Image from Design Days Dubai.
Design Days Dubai and the emergence of a design community in the UAE.
Shows like IDS (Interior Design Show) here in Toronto have helped demystify design for a general audience. For the price of an entry ticket you can see fresh work by new independent Canadian designers in Studio North and Prototype or take advantage of international guests speaking on design and architecture. Along with Toronto Design Offsite, Design Week’s independent festival that runs concurrently, it’s a great way to get the creative juices flowing. But if you ever happen to be in Dubai in March there is a new show that is growing a community around design in the Emirates. (More MIXED BAG MAG posts on design in Toronto with TODO Festival & Highlights of Design Week 2013)
The first fair in the Middle East that focuses on furniture design and design objects Design Days Dubai aims “to strengthen greater appreciation and understanding for design as a form of applied arts.”
What I love is that the aesthetic collected is BOLD! The work you see at Design Days Dubai shows no fear when it comes to exploring form and materials. But somehow it still manages to be accessible maybe because it is so over-the-top fantastical that it is the recognizable stuff of our dreams – playful, imaginative, and in many cases, like nothing we have ever seen before in the flesh within our reach.
The Proust Geometrica Chair on display the PF Emirates Interiors. Image from Design Days Dubai.
Visitors at Design Days Dubai. Photo by Siddharth Siva. Image from Design Days Dubai.
Image from Design Days Dubai.
Image from Design Days Dubai.
A million times (Time Dubai) by Humans since 1982 from Humans since 1982 on Vimeo.
Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Bin Khalifa Al Nahyan tours a special preview day at the Inaugural Design Days Dubai at Franziska Kessler. Image from Design Days Dubai.
Southern Guild Gallery, South Africa. Image from Design Days Dubai.
Gradient Mashrabiya by mischer’traxler for Carwan Gallery, Beirut. Image from Design Days Dubai.
Kwangho Lee at his workshop, Camel Leather Weaving at Design Days Dubai. Image from Design Days Dubai.
Meltdown Chairs by Tom Price, UK. Photo by Klara Urbanova. Image from Design Days Dubai.
The Sharjah Art Foundation. Image from Universes in Universe.
The Sharjah Biennial – art work that pushes the envelope with some serious play and dark humour.
And in another desert location down the road, the Sharjah Biennial gathers together incredible established and emerging artists who produce projects that skip over, around and through the artistic expressions of new media, street art and installation like kids at a game of hopscotch. Case in point – this stunning-crazy-brilliant piece by French-Tunisian “calligraffiti” artist El Seed.
Beware of this Artist by Ramin Haerizadeh. Image from www.sharjahfoundation.org.
For obvious reasons, the work that pools around this intimate Biennial is often about analysis of the politics of body, space, and nation but because the execution is so beautifully rendered the intense work powerfully draws you in through your eyes to open your heart and mind to important issues.
The Sharjah Art Foundation. Work by Imran Qureshi. Image from Universes in Universe.
The Sharjah Art Foundation. Work by Mustapha Benfodil. Image from Universes in Universe.
Like Toronto, Dubai is rapidly expanding while exploring what this means for this city that has become an international destination and like Toronto it will be exciting to watch how Dubai grows as a destination for design.
Image by Leah Snyder for Mixed Bag Mag.
