It was a pleasant surprise to see sunny skies greet the attendees at the two-day Quoz Arts Fest in Alserkal Avenue on Saturday after nearly a week of dismal weather in Dubai. Up to Sunday, the milestone 10th festival, which has the theme “Shift Away,” will feature live music, visual and performing arts, gastronomic experiences, public art installations, and more. Along with a farmers’ market, art exhibitions, public art, talks, and workshops, themes, or “portals,” such as Cyborg, Nature, and Childhood, are curated throughout the alleyways of the Dubai arts district.
The varied schedule of events reflects the diversity of the audience, according to the National. New shows are being presented in galleries like Mestaria Gallery and the Ishara Art Foundation, where young parents with young children in strollers, culture enthusiasts, and creatives are constantly coming and going. Teenagers skating in front of their families, young couples and friends walking their dogs, bookworms making their way to Zerzura Rare Books in A4 space for a book launch, music fans congregating at the main stage, and costumed dancers mingling with the throng are also there.
Quoz Arts Fest is a genuine representation of the vibrant and expanding community that Alserkal Avenue has played a significant role in building in Dubai. Quoz Arts Fest offers a stage for upcoming artists from all disciplines to present their work. This year’s festival has an immersive art experience called Concrete by Montreal’s Irregular, which is drawing sizable crowds. Two enormous, ceiling-high screens in the middle of Alserkal Avenue’s courtyard are titled As WaterFalls and investigate how the movement of water within a digital cascade symbolizes our relationship with the element and its many facets.
The massive installation responds to flashlights from cell phones and displays various movements and shapes that cascade down the screen for viewers to interact with. People of various ages and ethnicities are taking pleasure in this vibrant, engaging event. The centre stage is located across from Concrete, in front of several food trucks and performers decked up as silver dancing robots. The Tasty Biscuit from Dubai, Bu Kolthoum, a rapper and vocalist with soul and funk influences, and Saint Levant, a viral artist, are just a few of the acts performing throughout the course of the weekend.
Each year’s festival experience has grown to include live music and entertainment. Music blogger and radio personality MC Big Hass, who will perform on both festival evenings, claims that Quoz Arts Fest has made it possible for musicians to reach out to new audiences.
For certain musicians, the festival has almost become a rite of passage, according to Big Hass, who claims that if they can “rock this festival and generate hype,” they will be able to move on. “Places like this, where beautiful energies are colliding, where you have a diversity of people coming, it’s very important to get to know who’s who and who’s making what,” he adds. “It’s the energy that this festival gives … it’s beautiful.”
Jurkute says it’s been important for them to make sure the festival is not “regionally bound”, but that they “stay connected with talent that has a connection to this region”.
“Dubai, as a city, already has been this extensive platform for the world,” Big Hass adds. “It’s not about where you were born, or whether you are local. It really is this connection to this place, in this part of the world.”