Commissioner: Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, President of the Bahrain Authority for Culture & Antiquities
Curators: Noura Al-Sayeh, Ghassan Chemali
Exhibitors: Bureau Bas Smets, Christian Kerez OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Team del Pearling Path (Fatema Abdali Abdulnabi, Shatha Abu El Fath, Ahmad Abd El Nabi, Batool Al Shaikh, Mario Affaki, Fatema Al Hayki, Ahmad Al Jishi, Mustafa Al Zurki, Ronan Dayot, Wissam Fadlalah, Sarah Fareed Hassani, Lucia Gomez, Yehya Hassan, Marwa Nabeel, Tamer Nassar, Faisal Soudaga, Shadi Taha), Studio Anne Holtrop, Studio Gionnata Rizzi, Valerio Olgiati
Bahrain (Kingdom of)
In Muharraq: The Pearling Path
Album
Description
In Muharraq, the UNESCO World heritage site Pearling, Testimony of an Island Economy relates the unique legacy of Bahrain’s pearling era through the architecture and urban heritage of the old city as well as three oyster beds. The project is an ongoing work in progress that adapts itself to the challenges of a changing city, and to reinventing the city within its existing footprint. The exhibition presents both the results and the process of making, through models, objects, minutes of meetings, artefacts, drawings, and conversations, showing the project in its current state. It explores the challenges in reviving the memory of pearling, as a backdrop to a culturallyled development approach and as a binder between the physical makings of the city and its identity, and questions whether pearls, oysters, coral stones, cars, and humans can sustainably and generously cohabit in the city today.
