SAF and Mudam Luxembourg host Nets for Night and Day exhibition
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) has announced the opening of the exhibition Nets for Night and Day by Lubaina Himid CBE RA and Magda Stawarska at Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (Mar. 7 – Aug. 24). Following an initial presentation titled Plaited Time/Deep Water in Sharjah in 2023, Nets for Night and Day is the first full-scale European survey of the artists' collaborative practice. The exhibition, organised by SAF and Mudam Luxembourg, explores over a decade of creative exchange between British painter Lubaina Himid (b. 1954, Zanzibar), a leading figure of the British Black Arts Movement, and multidisciplinary Polish artist Magda Stawarska (b. 1976, Ruda Śląska, Poland), whose practice combines moving image, soundscapes, and screen printing.
Conceived as visual and performance art, Nets for Night and Day unfolds memory narrated through paintings, drawings, sculpture, silkscreen printing, photography, and sound installation. Comprising over fifty artworks produced between the late 1990s and today, the exhibition invites visitors on a journey aboard ships, across carts, and into dreamscapes shaped by the artists' collective imagination, with a nod to the question of migration and movement, a critical issue of contemporary times. At the heart of the exhibition is a newly imagined presentation of Zanzibar (1999 – 2023), first shown in Sharjah. The series of nine painted diptychs by Himid narrates journeys — both real and imagined — to and from her birthplace, Zanzibar.
Visitors will be greeted by the sound of rainfall, recorded from England to Zanzibar, off the coast of East Africa. The sonic backdrop, composed by Stawarska in dialogue with Himid, is a 38-minute multi-channel 'libretto' for the paintings. A voice-over, alternating between male and female voices, presents itself. Stawarska says that 'the process of listening is often at the core of my practice. I am interested in how sound triggers memories while simultaneously anchoring us in a place.' A mother's mourning in Himid's voice resonates through the sound installation, women's tears that fill the ocean. 'The result is often heart-wrenching,' says exhibition curator Dr. Omar Kholeif, SAF Director of Collections and Senior Curator.
In another section, screen prints and patterns intertwine with paintings of ships and boats that bear multiple lives and histories, suggestive of diverse experiences and encounters. 'The idea of bringing boats into the story became very important,' says Himid. 'Boats are places of work, places of rescue, places to live, places for fun, but also places of deep tragedy and horror — places to escape to, places to escape from. I see them as temporary moving homes.' In happier contexts, boats could have been the camels of the sea, carrying Bedouin.
Visitors here are invited to engage with paintings, photographs, and sculptures in a scenography relating to imaginary and real contexts of movement and travel. Travelling through time and space, works including Himid's evocative Sharjah Carts (2023) and Stawarska's moving image works in the Jardin des Sculptures, invite visitors to wander into dreamscapes, where they can add their own memories of real life experiences and imaginary movement. The location of the exhibition reflects the social and cultural contexts of Luxembourg, a country with a diverse immigrant community. Through the juxtaposition of memory, paint, sound and movement, the exhibition attempts to capture the poignancy of lived lives, revealing songs of longing and belonging, loss and gain and the power of memory to resuscitate history and selfhood.
The exhibition is coordinated by Julie Kohn, Curatorial Assistant, Mudam Luxembourg and design is by Souraya Kreidieh, SAF Senior Collections Researcher and Spatial Designer. Himid CBE RA lives and works in the UK. For over four decades, she has depicted contemporary everyday life and aimed to fill gaps in art history. A painter, cultural activist, witness, storyteller and historian, in 2017, she won the Turner Prize, in 2023 the Maria Lassnig Art Prize, and the 2024 Suzanne Deal Booth/FLAG Art Foundation Prize.
Stawarska's multi-disciplinary practice combines moving image, sound, silkscreen prints and painting. She explores the connections between personal memory, place, and sound, often uncovering hidden and conflicting histories. Her work is in public collections including the Government Arts Collection, London, the Arts Council Collection, London and the SAF Collection. She lives and works in the UK. Through its exhibitions, publications and artistic and educational programme, Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean fosters research and dialogue, tracing the changing nature of art and society. Like Luxembourg itself, the museum is located at the centre of Europe and has an outward-looking vision.
SAF is an advocate, catalyst and producer of contemporary art within the emirate of Sharjah and the surrounding region, in dialogue with the international arts community. It supports the production and presentation of contemporary art, preserves and celebrates the culture of the region and encourages an understanding of the transformational role of art. The Foundation's core initiatives include the long-running Sharjah Biennial, featuring contemporary artists from around the world; the annual March Meeting, a convening of international arts professionals and artists; grants and residencies for artists, curators and cultural producers; experimental commissions and a range of travelling exhibitions and scholarly publications. Established in 2009, SAF is a legally independent public body established by Emiri Decree and supported by government funding, grants from national and international nonprofits and cultural organisations, corporate sponsors and individual patrons; all its exhibitions are free and open to the public. Hoor Al Qasimi is SAF President and Director.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Dubai Eye
7 hours ago
- Dubai Eye
Frederick Forsyth, 'Day of the Jackal' author, dies at 86
British novelist Frederick Forsyth, who authored best-selling thrillers such as 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Dogs of War', has died aged 86, his publisher said. A former correspondent for Reuters and the BBC, and an informant for Britain's MI6 foreign spy agency, Forsyth made his name by using his experiences as a reporter in Paris to pen the story of a failed assassination plot on Charles de Gaulle. The Day of the Jackal, in which an English assassin, played in the film by Edward Fox, is hired by French paramilitaries angry at de Gaulle's withdrawal from Algeria, was published in 1971 after Forsyth found himself penniless in London. Written in just 35 days, the book was rejected by a host of publishers who worried that the story was flawed and would not sell as de Gaulle had not been assassinated. De Gaulle died in 1970 from a ruptured aorta while playing Solitaire. But Forsyth's hurricane-paced thriller complete with journalistic-style detail and brutal sub-plots of lust, betrayal and murder was an instant hit. The once poor journalist became a wealthy writer of fiction. "I never intended to be a writer at all," Forsyth later wrote in his memoir, The Outsider - My Life in Intrigue. "After all, writers are odd creatures, and if they try to make a living at it, even more so." So influential was the novel that Venezuelan militant revolutionary Illich Ramirez Sanchez, was dubbed 'Carlos the Jackal'. Forsyth presented himself as a cross between Ernest Hemingway and John le Carre - both action man and Cold War spy - but delighted in turning around the insult that he was a literary lightweight. "I am lightweight but popular. My books sell," he once said. His books, fantastical plots that almost rejoiced in the cynicism of an underworld of spies, criminals, hackers and killers, sold more than 75 million copies. Behind the swashbuckling bravado, though, there were hints of sadness. He later spoke of turning inwards to his imagination as a lonely only child during and after World War Two. The isolated Forsyth discovered a talent for languages: he claimed to be a native French speaker by the age of 12 and a native German speaker by the age of 16, largely due to exchanges. He went to Tonbridge School, one of England's ancient fee-paying schools, and learned Russian from two emigre Georgian princesses in Paris. He added Spanish by the age of 18. He also learned to fly and did his national service in the Royal Air Force where he flew fighters such as a single seater version of the de Havilland Vampire. Impressing Reuters' editors with his languages and knowledge that Bujumbura was a city in Burundi, he was offered a job at the news agency in 1961 and sent to Paris and then East Berlin where the Stasi secret police kept close tabs on him. He left Reuters for the BBC but soon became disillusioned by its bureaucracy and what he saw as the corporation's failure to cover Nigeria properly due to the government's incompetent post-colonial views on Africa. It was in 1968 that Forsyth was approached by the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, and asked by an officer named "Ronnie" to inform on what was really going on in Biafra. By his own account, he would keep contacts with the MI6, which he called "the Firm", for many years. His novels showed extensive knowledge of the world of spies and he even edited out bits of The Fourth Protocol (1984), he said, so that militants would not know how to detonate an atomic bomb. His writing was sometimes cruel, such as when the Jackal kills his lover after she discovers he is an assassin. "He looked down at her, and for the first time she noticed that the grey flecks in his eyes had spread and clouded over the whole expression, which had become dead and lifeless like a machine staring down at her." After finally finding a publisher for The Day of the Jackal, he was offered a three-novel contract by Harold Harris of Hutchinson. Next came The Odessa File in 1972, the story of a young German freelance journalist who tries to track down SS man Eduard Roschmann, or The Butcher of Riga. After that, The Dogs of War in 1974 is about a group of white mercenaries hired by a British mining magnate to kill the mad dictator of an African republic - based on Equatorial Guinea's Francisco Macias Nguema - and replace him with a puppet. The New York Times said at the time that the novel was "pitched at the level of a suburban Saturday night movie audience" and that it was "informed with a kind of post‐imperial condescension toward the black man". Divorced from Carole Cunningham in 1988, he married Sandy Molloy in 1994. But he lost a fortune in an investment scam and had to write more novels to support himself. He had two sons - Stuart and Shane - with his first wife. His later novels variously cast hackers, Russians, Al Qaeda militants and cocaine smugglers against the forces of good - broadly Britain and the West. But the novels never quite reached the level of the Jackal. A supporter of the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, Forsyth scolded Britain's elites for what he cast as their treachery and naivety. In columns for The Daily Express, he gave a host of withering assessments of the modern world from an intellectual right-wing perspective. The world, he said, worried too much about "the oriental pandemic" (known to most as COVID-19), Donald Trump was "deranged", Vladimir Putin "a tyrant" and "liberal luvvies of the West" were wrong on most things. He was, to the end, a reporter who wrote novels. "In a world that increasingly obsesses over the gods of power, money and fame, a journalist and a writer must remain detached," he wrote. "It is our job to hold power to account."
Al Etihad
14 hours ago
- Al Etihad
'The Day of The Jackal' author Frederick Forsyth dies aged 86
9 June 2025 22:31 LONDON (AFP)Prolific British thriller writer Frederick Forsyth, who instantly became a global bestselling author when his book 'The Day of the Jackal' was published in 1971, died on Monday aged 86, his literary agents Curtis Brown famously penned his most famous work, about a fictional assassination attempt on French president Charles de Gaulle by right-wing extremists, in just 35 days after falling on hard times."The Jackal" went on to be made into a hit film starring Edward Fox as the assassin.A Netflix remake last year with Eddie Redmayne in the lead role was released last year."We mourn the passing of one of the world's greatest thriller writers," his agent Jonathan Lloyd died at home surrounded by his family following a brief illness, according to Curtis former journalist and pilot wrote over 25 books including 'The Odessa File' (1972) and 'The Dogs of War' (1974), and sold over 75 million copies of his novels were also turned into films. Forsyth attributed much of his success to "luck", recalling how a bullet narrowly missed him while he was covering the Biafra civil war between 1967 and 1970.
ARN News Center
15 hours ago
- ARN News Center
Frederick Forsyth, 'Day of the Jackal' author, dies at 86
British novelist Frederick Forsyth, who authored best-selling thrillers such as 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Dogs of War', has died aged 86, his publisher said. A former correspondent for Reuters and the BBC, and an informant for Britain's MI6 foreign spy agency, Forsyth made his name by using his experiences as a reporter in Paris to pen the story of a failed assassination plot on Charles de Gaulle. The Day of the Jackal, in which an English assassin, played in the film by Edward Fox, is hired by French paramilitaries angry at de Gaulle's withdrawal from Algeria, was published in 1971 after Forsyth found himself penniless in London. Written in just 35 days, the book was rejected by a host of publishers who worried that the story was flawed and would not sell as de Gaulle had not been assassinated. De Gaulle died in 1970 from a ruptured aorta while playing Solitaire. But Forsyth's hurricane-paced thriller complete with journalistic-style detail and brutal sub-plots of lust, betrayal and murder was an instant hit. The once poor journalist became a wealthy writer of fiction. "I never intended to be a writer at all," Forsyth later wrote in his memoir, The Outsider - My Life in Intrigue. "After all, writers are odd creatures, and if they try to make a living at it, even more so." So influential was the novel that Venezuelan militant revolutionary Illich Ramirez Sanchez, was dubbed 'Carlos the Jackal'. Forsyth presented himself as a cross between Ernest Hemingway and John le Carre - both action man and Cold War spy - but delighted in turning around the insult that he was a literary lightweight. "I am lightweight but popular. My books sell," he once said. His books, fantastical plots that almost rejoiced in the cynicism of an underworld of spies, criminals, hackers and killers, sold more than 75 million copies. Behind the swashbuckling bravado, though, there were hints of sadness. He later spoke of turning inwards to his imagination as a lonely only child during and after World War Two. The isolated Forsyth discovered a talent for languages: he claimed to be a native French speaker by the age of 12 and a native German speaker by the age of 16, largely due to exchanges. He went to Tonbridge School, one of England's ancient fee-paying schools, and learned Russian from two emigre Georgian princesses in Paris. He added Spanish by the age of 18. He also learned to fly and did his national service in the Royal Air Force where he flew fighters such as a single seater version of the de Havilland Vampire. Impressing Reuters' editors with his languages and knowledge that Bujumbura was a city in Burundi, he was offered a job at the news agency in 1961 and sent to Paris and then East Berlin where the Stasi secret police kept close tabs on him. He left Reuters for the BBC but soon became disillusioned by its bureaucracy and what he saw as the corporation's failure to cover Nigeria properly due to the government's incompetent post-colonial views on Africa. It was in 1968 that Forsyth was approached by the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, and asked by an officer named "Ronnie" to inform on what was really going on in Biafra. By his own account, he would keep contacts with the MI6, which he called "the Firm", for many years. His novels showed extensive knowledge of the world of spies and he even edited out bits of The Fourth Protocol (1984), he said, so that militants would not know how to detonate an atomic bomb. His writing was sometimes cruel, such as when the Jackal kills his lover after she discovers he is an assassin. "He looked down at her, and for the first time she noticed that the grey flecks in his eyes had spread and clouded over the whole expression, which had become dead and lifeless like a machine staring down at her." After finally finding a publisher for The Day of the Jackal, he was offered a three-novel contract by Harold Harris of Hutchinson. Next came The Odessa File in 1972, the story of a young German freelance journalist who tries to track down SS man Eduard Roschmann, or The Butcher of Riga. After that, The Dogs of War in 1974 is about a group of white mercenaries hired by a British mining magnate to kill the mad dictator of an African republic - based on Equatorial Guinea's Francisco Macias Nguema - and replace him with a puppet. The New York Times said at the time that the novel was "pitched at the level of a suburban Saturday night movie audience" and that it was "informed with a kind of post‐imperial condescension toward the black man". Divorced from Carole Cunningham in 1988, he married Sandy Molloy in 1994. But he lost a fortune in an investment scam and had to write more novels to support himself. He had two sons - Stuart and Shane - with his first wife. His later novels variously cast hackers, Russians, Al Qaeda militants and cocaine smugglers against the forces of good - broadly Britain and the West. But the novels never quite reached the level of the Jackal. A supporter of the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, Forsyth scolded Britain's elites for what he cast as their treachery and naivety. In columns for The Daily Express, he gave a host of withering assessments of the modern world from an intellectual right-wing perspective. The world, he said, worried too much about "the oriental pandemic" (known to most as COVID-19), Donald Trump was "deranged", Vladimir Putin "a tyrant" and "liberal luvvies of the West" were wrong on most things. He was, to the end, a reporter who wrote novels. "In a world that increasingly obsesses over the gods of power, money and fame, a journalist and a writer must remain detached," he wrote. "It is our job to hold power to account."
