. He suddenly flew and I took the shot. A few seconds later the sun rose and the mist turned suddenly red before disappearing.
AMMAN: Fans of spy novels may already be familiar with Mick Herron’s excellent “Slough House” series about a group of British Secret Service outcasts exiled to a tiny, filthy office away from the real action of ‘The Park’ (MI5 HQ in the show). Happily Apple TV+’s adaptation has managed to transfer both the pace and dark humor of Herron’s writing from page to screen.
The ostensible ‘hero’ of the story is River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), unfairly transferred to Slough House (the show’s title refers to the disparaging nickname given to those unfortunate enough to work there) after being wrongly accused of spectacularly messing up a training exercise.
Kristin Scott Thomas and Paul Higgins. (Supplied)
Once there, he reports to Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) — an apparently burned-out spook whose glory days were some time in the 1970s or 80s, an era from which he draws his swear-heavy approach to HR and management. Lamb delights in tormenting his hapless charges, giving them seemingly pointless and repetitive tasks to perform until their spirits are broken.
Lamb is, of course, not all he appears. We gradually learn that he’s a lot sharper than his slovenly appearance and love of farting make him seem. In fact, he proves to be at least the equal of MI5’s head of operations, the scheming, ambitious Diana Taverner (played with crystalline cool by Kristin Scott Thomas).
Rosalind Eleazar and Dustin Demri-Burns. (Supplied)
Taverner, it transpires, has instigated a dangerous scheme involving white-pride group Sons of Albion that she hopes will boost the budget, profile and support of MI5’s counter-terrorism operations. And the team of losers at Slough House are her expendable pawns.
Oldman and Scott Thomas are terrific together (and separately) — trading barbs and threats and revelling in it. Lowden is well cast as the gifted-but-politically-naïve River. The rest of the ensemble (in the four episodes aired at the time of writing) are not as well-developed yet; the showrunners have struggled to flesh out characters who, in Herron’s books, are brought to life quicker because the reader is allowed access to their inner monologues — a trick that doesn’t really work in TV shows.
Still, “Slow Horses” is a lot of fun — fast-moving, funny, and surprising. There are several books in Herron’s series and, on this evidence, it would be worth adapting more of them.
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