Saudi Arabia FIFA World Cup, Manga Arabia to publish ‘Road To 2034’ special manga
Special edition manga is part of SAFF’s efforts to build on the excitement as the Kingdom prepares to host the first 48-team FIFA World Cup held in a single nation
Partnership highlights Saudi Arabia’s ambition to celebrate its culture and legacy as part of its FIFA World Cup bid
Updated 10 October 2024
Arab News Japan
DUBAI: The Saudi Arabia 2034 FIFA World Cup has entered a partnership with Saudi Research and Media Group’s Manga Arabia to release a special edition manga titled “Road to 2034” which aims to capture the imagination of young football fans and manga enthusiasts around the world.
The manga is a part of the Saudi Football Federation’s efforts to build on the excitement as the Kingdom prepares to host the first 48-team FIFA World Cup held in a single nation. Available in Japanese, English, and Arabic, it will be released both in print and digitally.
The partnership highlights Saudi Arabia’s ambition to celebrate its culture and legacy as part of its FIFA World Cup bid, offering an opportunity to connect with youth across the world.
The collaboration also emphasizes the desire to inspire the next generation of young footballers to pursue their dreams through the powerful medium of storytelling.
The announcement falls on the same day as the World Cup 2026 qualifier match between Saudi Arabia and Japan, which is taking place at the King Abdullah Sports City Stadium.
“Our bid unites our nation through a passion for the beautiful game and is powered by the dreams and ambitions of over 32 million people,” Hammad Albalawi, head of the Saudi Arabia FIFA World Cup, said. “Through this manga, we are showing how our dream towards hosting the FIFA World Cup in ten years’ time is about inspiring future generations.
“We want to ensure we leave behind a lasting legacy. This partnership is a testament to our commitment to engaging our young population — 63 percent of which are under 30 — in ways that resonate with their interests while also showcasing and utilizing Saudi Arabia’s rich cultural heritage on the global stage,” he added.
Rashid Al-Rashed, CEO of SRMG, also emphasized the importance of the partnership, saying it resonates with future generations, empowers local talents and promotes storytelling.
Manga Arabia’s General Manager and Editor-in-Chief Essam Bukhary shared that the partnership highlights the Kingdom’s position in sports globally with the help of young Saudi talents, adding that the manga industry plays a huge role in society as it inspires future generations.
AMSY Lab uses a robotic sculpting technique on wood and stone, which visitors will find unique
Updated 03 October 2025
Haifa Alshammari
AMSY Lab is a creative space located in the heart of the lively and vibrant district of JAX in Diriyah. Owned by architect Abdulaziz Abbas and opened eight months ago, the lab serves as a space for artists to express their appreciation for handicrafts as well as engage in various forms of weekly workshops, especially workshops on carving wood.
Despite being established for less than a year, the lab has been developed under the umbrella of AMSY Construction and Innovation Co. and is collaborating with Dahma Coffee, providing a mixture of art experiences while enjoying a cup of coffee for both customers and visitors.
Visitors will be fascinated by the interior. It is by far one of the best coffee and creative places in Riyadh. It combines visual art with coffee and can easily satisfy the senses with the smell of roasted coffee beans and the beautiful carving on the wooden wall.
Another exciting aspect of this place is also the utilization of modern technology in Art. AMSY Lab uses a robotic sculpting technique on wood and stone, which visitors will find unique.
They also organize art galleries and host workshops every weekend for all types of arts, and invite art lovers and artists to get involved in creating artwork, such as when they organized carving on wooden coffee tables and phone holders in the past, along with decoupage on cup coasters and clay workshops.
However, the coffee options are limited to almost the basic hot drinks. Dahma coffee serves only hot beverages with only three types of dessert. It would be much better if they also included cold drinks in their menu for visitors who might prefer iced coffee over hot coffee.
Another point that might be a disadvantage is the cost of workshops. Workshops cost from SR200 ($53.33) to SR300, which some will believe is a bit expensive.
Bad Bunny celebrates Palestinian listeners embracing his music
Updated 03 October 2025
Arab News
DUBAI: Puerto Rican star Bad Bunny this week spoke about the global reach of his songs, highlighting how deeply moved he feels by listeners in Palestine embracing his work.
Speaking in an interview with Billboard Arabia, the Grammy-winning artist reflected on the response to his track “DtMF.”
“It’s really beautiful to see so many people from Latin America connecting with that song, people from Palestine connecting with that song, people from all over the world connecting with that song,” he said.
He explained that the impact extended to his other personal works. “And not only with that one but also with ‘DeVita’ and ‘Dalma Fotos,’ songs where I mention San Juan, songs where I mention places only from here, from Puerto Rico, where I mention my grandfather … Personal songs that people identify with,” he added.
Bad Bunny reflected on what this connection means for him as an artist. “That’s where you see that music is about that, and art in general is about being real, about being honest, and about people being able to identify with what you feel, because through those songs they see that there is no difference between them and me.”
“DtMF” — short for “Debi Tirar Mas Fotos” (“I should’ve taken more photos”) — went viral in Palestine, with people sharing before-and-after pictures of destruction from the war with Israel.
In the song, Bad Bunny looks back on moments he wishes he had captured, weaving in references to Puerto Rico, his grandfather and local musical styles such as bomba and plena.
While he dwells on regret, he also emphasizes the importance of cherishing what remains, valuing connections, and honoring one’s roots and memories.
Inside Ithra’s ‘Horizon in Their Hands’ exhibition
Overlooked stories of pioneering Arab women come to light in new show
Updated 05 October 2025
Jasmine Bager
DHAHRAN: There’s a new exhibition in town. Some of the artists you know, and some you don’t — which is exactly the point.
The works of more than four dozen pioneering women from across the Arab world are on display — some for the first time ever — in “Horizon in Their Hands: Women Artists from the Arab World (’60s–’80s),” which opened Sept. 18 at the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) in Dhahran and runs until Feb. 14. The show contains 70 works by artists from 13 countries.
Fatima Hassan Assiri, ‘Untitled.’ (Courtesy of Jameelah Assiri)
“The idea behind the title was to give back agency to a generation of women who have been overlooked,” the show’s curator, Rémi Homs, tells Arab News. “We also wanted to see this relationship between arts and craft as a horizon for further research. And we wanted to have this idea of hands — something handmade.”
The exhibition is a collaboration between Ithra and Barjeel, a UAE-based foundation established by Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi in 2010. Of the 50 artists featured, four are from Saudi Arabia: Mona Al-Munajjed, Fatima Hassan Assiri, Mounirah Mosly, and Safeya Binzagr, regarded as the mother of Saudi modern art. Both Al-Munajjed and Binzagr are the subjects of an “In Focus” section of the show, along with the late Tunisian artist Safia Farhat, and the Wissa Wassef Art Center in Egypt, which preserves hand-weaving traditions.
Mona Al-Munajjed, ‘Dreams Come True in Saudi,’ 2022 - Batik on silk. (Courtesy of the artist)
Al-Munajjed’s works, including “Traditional Saudi Door” and “Minaret of Mosque” — both from the mid-Eighties — weave together personal memory and collective history, capturing intimate domestic scenes and broader social narratives of Jeddah. Using the fiery batik dyeing technique, she blends vibrant colors and subtle textures, creating visual stories that feel both deeply personal and historically resonant.
Assiri, the mother of renowned artists Ahmed and Jamila Mater, showcases an untitled acrylic-on-wood panel piece — a complex composition that intertwines colors and motifs, employing the feminist-centric traditional Saudi art form, Al-Qatt Al-Asiri — which women historically used to decorate their homes with specific shapes, colors, and markings, and is listed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Nadia Mohamed, ‘Palms and Fields,’ 2021 - Tapestry. (Courtesy of Barjeel Art Foundation Collection, Sharjah)
“The Young Woman,” by Mosly, exemplifies the late artist’s ability to blend portraiture with broader social and cultural themes, while Binzagr’s lithography etchings, intimate and bold, captured the spirit of Saudi life, blending figurative storytelling with a modernist sensibility that continues to resonate. Her 1980 work “Desert Ship,” depicting camels in front of a tent, is particularly striking.
The show is split into thematic sections, including “Depicting a Rapid Modernization,” “Alternative Pathways: Self-Taught Artists,” “Revisiting Islamic Art Legacies,” “New Media Experimentation,” “Reclaiming Local Craft Practices,” and “Al-Qatt Al-Asiri.”
Many of the works carry partial or unknown histories. Homs cites a brass piece by Egyptian artist Atyat El-Ahwal (1989), initially listed only by name and date.
“We basically had no information about her,” he says. “We included her work because we wanted to focus not just on the more well-known names,” he said. Further research — and input from visitors and experts — helped uncover her full name, dates of birth and death (1919–2012), and even a video likely recorded in the 1970s found on YouTube, all allowing her work to be contextualized in a broader history.
Everyday materials appear in surprising ways — transformed into abstract compositions, for example — and embroidery is reimagined as narrative painting. Henna recurs across many works; Homs highlighted Emirati pioneer Najat Makki, saying: “Henna was an accessible part of everyday life.”
He praises the artists’ innovative and creative use of available materials. “Something that you cannot see in history books from the West, but it’s something very important and, in my opinion, very groundbreaking,” he says.
And Homs is hopeful that the exhibition will lead to further revelations of artworks by women in the Arab world.
“Yes, we are seeing 70 different works by 50 different artists—22 of whom are still alive,” he says. “But it’s the tip of the iceberg. I’d say that we are seeing maybe the first 5 percent of artists we need to discover.”
REVIEW: ‘Wayward’ — Toni Collette shines in Mae Martin’s Netflix thriller
Updated 03 October 2025
Adam Grundey
DUBAI: Don’t be misled by the fact that “Wayward” is the creation of Canadian comedian and actor Mae Martin. This is not a comedy, but an eerie thriller set in the early Noughties in a creepily off-kilter, verdant small town in Vermont called Tall Pines — a name whose echoes of David Lynch’s early-Nineties cult classic “Twin Peaks” seems unlikely to be a coincidence.
Martin plays Alex, a cop who has moved from Detroit to Tall Pines with pregnant partner, Laura (Sarah Gadon), who is herself a graduate of the town’s central focus, an academy for “troubled” teens run — and founded — by Evelyn Wade (Toni Collette), an unsettlingly weird woman whose life goal of enabling kids to bypass the intergenerational trauma passed down by their parents involves techniques that are unlikely to be sanctioned by any sane society. But Tall Pines isn’t a sane society, populated as it mainly is by graduates of Tall Pines Academy.
A parallel plotline follows two teenage best friends from Toronto: Laura (Alyvia Alyn Lind) — a wrong-side-of-the-tracks kinda gal who dabbles in drugs and is dealing with the death of her sister, and Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) the more strait-laced of the two, whose friendship with Laura has scared her strict parents enough for them to have her sent to the academy. When she discovers this, Laura sets out to rescue her, but ends up incarcerated too.
The atmosphere of general not-quite-rightness is set up early on — a slight over-eagerness on the part of the natives to welcome Alex; the cult-y décor, hierarchy and activities of the academy; Evelyn’s assumption of a mother’s role with Laura… But Laura seems happy to be back, and, at first, there’s nothing quite concrete enough for Alex to be able to fully justify jumping in the car with Laura and getting out of there. That soon changes. But by then, it’s already too late.
“Wayward” has plenty of faults: The characterization, especially of the teenagers, is often clunky and the plot twists don’t always work — sometimes confusing rather than propelling the story. But the show’s ambition should be lauded — it’s tackling “big” topics in an entertaining, engaging way. And Collette gives a performance that’s compelling, charismatic and repellent all at once, making Evelyn such a great creation (credit to Martin too, for that) that she saves the show from mediocrity.
Sotheby’s brings Safeya Binzagr work to Riyadh for Cultural Investment Conference
Updated 03 October 2025
Adam Grundey
RIYADH: At the Kingdom’s inaugural Cultural Investment Conference, which opened in Riyadh on Sept. 29, auction house Sotheby’s presented a rare and significant acquisition from the Arab world: a piece by the late Safeya Binzagr, a seminal figure in the Saudi modern-art scene.
“Coffee Shop in Madina Road” was painted in 1968, the same year in which Binzagr held her first exhibition with her peer, and fellow art pioneer, Mounirah Mosly in Jeddah.
“(That exhibition) marked an early, visible moment for women artists in the Kingdom’s modern scene, shaping expectations for subsequent generations,” Alexandra Roy, Sotheby’s head of sale, Modern and Contemporary Middle East, told Arab News.
Binzagr’s influence stretched well beyond her work. Perhaps even more significant is the eponymous cultural center she opened in Jeddah, which, Roy said, “cemented her role in preserving and presenting Saudi cultural narratives to the public.”
It also helped bring through a new generation of Saudi women artists. One of the center’s former students, Daniah Alsaleh, told Arab News soon after Binzagr’s death last year: “Safeya was a true pioneer, dedicated to both art and education, and her contributions will continue to inspire many. I am incredibly grateful for the impact she had on my artistic journey.”
“Safeya also collected traditional costumes and rarely sold or gifted unique painted works and actually stopped selling in the mid-1970s — a stance that placed artistic and cultural preservation above commercial circulation, while intensifying institutional interest and long-term esteem for her oeuvre,” Roy noted.
That stance also means that Binzagr’s works rarely feature at auction.
“Works like this are exceptionally scarce — making any appearance on the market a notable event — and very few are in private hands,” Roy said. “It’s from 1968, placing it at the very start of her public career and within the formative phase in which her visual language and cultural preoccupations were taking shape.
“Seen against the backdrop of her later museum recognition, the work speaks to an artist whose practice is now preserved institutionally,” she continued. “So this early example carries both historical and documentary weight in the narrative of Saudi modern art.”
