From mangrove promenades to shaded oasis courtyards, Manar Abu Dhabi 2025 maps the Gulf’s ancestral ties to light across three landscapes. Running 15 November–4 January, the second edition brings 23 works by 15 artists and collectives from 10 countries — plus talks, workshops and performances — under the theme “The Light Compass.” Highlights include biometric blooms by DRIFT, Pamela Poh’s suspended glass spheres, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s poetic letter stream, KAWS’s reclining moon sculpture and new Emirati commissions by Maitha Hamdan and Shaikha Al Mazrou.
Night falls over Jubail Island and the mangroves take on a new language: glass that hums, steel that breathes, and a pathway that seems to remember footsteps. You can hear someone laugh, then stop, mesmerized by a sphere catching the last warmth of day. This is Manar Abu Dhabi 2025 — an exhibition that asks you to walk through light the way you might walk through a memory.
Curated by Khai Hori with Alia Zaal Lootah, Munira Al Sayegh and Mariam Alshehhi, the festival spreads like constellations across Abu Dhabi and Al Ain. It’s not a conventional gallery crawl. It’s a choreography: you move, the artworks respond, and the city answers back. The theme, “The Light Compass,” is literal and poetic. Artists from 10 countries probe how light guides life, ritual, navigation and imagination in the Gulf — an ancestral relationship reimagined with contemporary tools.
At Jubail Island, the route is framed by mangrove trunks and the hush of water. Malaysian artist Pamela Poh’s "Eden" suspends glass orbs like caught breaths; walk beneath and the orbs refract your silhouette into tiny galaxies. DRIFT’s "Unfold" reads biometric data and blossoms it into algorithmic flowers and sound. It’s intimate and slightly uncanny: your pulse becomes petals. Emirati sculptor Shaikha Al Mazrou’s "Contingent Object" is a 30-metre ring where saltwater crystallizes in real time, a slow geological drama that makes you feel time is being rewritten in the present.
Al Qattara and Al Jimi Oasis Trails fold the festival into live palm shade and mud-brick courtyards. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s "Translation Stream" turns contemporary Emirati poems into a slow, dripping river of letters — at once digital and tactile. Near it, "Pulse Canopy" responds to heartbeats: the canopy flares when you hold your palm to a sensor and the light seems to acknowledge you as kin. In Al Jimi, Maitha Hamdan’s "Breath of the Same Place" sketches two light-based installations that feel like an exhale — quiet, cyclical, rooted in place. Ammar Al Attar’s bicycle self-portraits, captured in circular motion for "Cycle of Circles," add a human choreography to the palms.
Souq Al Mina hosts something that feels like a blockbuster and a lullaby at once: KAWS’s "HOLIDAY" figure, reclining and cradling a lit moon, is at once playful and monumentally tender — a public sculpture that invites selfies, reflection and city-scale wonder.
Beyond the visuals, Manar stages conversations. "Let’s Talk About Manar Abu Dhabi 2025" brings the curatorial team together on November 16 to unpack the edition’s vision. Panels like "The Future of Art Without AI: Is It Possible?" and "Art at the Intersection of Nature & Technology" dig into urgent questions about automation, perception and the natural world. In performance, Bedouin Burger and Haepaary blend electronics, folk and ritual — music that feels designed to be heard beneath stars and fronds.
Practical notes: Jubail Island programming runs daily 17:30–00:00; Souq Al Mina is open 24 hours; Al Ain sites are open 17:30–00:00. Most installations and talks are free; some workshops require registration and fees via paad.ae.
Manar’s public art footprint stretches across Jubail Island — an emerging mangrove-lined residential and leisure enclave — and historic Al Ain oases, spotlighting the cultural value of placemaking in Abu Dhabi’s development. For investors and developers, programming like Manar increases footfall, raises neighborhood brand value and demonstrates the potential for mixed-use projects to pair cultural initiatives with residential sales. Consider proximity to public art and programmed open spaces as a qualitative uplift when assessing long-term asset desirability.
Whether you come for a performance, a workshop, or to watch salt crystallize into a new shoreline, Manar Abu Dhabi 2025 turns light into a compass you can follow — and then, perhaps, take home as a memory.
