The Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award winning work has been revealed, ‘Sila’ meaning ‘connect’, by young artists from the American University of Sharjah, Falwah Alhouti, Ibrahim Abdellatif and Omer Al Raee, taking inspiration from the UAE’s cultural heritage and folklore – important elements of our nation’s identity – and embodies artistic creativity contributing to unity and community solidarity through the arts.

The Young Filmmakers Circle programme continues with participants working with instructors on a short film to be premiered during Abu Dhabi Festival 2020

Distant Prospects – European Landscape Paintings from LIECHTENSTEIN. The Princely Collections presents the history of European landscape painting from one of the world’s most important private collections and is now open to the public. These masterpieces have never before been seen in the Middle East, and the paintings date back to the 15th century, featuring key figures in the Late Renaissance and Baroque artistic movements, including works by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Joos de Momper, Jan Brueghel the Younger and Peter Paul Rubens, among many others, collected and preserved over many generations by the House of Liechtenstein. The Exhibition will be open to the public until 25th of March 2019 at Manarat al Saadiyat, Gallery S in Abu Dhabi.

Do you have the desire and curiosity to find, write and edit stories that have the potential to inform and transform the minds of readers? Are you a UAE national between the ages of 20 and 35 interested in developing your talents in media content creation, editing, and reporting? If so, then apply to be a Young Media Leader. The young media leaders’ program is an experience-based career development platform for Emirati university students and graduates to enable them to gain the passion, conviction, skills and networks to become powerful and convincing storytellers, in order to build industry focused portfolios to take their media career to the next level.

As part of the Distant Prospects exhibition, five Emirati artists from ADMAF’s Nationals’ Gallery were sent overseas on a visual arts residency programme. Firstly they visited and met with the Princely Collections team in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, after which they  headed to Vienna, Austria, to visit both City and Summer Palaces, which form part of the Princely Collections. Visits were also made to a variety of important Viennese museums including Museum of Modern Art Vienna (MUMOK), the Art History Museum Vienna, World Museum, Albertina, Kunstforum and Hundertwasser Haus. Through this residency programme ADMAF provided a vital opportunity for Emirati artists to develop and shape their artistic practice within an international context, while facilitating important cultural dialogue between them and their contemporaries overseas. 

Celebrating Arabic literature, the annual programme culminated this year with the launch of 16 new works by Emirati authors, including works for children and fiction for adults. During the signing event, fans met the authors, discussed their works and received copies of the new works.