Dazzled by Art

Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture) is celebrating a vibrant spectrum of artistic experiences at the 13th Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture) is celebrating a vibrant spectrum of artistic experiences at the 13th Sikka Art & Design Festival, held under the patronage of Her Highness Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairperson of Dubai Culture. Taking place in Al Shindagha Historic Neighbourhood, the festival features over 250 Emirati and UAE & GCC-based creatives. Through this initiative, Dubai Culture aims to foster a sustainable ecosystem that supports talent and enriches the local art scene. This year’s edition, part of the Dubai Quality of Life Strategy, transforms 19 houses into colourful showcases, led by chief curator Sheikh Maktoum bin Marwan Al Maktoum. The festival includes the ‘Design House’ curated by Alanood Bukhammas, which hosts six innovative projects exploring the region’s architectural and cultural roots. Highl...

Copenhagen Fashion Week AW ‘25 showcases a bold shift in womenswear, embracing traditionally masculine elements under the “Office Core” trend. MKDT Studio Runway AW '25: At Copenhagen Fashion Week AW ‘25, designers are reshaping womenswear with "Office Core"—a trend that blends menswear-inspired tailoring with feminine silhouettes. James Cochrane The fashion landscape has witnessed a bold shift during Copenhagen Fashion Week [CPHFW] AW ‘25 runway shows and presentations, as designers increasingly infuse womenswear with traditionally masculine elements. This trend, often referred to as "Office Core," is redefining how women dress for power - the Boss Babe - blending tailored menswear-inspired pieces with feminine silhouettes. Won Hundred Runway AW '25: At Copenhagen Fashion Week AW '25, designers are redefining womenswear with "Office Core"—a trend that fuses sharp menswear tailoring with feminine silhouettes. James Cochrane At the heart of th...

The fashion and beauty worlds are both making steady progress with innovation. Eight experts pipe in on trends we can expect to see in 2025. One of the latest looks by The Bar The fashion and beauty worlds are both making steady progress with innovation. This year, expect fashion to dip into vintage styles for inspiration, while focusing on chic, modern cuts. Tech-driven beauty enhancements are in, so are smart beauty devices which feature personalized recommendations. Gender neutral fashion is also expected to grow this year. From sustainable fabrics to innovative skincare technology, here is a glimpse of some insights from industry experts on what we can expect to see in 2025. Looks by The Bar Bridget Bahl, founder of The Bar “Capes are going to be everywhere,” said fashion expert, Bridget Bahl. “They’re a bold, dramatic addition to any outfit that make you look elevated and stylish. Boho will be everything in 2025; think ruffles, ruffles, and more ruffles, which always add a ...

In Lightscape at the Marciano Art Foundation and his Regen Projects exhibition, polymedia artist Doug Aitken elucidates how we experience life moment-to-moment. Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Doug Aitken, Lightscape, 2024 © Doug Aitken Workshop Doug Aitken, the polymedia multidisciplinary artist whose work can seem deceptively simple or so multilayered in its complexity as to be difficult to fathom, has a new work, Lightscape, a one hour immersive film and music installation, on view at the Marciano Art Foundation, as well as paintings, sculptures and installations that have grown out of the project on exhibit at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. Having spent time at both in the company of Aitken as my Virgil, I appreciate the extent to which Aitken’s art practice places us in the moment. Although at times fantastical, Aitken elucidates how these moments, which are how we experience life (moment-to-moment), are not static or fixed. They carry within them not just t...

Long Beach Opera embarks on a risky, unprecedented season centered on pioneering composer Pauline Oliveros. "We’re just going for it." Pauline Oliveros in 1995. (Jack Mitchell / Getty Images) "We're not the Met!" “Here’s our slogan,” Long Beach Opera’s interim managing director proudly announces during a recent conversation about the company’s upcoming season, “We’re not the Met!” For an art form hardly accepting of understatement, such a slogan is insurgent understatement. The oldest opera company in the Los Angeles area and America’s oldest purveyor of consistently progressive opera is about to embark on the most uncompromising season of any company of its size or supposed mission anywhere. Ever. Marjorie Beale may be interim in her role as managing director, but she had been board president before she stepped down to help find a new course for the company, which had gone through administrative turmoil over the last few years. A former profe...

They are breaking down the barriers to what have long been seen as exclusionary spaces Art galleries have always felt like sanctuaries to me — a place to lose yourself in someone else’s imagination while discovering something new about your own. One of the joys of living in Rosebank, Johannesburg, is the proximity to a rich constellation of galleries: the Keyes Art Mile, home to Everard Read, Circa and Origins; the historic Goodman Gallery; David Krut Projects and its adjoining Art Bookshop on Jan Smuts Avenue and, just beyond, in Parktown North, the likes of Momo, Stevenson and Kalashnikovv. Yet, despite this abundance, few of these galleries are owned by young black people. For too long, the art world has been seen as the domain of old white money — a perception that isn’t unfounded. When I first moved to South Africa, nearly a decade ago, I noticed this divide acutely. I’d invite friends to exhibition openings, only to be met with polite but firm refusals. They didn’t feel welcome...

Doug Varone and Dancers in Orange County, "Appropriate" in San Diego and more arts headlines and happenings. “The Great Yes, the Great No” will play the Wallis as part of a Los Angeles residency of the Johannesburg-based Centre for the Less Good Idea. (Stella Olivier) A Big Los Angeles Welcome A big Los Angeles welcome to the Centre for the Less Good Idea, a Johannesburg-based interdisciplinary incubator co-founded by William Kentridge and Bronwyn Lace, for its weeklong residency here. And we Angelenos are in for a treat: Back in 2017, Times classical music critic Mark Swed reviewed a Kentridge installation and called him "an amiable, professorial emcee" who "surrounded himself with fabulous dance; potent singing, operatic and otherwise (mostly otherwise); multidimensional video imagery; quirky music; even quirkier machinery on stage." Collectively titled "Three Less Good Ideas in Los Angeles," the residency begins at UCLA’...

From going to court over the Hobart museum’s Ladies Lounge to working with foresters, Mrs David Walsh is putting her wealthy dilettante persona to clever use. Kaechele never finished her university degree, choosing instead to take up an offer from American cable network VH1 to document her world adventures in a reality-TV-style show. The show never eventuated, coming undone in Lebanon where Kaechele, aged 23, ended up living with a “Hezbollah family” and the producer wanted out (you can read all about it on Kaechele’s Substack blog). It’s hard to get a clear chronology of Kaechele’s life as it shoots off in so many -directions, and some of the stories she tells are so out there that they sound apocryphal – such as her adventures taking ayahuasca with -shamans in the Amazon, or being hired to design the “first zero--energy apartment in New York” for a -“currency billionaire”, until the global -financial crisis foiled that. “That’s why I’m writing creative non--fiction,” Kaechele says....