Their latest adventure saw them travel from Amsterdam to Dubai entirely by land, crossing 11 countries and covering over 9,000 kilometers. “We crossed 11 countries, covered 9,000 kilometers, and spent more than 155 hours in 12 trains, 2 buses, 4 minivans, 2 taxis, and 1 ferry,” Adam shared, highlighting the unique experiences that came with their unconventional route.

For Adam and Veronica, this approach isn’t about avoiding flights—although Adam admits to a fear of flying—but rather a desire to immerse themselves fully in each journey.

“It’s not only about the fear of flying. We just enjoy more travelling by land, so we don’t even think about flying somewhere,” Adam said. By avoiding planes, the couple experiences the gradual transitions between countries, a perspective often lost at 30,000 feet.

Their journey brought them to unexpected places, like Transnistria, a breakaway state from Moldova, where they felt like they had stepped back in time. “It’s essentially a Soviet museum as if time had stopped there,” Adam recalled, noting the warm, if surprised, reception they received from locals.

Another highlight was crossing Turkey by train, a journey that combined stunning scenery with memorable moments like dining in the train’s restaurant car.

“We crossed Turkey almost entirely by train and it was a very scenic ride,” the couple shared. These experiences, they believe, are the heart of their travel philosophy.

Currently, Adam and Veronica are taking on an even more ambitious journey—from Dubai to Japan, once again without flying. This route will take them through Iran, Armenia, Georgia, Russia, Central Asia, and Mongolia, before reaching Japan by ferry. Despite the challenges, including visa complexities for Russia, the couple is committed to their overland journey, hoping to turn their travels into a sustainable lifestyle through their growing online presence. “We try to work hard on all these things on the internet – our website, YouTube, and social media,” Adam said.

Their minimalist approach extends to their packing, with just one travel backpack each and an extra small one for electronics. As they traverse different cultures and languages, Adam and Veronica find that human connection often transcends words. “Sometimes you don’t even need to understand each other. You just feel it,” Adam reflected.

For those inspired by their journey, the couple’s advice is simple: “Just go. Don’t overthink it.” They believe the most rewarding experiences come not from quickly reaching a destination, but from savoring every moment of the journey. As they continue their travels, Adam and Veronica embody the essence of slow travel, offering a compelling alternative to the conventional tourism model.

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Tickets for World Art Dubai are available on Platinumlist: https://shorturl.at/ekqI8

Dubai, UAE, 26 April 2024: World Art Dubai (WAD), the largest contemporary art fair in the region, is poised to celebrate its 10th edition. This year WAD will unveil 12 international pavilions dedicated to showcasing the vibrant artistic diversity from different countries and regions. From 2^nd to 5^th May 2024, art enthusiasts will have the opportunity to explore artworks from different pavilions. Namely, the UAE, America, Asia, China, Europe, GCC, India, Iran, Japan, Russia, and the UK, highlighting the universal language of art that transcends borders.

The fair, held at Dubai World Trade Centre in partnership with Dubai Culture, will feature over 4,000 artworks from over 65 countries. It will be presenting a dynamic snapshot of Dubai’s unique blend of local and international influences. The fair will be reinforcing the city’s position as an arts powerhouse for the Global South, elevating the global positioning of WAD

As a matter of fact, the international pavilions also stand as cultural gateways. Each offers a unique window into the country or region’s artistic heritage and contemporary creativity. From the traditional to the avant-garde, these pavilions curate a rich tapestry of artistic expressions. They underscore the universal language of art that unites us all. Each pavilion is a testament to the global nature of World Art Dubai and its commitment to fostering cultural exchange and appreciation. Moreover, it is adding positive economic impact to a city where 9% of the GDP comes from tourism.

World Art Dubai’s landmark 10^th edition will showcase a diverse array of pavilions and artists from around the world.

UAE and GCC Pavilion Highlights

The UAE and GCC Pavilions will spotlight both the talent of residents who call Dubai home and talented citizens. Undoubtedly, this demonstrates how the two populations exist and interact through their creative drives. These artists include Daria Avdeeva, Javeria Khan, and Francine Kaspar. They present their vibrant artworks, harmoniously blending classical techniques with contemporary interpretations, reflecting the UAE’s multicultural identity. Additionally, Hend Rashed, a Dubai-based abstract artist, will present her dynamic creations. Distinctly, with a repertoire spanning seven years at prestigious exhibitions worldwide, including in Singapore, Oman, and Italy, Rashed’s artistry has garnered recognition. She has earned nominations for the UAE Residence Artist Award by World Art Dubai for three consecutive years.

Bahraini artist Leena Al Ayoobi, Iraqi artist Nabil Ali, and Lebanese artist Lydia Moawad will showcase their unique artistic visions. They blend cultural influences and personal experiences to create compelling artworks. Specifically, their pieces demonstrate the wide variety of styles and cultural influences in Middle Eastern art.

Representing Diverse Global Regions

The pavilions of World Art Dubai feature artistic fusion among cultures, continents, and art schools that converge in Dubai from diverse global regions. The Europe Pavilion is curated by Tablinum Cultural Management. It presents innovative contemporary art, with artists like Tatiana Kramarenko, Follow Med, and Petr Shebarshin exploring themes of chaos, spirituality, and life’s profundity. China’s presence, facilitated by Artaflo Collective from Hong Kong, reflects the belief in art as a universal language. India’s offering showcases the dynamic art scene. This includes Sanuj Birla’s pop art, Raihan R Vadra’s immersive installations, and Niyati Parekh’s art and interior design.

Japan Promotion’s ‘Japan Tide’ project presents a curated blend of traditional and contemporary Japanese arts. The Russia Pavilion, featuring Igor Kirillov and IMMI Art, offers immersive experiences in romantic hyperrealism. Iran’s pavilion, represented by Ronas Gallery and Negara Group, highlights the vibrant contemporary art scene. In addition, insights from America, Asia, and the UK are incorporated, including contributions from the Museum of Modern Renaissance, Art Muse Gallery, and Lenny Lopes, respectively. These offerings provide fresh perspectives and innovative approaches to art.

Asma Al Sharif, Assistant Vice President at Exhibitions, Dubai World Trade Centre remarked about the fair. She said, “World Art Dubai’s 10th edition underscores our commitment to making art accessible and celebrating the diversity of the global art scene. The 12 international pavilions serve as portals, inviting visitors to immerse themselves in a vibrant mosaic of artistic expressions and explore a rich tapestry from around the world.”

Spotlight on Legacy and Innovative Artists

Notably, legacy exhibitors include Japan Promotion and Art Plus Photographers Production who have been loyal exhibitors at the fair for the past eight years. This signifies their longstanding commitment to World Art Dubai. Alongside them, new artists like Rinko Lim and Liz Ramos-Prado bring fresh perspectives to the Dubai art scene.

Rinko Lim uniquely blends art, design, and energy therapy. She harnesses her experiences from the United States to delve into themes of self-discovery and spiritual wellness. Meanwhile, Liz Ramos-Prado seamlessly merges graphic design with fine art, bridging the gap between commercial and personal artistic expressions. With a decade-long career in the UAE’s media and design landscape, Ramos-Prado’s work delves into the intricacies of human emotion.

With Hotel Indigo Dubai Downtown, the first certified boutique hotel in the UAE, proudly serving as the fair’s Art Hotel Partner. Additionally, Al Hathboor Group have joined WAD as Artistic Sponsor. There is an anticipated turnout of over 15,000 visitors at World Art Dubai 2024. The fair promises an immersive cultural journey, celebrating the transformative impact of art and its ability to forge global connections. Secure your tickets for World Art Dubai now on Platinumlist: https://shorturl.at/ekqI8.

For more information, visit www.worldartdubai.com

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The event was limited to 64 galleries, less than a quarter of the 282 that will attend Art Basel Miami Beach next month. It only had 35 booths, most of which were shared by a Japanese host gallery and an international collaborator. Some galleries found their partners by sharing an artist’s representation.

Kavi Gupta (Chicago) and Kotaro Nukaga (Tokyo), for instance, split their works on either side of a dreamy Tomokazu Matsuyama painting. At the same time, Denny Dimin (New York) and Koki Arts (Tokyo) divided around Amanda Valdez.

For other pairings, we have Canada (New York) with Tomio Koyama Gallery (Tokyo), and Shibunkaku (Kyoto) with Nonaka-Hill (Los Angeles).

Yamashita said, “I did matchmaking.” The Hole (New York) and Nanzuka Underground shared the booth that best embodied the fair’s collaborative spirit (Tokyo). Their works, which included Joakim Ojanen’s ugly-cute paintings and stoneware and Ryuichi Ohira’s two-meter-tall hot pink cherries made of camphor wood, were interspersed but kept coherent thanks to a shared aesthetic that Julien Pomerleau, Director of Operations at The Hole, described as ‘pop’ and ‘joy.’

The booth design and layout by architect Takashi Suo also contributed to the fair’s intimacy. Rather than cramming works onto interior and exterior walls, they were contained within tall wooden walls resembling shipping crates waiting to be unpacked. These formed a network of narrow alleyways meant to resemble Kyoto’s streets.

This created a negative space between booths, which sound artist Miyu Hosoi used greatly in the fair’s public programme. The frantic pace of an art fair is hostile to durational works. Still, Hosoi’s ethereal sound, composed of 60 layers of her voice, was played on speakers running either side of an alleyway, allowing visitors to take it in a while navigating the fair.

Jam Acuzar, who recently moved to Tokyo from the Philippines, curated the public programme.

Takashi Hinoda’s Stink (2002), a ceramic work sculpted and painted to look like polyurethane foam, and Tromarama’s Patgulipat (2022), an upside-down bouncy castle surrounded by hanging construction helmets with a sound element triggered by Twitter activity, were also highlights of her show. Patgulipat is frustrated by the blurring of professional and personal life—work and play—on social media.

The fair’s emphasis on slowing down and cultivating mindfulness was most visible in the exhibition Flowers of Time, curated by Yamashita and held at Hongwanji Dendoin, a red brick building topped with a mosque-like dome in the early Taisho period (1912–1926).

There, Lee Mingwei’s 100 Days With Lily (1995) documents the artist’s efforts to honor his deceased grandmother by doing everything with her favorite flower (eating, shitting, showering, etc.).

Visitors to the Center Empty are encouraged to touch the incense rather than smell it, to hear artworks rather than see them, and to embrace ‘mu,’ which means nothing, emptiness, or without.

The goal is to dissolve the distinction between the self and others, as well as between the self and nature, in the same way that ACK removes walls between galleries.

The timing of the fair is also important in this regard. The main event lasted four days, beginning with a VIP day on November 17, when the fall leaves are changing—maples turning orange and red, ginkgos juggling lemons and limes.

Art Collaboration Kyoto operates at different time scales—business time, botanical time, and generational time—befitting an ancient capital staking its claim in the contemporary art market.

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A ceramic item with a silver streak and a metallic glaze is called Owari Cloisonne. It was first made using a cloisonne ware manufacturing process in Japan in the early 19th century. Cloisonne is still created using the same age-old methods and supplies that skilled artisans have handed down from generation to generation.

Huda Alkhamis-Kanoo, the founder of the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation, as well as diplomats and admirers of Japanese culture, attended the event. Takayuki Ikeda, a renowned craftsman of Owari Cloisonne, demonstrated how to paint the motifs on cloisonne goods while Shigeyuki Ando, president of Ando Cloisonne, discussed the appeal of Owari Cloisonne.

The talk examined the history and art of the distinctively colored Japanese enamelware and attempts to update the tradition into products that may be used in contemporary society.

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One of the allures of Japanese culture is the assimilation and blending of inherited traditional culture and cutting-edge technology. We will have Welcome Art exhibits at the airport, inviting tourists to experience and enjoy the fusion of traditional Japanese art with a wide spectrum of contemporary Media Arts, such as manga and animation, as well as other technology-based art forms.

Hanging scrolls display artwork and calligraphy in alcoves and on walls for decoration or enjoyment. In this exhibition, we’ve combined classic mediums with technology and modern interpretations to create new manifestations.

A monitor has been installed in the middle area, known as the ‘honshi,’ which is traditionally ornamented with a picture or calligraphy, to play videos created by five modern Media Arts artists.

The artists and innovators convey the culture and allure of Japan employing innovative views and techniques to greet and encourage airport guests inside the screen that resembles a hanging scroll.

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The repatriation ended after a legal dispute of two decades. In the 1990s, Tasoula Hajidtofi, the former honorary consul of Cyprus known for her work in helping to repatriate artifacts looted from her home country, found the doors were located at the Kanazawa College of Art in Osaka, Japan. According to her, the college acquired the gates for 14 million yen ($140,000) from a Dutch art dealer in the Hague.

The ornate gold-painted arched doors, dating back to 1778, depict an Annunciation scene on their upper half. The lower half depicts four saints: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom, known as the Three Hierarchs, alongside the Cypriot saint Agios Spyridon.

In its announcement, the Cyprus Department of Antiquities describes the return of the doors as “one of the most renowned and at the same time complex cases of repatriation.” The looting of the church under Turkish military occupation, the department said, “reveals once again the catastrophic consequences of the Turkish invasion on the cultural heritage of Cyprus.”

The church of Agios Anastasios was looted in the years following the invasion of Cyprus by Turkish forces in 1974. The intervention was a response to a military coup led by Greek Cypriot forces. The church is one of many in the region from which religious art was taken and illegally trafficked.

According to a record from a convention around Cyprus cultural property in 2011, a Japanese attorney representing the Kanazawa College of Art claimed that the school purchased the works in good faith, rendering them “legally owned.”

The doors will now be conserved by Cyprus’s Department of Antiquities. After that, they will be given to the office of the Archbishop until their return to the church of Agios Anastasios.

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In the past, the sculpture has been temporarily removed ahead of typhoons to avoid any damage, but the unexpected rapid intensity of Typhoon Lupit had caught the centre off-guard. It is currently being restored and the art centre told the publication it would announce when the work would be displayed again.

Pumpkin was installed at the site in 1994 and has become one of Naoshima Island’s art landmarks. It is one of Kusama’s largest pumpkin sculptures from that period measuring more than 2.4 meters wide.

In 2017, another sculpture in the UK by Kusama was damaged. A pumpkin displayed at the 2017 exhibition “Infinity Mirrored Room—All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., was damaged after a visitor to the show tripped on it while trying to take a selfie.

The yellow pumpkin sculptures represent a cornerstone of the artist’s practice. Kusama has been drawing pumpkins since elementary school. Two of Kusama’s pumpkin sculptures, one in yellow and one in red, both around 6 feet tall, have been installed on Naoshima Island since 1994. The works are also extremely valuable. Earlier this month, one pumpkin work was at the center of a fraudulent scheme by German socialite Angela Gulbenkian, in which she sold a pumpkin work to a buyer for $1.3 million but never delivered the sold work and pocketed the money for herself. Gulbenkian was recently jailed for theft. 

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The digital feline can be seen between the hours of 7am to 1am and behaves like an actual cat. In the morning, it gets started awake, by afternoon it stands and meows at people who pass by and then, in the evening, it lies down to fall asleep and rests its head on its paws.

The cat also greets pedestrians with “nyannichiwa” – a blend of “konnichiwa” for hello, and “nyan” for meow. The display won’t officially launch until Monday, July 12 but test broadcasts have been taking place since last month and many online users have gotten a peak and shared how impressed they are.

For those unable to view it in person because Japan is currently closed to tourists, the company behind the display has created a livestreamed view of the billboard on YouTube. However, they warn that certain angles can affect how the 3D effect is viewed.

Takayuki Ohkawa is a spokesman for Unika, one of the two companies behind the feline display. He told that the cat does not have an official name yet, although fans have been calling it “Shinjuku east exit cat”. He explained the reason behind creating the 3D cat was to help cheer people up during the coronavirus pandemic.

“There are many reasons we decided to display the cat, but one of the big reasons is that with corona, the world became very dark. Through the cat display, we wanted to revive Shinjuku and make it brighter,” said Ohkawa.

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Tentatively named Nintendo Gallery, the museum will sit at the site of the Nintendo Uji Ogura Plant, one of Nintendo’s older factories. It was originally built in 1969 and was used to manufacture playing cards, later housing a customer service center for product repairs. The factory, however, has sat unused since 2016 after the opening of a newer facility. 

Nintendo, which began as a producer of playing cards in 1889, has achieved success with its game consoles as well as with the Mario, Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon media franchises.

In 2020 Nintendo was named Japan’s richest company. The release of the new game Animal Crossing: New Horizons coincided with the pandemic lockdown, which contributed to record sales of the Nintendo Switch handheld gaming system. Profits increased by 34% as the company earned over $16 billion in sales. 

Pokémon playing cards have also found renewed interest during the pandemic, with a rare sealed Pokémon card set fetching $408,000 at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas.

The museum, tentatively titled the Nintendo Gallery, will showcase the company’s historic products as well as related exhibits and game experiences. It is slated to open in 2024.

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