DUBAI: Moroccan-Italian model Malika El-Maslouhi spent the weekend exploring Milan’s Salone del Mobile, the largest furniture and interior design trade fair in the world, where Lebanese designer Elie Saab decided to showcase his homeware line this year.
The model treated her 48,000 Instagram followers to a tour of the boundary-pushing design fair by way of a carousel of photos. El-Maslouhi highlighted a couple of futuristic armchairs and other high end, quirky furniture pieces she found at the fair.
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“Here some of my favorites from salone,” she captioned the post about the event, which wraps up on June 12.
The Salone del Mobile furniture fair this year featured 2,100 exhibitors spread across 20 halls in the Rho Fiera, as well as a string of installations and debuts across the city in what Architectural Digest called “unquestionably the industry’s biggest event of the year.”
For its part, Elie Saab Maison showed off an array of modern design pieces, with geometric glass chandeliers and ultra-luxurious padded beds wowing industry insiders at three separate locations in Milan.
The world-famous Beirut-born designer added furniture, lighting, rugs and home accessories to his portfolio in 2020.
“We’ve been working on expanding our business into luxury living for home and hospitality projects,” shared Elie Saab Jr., the designer’s son who became brand director in 2013, previously told Arab News.
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In line with the brand’s evolution into a full-fledged lifestyle label, Elie Saab also partnered with Dubai real estate giant Emaar Properties to design one-to-four-bedroom luxury apartments long the city’s beachfront.
The designer’s range of furniture and home accessories are manufactured in Italy.
Although El-Maslouhi did not stop by Saab’s showcase, the 23-year-old model made sure to take in the latest in furniture and interiors trends at the 60th edition of the fair.
The catwalk star, who was born in Milan to an Italian mother and a Moroccan father, stopped by Prada Frames — a symposium organized by the luxury fashion label to explore the complex relationship between the natural environment and design.
Prada described the symposium as having a “scientific, educational and didactic approach.” The panels were hosted by leaders in the fields of design, science, architecture and activism, including Indian author Amitav Ghosh, British Israeli architect Eyal Weizman, British design critic and author Alice Rawsthorn and Brazilian architect Paulo Tavares.
MEXICO CITY: What is art? Do awards make you a better artist? Are blockbuster movies only for pseudo-actors? These are some questions unleashed in “Official Competition,” a comedy starring Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez in a battle of egos. Throughout the film, directed by Argentinians Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, the deadly sin of vanity is experienced with great intensity. It is felt from the beginning, when an old businessman (José Luis Gómez) seeks to leave his mark on history by financing a film about two brothers fighting to the death directed by a renowned filmmaker — even though he never read the novel in which it is based. The director is Lola Cuevas (Cruz), a relentless woman with no filter, passionate about film down to the smallest detail, but with a rather unconventional approach. “She believes that her actors must suffer to get a better result,” Cruz said in a recent interview from New York, where the film was shown at the Tribeca Festival ahead of its theatrical release on Friday in the US. “She’s a very peculiar character, very quirky, but that’s why she’s so fascinating. When I read it (I said) ‘how wonderful, how lucky to be able to play a person like that, a being with no filters who says everything she feels and thinks and doesn’t care what people think of her’”, the Academy Award-winning actress added. One of Lola’s first jaw-dropping comments on the film is that “an artist without children has a great advantage, he can create freely, without fear. When there are children, there is panic.” Cruz, who is a mother of two, disagrees with her character’s statement. “You can take (motherhood) into your work, for sure it’s a big injection to creativity. Even if you are much more tired all the time, it doesn’t matter, it’s worth it,” said the actor, who recently was recognized with Spain’s 2022 National Film Award for her contributions to the art. In “Official Competition”, Lola summons two equally recognized but diametrically opposed actors: Iván Torres (Martínez), a very experienced Argentine who has his own school, does theater and hates the deceptive glitter of fame; and Félix Rivero (Banderas), a star of international stature with many awards and blockbuster films, but who tends to be late for rehearsals. The tension is present from the first script reading and increases but, secretly, little by little, Iván and Félix begin to do things that they learn from the other, while trying to demonstrate their superiority. “They are dangerous animals. They can destroy themselves in order to obtain the predominant position in that production,” said Banderas in a video call from New York. For the Spanish actor, one of the points of the film is that “you can see how easy it is for people to become what they criticize.” He has avoided falling into the mistakes that Félix makes, despite having a world-renowned career, precisely as a result of meeting actors like his character in real life. “My career was built little by little,” said Banderas. “I basically started in theater, which is very helpful, because theater confronts you with yourself very strongly every day, you have an audience that responds, or not, to whatever you’re doing, and you start analyzing yourself in a completely different way that cinema actors do. ... I think it’s sometimes very dangerous when you have a very successful career very early.” In “Official Competition”, Lola acts as a referee, but also as a sparring partner, inciting confrontation between the two actors — if the tension is real, her film will be better, she thinks. One of the tests she puts them through to combat their egos is the destruction of their awards, including her own Palm d’Or and Silver Lion. “You can take that very seriously, you can just think that is a very real exercise to any human being just to break that kind of attachment that we have to objects, and those objects that they represent things that we obtain in life,” said Banderas. That was one of Cruz’s favorite scenes, along with another in which the director is alone on the floor talking to herself through a plastic tube, insulting herself. “I think it’s a very funny and pathetic moment, where you also see the lost girl she has inside,” said Cruz, whose character sports big red, curly hair. “It was a big statement,” she said of of Lola’s appearance. “She’s not trying to hide herself, she wants people to see her, to look at her. She thinks she always has the most interesting things to say in the room. She is such an egomaniac.” Coupled with the great personalities of the three main characters, the film, shot in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain, takes place in a cultural complex whose gloomy and modern architecture contrasts with the absurdity of the scenes, but also makes it feel like a conceptual art performance. “Being in those spaces brings up so many questions about art — What is wrong? What is right?,” said Cruz. “Being in that space is like all that information was floating everywhere in the room”. The shooting began in early 2020 and was cut short in March by the coronavirus pandemic. They were able to resume it in September of that year. “The nice thing about this is that I see the movie now and I don’t remember what was shot in March and what was shot in September. I think we recovered the tone that we had when we left the movie ... and luckily we didn’t lose inspiration,” said Banderas. Playing a director has only fueled a spark that Cruz has since she was 16. The actor directed a documentary, 2016’s “Yo Soy Uno Entre Cien Mil,” as well as two short films for Agent Provocateur, a lingerie brand. “It is something that I want to do for sure in my life,” Cruz said. “I am preparing a documentary now that is gonna take me a few years, because it’s complicated and requires different treatments, different locations. It’s not an easy subject to approach. I need time to do it right,” she added, without revealing any details. Although they have known each other for about 30 years and consider themselves friends, “Official Competition” is the first film in which Cruz and Banderas have numerous scenes and dialogues together. Before, they had shared small scenes in Pedro Almodóvar’s “Pain and Glory” and “I’m So Excited!” “It was a pleasure and especially in a comedy world, although deep down it is a very thoughtful and complex film,” Banderas said. “Seeing her create a character ... that has nothing to do with her, that is so different from who she is, it was very beautiful.”
DUBAI: Louvre Abu Dhabi announced on Friday the second edition of the Richard Mille Art Prize, aimed at attracting artists living and working in the Gulf region.
In celebration of its fifth anniversary, the competition will allow creatives working in various fields to showcase their work at the museum’s Forum, a space of interaction and exchange dedicated to contemporary art.
Peter Harrison, the CEO of the Swiss watchmaking brand Richard Mille in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, said the company was “honored” to be expanding the opportunity for GCC nationals and residents.
“Following last year’s impressive roster of artists, this year’s edition … challenges artists to reflect on the powerful terms ‘Icon’ and ‘iconic,’ advancing the confines of their creativity,” he added.
The museum also announced the second edition of its exhibition contest, titled Louvre Abu Dhabi Art Here.
The shortlisted artists’ work will be on display from November 2022 to February 2023.
From this group, the jury will select one winner who will receive the Richard Mille Art Prize.
Submissions for both competitions are open until July 31.
BERLIN: This year’s documenta — the contemporary art exhibition that takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany — eschews the idea of the individual artist working in isolation and embraces the collective. The show, which runs from June 18 until September 22, explores the intersections between art and life, less object-driven and more process-driven; artistic practice as social structure.
Mirwan Andan, a member of this year’s artistic directors, the Jakarta-based collective ruangrupa, tells Arab News: “We realized from the beginning that involving people from different backgrounds will enrich the idea of the collective. It’s not enough to involve artists.”
Ruangrupa have conceived documenta 15 around the idea of the “lumbung” — an Indonesian term for a communal rice barn. In this case, conceptually and in practice, it is similar to the Islamic notion of the jam’iyah, in which participants pool resources and redistribute them.
In fact, many of the organizing principles of documenta 15 are driven by aspects of Muslim culture, such as working groups forming a majlis, and the public program, entitled Meydan. “We don’t separate daily life from our practices, so lumbung is not a theme, it’s more (like) a software that can run on any hardware,” says Andan. “We want to experiment with this practice, which takes place in the Southern Hemisphere, rather than hijack the art world as curators.”
Ruangrupa are perhaps better known for the convivial spaces they open up in an urban context than the art that they make. For example, at the Sharjah Biennial in 2019, they staged “Gudskul” (pronounced “good school”), a public learning space established with two other collectives that provided a toolkit for knowledge sharing. Here, the roles of the teacher and the students were interchangeable.
“Many of the aspects of the ruangrupa space in Jakarta — a house, an exhibition space and a library of pirated books — which I came across in 2015 on a visit with the De Appel Curatorial Program, resonates with the informal artistic scene in Ramallah,” says Palestinian cultural worker Lara Khaldi, a member of documenta’s artistic team. “And what ruangrupa call ‘ekosistem’ — a set of relations you cannot define — are like the conversations that happen at home, in the garden and cafés.
“The curator has become very much about the auteur, which isn’t an honest way of defining the role, since it is always about collective authorship,” Khaldi continues. “It’s interesting to look at the lumbung as a pre-colonial Indonesian practice that is also present in our cultural scene in the region.”
In addition to an artistic team, ruangrupa have created an international lumbung network of 14 collectives (whose work together will continue beyond documenta), including Question of Funding, a group of Palestinian cultural producers whose exhibition space in Kassel was recently subject to vandalism and fascist slogans.
Despite the expanded ways of thinking about geographic and political configurations — this year ruangrupa announced the participating artists based on time zones — the organizers still have to deal with Germany’s complex political and cultural climate as a place affected by both anti-Semitism and anti-Palestinian sentiment. It’s ironic because, as Amany Khalifa, formerly a community organizer at Grassroots Jerusalem and now a member of The Question of Funding, tells Arab News: “We wanted to avoid the representation of Palestinian art in documenta and getting stuck in identity politics. We are about the idea of the collective. Since 2016, we’ve met informally in kitchens and gardens, trying to create different economic structures, models that were left out by civil society. It’s the question of who owns the means of production, and this is applicable not just to Palestine.”
Drawing from what they call the “NGO-ization” of Palestinian civil society in the 1990s, The Question of Funding was formed in 2019 by NGO workers and institutional representatives of Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center and Popular Art Center, among others.
“We are using this dilemma as a framework to think of communal practices, and not just theoretically,” says artist and Question of Funding member Yazan Khalili. “The Question of Funding is a historical question. It attempts to move away from a critique of the donor’s economy to rethink what funding can be, and learn from other economic models.”
Khalili, became the chairman of the storied Sakakini Cultural Center, the first cultural NGO in Palestine, in 2015, after his MFA in Amsterdam. “Our approach was to take the economic crisis and flip it into a cultural one. We call this the total work of the cultural institution. It can be argued that the main tool for cultural practices in Palestine is an institution which is not only a means of production but also an ideological structure. So how do we practice institutionalism without recreating an institution? How do we form structures of production through the critique of the cultural institution as such? We are interested in creating artworks that look like they are of an institution, while producing structures in which the critique of the cultural institution can be practiced.”
While, as a whole, the exhibition does emerge from a position of critique — of institutions, the art industry, and of exhibition-making itself — Khalili says that it’s an affirmative one. While the world is unstable — with pro-Palestinian, anti-apartheid thinkers and artists subject to smear campaigns — spaces in the art world are being created for alternative ways of thinking outside the political arena.
“What scares us the most is this buildup of McCarthyism and mass fear,” says Khalili. “But we’ve had support from German artists, academics, and collectives in Kassel. There is a lot of space to fight back.”
For documenta, The Question of Funding is organizing exhibitions and communal spaces with other collectives, including the Eltiqa Group for Contemporary Art in Gaza. With the help of writers and illustrators, they will also create a children’s book about the economy and a new economic medium called Dayra, a form of money-less exchange using blockchain technologies.
“Eltiqa is a unique example of a collective in Palestine,” Khalili says. “They produce paintings, sculpture and photography in a collective space that also supports young artists from Gaza. And they managed to do this without becoming an NGO. During the last May 2021 war on Gaza, a member of the group, Mohammed Hawajri, posted a comment on Facebook on what it means to show solidarity. He proposed going beyond the level of funding by showing the work of artists from Gaza. There needs to be support on an intellectual and artistic level, not just sending money. And so how do we use documenta as a resource to support another group that is also trying to produce something outside given structures of cultural production?”
With Berlin-based Syrian art collective Fehras Publishing Practices presenting “Borrowed Faces” — a hybrid archival research project on Arab globalization and political agency, as well as a fictional story on the female figures of Afro-Asian Solidarity Movement in Tashkent, Cairo and Beirut; Tunis-based El Warcha bringing their idea of the workshop to Kassel with a library and public art installation; and Sada curating an exhibition of commissioned video works from Baghdad, there’s a great deal of collective action and alliances from the Arab world at documenta 15.
It remains to be seen what artists as researchers, collaborators and thinkers can propose in a non-hierarchical format but this feels like a decisive shift in the way practices, and artists, from the region are presented on the global circuit — non-essentialized, transdisciplinary and more collaborative.
DUBAI: As Rene Manzanilla tells it, cooking has been a lifelong passion. The story of his initial inspiration is a conventional one: A love inspired by his mother and grandmother. The story of his ‘Eureka’ moment — the one that shifted him away from becoming a lawyer like so many of his family before him — is slightly more unusual.
“I went to a careers fair in my town in Mexico and I saw a guy doing fruit carving. One of my big passions when I was a kid was origami, so when I saw this guy I thought, ‘I want to do that.’ So I got all the information, then went back and told my mom, ‘I want to be a chef,’” he explains. “So far, I still haven’t learned how to carve fruit, but… I’m here.”
“Here” is head chef at Dubai’s Rumba Cuban Bar & Kitchen, which serves Latin American cuisine influenced by Mexican, Cuban and Peruvian fare.
“The thing I love most about the job is the chemistry you can build in a kitchen,” he says. “Obviously, I love to cook, but I love being around everyone. Over the years, I’ve come to understand that, as a head chef, the only thing the people working with you need from you is leadership. I like to be cooking with them. If you lead by example, they’ll respond well. The environment of a kitchen is always hot, it’s always noisy. I want them to understand that we’re all in it together.”
Here, Manzanilla gives some tips for amateur chefs, spills the beans on annoying customers, and offers a simple, delicious recipe for guacamole.
Q: What’s the best advice you can give to amateur cooks?
A: In the kitchen, we call it ‘mise en place.’ It’s all about the process — the visualization of everything you’re going to be doing; getting everything in place before you start to cook. You can’t just head to the kitchen and grab stuff from the chiller. You need to organize yourself. The mindset is the most important thing for a chef.
What single ingredient can improve any dish?
I really love lemon zest. Or lime zest — I’m from Mexico, so we have a lot of lime around. It improves the aroma, it improves the flavor and it improves the visuals. It gives freshness and crispness. Even on sweets — in a caramel, or a toffee sauce. You add a little bit of lime juice and it balances the sweetness.
When you go out to eat. What’s your favorite cuisine?
Something I really appreciate — in any cuisine — is the dessert menu. I used to be a pastry chef and that really taught me discipline in the kitchen. With pastry, you can’t play with the timing; you’ve got to be really organized. Each dessert is like a main course; you have five elements: The crispiness, the cake side, the sauce, the garnish and the decoration. I’m a big dessert lover.
What customer behavior most frustrates you?
When they try to tell you that a dish isn’t how it’s ‘supposed to be’ because it’s not the way their mom or their grandmother did it. It’s a recipe I’ve crafted with my team, and we love it, so now we want you to try it and love it. If it doesn’t meet your expectations because you have a different version in mind, I’ll understand, but I can’t make it the same as you have it in your mind.
I guess people don’t really get that you’ve spent years building these dishes.
Exactly. They’ll ask you to remove one ingredient, because they don’t like it. But by removing one ingredient, the entire recipe can be lost.
What’s your favorite dish to cook?
Pozole. It’s a corn soup. It’s super-basic — you can make it with any meat really. You make a stock with some roasted garlic, bay leaves, pepper, salt. When the meat is tender you add the half-cooked corn. You’ll have a couple of sauces on the side and a lot of garnishes: Onion, garlic, lettuce, cheese. You put all that out on the table and people will add them in. It’s a big, beautiful, messy dish. It’s very traditional — a delicious, colorful dish to be shared at family gatherings. I would make it for my mom on her birthday.
Chef Rene’s classic guacamole
Ingredients: 250g avocado; 50g chopped tomato; 30g chopped onion; 10g chopped coriander; 2 limes; 10ml olive oil
Instructions: Peel the avocado, then mash it with a fork to the desired consistency. Put it in a bowl and mix in all the other ingredients, folding them in to integrate the sauce’s emulsion. Season with salt and black pepper to taste.
PARIS: Welsh painter David Bellamy has released his latest book, “Arabian Light,” which features his sketches and watercolors of the region, along with historical facts and information on local customs.
The watercolorist — a frequent visitor to the Middle East — showcases the sights, both manmade and natural, of the Arab world, from the ancient ruins of Jordan and Lebanon to the tombs and minarets of Egypt and Oman.
Bellamy’s fascination with the Arab world began in 1963, when he was posted to Aden, Yemen, as part of his military service with the UK’s Royal Air Force.
“I just loved the environment,” he told Arab News. “I wasn’t in the military for very long — I realized that wasn’t my scene — but I thoroughly enjoyed myself out there, seeing dhows and meeting people. It was mind-blowing for me.”
Bellamy has been inspired by the Orientalist painting style that flourished in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. “I absolutely love their work and I’m very traditional and a bit of a romantic, really. That’s why I get so much out of studying their paintings,” he explained.
Bellamy uses watercolors for his work. “It’s a very transportable medium – you can take it up a mountain and out to sea. I’ve even done it on the back of a camel,” he said.
“It’s not easy for any newcomer. It takes quite a bit of time to get used to the techniques of watercolor. But once you know what you’re doing, it’s a lovely medium. You can put so much mood into it and capture the light very quickly.”
What Bellamy hopes to convey through the work in his book is the connections he established through his travels. “I always prefer to travel among the locals rather than in an air-conditioned tourist bus,” he said.
He had planned to publish this particular book for some time, he says, as he feels it can tell a different story of the Arab world.
“I wanted to show people that this was a place where the people are so interesting, kind, and hospitable. You can have a wonderful time engaging with them,” said Bellamy. “All the horrible things that happened in the past, like Iraq, upset us all. I wanted to give a more truthful idea of what the Middle East was like.”