Next month, Palestinian artist Yazan Khalili will be collaborating with Absolut to provide what’s set to be an exciting, head turning installation in the form of an Art Bar for the city’s ninth annual Contemporary Art Fair and will be located on the popular Madinat Jumeirah’s Fort Island in Dubai.
Drawing inspiration from Dubai’s surrounding desert landscape and its juxtaposing façade of urban modernity, Khalili will be working closely with artist Arnar Ásgeirsson, to transform the complex into a mecca for contemporary visual art and live performances, introducing some of Dubai’s freshest, emerging local talent and with it, a selection of Absolut’s irresistibly smooth cocktails to get your creative juices flowing.
Step outside and Khalili’s bar will take the form of a towering mountain set amidst a back drop of jutting sky scrapers, serving to remind us of Khalili’s concept of ‘past futures’ but also indicative of a forward thinking city that nearly two centuries ago, was built upon nothing but a bed of sand and imagined futures.
“There is a complex idea behind the project touching on identity, constructed realities and constructed pasts and futures, but at the end of the day, it’s a bar and I would just want people to have fun in the space. I really hope people enjoy it’.
Open daily from 17 – 20 March, 2015
For more information about The Island or Absolut’s International art programme visit ABSOLUT
