Palestinian art takes centre stage as Arab festival returns

Milk, by Haifa-based troupe Khashabi Ensemble, among the major performances at the Shubbak Festival in London

MILK by the Haifa-based Khashabi Ensemble. Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage, Festival d'Avignon

The UK’s largest celebration of performing arts and culture from the Arab world has returned to London, with a focus on art from Palestine.

The festival staged the UK’s largest Palestinian theatre production to date at the Southbank Centre at the weekend.

Part dance, part theatre, MILK is a play focused on disaster, telling the story of women who have lost their children, focusing on the moments before and after the tragic events. It is directed by Bashar Murkus and Khulood Basel of the Haifa-based Khashabi Ensemble.

And as with every edition of Shubbak festival – which takes place once every two years – uncertainty about whether the artists will make it to the UK is fuelled by growing visa restrictions. This year, the Khashabi Ensemble was held up due to closures at Ben Gurion Sirport after Houthi air strikes. Members ended up taking an alternative route through Jordan.

Artistic director Alia Alzougbi said the weight of the wars in Gaza and Sudan is hanging over this year's festival, which runs until mid-June. “This year was a particularly difficult one for us because we really have to ask ourselves what are festivals for, when a group of people is being erased, their heritage and culture is being erased,” she told The National.

She hopes to bridge the uncertainty by presenting a line of up of “artists as archivists, as dreamers who hold mirrors to the world as it is, and are so crucial to society. They can help us imagine how different the world would be. This festival stands squarely before our grief and rage and at the same time reflects on our hopes and dreams,” she said.

Saliah. Photo: Shubbak Festival

The festival opened on Friday with a fashion show showcasing clothing brands from Palestine, Lebanon and Syria at the Southbank Centre.

Designers selected by the fashion platform 3EIB include the Ramallah-based Nol Collective, Trashy Clothing and Nafs Space, and their collections were available in a pop-up at the centre’s foyer at the weekend.

The festival is no stranger to war and adversity, having launched in 2011, capturing the optimism generated by the Arab Spring, and subsequently serving as a platform for Syrian artists exiled by the ensuing civil war.

Al Zoghbi hopes to continue this legacy, and has incorporated three plays put on by the London-based PalArts Collective into its programme this year. Ahmed Masoud’s black comedy Application 39 imagines Gaza hosting the Olympics in the year 2048 and runs all of this week at Teatro Technis.

Designs by Reeta El Khoury featured in a fashion show and pop-up store by 3EIB at the Shubbak Festival. Photo: Creative Space Beirut

Other theatre productions include Koulounisation, by Franco-Algerian director and artist Salim Djaferi, which explores the language of colonisation that lingers in discussions of the Algerian war of Independence. The one-man performance at the Battersea Arts Centre is played by Djaferi and will bring together storytelling, theatre and visual arts.

The British-Lebanese DJ Saliah will present her first original live show, The Scene Between, at Village Underground as part of the festival’s collaboration with SXSW. The artist made her debut appearance at Glastonbury in 2022, and is known for blending old Arabic pop songs with contemporary dance music and hip-hop.

Clothing by Joelle Daccache is being presented at the 3EIB pop-up store with Shubbak Festival. Photo: Creative Space Beirut

Beauty and identity will be explored through Talking Textures, a photography exhibition curated by Yasemin Hamdan at Coal Drops Yard from June 4 to 7. This will be followed by an Eid Souq organised by the festival, where skincare products such as traditional soaps, henna and kohl, as well as textiles and food, will be sold during the Eid weekend.

Two generations of artists will be presented through the works of Syrian-born painter and sculptor Issam Kourbaj, and Leicester-based painter Sarah Al Sarraj, whose recent collection explores Islamic astronomy and indigenous knowledge systems.

The Dog Tooth of Time by Sarah Al-Sarraj. Photo: Pete Martin