Beliz Tecirli

Mangroves have been drawing increasing global attention for a quiet superpower: the ability to store up to five times more carbon than tropical forests. While coastal development, uncontrolled aquaculture, sea-level rise and warming temperatures have all contributed to the 35 percent decline in mangrove forests worldwide since the 1970s, government agencies, scientists and local communities are increasingly rallying to protect and replant mangroves. One group is taking restoration to notably new heights.

In less than a decade, Saudi Arabia has emerged as one of the world's fastest-growing centers of contemporary art. Both for Saudi artists and international creatives invited to exhibit, install, screen, teach and produce, more than 100 new events sponsored by more than two dozen new arts organizations now offer opportunities across the country. Artists such as Dana Awartani, whose neoclassically symmetrical installation "Where the Dwellers Lay" (above) nestled at the outdoor exhibition Desert X AlUla 2022, and dozens of others are showing at recently opened, large-scale venues, including Riyadh's JAX District, Jiddah's Hayy Jameel cultural center and Red Sea Film Festival, and Dhahran's cultural center, Ithra.

From hummus to harira to olive oil, ever since the dawn of agriculture, the Middle East has offered delicious, healthy, environmentally low-impact foodways that honor tradition while embracing innovation.

Amid this year’s travel bans, museum and gallery closures, lockdowns, quarantines, and social distancing, visual artists are responding with fresh imagery and creative collaborations across new platforms to articulate this moment and carry culture forward into the next.

Some 90 former warehouses have been transformed into a lively cultural scene at Alserkal Avenue—the latest of Dubai’s replies to the question, “What can art do for a city?”

In the oblique and often provocative ways of contemporary art, the 17-artist exhibition “Crude” probes the roles of oil in cultures and societies of the Middle East through the eyes of artists of the region. It is “art rooted in the Gulf, yet addressing universal ideas,” says Antonia Carver, director of the new Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai, which in November inaugurated its galleries with the show.