The Colombian painter Fernando Botero is one of 12 artists featured in Latin Flavour at Dubai's Opera Gallery.
The Colombian painter Fernando Botero is one of 12 artists featured in Latin Flavour at Dubai's Opera Gallery.

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Emirati Expressions showcases work by 50 UAE artists at the Emirates Palace this week. As best-of collections go, this one looks to be authoritative. Some of the country's most prominent creative talents are showing, with Faiza Mubarak, Abdul Kader al Rais and Azza al Qubaisi among them. The noted Picasso scholar Anne Baldassari, the director of Paris's Musée National Picasso, curates. She plans to present work in both traditional and modern idioms, from video art to Arabic penmanship, to show the full range of contemporary Emirati culture.

Dubai's Opera Gallery will show Latin Flavour, a survey of art produced in Latin America, this week. Among the 12 artists featured are established names such as Romero Britto and emerging talents such as the Jeddah-based Argentinian collagist Laura Fernandez de Nazir. Particularly enjoyable is Federico Uribe's Dirty Money, a bust of a grim-faced statesman, neatly bearded and bow-tied, pieced together from coins. It's typical of the Colombian conceptualist, who likes to mimic traditional forms using unconvential means. His Portrait I achieves similar painterly effects by glueing together dozens of Puma running shoes. Also on wrongfooting, so to speak, is the Colombian painter Fernando Botero, who achieves a pitch of simmering menace simply by not showing his Abu Ghraib series. These chilling studies of doughy bodies subjected to humiliation and torture put him in the headlines in 2005; now one finds oneself nervously examining his scenes of corpulent bullfighters and housewives with currant-bun faces for some hint of atrocity. Yet even the bull seems to be having a nice time. It's like looking at a Beryl Cook painting and expecting a wave of Cossacks to come sweeping over the horizon.

One of the stars of Carbon 12's youth section, Alireza Massoumi, has been given his own show. The 30-year-old Iranian artist goes in for Philip Guston-ish desert scenes. His scrubby landscapes, both cartoonish and sinister, look poised, stifling their hilarity, ready to spring something on you. That the rug remains eternally unpulled just makes the trick all the neater. The Dubai Shopping Festival though not known for its intellectual delights is hosting a gathering of Hindi and Urdu poets at Dubai's Indian High School at the end of the month with some lighter diversions in the form of the Chinese state Circus, complete with Shaolin Warriors.

Lastly, to Dubai's Ayyam Gallery. Stories from the Levant presents cool, precise work by the estimable Palestinian painter Samia Halaby, whose canvases always seem to suggest microscope slides and optics experiments. In addition, there's knotty collage work from Syria's Tammam Azzam and mad stuff from the multidisciplinary Lebanese artist Nadim Karam, who has designed a sort of floating cloud garden, borne aloft on columns meant to resemble rain. The whole thing has been worked out in stupefying detail; I gather he wants to have it built in Dubai at some stage. Here's hoping they leave out the many-armed puppet-master thing that hovers over it in his 2008 painting, The Conductor and the Cloud.

Emirati Expressions. Tuesday until April 16, Gallery One, Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi (www.arts abudhabi.com). Latin Flavour: Contemporary Latin American Art. Saturday to Feb 5, Dubai Opera Gallery, Gate Village Building 3, Dubai International Financial Centre, Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai (04 323 0909, www.operagallery.com). Alireza Massoumi. Tuesday until Feb 20, Carbon 12, Marina View Towers, Marina Drive, Dubai (050 464 4392, carbon12dubai.com).

Stories from the Levant. Thursday until Feb 5, Ayyam Gallery, Alserkal Warehouse Avenue, Street 8, Al Quoz, Dubai (04 3236242, www.ayyamgallery.com). Chinese State Circus. Until Feb 15, Dubai Festival Centre, Sheikh Zayed Rd, Dubai (04 2325444, www.festivalcentre.com).

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Living in...

This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.

The Perfect Couple

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Jack Reynor

Creator: Jenna Lamia

Rating: 3/5

Earth under attack: Cosmic impacts throughout history

4.5 billion years ago: Mars-sized object smashes into the newly-formed Earth, creating debris that coalesces to form the Moon

- 66 million years ago: 10km-wide asteroid crashes into the Gulf of Mexico, wiping out over 70 per cent of living species – including the dinosaurs.

50,000 years ago: 50m-wide iron meteor crashes in Arizona with the violence of 10 megatonne hydrogen bomb, creating the famous 1.2km-wide Barringer Crater

1490: Meteor storm over Shansi Province, north-east China when large stones “fell like rain”, reportedly leading to thousands of deaths.  

1908: 100-metre meteor from the Taurid Complex explodes near the Tunguska river in Siberia with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima-type bombs, devastating 2,000 square kilometres of forest.

1998: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 breaks apart and crashes into Jupiter in series of impacts that would have annihilated life on Earth.

-2013: 10,000-tonne meteor burns up over the southern Urals region of Russia, releasing a pressure blast and flash that left over 1600 people injured.

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Brief scoreline:

Toss: South Africa, elected to bowl first

England (311-8): Stokes 89, Morgan 57, Roy 54, Root 51; Ngidi 3-66

South Africa (207): De Kock 68, Van der Dussen 50; Archer 3-27, Stokes 2-12

Where to buy and try:

Nutritional yeast

DesertCart

Organic Foods & Café

Bulletproof coffee

Wild & The Moon

Amasake

Comptoir 102

DesertCart

Organic Foods & Café

Charcoal drinks and dishes

Various juice bars, including Comptoir 102

Bridgewater Tavern

3 Fils

Jackfruit

Supermarkets across the UAE

Anxiety and work stress major factors

Anxiety, work stress and social isolation are all factors in the recogised rise in mental health problems.

A study UAE Ministry of Health researchers published in the summer also cited struggles with weight and illnesses as major contributors.

Its authors analysed a dozen separate UAE studies between 2007 and 2017. Prevalence was often higher in university students, women and in people on low incomes.

One showed 28 per cent of female students at a Dubai university reported symptoms linked to depression. Another in Al Ain found 22.2 per cent of students had depressive symptoms - five times the global average.

It said the country has made strides to address mental health problems but said: “Our review highlights the overall prevalence of depressive symptoms and depression, which may long have been overlooked."

Prof Samir Al Adawi, of the department of behavioural medicine at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, who was not involved in the study but is a recognised expert in the Gulf, said how mental health is discussed varies significantly between cultures and nationalities.

“The problem we have in the Gulf is the cross-cultural differences and how people articulate emotional distress," said Prof Al Adawi. 

“Someone will say that I have physical complaints rather than emotional complaints. This is the major problem with any discussion around depression."

Daniel Bardsley

RESULTS

4pm: Al Bastakiya Listed US$250,000 (Dirt) 1,900m
Winner: Yulong Warrior, Richard Mullen (jockey), Satish Seemar (trainer)

4.35pm: Mahab Al Shimaal Group 3 $200,000 (D) 1,200m
Winner: Jordan Sport, Adrie de Vries, Fawzi Nass

5.10pm: Nad Al Sheba Conditions $200,000 (Turf) 1,200m
Winner: Jungle Cat, William Buick, Charlie Appleby

5.45pm: Burj Nahaar Group 3 $200,000 (D) 1,600m
Winner: Kimbear, Patrick Dobbs, Doug Watson

6.20pm: Jebel Hatta Group 1 $300,000 (T) 1,800m
Winner: Blair House, James Doyle, Charlie Appleby

6.55pm: Al Maktoum Challenge Round-3 Group 1 $400,000 (D) 2,000m
Winner: North America, Richard Mullen, Satish Seemar

7.30pm: Dubai City of Gold Group 2 $250,000 (T) 2,410m
Winner: Hawkbill, William Buick, Charlie Appleby.