38Farewell, Brangelina,

but wait: Celeb royalty abounds

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2016

Visitors attend the media preview of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei Italy’s first major retrospective “Libero” at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence yesterday. The exhibition will start on September 23 and will run until January 22, 2017. — AFP

Art lovers will have to wait a bitlonger to visit a much-anticipatedMideast outpost of the Louvre,

which will be headed by a Frenchmaninvolved in the project for years. The AbuDhabi Tourism and Culture Authority saidTuesday the branch in the United ArabEmirates capital won’t host its first visitorsuntil sometime in 2017. It’s the latest in aseries of delays for the project, which wasoriginally slated to open in 2012. It mostrecently was expected to be finished byyear’s end.

The tourism authority named Parismuseums veteran Manuel Rabate as themuseum’s first director. The 40-year-oldhas worked at the original Louvre andserved as CEO of Agence France-Museums, which is charged with carryingout France’s commitments in developingthe UAE museum, since 2013. Designedby renowned architect Jean Nouvel, thesky-lit, domed museum is the centerpieceof an ambitious waterfront cultural dis-trict that will also include a branch of the

Guggenheim museum. The district,known as Saadiyat Island, has for yearsbeen a focus of criticism over the treat-ment of thousands of low-paid migrantworkers involved in its construction.

The Tourism Development andInvestment Co, the project’s government-backed developer, put in place policiesdesigned to protect workers and monitorcompliance at the site. Rights activists saythe reforms were not enough to preventexploitation and abuse. One worker diedwhile working on the Louvre last year.Curators have acquired 600 pieces of artso far, and plan to display them alongside300 others on loan from French muse-ums. The collection includes works byFrench painters Paul Gauguin andEdouard Manet, as well as religiouspieces, including a 6th-Century ChineseBuddha sculpture and a more than 500-year-old Torah from Yemen. — AP

On bakery walls, buildings and roadside sheetingin South Sudan’s capital, Juba, street artists fedup with war are painting for peace as young

musicians, actors and artists campaign to end decadesof conflict. A mural of a child in a singlet working at asewing machine reads “the young who are tired are theones who will sew the fabric of our nation back togeth-er.” A white-washed bakery wall features stark silhou-ettes wielding axes while a container doubling up as acultural center shows an AK-47 shooting doves insteadof bullets.

The anti-war street art burgeoning on the roads ofthe hot, humid South Sudanese capital on the banks ofthe White Nile, the scene of heavy combat as recently asJuly, is the work of a newly-created movement called#AnaTaban. #AnaTaban tags itself on twitter as “a com-munity of young South Sudanese creatives who aretired of seeing our people suffer.” The world’s newestnation won its independence only five years ago afterdecades of war. But the fighting continued, degenerat-ing into a particularly brutal civil conflict that has drivenmore than one million people out of the country anddisplaced many more.

Villages have been burnt to the ground, almost halfthe population relies on food assistance to survive andwomen and girls are raped by government and rebelforces, according to rights groups. So with no end insight, some 40 entertainers and artists in Juba set up

#AnaTaban with the support of exiled compatriotsalso involved in the arts. They hope to spread to othercities such as Wau, Yei, Aweil and Yambio.

‘I’m sorry’ “What #AnaTaban is doing is actually to create a plat-

form for other young South Sudanese people to raisetheir voices, to speak out their mind, so we all haveeverlasting peace in this country,” said co-founder JoyceMaker. Maker, an actress, brings theatre, playing outdire scenes of conflict, while #AnaTaban musicians haverecorded a first song- and are preparing another underthe theme #AnaMalesh-”I’m sorry” in Arabic. Over thecoming weeks the group plans a series of public events,on streets, in hospitals, schools and even in prisons.

“What is happening now in South Sudan is corruption,war, conflict,” said painter and cartoonist Thomas Dai. Lastweek a report commissioned by actor-activist GeorgeClooney alleged massive corruption and war profiteeringby its leaders, saying the key factor in the fighting was“competition for the grand prize-control over state assetsand the country’s abundant natural resources,” notablyits oil. “Those things, we want to put them out, we wantto throw them out,” said Dai. “We want to say these thingsare not good. That’s what we want to show to the peoplethrough art, painting, graffiti, on the street”. Poet and rap-per Asif Kafi described the group’s work as “art-ivism”,combining art and activism. “We have musicians, we haveartists, people ... portraying a message of peace and rec-onciliation,” he said. — AP

Abu Dhabi names Louvre outpost

director, plans 2017 launch

In this file photo, a model of the future Abu Dhabi branch of the Louvre muse-um by French architect Jean Nouvel is on display as part of a sample collectionat the museum in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. — AP photos

Painter Thomas Dai (left) and musician James Aka, both members of the new activist movement #AnaTaban, talk in front of Thomas’ latest graffiti in astreet in Juba.

Painting the town for peace in South Sudan

A member of the newactivist movement

#AnaTaban, paints a newmural at the Aggrey Jaden

cultural centre in Juba.