The Shubbak Festival celebrates its seventh edition of celebrates Arab art and culture
The Shubbak Festival is celebrating the seventh edition of contemporary Arab arts and cultures.
The festival’s programme provides platforms for narratives representing Arab, South West Asian, and North African cultures.
Showcasing an ambitious and vibrant line-up of performance, visual art, comedy, dance, film, literature, talks and workshops, Shubbak Festival will host artists and their crafts as they confront the urgent environmental and social issues of today.
Alia Alzougbi, chief executive of Shubbak Festival said: “Shubbak is so much more than a festival.
“It is a home away from home for our artists and communities, our joyful resistance and respite from the times we live in, and our pride to continue in the breath of our ancestors’ wisdom yet to sing in our own tongues our reverence for the land.”
This year’s festival starts with the exhibition, Totalitarian Props, at The Africa Centre in King Street, Covent Garden, exploring the use of political props as modalities of control in Afro-Arab nations.
Next, the celebrations will embark on a weekend take-over at the National Theatre’s River Stage Festival in the South Bank.
An abundant ceremony of international arts and culture for all ages, this free event will offer family fun, live music as well as late night entertainment.
Renowned Lebanese-American musician and activist, Hamed Sinno, follows, performing at the British Library in Euston Road.
A key figure in representational politics, free speech, and sexual freedoms in the Middle East, Sinno is at the forefront of conversations addressing social and political discourse.
Shubbak’s music line-up also includes Lebanese artist, Sandy Chamoun, who will perform her solo project, Fata 17, conceptualized around field-recordings and sounds from the October 17 Revolution in Lebanon.
This will be hosted at the Waterloo venue, Iklecktic.
Palestinian narratives will be at Theatro Technis in Crowndale Road, Camden, by Palestinian-Irish playwright Hannah Khalil and her evolutionary play, Trouf: Scenes from 75 Years.
For the visual art enthusiasts, the festival offers multiple shows, from an investigation into the cross-pollination of coastal cultures in Two Seas to the intricate practice of Arabic calligraphy in Sound & Silence.
From June 23 until July 9, Shubbak will be serenading the streets of London with poetry, dance, entertainment, and food.
Several of the events are free and a pay-what-you-can sliding price scale has been set across many others.
If you cannot afford a ticket, email info@shubbak.co.uk
Website: https://www.shubbak.co.uk/
Picture: Sandy Chamoun, Picture: Gabriel Ferneine