Freshest news from the region, straight to your screens!
١. Maison Terraē’s “Clay Jugs”: Sculpting Awareness Through Touch
On November 6, 2025, Dubai’s contemporary ceramics studio Maison Terraē turned clay into a tool for change. In collaboration with Dr. Mariana Barretto, the studio launched “Clay Jugs” — a tactile workshop teaching women breast self-examination through the art of sculpting.
Held at the Al Quoz studio in Goshi Warehouse City, the debut session brought together survivors, media, and women’s health experts for a candid, hands-on dialogue on awareness and action. Each participant moulded her own ceramic jug, guided through the gestures of self-examination — a process that transformed fear into familiarity, stigma into conversation.
The final act — adding a small clay lump — became a powerful symbol of confronting the “fear of finding.” Continuing throughout November, the Clay Jugs series redefines breast cancer awareness as something tactile, creative, and enduring — a gesture that lingers beyond October.
٢. Ancient Egypt Unveiled at the Hong Kong Palace Museum
From 20 November 2025 to 31 August 2026, the Hong Kong Palace Museum opens its doors to Ancient Egypt Unveiled: Treasures from Egyptian Museums — a landmark exhibition bringing over 250 artefacts from seven major Egyptian museums to Asia for the very first time.
Organised in collaboration with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, the show spans nearly 5,000 years of history— from monumental statues and golden jewellery to painted coffins, everyday objects, and animal mummies — many leaving Egypt for the first time.
Highlights include sculptures of Tutankhamun, Hatshepsut, and Rameses II, recent discoveries from Saqqara, and digital installations reanimating the mummification process and the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Marking the 70th anniversary of China–Egypt diplomatic relations, the exhibition celebrates the shared spirit of preservation and cultural dialogue — a meeting of ancient worlds brought to life through art, technology, and time.
٣. LOEWE Welcomes Salma Abu Deif as Brand Ambassador
When Salma Abu Deif stepped into LOEWE’s Spring/Summer 2026 show in Paris — the first under new creative directors Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez — the moment hinted at something larger. Now, the Egyptian actress and model officially joins the Spanish house as its newest Brand Ambassador, and the first from the region.
Salma’s path has always balanced craft and curiosity. Trained at New York’s Stella Adler Studio of Acting, she’s known for the honesty she brings to her roles — from Sheikh Jackson, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, to a series of acclaimed Arabic dramas that have shaped her as one of Egypt’s most compelling screen voices.
“I’ve always admired LOEWE for its quiet confidence,” she says. “It’s a brand that lets individuality breathe.”
The partnership feels less like an appointment and more like an alignment — a meeting point between Salma’s grounded elegance and LOEWE’s evolving vision of modern craft.
٤. Middle East Archive Turns Five During Paris Photo 2025
Marking five years of independent publishing, Middle East Archive (MEA) celebrates its anniversary during Paris Photo 2025 with an exhibition that brings together ten photographers from the region and its diaspora — each offering an alternative, unfiltered gaze on the Middle East.
Taking place from 14 to 16 November at 61 rue Quincampoix, Paris, with an opening night on 14 November from 5–10 PM, the show features Myriam Boulos, Olgac Bozalp, Yasmina Hilal, Taqwa Bint Ali, Adam Rouhana, Shayan Sajadian, Dean Majd, Mariam El Gendy, Charbel Alkhoury, and Majdi Fathi — artists whose work bridges memory, resistance, and belonging.
Alongside the exhibition, a reading room curated by New York’s Storm Books extends MEA’s publishing ethos into physical space — a quiet invitation to read, linger, and connect.
Founded in 2019, Middle East Archive has evolved from a digital platform into a publishing house and community hub, archiving contemporary visual narratives that challenge dominant perspectives.
٥. Eman strikes with “Shameless”, A Cinematic Confession of Self
“Shameless” marks the first release from London-based Eman’s forthcoming 2026 EP — a shimmering, self-assured entry into the artist’s world. Known for her work in the BAFTA-winning series We Are Lady Parts, the Iranian-Saudi actress and musician channels the same precision she brings to the screen into her sound: intimate, cinematic, and grounded in emotional truth.
Raised in small-town Canada and shaped by the glow of early-2000s MTV, she crafts pop that looks both inward and outward — clear-eyed about identity yet unwilling to be contained by it. “Shameless” doesn’t perform culture; it reclaims the right to exist beyond category.
Varsity jackets meet delicate jewellery, echoing Eman’s navigation of dual worlds, masculine and feminine, insider and outsider. With “Shameless,” she reclaims pop as something personal, not performance, because presence is enough.
٦. “3oubour: A River Between Mountains” Lands in London
At a moment when “craft” is too often flattened into aesthetic shorthand, 3oubour: A River Between Mountains arrives in London to remind us of its political and emotional weight. Opening at the Crafts Council Gallery from 13 to 22 November 2025, the exhibition — co-produced by The Arab British Centre, A.MAL Projects, and Takafes — brings together eight artists from the UK, Morocco, and Lebanon who understand material not as medium, but as argument.
Developed through a six-month digital exchange and a residency in Fes, the works in 3oubour question what innovation means outside Western frameworks of “the new.” Here, experimentation is about learning with artisans whose knowledge predates our idea of modernity. That inversion is what makes the show vital: it reframes tradition as a form of avant-garde thinking.
Artists like Dima Srouji, Mehdi Ouahmane, and Alia Hamaoui collapse distinctions between craft and critique, working through architecture, ecology, and labour to ask how material can both remember and resist. The exhibition’s rhythm — from the tactile precision of zellige to the conceptual abstraction of sound and performance — keeps returning to one question: what do we inherit when we make?
Accompanied by performances, panels, and sound works including Sawat al Layla, 3oubour isn’t a show to glance at — it’s a space to spend time in, to think with.
٧. Cairo International Film Festival 2025 Opens in November
Happening from 12-21 November 2025 in Cairo, CIFF’s 46th edition stands out as a platform of cinematic force. With over 100 films and international co-productions making their regional debut, one of the early announcements names The Blue Trail by director Gabriel Mascaro as the opening film. Particular focus falls on the Critics’ Week and Restored Egyptian Classics sections—eight new voices from Europe and the Arab world in Critics’ Week, and 21 restored landmark Egyptian films resurfacing for a new context.
For anyone interested in how Arab cinema is intersecting with global messaging, industry platforms like the Cairo Film Connection (which this year supports 15 projects from 10 countries) also make this one of the few festivals where the culture-makers meet the systems behind the cinema.
٨. Myriam Boulos at Paris Photo 2025
Lebanese photographer Myriam Boulos is set to take significant stage at Paris Photo 2025 (13–16 November) through her inclusion in the Magnum Photos booth, where her work appears alongside historically pivotal names such as Eve Arnold.
Her images underscore the festival’s broader curatorial tone this year: “silhouettes, half-obscured faces and shadows,” as one curator puts it. Drawing from moments in Beirut’s youth, protest and everyday life, Boulos negotiates the tension between vulnerability and resolve — her lens registering what remains unspoken and what surfaces.
٩. Runway Returns: The Devil Wears Prada 2 Lands in May 2026
Nearly 20 years after the original’s debut, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is officially scheduled for release on 1 May 2026.
The first teaser trailer, dropped 12 November 2025, reunites the iconic quartet — Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci — in a familiar elevator moment at Runway magazine, reminding us that the original’s sharp edge doesn’t fade with time.
Directed by David Frankel and written by Aline Brosh McKenna — the same team behind the 2006 hit — this sequel sets its sights on the collapse of print fashion media and the power shifts within it.
New to the runway: actors like Kenneth Branagh, Simone Ashley, Lucy Liu and B.J. Novak join the original cast, promising fresh dynamics and high-stakes fashion drama.
١٠ Elham Al-Marzooqi Takes the Carnegie Hall Stage
Tonight, 13 November 2025, Emirati cellist Elham Al-Marzooqi appears at Carnegie Hall in New York, performing A Journey to the New World with the Reina Sofía School of Music Symphony Orchestra, violinist Renaud Capuçon, and conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada. Presented in collaboration with Abu Dhabi Festival, the flagship initiative of the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation, the concert unfolds in the presence of Queen Sofía of Spain and Huda Alkhamis-Kanoo, founder of ADMAF.
For Al-Marzooqi — the UAE’s first professional female Emirati cellist — the night marks a precise kind of milestone: a place earned within one of classical music’s most demanding rooms.
