The third Shubbak biennial is in full swing in London this week. Among the many new works—including Gulf street art, Bahraini protest photography and a show of young artists from Beirut—visitors to the festival of contemporary Arab culture will get a rare chance to see Palestinian artist Sharif Waked’s Chic Point: Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints from 2003, which was recently acquired by the Imperial War Museum. The seven-minute film, on show at the Delfina Foundation (until 15 August), shows a series of young men on a catwalk wearing varying outfits that bare their midriffs. The work is a reaction to the instructions given by soldiers at Israeli checkpoints for young Palestinian men to lift their shirts in order to show that they are not concealing explosives.
This evening (23 July), the Iraqi artist Sadik Alfraji will be in conversation with British Museum curator Venetia Porter at Ayyam Gallery about the his latest exhibition Driven by Storms (Ali’s Boat), while the Chinese-born Lantian Xie will perform Turn the Cold Weather Into Sun and Fun amongst the shisha smoke at the Shishawi restaurant on Edgware Road.