Total media coverage Kutubna 2024-2025

Kutubna Cultural Center’s Documentary Photo Exhibition

Rana AlMuttawa book Everyday Life in the Spectacular City Ongoing—July 4, Dubai, UAE—more info

Kutubna Cultural Center, Dubai’s newest independent bookstore and cultural center announced the opening of Dr. Rana AlMutawa’s urban ethnography photo exhibition “Everyday Life in the Spectacular City.”

The exhibition, which is free to attend, is Dr. AlMutawa’s first solo exhibition in Dubai. The photographs in the exhibit form a part of the research that AlMutawa conducted for her book, Everyday Life in the Spectacular City: Making home in Dubai, published by the University of California Press, the book is a pioneering urban ethnography that explores how middle-class citizens and long-time residents of Dubai interact with the city’s spaces to create meaningful social lives.

The exhibition showcases over 33 documentary photographs taken during AlMutawa’s fieldwork from 2017-2021 to highlight the forms of belonging that take place in shopping malls and other so-called superficial spaces and to demonstrate that inhabitants do make meanings within the spectacle.

Commenting on the exhibition, AlMutawa said: “I want to show that “superficial” places are important cultural sites: ones where people go to see and to be seen by members of their community; where people have memories from their childhoods; and where social and gender norms are observed and negotiated. I hope that the book and exhibition can generate more debate about how to go about understanding these places without repeating the stereotype about inauthentic Gulf cities.”