Nawwara is a highly visual narrative tale that unveils the magical adventures of the heroic role a 13-year-old girl plays in a continuously troubled area of the world.

As in all magical tales, Nawwara’s story is told through a narrator, an ancient Arab manuscript secretly hidden for a thousand years and more, in her house at the centre of a desolate desert.

The journey of Nawwara tells the story of a nation that has lost its golden compass, but not its glow and is aimed at both young adults and adults.

Author and artist Mimosa Al Arawi wrote Nawwara as a poetically narrated artwork; where reality and imagination together, intensely connect fantasy with reality, and words with images.

At the launching of Nawwara, a short video by the author will be screened. It will echo the mood of the book and express the author’s desire to explore the gap that bridges between reality and perception, seeing and believing, abstraction and defined forms, as well as open spaces and fields of defined force.

An exhibition of the major mixed media artwork that appeared both in the book and the video will be held during the two-day event, which continues on Saturday, January 26th, from 11 AM to 9 PM.

Artist Statement

The key to what I came to call 'art practices', whether poetry, prose, critical writings, video making, photography, or paintings, were deeply anchored in my early and late teen years.

Looking back now, if I have managed to realise anything, it is to maintain the integrity of my various practices, and the belief that life is worth living despite all the bruises.