iGuzzini partners with HERstory
(UAE) – iGuzzini partners with HERstory, an exhibition directed by Prof. Rafia Ghubash, supported by the Women’s Museum in Dubai and in collaboration with the School of Design, Politecnico Milano.
Curated by Anna Barbara (Politecnico di Milano; SenseLab, Milan) and Indu Varanasi (irdesign, Dubai), HERstory is a curated cross-cultural interaction between women who have enlightened lives through their words and actions.
The participatory project is a dynamic interaction between five women from the UAE paired with five female artists who translated and articulated their stories through art.
HERstory is an intergenerational creative exchange among inspiring women in the UAE, a collection of stories aimed at building a dialogue between different generations, bridging the experiences. The interaction is not aimed at developing a biography of the women leaders but to activate, nurture and document a unique exchange and dialogue between inspiring personalities.
Some of those involved included Isobel Abulhoul, Founder of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature and Co-Founder of Magrudy’s bookshop chain. Afra Atiq is an Emirati award-winning poet, Alla Lootag from the curatorial team at the Louvre, Abu Dhabi and Najat Makki, the first Emirati woman to earn a government scholarship to study art abroad in 1977.
The event will be held at the Women’s Museum in Dubai on 23 January from 6pm. The exhibition, displaying words, images, objects and videos that are interwoven into the understanding of the story-telling process, will run until 31 March.
iGuzzini donated and upgraded the lighting scheme in the mezzanine where the artworks are displayed. The Palco low voltage illuminates the exhibition area and provides a higher visual comfort for visitors. Its higher colour rendering reveals truer colours and chromatic nuances of the displayed artworks, producing a uniformed light beam, free of any chromatic aberrations.
HERstory is sponsored by Came and Kelmer and is the first of a wider project for Women Design Capital, which was launched during the Dubai Design Week by Anna Barbara and Ingrid Paoletti. The Politecnico Milan is team leader of a constellation of institutions and organisations willing to encourage the cross-cultural exchange and dialogue on topics concerning women through a series of initiatives, activities and projects heading towards the Expo 2020.
The Women’s Museum is the first of its kind in the region and is a national archive and documentation centre dedicated to the women of UAE. It is concerned with all aspects of their lives with historical and social contexts. It is a contemporary cultural centre that explores the activities of Emirati women in the arts, academy, business, culture, politics and society.
The Women’s Museum was founded in 2012 by Prof. Rafia Ghubash, Professor of Psychiatry, former President of the Arabian Gulf University in Bahrain and President of the Arab Network for Women in Science and Technology and is illuminated by iGuzzini lighting.
