2020 Spotlight

Travel through a universe inspired by elements of Sharjah with Planet Sharjah. An interactive video mapping installation that allows participants to use technology to stretch the boundaries of the building beyond its walls, interacting with the planets and modifying the characteristics of the show.

Tigrelab
Tigrelab is a Barcelona-based studio with long-standing experience in 2D and 3D animation, Motion Graphics and Video Mapping. Blending technology, art and people, they bring their content to a variety of surfaces, media and platforms, gathering the best creative minds to reach new heights.

The Students of AUS take us on a roundtrip, a flight from the emirate to America, landing back again in Sharjah. The University building transforms into a dreamy travelogue, re-establishing the students’ relationship to their daily environment, traveling far but deeply-rooted in the Emirate of Sharjah.

The Students of AUS under the Artistic Direction of Mathieu Felix
In a first time collaboration, the Sharjah Light Festival focuses on developing creative skills. Bound to Sharjah by birth or by heart, young talents put their knowledge and attachment into creating a show with relevant cultural content. Mathieu Felix is a French artist based in Barcelona, with longstanding experience in motion graphics. He has participated in SLF 2016 - 2019 and this year he is sharing his experience with the students of Sharjah.

The Jungle Book is an age-old story of instincts, nature, survival, fight, fear, love and learning, crossing cultures to become part of global imagination. This show is a journey through the key moments of the Jungle Book. Filling the building with its essence and involving the public to build the story. The Sound Design particularly amplifies the underlying meaning of the visual material.

Federico Gonzalez & Javier Pinto
The artistic duo brings a truly international mix of culture and sensibilities to their shows, mixing large-scale architectural mapping projections with lighting and special effects to catch audiences’ imagination.

With present generation ideograms such as emojis and smileys, students from University of Sharjah present their daily routine of life in Sharjah while showing their strong connection to the beautiful emirate.

The Students of UOS under the Artistic Direction of Mathieu Felix
Acting as a talent incubator, the Sharjah Light Festival enables students to utilize their knowledge of the emirate and their developing creative skills into creating a show with relevant cultural content. Mathieu Felix is a French artist based in Barcelona, with longstanding experience in motion graphics. Felix participated in SLF 2016 - 2019 and this year he is sharing his experience with the students of Sharjah.

SLF 2020 lights up the Grand Masjid Sheikh Rashid Al Qasimi in a show narrating stories of culture and memory in a contemplation of legacy. Paired with light odes to Islamic patterns and orient designs, ‘Arabic Fusion’ gives a particular touch to the structure’s architectural details, and to the images of the Islamic culture representing Sharjah’s heritage.

Bijoy Kaaliyadan
Bijoy Kaaliyadan is a visual artist based in the United Arab Emirates, working in the fields of motion graphics and digital arts. After completing his studies in graphic design and new media, he started to work in an animation studio until a few years ago when he began to focus on architectural video projections and live generative visuals.

Past legacies and future creativity coexist during a show, to disrupt our senses and perpetuate traditions. During this show, the artist will merge traditional and modern styles, deforming and then creating a new building, a blend between eras and designs finally forming the present culture of the emirate of Sharjah.

Prunelle Chappert
French artist, graphic and motion designer, Chappert, greatly influenced by visual projections and immersive experiences has developed a multidisciplinary happy, childish, colorful and luminous world around the aesthetics of wonderful and imaginary tales, manifested in many different forms: animated, painted, printed or projected letters and images.

The show explores games, fun and playful moods across every age. Pixel Carré is a construction game of a screened image, referencing pixels and TV test images. Hypnotic Graphics display a panorama of shapes inspired by board games and brain teasers. Minimal Circus reveals an acrobatic show where the game is more about the motion, the body and the performance. Gradient Track depicts fun and energy around the power of music. Balloon Fountain floods us with balloons in a myriad of patterns and colors in bouncing slow motion.

Elmo
Elmo is an independent multi-disciplinary studio, specialists in the art of the illusion. They animate their art in 2D, 3D or Stop Motion. Their creations are bright and colorful and mainly inspired by the 80s with ideas expressed through pixels and 3D.

This visual and luminous installation is an ode to the beauty of the Islamic architecture of the emirate’s newest mosque, a graphic ballet of shadows and lights. The details and patterns of the mosque unfurl over the entire building, to the rhythm of the four elements (water, earth, fire and air) and illuminated pages of illustrations of the beautiful Quran.

Laurent Langlois
Laurent Langlois has collaborated for multiple cultural events, in museums, theatres and festivals all over the world since 1986. With a history of using projected photographic images in his stage directing and space designing projects, Langois focuses on 3D architectural mapping projections.

This illuminated building in the middle of a vast open-space represents the hope that Sharjah represents in the Arab world and internationally. This is a lighthouse in the middle of the desert to guide people and their vision for the future, Sharjah as a Cultural Capital, a beacon of light.

Benjamin Perroux
Benjamin Perroux is a lighting designer with 10 years of experience, based in the UAE. Perroux participated in SLF 2017-2020 and employs combinations of colors, effects and light intensity to transform a landscape into different ambiances and evoke different emotions.

The four elements, fire, earth, water and air, are the thread of a visual journey in the traditional culture of Sharjah and towards the horizons of the future. The architecture unfolds element by element till the whole building seems to move away to find the first Emirati astronaut who floats in space surrounded by a visual allegory of Arab sciences.

Artslide
Artslide is a visual arts studio expert at creating large-scale masterpieces of digital arts, high-end technology, paintings and photography. Their impressive 3D video-mapping shows cover monuments in an assortment of colours and patterns further enhancing the building’s architectural details.

From the real to the surreal of the Festival, a dreamlike and evolving journey takes us through styles and eras. A paper theater plunges us into a surreal world of the city of Sharjah, its culture and its Festival in constant evolution. This video mapping show aims to take spectators through Sharjah’s different styles and eras, desert to a futuristic city with its basis in traditions and culture.

Ines Sakina
A French artistic director, video maker and 3D artist, focusing on the boundaries between real and virtual, digital identity and cultural diversity, mainly in the fields of music, fashion, streetwear and luxury. Influenced by urban culture, music and dance, Sakina’s work is multidisciplinary but also poetic and dreamlike.

This is a show inspired by exchanges between people, countries and cultures. The artists chose to illustrate these exchanges through the major works of some famous international artists, taking the audience through different compositions, colors and lights, to offer intense and multiple emotions to the audience.

Gilbert Coudène & Les Allumeurs de Rêves
Gilbert Coudène founder of the company Les Allumeurs de Rêves, along with the team BK France, visual artists, musicians, and technical engineers, creates and broadcasts tailor-made shows that transport the spectators into worlds and shows made of flamboyant fairytales.

The Sharjah Roads and Transport Authority’s show aims at transforming the cityscape and taking audiences on an endless journey through different spaces and atmospheres, inspired by organic elements such as coral, and displays a variety of unique graphical universes each developing in their own way and expanding to meet each other.

Muhammed Tahseen Mustafa
One of the Arab World’s preeminent projection designers, used to working with massive architecture and spaces. He and his team design and produce award-winning large-scale projection projects worldwide. They are expert at creating digital-image sequences overlaid on the surfaces of large-scale objects to create three-dimensional site-specific shows.

Can we capture Light and hold it? Here is a magical dome holding a giant Chandelier that has fallen from an invisible ceiling in the Sky. Representing how precious is the Sharjah Light Festival to the country and to the people coming from all around the globe to see it and grave it in their memory as a souvenir they carry around.

Nomada Design Studio

Resonance is an installation interacting with the rhythm of its environment. Dynamic and in constant movement, the massive tunnel recreates the vibe of the city with lighting and sonic atmospheres. In Al Majaz, Resonance is a fantastic path along the palm trees. The spectator is invited to wander and to change the vibe with an interactive interface located at the entrance. Kontact is live architecture combining sound, light and movement. The audience is immersed in different atmospheres, projecting various moods to the installation. This project allows the public to play by modifying this changeable structure. Each theme immerses the viewer in a specific universe.

Module
Module is a company that offers an immersive and singular experience of reality through the design of hybrid architectures, exploring the different possibilities of images, sound and digital effects offered through audiovisual installations, stage design and experimentation.

The Little Giant first visited Sharjah in 2011 to launch the very first Sharjah Light Festival. 10 years later, the Little Giant returns to remind us of the beauty of the first show. A bed-time story, a child’s dream, the little giant plays all around the buildings of Al Qasba with water, fire and colors.

Spectaculaires
From set-designer beginnings, Benoît Quero, founder and artistic director, moved on to build the French-based company, Spectaculaires. Spectacularies now enjoys a worldwide reputation for creating facade projection shows, telling stories and redirecting moments, places and architectures by creating original, poetic and spectacular video-mapping sceneries.

A colourful current runs through the mosque, revealing its contours and illuminating its curvature, combining space and a cosmic theme to elevate the spiritual frame of mind of the spectators.

Syed Atiq ur Rehman
Originating from Pakistan and living in the United Arab Emirates, Syed Atiq ur Rehman brings his culture into his work and takes the audience to a universe of new geometrical forms and magnificent colors. As shapes take form on architecture, music evokes new emotions and the work of this artist is accomplished, creating captivating illusions.

A captivating choreographic show, representing the true colors of Sharjah and the universal harmony existing between people of different cultures. This is a bridge between modern - contemporary dance and the local culture and diverse societies of the United Arab Emirates, combining dance, lights, music, video and fireworks.

Mourad Merzouki & Sharjah Institute for Heritage
A major figure on the hip-hop scene since the early 1990s, the choreographer Mourad Merzouki combines many different disciplines; circus, martial arts, fine arts, video and live music in an exploration of hip-hop dance. This multidisciplinary approach opens new horizons and reveals original viewpoints. The Sharjah Institute for Heritage runs programs and activities on the preservation and transference of intangible cultural heritage, playing a part in protecting Emirati and Arab heritage.

The newly inaugurated Academy is the canvas for a show based on Sharjah’s maritime and trades history. From ancient commerce where fishermen dived in the blue sea to find precious pearls and unique fish to the present day where we find the port filled with multicolored containers, a tribute to the bright Future awaiting Sharjah.

Typru & Rehman
Based in Paris and Dubai, Typru and Rehman are specialized in monumental 3D projection mapping, creating memorable visual experiences, bringing brightness and emotion to Sharjah’s audience.