Giving centre-stage to cultural and region-focused showcases, the 2020 edition of Dubai Design Week shed light on the local community and its creative scene, including its new initiative – titled UAE Designer Exhibition.
The exhibition showcased the works of locally based talent and focused on home-grown design by aspiring designers who submitted proposals to present their promising ideas in a curated space where the various design disciplines recognised include furniture, lighting, accessories, jewellery.
An adapted iteration is now being exhibited at Jameel Arts Centre which furthers an ongoing conversation with design in the context of a contemporary arts museum. The work on display includes ‘Burqa’ by designer Dana Amro, inspired by Wegner's lounge chair and the shape of an Emirati cultural element called Burqa [البرقع], Amro reinterprets and presents her take in the form of a chair constructed in brass and upholstered leather alongside Tamara Barrage’s ‘Symbiotic forms’ collection of uncanny stools.
The exhibition also highlights research-based projects related to material exploration and urban spaces, ‘An Exquisite Corpse’ a showcase of one such project, based on a method invented in 1925 by surrealists and used as an artistic reference for the project by Dania Darra and Saba Besiso this experimental process was done by collecting waste materials from Sharjah Industrial Area such as shrubs, wires, stones, aggregate, scrap metals, recycled plastic, glass, etc. and then cast together.
Other designers being represented include Bwader Elhassan, Nuhayr, Film My Designs, Yara Habib, Abdhul Hazeeb, Adnan Ihsan, Leen Kahaleh, Rimsha Kidwai, Mohamed Rowaizak, Sense Studio, Eman Shafiq and Sanaz Yahyaabadi.
The exhibition is on show till 26 December 2020 at Jameel Arts Centre.