Saudi Arabia to present ‘Shifting Sands: A Battle Song’ at Venice Biennale

Saudi Arabia to present ‘Shifting Sands: A Battle Song’ at Venice Biennale
The Saudi pavilion at Biennale Arte 2024 in Venice has revealed the name of artist Manal AlDowayan’s installation at the event as “Shifting Sands: A Battle Song.” (Supplied)
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Updated 25 March 2024
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Saudi Arabia to present ‘Shifting Sands: A Battle Song’ at Venice Biennale

Saudi Arabia to present ‘Shifting Sands: A Battle Song’ at Venice Biennale

DUBAI: The Saudi pavilion at Biennale Arte 2024 in Venice has revealed the name of artist Manal AlDowayan’s installation at the event as “Shifting Sands: A Battle Song.” The multimedia installation artwork was inspired by the evolving role of women in Saudi Arabia.

“Shifting Sands: A Battle Song is a call for solidarity in the context of the global representation of women in and from Saudi Arabia, and a rally to take ownership of our identity as we navigate both the physical space we inhabit and the narratives that have historically defined us,” said AlDowayan in a released statement.




The multimedia installation artwork was inspired by the evolving role of women in Saudi Arabia.(Supplied)

The work, which will be unveiled during the Biennale’s opening week beginning April 16, is the result of three preparatory workshops the artist conducted across Saudi Arabia — in Alkhobar, Jeddah and Riyadh — in January, where she welcomed more than 1,000 women who responded to an invitation to contribute to her upcoming work for the pavilion.

During the workshops, women of all ages and backgrounds were invited to engage in group singing sessions led by AlDowayan and Ileana Yasmin, a vocal coach for Saudi Arabia’s Music Commission.

The women were also asked to reflect on the idea of visibility and invisibility in the context of the international media. Additionally, they were asked to bear witness to each other by writing about and illustrating what they see in each other.

“For this artwork, I have returned to my community of women and asked the questions: What is the history that needs to be written through this work? What is the marker of the transformation that needs to be examined?” said AlDowayan in a statement.

The recorded singing, drawings and texts created by workshop participants will be incorporated into “Shifting Sands: A Battle Song” so that participants of the artwork will have their voices heard in unison on the international stage in Venice.

An all-female group of curators are responsible for the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia at the 60th Venice Biennale this year, with Jessica Cerasi, Maya El-Khalil and assistant curator Shadin AlBulaihed working with AlDowayan on her installation for the event.


Maggie Smith, star of stage, film, ‘Harry Potter’ series and ‘Downton Abbey,’ dies at 89

Maggie Smith, star of stage, film, ‘Harry Potter’ series and ‘Downton Abbey,’ dies at 89
Updated 27 September 2024
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Maggie Smith, star of stage, film, ‘Harry Potter’ series and ‘Downton Abbey,’ dies at 89

Maggie Smith, star of stage, film, ‘Harry Potter’ series and ‘Downton Abbey,’ dies at 89
  • Smith was frequently rated preeminent British female performer of a generation that included Vanessa Redgrave, Judi Dench
  • She remained in demand even in her later years despite saying, “When you get into the granny era, you’re lucky to get anything”

LONDON: Maggie Smith, the masterful, scene-stealing actor who won an Oscar for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” in 1969 and gained new fans in the 21st century as the dowager Countess of Grantham in “Downton Abbey” and Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter films, died Friday. She was 89.
Smith’s sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, said in a statement that Smith died early Friday in a London hospital.
“She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother,” they said in a statement issued through publicist Clair Dobbs.
Smith was frequently rated the preeminent British female performer of a generation that included Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench, with a clutch of Academy Award nominations and a shelf full of acting trophies.

She remained in demand even in her later years, despite her lament that “when you get into the granny era, you’re lucky to get anything.”
Smith drily summarized her later roles as “a gallery of grotesques,” including Professor McGonagall. Asked why she took the role, she quipped: “Harry Potter is my pension.”
Richard Eyre, who directed Smith in a television production of “Suddenly Last Summer,” said she was “intellectually the smartest actress I’ve ever worked with. You have to get up very, very early in the morning to outwit Maggie Smith.”
“Jean Brodie,” in which she played a dangerously charismatic Edinburgh schoolteacher, brought her the Academy Award for best actress, and the British Academy Film Award (BAFTA) as well in 1969.
Smith added a supporting actress Oscar for “California Suite” in 1978, Golden Globes for “California Suite” and “Room with a View,” and BAFTAs for lead actress in “A Private Function” in 1984, “A Room with a View” in 1986, and “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” in 1988.
She also received Academy Award nominations as a supporting actress in “Othello,” “Travels with My Aunt,” “Room with a View” and “Gosford Park,” and a BAFTA award for supporting actress in “Tea with Mussolini.” On stage, she won a Tony in 1990 for “Lettice and Lovage.”

Her work in 2012 netted three Golden Globe nominations for the globally successful “Downton Abbey” TV series and the films “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and “Quartet.”
Smith had a reputation for being difficult, and sometimes upstaging others.
Richard Burton remarked that Smith didn’t just take over a scene in “The VIPs” with him: “She commits grand larceny.” However, the director Peter Hall found that Smith wasn’t “remotely difficult unless she’s among idiots. She’s very hard on herself, and I don’t think she sees any reason why she shouldn’t be hard on other people, too.”
Smith conceded that she could be impatient at times.
“It’s true I don’t tolerate fools, but then they don’t tolerate me, so I am spiky,” Smith said. “Maybe that’s why I’m quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.”
Critic Frank Rich, in a New York Times review of “Lettice and Lovage,” praised Smith as “the stylized classicist who can italicize a line as prosaic as ‘Have you no marmalade?’ until it sounds like a freshly minted epigram by Coward or Wilde.”
Smith famously drew laughs from a prosaic line — “This haddock is disgusting” — in a 1964 revival of Noel Coward’s “Hay Fever.”
“But unfortunately the critics mentioned it, and after that it never got a laugh,” she recalled. “The moment you say something is funny it’s gossamer. It’s gone, really.”
Margaret Natalie Smith was born in Ilford, on the eastern edge of London, on Dec. 28, 1934. She summed up her life briefly: “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, one’s still acting.”

Her father was assigned in 1939 to wartime duty in Oxford, where her theater studies at the Oxford Playhouse School led to a busy apprenticeship.
“I did so many things, you know, round the universities there. ... If you were kind of clever enough and I suppose quick enough, you could almost do weekly rep because all the colleges were doing different productions at different times,” she said in a BBC interview.
She took Maggie as her stage name because another Margaret Smith was active in the theater.
Laurence Olivier spotted her talent, invited her to be part of his original National Theatre company and cast her as his co-star in a 1965 film adaptation of “Othello.”
Smith said two directors, Ingmar Bergman and William Gaskill, both in National Theatre productions, were important influences.
Alan Bennett, preparing to film the monologue “A Bed Among the Lentils,” said he was wary of Smith’s reputation for becoming bored. As the actor Jeremy Brett put it, “she starts divinely and then goes off, rather like a cheese.”
“So the fact that we only just had enough time to do it was an absolute blessing really because she was so fresh and just so into it,” said Bennett, who also wrote a starring role for Smith in “The Lady in the Van.”
However extravagant she may have been on stage or before the cameras, Smith was known to be intensely private.
Simon Callow, who acted with her in “A Room with a View,” said he ruined their first meeting by spouting compliments.
“I blurted out various kinds of rubbish about her and she kind of withdrew. She doesn’t like that sort of thing very much at all,” Callow said in a film portrait of the actress. “She never wanted to talk about acting. Acting was something she was terrified to talk about because if she did, it would disappear.”
Smith was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire, the equivalent of a knight, in 1990.
She married fellow actor Robert Stephens in 1967. They had two sons, Christopher and Toby, and divorced in 1975. The same year she married the writer Beverley Cross, who died in 1998.


Maggie Smith, star of stage, film, ‘Harry Potter’ series and ‘Downton Abbey,’ dies at 89

Maggie Smith, star of stage, film, ‘Harry Potter’ series and ‘Downton Abbey,’ dies at 89
Updated 27 September 2024
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Maggie Smith, star of stage, film, ‘Harry Potter’ series and ‘Downton Abbey,’ dies at 89

Maggie Smith, star of stage, film, ‘Harry Potter’ series and ‘Downton Abbey,’ dies at 89
  • Smith died early Friday in a London hospital
  • Smith was frequently rated the preeminent British female performer of a generation that included Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench

LONDON: Maggie Smith, the masterful, scene-stealing actor who won an Oscar for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” in 1969 and gained new fans in the 21st century as the dowager Countess of Grantham in “Downton Abbey” and Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter films, died Friday. She was 89.
Smith’s sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, said in a statement that Smith died early Friday in a London hospital.
“She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother,” they said in a statement issued through publicist Clair Dobbs.
Smith was frequently rated the preeminent British female performer of a generation that included Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench, with a clutch of Academy Award nominations and a shelf full of acting trophies.

She remained in demand even in her later years, despite her lament that “when you get into the granny era, you’re lucky to get anything.”
Smith drily summarized her later roles as “a gallery of grotesques,” including Professor McGonagall. Asked why she took the role, she quipped: “Harry Potter is my pension.”
Richard Eyre, who directed Smith in a television production of “Suddenly Last Summer,” said she was “intellectually the smartest actress I’ve ever worked with. You have to get up very, very early in the morning to outwit Maggie Smith.”
“Jean Brodie,” in which she played a dangerously charismatic Edinburgh schoolteacher, brought her the Academy Award for best actress, and the British Academy Film Award (BAFTA) as well in 1969.
Smith added a supporting actress Oscar for “California Suite” in 1978, Golden Globes for “California Suite” and “Room with a View,” and BAFTAs for lead actress in “A Private Function” in 1984, “A Room with a View” in 1986, and “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” in 1988.
She also received Academy Award nominations as a supporting actress in “Othello,” “Travels with My Aunt,” “Room with a View” and “Gosford Park,” and a BAFTA award for supporting actress in “Tea with Mussolini.” On stage, she won a Tony in 1990 for “Lettice and Lovage.”

Her work in 2012 netted three Golden Globe nominations for the globally successful “Downton Abbey” TV series and the films “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and “Quartet.”
Smith had a reputation for being difficult, and sometimes upstaging others.
Richard Burton remarked that Smith didn’t just take over a scene in “The VIPs” with him: “She commits grand larceny.” However, the director Peter Hall found that Smith wasn’t “remotely difficult unless she’s among idiots. She’s very hard on herself, and I don’t think she sees any reason why she shouldn’t be hard on other people, too.”
Smith conceded that she could be impatient at times.
“It’s true I don’t tolerate fools, but then they don’t tolerate me, so I am spiky,” Smith said. “Maybe that’s why I’m quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.”
Critic Frank Rich, in a New York Times review of “Lettice and Lovage,” praised Smith as “the stylized classicist who can italicize a line as prosaic as ‘Have you no marmalade?’ until it sounds like a freshly minted epigram by Coward or Wilde.”
Smith famously drew laughs from a prosaic line — “This haddock is disgusting” — in a 1964 revival of Noel Coward’s “Hay Fever.”
“But unfortunately the critics mentioned it, and after that it never got a laugh,” she recalled. “The moment you say something is funny it’s gossamer. It’s gone, really.”
Margaret Natalie Smith was born in Ilford, on the eastern edge of London, on Dec. 28, 1934. She summed up her life briefly: “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, one’s still acting.”

Her father was assigned in 1939 to wartime duty in Oxford, where her theater studies at the Oxford Playhouse School led to a busy apprenticeship.
“I did so many things, you know, round the universities there. ... If you were kind of clever enough and I suppose quick enough, you could almost do weekly rep because all the colleges were doing different productions at different times,” she said in a BBC interview.
She took Maggie as her stage name because another Margaret Smith was active in the theater.
Laurence Olivier spotted her talent, invited her to be part of his original National Theatre company and cast her as his co-star in a 1965 film adaptation of “Othello.”
Smith said two directors, Ingmar Bergman and William Gaskill, both in National Theatre productions, were important influences.
Alan Bennett, preparing to film the monologue “A Bed Among the Lentils,” said he was wary of Smith’s reputation for becoming bored. As the actor Jeremy Brett put it, “she starts divinely and then goes off, rather like a cheese.”
“So the fact that we only just had enough time to do it was an absolute blessing really because she was so fresh and just so into it,” said Bennett, who also wrote a starring role for Smith in “The Lady in the Van.”
However extravagant she may have been on stage or before the cameras, Smith was known to be intensely private.
Simon Callow, who acted with her in “A Room with a View,” said he ruined their first meeting by spouting compliments.
“I blurted out various kinds of rubbish about her and she kind of withdrew. She doesn’t like that sort of thing very much at all,” Callow said in a film portrait of the actress. “She never wanted to talk about acting. Acting was something she was terrified to talk about because if she did, it would disappear.”
Smith was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire, the equivalent of a knight, in 1990.
She married fellow actor Robert Stephens in 1967. They had two sons, Christopher and Toby, and divorced in 1975. The same year she married the writer Beverley Cross, who died in 1998.


Georgina Rodriguez jets to Paris for Messika show

Georgina Rodriguez jets to Paris for Messika show
Updated 27 September 2024
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Georgina Rodriguez jets to Paris for Messika show

Georgina Rodriguez jets to Paris for Messika show

DUBAI: Saudi-based Argentine model Georgina Rodriguez jetted to Paris this week to attend the Messika show at the city’s fashion week.

She wore an off-the-shoulder, form-fitting silver dress with a metallic finish and slight draping at the bust, complementing her look with silver pointed-toe heels, a glitzy diamond necklace and matching earrings.

Deema Al Asadi, Myriem Boukadida and Veronica Ferraro attended the Messika Paris Womenswear Spring-Summer 2025 show as part of Paris Fashion Week. (Getty Images)

A host of other A-list celebrities attended the event, including Cardi B, Kelly Rutherford, Nina Dobrev, Cole Sprouse, Natalia Vodianova and Lucien Laviscount, alongside Arab luminaries including Emirati Yemeni singer Balqees Fathi, Egyptian actress Ghada Abdel Razik and Iraqi fashion influencer Deema Al-Asadi.

Emirati Yemeni singer Balqees Fathi was also in attendance. (Getty Images)

Also present was Tunisian model and actress Myriem Boukadida, who caught attention posing in a dark green oversized blazer featuring a plunging neckline, layered over a matching top and a flowy, sheer, calf-length skirt. Boukadida completed her ensemble with beige high-heeled shoes and subtle bracelets and earrings.

Moroccan Italian model Malika El-Maslouhi walked the runway. (Getty Images)

Meanwhile, Moroccan Italian model Malika El-Maslouhi walked the runway, donning a black outfit and accessorizing with a wide-brimmed hat, multiple layered necklaces featuring diamonds and turquoise, and matching statement earrings and rings.


Part-Saudi model Amira Al-Zuhair stuns in bold Balmain showcase at Paris Fashion Week

 Part-Saudi model Amira Al-Zuhair stuns in bold Balmain showcase at Paris Fashion Week
Updated 27 September 2024
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Part-Saudi model Amira Al-Zuhair stuns in bold Balmain showcase at Paris Fashion Week

 Part-Saudi model Amira Al-Zuhair stuns in bold Balmain showcase at Paris Fashion Week

DUBAI: French Saudi model Amira Al-Zuhair is making waves at Paris Fashion Week, beginning with her appearance for Ganni and continuing with a striking presence at Balmain.

She showcased a structured gray blazer over a classic black T-shirt, complemented by vibrant red suede over-the-knee boots that added a bold pop of color. Her ensemble was completed with a neutral-toned shoulder bag and a striking gold pendant necklace.

Olivier Rousteing, the fashion designer and creative director of Balmain since 2011, delivered a collection that unapologetically fused boldness with a dose of camp.

Prints of half-painted women’s faces guided the eye down floor-length gowns, while disembodied eyes, lips, noses and nails formed the visual leitmotifs of the evening.

At its core, this collection’s identity hinged on the sculptural, almost scaffolded, shoulders — a signature of Balmain’s power dressing reimagined yet again. The effect extended to the hips in gold-striped chain mini-dresses, evoking an exaggerated 1980s glamor.

There were moments of pure fun and theatricality, such as a cream skirt with a 3D face peering out, a delightful nod to Rousteing’s penchant for surrealist humor. This playful audacity keeps the Balmain faithful coming back, even when some pieces falter under the weight of their own excess.

In many ways, this collection echoed themes in his archive: an obsession with exaggerated silhouettes, a love for sculptural shoulders, and a desire to embed his personal narrative into the fabric of his designs.

On Wednesday, Al-Zuhair walked the runway for Ganni in a dark grey, structured blazer styled with similarly colored tailored pants. Adding an artistic touch, the model also wore a large, ruffled pale blue scarf around her neck, which contrasted with the dark tones of the outfit.

Before her appearance in Paris, she had turned heads at Milan Fashion Week walking for Missoni.

There, she showcased a dynamic ensemble marked by bold, wavy stripes in black, white, and yellow. The look featured an asymmetrical top with exaggerated ruffled detailing cascading down one side, paired with a high-waisted bikini bottom. Vibrant yellow high-heeled sandals completed the outfit, adding an extra pop of color.


Coldplay adds fourth Abu Dhabi show

Coldplay adds fourth Abu Dhabi show
Updated 27 September 2024
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Coldplay adds fourth Abu Dhabi show

Coldplay adds fourth Abu Dhabi show
  • Palestinian-Chilean artist Elyanna will open for the band in the Emirati capital

DUBAI: British supergroup Coldplay has once again responded to increasing fan demand by adding a fourth show in Abu Dhabi.

The band will now perform their hugely successful “Music of the Spheres World Tour” on Jan. 9, 11, 12 and 14 at Zayed Sports City Stadium.

Palestinian-Chilean artist Elyanna will open for the band.

The 22-year-old has been a frequent collaborator of the group this year, joining the band on stage at their Glastonbury set. Last week, she released the Arabic edition of the band's new song “We Pray.” On Saturday, she performed with Coldplay in Las Vegas.

Promoters Live Nation Middle East confirmed Abu Dhabi will be the only stop in the region for the band.