FashCultivate Returns

- Saturday 14 November, 2020 10:00PM

VENUE

Building No. 5, Dubai Design District

9 November, 2020 – 14 November, 2020

1971 – Design Space presents FashCultivate at Dubai Design Week 2020. The exhibition celebrates date palms for being one of the most cherished gifts of nature and their importance throughout the history of human civilization. Date palms (Phoenix Dactylifera) have become a part of the cultural and historical identity of the Gulf Region playing an important role in the region’s economy.

Curated by Khulood Bin Thani and Fatma Al Mahmoud, seven Gulf-based designers worked on commissioned pieces within the areas of textiles, handmade objects and architecture. True to the exhibition title, the designers researched date palms and their cultivation extensively, thereby defining certain narratives, aligning them with their own ideas and merging them into their own, hand-crafted results. These commissions reference various functions of date palm trees as well as their fibres, colours, structures, nourishments, haptics and inherent beauty.

The exhibition theme is also mirrored in the bespoke exhibition design itself, created by the Sharjah-based Interior/Product Designer Alya Al Ghfeli. In addition to the commissions, the curators initiated a research study with Irthi Contemporary Crafts Council in which experts working in laboratories created a new material fabricated out of the date palm.