Blog

Cairo · Egypt

The Museum of Everything That Became a Tomb

Egypt built a museum to tell the story of an entire civilisation — seven thousand years of it, from flint tools to the present. The public knows it for one thing: the room where twenty dead kings lie in the dark.

In a black, hushed hall beneath the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Old Cairo lie the mummified bodies of Ramesses II, Hatshepsut, and eighteen other rulers of the New Kingdom — carried here in 2021 in a televised parade watched around the world.

Dubai · United Arab Emirates

The Flower That Was Never Only Beautiful

The rose rules Persian poetry and painting — but under the sweetness sits a thorn, a bleeding bird, and a national emblem quietly assembled out of Chinese, European and Persian parts. A history of gol o bolbol, from a medieval still to a Dubai gallery.

Gol o bolbol — the rose and the nightingale — is among the most beautiful images in a thousand years of Persian art, and in modern Persian it also means sweet, empty talk. Under the tile, the picture is darker: a bird singing in blood for a flower that will not answer and will not last.

Amman · Jordan

Why Wadi Rum Keeps Playing Mars: A Desert That Is Right About the Wrong Planet

A valley in southern Jordan has become cinema's favourite Mars — not because it is like the planet, but because it looks like the one we carry in our heads.

Put Wadi Rum beside a rover photograph and you can't tell which is Mars. But the desert shares almost nothing with the real planet except its colour — and lately, the illusion has grown powerful enough that real space missions have come to Jordan to rehearse.

Baghdad · Iraq

Where Is Agrabah? The City Disney Assembled From Real Places

Agrabah was going to be Baghdad. A war made it fictional — and then Disney built it back out of real places, from a tomb in Agra to a valley in Jordan that usually plays Mars.

The Sultan's palace where Princess Jasmine feels trapped has the silhouette of the Taj Mahal — which is not a palace at all, but a tomb. That is how Agrabah works. Disney's fairy-tale city was going to be Baghdad, until the Gulf War made the name impossible; the studio invented a place that could not be found on a map, then quietly rebuilt it out of real ones — Isfahan and Agra, Marrakesh and Mandalay, a Jordanian desert that has played both Arabia and Mars.

Why Old Sana'a Builds Upward

The tower houses of Old Sana'a rise five to nine storeys of stone and mud — and the usual reasons, defence and lack of space, are both too small.

In one of the oldest cities on earth, families live stacked from the animals on the ground floor to the poetry room at the top, in mud towers nine storeys high. Why Sana'a built vertically has half a dozen answers, heat least of all — and the system that raised the towers is the same one now dissolving them.

Abu Dhabi · United Arab Emirates

The Word for Beautiful Was the Word for Moon

The moon has been the measure of a beautiful face in Arabic verse for fifteen centuries — but beauty was only one of the things that light was ever asked to carry. A history of one disc, from a pre-Islamic ode to a glowing sphere over an Abu Dhabi harbour.

Ya qamar — you moon — is the oldest compliment in Arabic, and almost nothing about it means what we assume. The moon it praised was not always a woman, not always even a kindness, and in the end not only about beauty at all.

Commission Agreements for Artists

Scope, deposits, copyright, delivery and cancellation: the key clauses you lock into writing before any studio work starts

Map the clauses in an art commission agreement before you stretch a canvas: brief and revision limits, deposits and kill fees, title versus copyright, delivery, acceptance and exit ramps. Educational overview from union and arts-law templates. Not legal advice; pricing method sits in the sibling guide.

How to Sign and Number an Edition

Pencil layout, fraction numbering and AP/HC/PP marks so every impression in your limited edition reads as authorised studio practice

Sign and number limited edition prints with standard pencil placement: edition fraction left, optional title centre, signature right. Covers AP, HC, PP and BAT marks, 2H pencil habits, full-bleed and verso signing, workshop chops, a materials table, professional studio practice, costs and when to bring in a master printer or publisher.

How to Apply for an Open Call

Eligibility, proposals, portals and fee warnings for artists applying to residencies, prizes and exhibition open calls

An art open call application succeeds when you match eligibility, follow file rules, and write a clear proposal for that programme. This guide covers how to select calls, build materials, handle deadlines, read fees, spot predatory offers, and decide when to skip, with pointers to gallery approach and submission-pack siblings.

What Goes in a Gallery Submission

Images, CV, statement, cover note and price list: the pack galleries ask for, with file specs and a ready checklist

A gallery submission pack is a fixed set of files: images with captions, artist statement, short bio, CV, cover note and a price or inventory list. This guide covers what each piece does, common file specs from CAA and CaFÉ norms, how to assemble email and portal bundles, and where approach etiquette belongs instead.

How to Describe Your Own Work

Tombstone facts, wall-length captions and sales copy for single paintings and objects, without rewriting your artist statement

Describe one painting or object with museum-grade tombstone data, a short looking caption and, when needed, practical sales notes. Covers title, date, medium and size conventions, context-specific lengths, process language that stays honest, edge cases, professional editing habits, costs and when to hire help.

How to Write an Artist Bio

Third-person career paragraphs for websites, press packs and programmes, with length targets from fifty words to a short page

An artist bio is a short third-person career summary for websites, press and programmes. This guide covers bio versus statement versus CV, a draft method from verified facts to prose, length versions by context, edge cases for thin records and collaborations, how editors cut text, and when paid help is worth it.