Interrupting Patterns: Celebrate Ramadan with art at Alserkal Avenue

Written by:
Manaal Fatimah
27th February 2025

Ramadan in a new light…

Alserkal Avenue is bringing the Holy Month of Ramadan to us in a new light. This Ramadan, the arts and culture hotspot will be hosting specialised programmes to celebrate the essence of the special month – when time slows down, stands still and forces us to change our daily rhythms to a new tune.

Interrupting Patterns is all about taking a long, hard look at this pocket in time and space, and invites audiences to collectively sit with the interruption of time itself, a time in the year when the community comes together and adopts a new lifestyle, even if only for a month.

The programme will run over two weekends in March – March 8 to 9 and March 15 to 16, and is rooted entirely in fiction. Some essential questions are asked and explored through this programme, including questions about what happens when we break our everyday routines.

Many art forms will be highlighted during this time, including poetry, performance, film and theatre, and through these mediums one shall discover new stories when rethinking the ones already inherited. It’s a basically a time to pause, reflect and reinvent yourself and what you kn0w.

The programme will also have dedicated sessions for children, and together with uncovering new perspectives, challenging how stories are told, bringing forgotten truths into the spotlight and posing new questions to old narratives, this Ramadan will be an unforgettable one.

What’s On at Alserkal?

Live Performances

Music will take center stage at The Yard with two acts. Ghazi & Boom.Diwan led by Kuwaiti composer, guitarist, and vocalist Ghazi Faisal Al-Mulaifi presents a collection of original compositions exploring our shared responsibility in the face of social injustice in collaboration with percussionist Berke Can Özcan (Turkey), keys player Jesse Boere (Netherlands), and bassist Steven Bedford (UK).

Tanaghom featuring Hanan Halwany, AnasAli Mortada, and Sandu blends Arabic Buzuq traditions with Indian rhythms, layered with keyboard melodies, piano chords, and deep bass undertones.

Tatreez Circles

Tatreez Circles at KAVE invites participants to gather in a circle and spin their own stories, drawing from the Palestinian storytelling tradition of patterned embroidery, passed down generation to generation. These sessions honour heritage in a modern way to speaks to us in the present.

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Workshops

Engage in a number of literary and creative workshops, perfect for the written word and visual storytelling. Archetypes & Echoes: Writing Through Imitation by Avni Doshi will take you through mimicry and transformation in writing. Meanwhile, illustrator and artist Mohammed Al Shaibani will host a hands-on comic-making workshop, Comics Through Light, where participants will create their own comics and experiment with developing them on photographic film using analog processing techniques. Post-Processing: Capturing Prompts by Gulf Photo Plus & Dubai Poetry Slam bridges poetry and photography.

Film screenings

Catch the The Tedious Tour of M, directed by Hend Bakr, which traces the journey of Mohammed Hafez Ragab, the writer credited with reinventing the modern Arabic short story, and Divine Intervention, directed by Elia Suleiman, remains an iconic work of political satire and absurdist cinema. Catch all the screenings put up by Cinema Akil at The Yard.