Manar Abu Dhabi 2025: The Light Compass
- Gen de Art
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
In a city that has long defined itself by light — the shimmer of sand, the glare of sea, the pulse of innovation — Manar Abu Dhabi 2025 returns this November as a meditation on how illumination continues to shape human perception and orientation.
Running from 15 November 2025 to 4 January 2026, the second edition of this public art initiative by Public Art Abu Dhabi transforms the emirate’s landscapes into a living atlas of light. Under the theme The Light Compass, curated by Khai Hori with co-curators Alia Zaal Lootah, Munira Al Sayegh, and Mariam Alshehhi, the exhibition unfolds across Jubail Island, Souq Al Mina, and — for the first time — the oases of Al Ain, featuring more 20 works by Emirati and international artists.
Navigating by Light
For Hori, The Light Compass is a curatorial model grounded in dialogue, intuition, and discovery. “This year’s edition draws from the Gulf’s navigational heritage while reimagining it through contemporary art,” he explains. “Guided by exchange and awareness, we sought a balance between the monumental and the meditative — allowing each work to emerge in response to its surroundings.”
That sensitivity to site shapes every aspect of Manar 2025. Here, curating becomes a process of listening: to place, to artists, to the subtle rhythms of the environment. “Ideas evolve through the connection between artist, curator, and landscape,” Hori continues. “For visitors, Manar unfolds as both collective and personal journey, where light serves as companion and guide toward deeper ways of seeing and sensing.”
Jubail Island: Centerstage of the Archipelago
Anchoring this year’s expanded edition, Jubail Island — a nexus of mangroves and tidal waterways — becomes an epicentre for sensory exploration. Malaysian artist Pamela Poh’s EDEN (2025) constructs a contemplative field of organic light, while Dutch studio DRIFT contributes UNFOLD (2025), WHISPERS (2025), and the aerial choreography WIND OF CHANGE (2025), using drones to draw transient geometries in the night sky.
Emirati sculptor Shaikha Al Mazrou’s CONTINGENT OBJECT (2025) meditates on tension and the elasticity of form, contrasting the fluid dynamism of Iregular’s four interactive installations — AS WATER FALLS (2022), FACES (2022), CONTROL NO CONTROL (2012), and FORTUNES (2024). Other participating artists, including Ezequiel Pini (Six N. Five), Christian Brinkmann, Kirsten Berg, Encor Studio, and Lachlan Turczan, further expand the dialogue between digital and organic light.
Al Ain: Light in the Oasis
Extending into the Al Qattara and Al Jimi oasis trails, Manar 2025 explores light as a form of cultural and ecological translation. At Al Qattara, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer presents PULSE CANOPY (2025) — a responsive field of lights animated by visitors’ heartbeats — alongside TRANSLATION STREAM (2023), while Khalid Shafar’s SADU RED CARPET (2025) reinterprets traditional weaving patterns as glowing textiles suspended in air.
At Al Jimi Oasis, a cluster of new works by Emirati artists — Ammar Al Attar’s CYCLE OF CIRCLES (2025), Maitha Hamdan’s BREATH OF THE SAME PLACE (2025), and Abdulla Al Mulla’s GUIDING DRAPES (2025) — responds to the rhythms of palm groves and desert wind. The trail culminates in Christian Brinkmann’s FLORAL RESONANCE (2024), an audiovisual installation that turns the oasis into an instrument of light and sound.
Technology as Reflection
If navigation once relied on celestial constellations, today’s artists, Hori notes, find their bearings in technological ones. “Technology in this edition acts as a reflective counterpoint to the Gulf’s long relationship with light and navigation,” he says. “Where stars and tides once shaped movement, new instruments now extend this instinct for orientation.”
Rather than treating digital tools as spectacle, Hori’s model embraces technology as a medium of reflection. Many works in Manar 2025 use sensors, code, and responsive systems to heighten awareness — of presence, rhythm, and change. “They translate light into experiences that can be touched, shaped, and felt,” Hori adds. “Through this attentiveness, Manar connects the ancient and the contemporary, reminding us that innovation remains tied to our oldest desire to follow light as guide and companion.”
City Lights: Souq Al Mina
Against the skyline of Mina Zayed, KAWS and AllRightsReserved present KAWS: HOLIDAY Abu Dhabi, featuring an illuminated COMPANION reclining on its back, holding a glowing moon in its hands — an image of playful introspection that mirrors Manar’s larger balancing act between spectacle and stillness.
A Living Continuum
While the installations will fade as the festival closes, Hori hopes the experience will endure. “The legacy of The Light Compass lies in the connections it builds and the perspectives it opens,” he reflects. “Each edition of Manar Abu Dhabi deepens the relationship between art, landscape, and public life. Beyond its exhibition sites, Manar continues through talks, workshops, and shared learning that nurture creative growth.”
As the city’s mangroves, oases, and ports glow under the soft geometry of light, Manar Abu Dhabi 2025 affirms the capital’s ambition to sustain a “living continuum of creativity, reflection, and renewal.” It is less a spectacle of illumination than an invitation — to reorient ourselves, not by stars, but by the luminous intelligence of art itself.
