Quoz Arts Fest 2019 Opens This Weekend in Dubai

Jan. 22, 2019

Quoz Arts Festival opens its 2019 edition this Friday, January 25th in Dubai’s foremost arts hub, Alserkal Avenue. Located in the rapidly diversifying industrial quarter of Dubai, Al Quoz, Alserkal Avenue aims to foster a burgeoning contemporary art scene in the MENASA region, offering an ever-expanding platform to give local artists international visibility. As a 500000 square foot conglomerate of creative spaces and arts related businesses, Alserkal Avenue encourages a collaborative work ethic, citing open dialogue and ideas exchange as their mandate, and highlighting the importance of diversity in public art.

Quoz Arts Fest 2018 // Photo credit Angelo Aguilar, courtesy Alserkal Avenue Al Quoz Fest

As part of their programming, Alserkal Avenue hosts Quoz Arts Festival, a unique two-day festival, this year running concurrently with Asia Contemporary Art Week’s art forum, ‘Field Meeting’. Quoz Arts Festival celebrates the growing creative community in the United Arab Emirates, with a strong emphasis on community. The festival, “free and open to the whole family, including pets”, invites its audience to partake in a two-day event of screenings, workshops, talks, performances and other various art events to celebrate community, culture and art. This year’s title is ‘CTRL+ALT+ACTION’, and centres on the theme of sustainability in its various forms. More specifically, the theme prompts the question of how small lifestyle changes can have a great impact on large-scale economic, social and environmental structures, taking a closer look at how it is possible to implement change from the ground up. Included in the programming are performances by Nikhil Chopra and Moe Satt on the first day; River Lin and Arahmaiani Feisal on the second; as well as talks given by a host of artists and art practitioners, including Bassem Saad & Edwin Nasr, Umber Majeed, Chongbin Zheng, Sam Samiee and Heman Chong. Participants of the festival can also enjoy pop-up installations in Alserkal Avenue’s industrial warehouses by Nadira Husain, Zolaykha Sherzad, Bingyi, Haiyang Wang and Hasanul Isyraf Idris.

Quoz Arts Fest 2018 // Photo credit Angelo Aguilar, courtesy Alserkal Avenue Al Quoz Fest

Operating as a key program of Asia Contemporary Art Week since 2014, ‘Field Meeting’ is a two day conference centred on the ‘art forum as exhibition’, delivering lively conversation and lecture-performances focusing on innovation in contemporary art. The forum also aims to cultivate relationships between arts organisations in the United States and Asia, with such participants as Asia Society Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.