Sharjah’s Tanweer Festival Turns the Desert Into a Gallery

We’ve entered a time where our most consistent form of exercise is scrolling, and our deepest emotional connection is with a blinking cursor. It’s a time defined less by movement than by micro-pauses—refreshing, liking, deleting—until suddenly, we’re struck by the soul-deep yearning for something…real. Not another algorithmically served experience. Not a curated moment designed for the ’gram. Just a genuine, unfiltered, and—dare we dream—un-copywritten connection. One Sharjawi festival that’s looking to answer this call is Tanweer. Dedicated to ensuring the awe-inspiring, ancient desert of Mleiha gets its share of global wellness seekers, Tanweer Festival brings together the weary, the curious, and the culturally hungry for a three-day gathering from November 21st to 23rd, 2025, where the only thing being optimised is your sense of wonder. An initiative of Her Highness Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi, the festival is built on a beautifully simple, yet profound, contradiction. It places the ultra-contemporary—global music maestros, large-scale immersive art, and modern wellness practices—directly onto one of the most historically significant landscapes on the planet. This is a gathering in a region where early humans walked 210,000 years ago, a stone’s throw from the newly UNESCO-listed Faya Palaeolandscape. Its genius lies in this juxtaposition. As you listen to the intricate sitar of Anoushka Shankar under a canopy of stars, you are participating in a ritual as old as time itself: humans gathering in the dark, sharing stories and sound. The art here isn't confined to white walls because it’s exactly where it all began—it is of the earth, and it is designed to become a permanent part of Sharjah’s soul, with past installations finding forever homes in landmarks from Khorfakkan Beach to Al Noor Island. This year, Tanweer—under the motto “What You Seek Is Seeking You,” a line borrowed from the 13th-century poet Rumi—continues to unfold across the desert, with 11 artists responding to Mleiha’s light, rock, and open sky. The result is an open-air gallery of cultural heritage, one for which we’ve created a comprehensive guide, so you can see exactly where to pause, linger, and be surprised.
‘Nexus' by HYBYCOZO 📍USA The collaborative LA-baed studio of Serge Beaulieu and Yelena Filipchuk presents a golden, honeycomb-vaulted structure that resembles a faceted cave. By day, its filigreed patterns cast ever-changing shadows. By night, light animates the structure from within, making this geometric marvel feel ephemeral and alive. It’s a place to walk through, sit inside, and simply be enveloped.
'Ancestral Whispers' by Milla Novo  📍Netherlands Dutch fibre artist Milla Novo creates her first large-scale installation: 20 hand-knotted fibre panels suspended vertically, inviting you to walk among them. Merging South American Mapuche heritage with contemporary design, the work is a tactile, flowing forest. A centrally suspended swing within the piece invites a moment of playful contemplation.
‘Meditation 1554' by Seo Young Deok  📍South Korea A stunning, hyper-realistic sculpture of a pensive male head with closed eyes, crafted entirely from 1,554 meters of welded, rusted bicycle chains. In the midst of the festival's energy, this work is a silent, powerful monument to stillness. It’s a reminder of the profound peace that can be forged from the raw materials of industry and chaos.
'Knots of Poetry: Sitting with Rumi' by Ranim Orouk  📍Syria/UAE Inspired by the verse “Be like a tree and let the dead leaves fall,” Syrian artist Ranim Orouk creates an immersive seating area from modular wooden benches that emerge from the sand like fallen leaves. Some are topped with carpets, others engraved with calligraphy. It’s a place to physically sit and contemplate themes of release, renewal, and transformation.
'Reflections' by One Third Studio  📍UAE This design trio (Amna Bin Bishr, Duna Ajlan, and Dania Ajlan) reimagines a cave as a mirror of the self. Inspired by Mleiha’s ancient caves and the nearby UNESCO Faya Palaeolandscape, the work reflects on these natural formations as timeless sanctuaries of refuge and introspection, connecting the deepest human history with our modern need for quiet.
'Threading Time - A Journey through Beads' by Pranoti Karajgi  📍India/UAE An immersive installation of five monumental arches, each echoing a distinct era from Mleiha’s past. As you walk through, the arches become a living necklace, connecting ancient artisans and traders to the present moment. The artist beautifully brings the bead—a symbol of ancient trade—back home to the desert where its story began.
‘Whispers of Truth’ by Juma Alhaj 📍UAE Emirati artist Juma Alhaj transforms the desert into a space for reflection with eight monumental, inverted quotation marks crafted from mild steel. Clustered together, they trace the path of thought crystallizing into understanding, inviting visitors to move around and through the work, experiencing the shaping of ideas as a tangible, sculptural journey.
‘The Sediment of Time’ by Rawdha Al Ketbi 📍UAE Visual artist Rawdha Al Ketbi draws inspiration from Mleiha’s desert mountains, which were once the floor of an ancient sea. Her installation, over 100 spheres suspended and arranged across the sand, captures the flow of water and the passage of time. Each sphere offers a moment to pause and reflect, evoking transformation, memory, and the traces left behind by history.
‘Word Garden’ by Shabir Mir 📍Pakistan/UAE Artist, sculptor, and calligrapher Shabir Mir presents a large-scale installation of Arabic letters rising like plants from the desert floor. Arranged at varying heights, the letters curve and stretch skyward, forming the word “Passion” at their peak. The work celebrates the organic flow of Arabic script while inviting visitors to wander through a garden of forms. 
‘Radii’ by Talin Hazbar 📍UAE This radical installation guides visitors through a journey across time, material, and memory. The structure references archaeological findings spanning the Palaeolithic to Late Pre-Islamic periods, allowing movement through layers of history. Each step through the installation echoes excavation and discovery, offering a contemplative experience of the desert as both gallery and chronicle.
‘Nadd’ by Neda Salmanpour 📍Iran/UAE Architect and designer Neda Salmanpour’s modular light installation draws from the patterns of desert dunes. At Tanweer, ‘Nadd’ is housed in a dark, cylindrical pavilion, with sand subtly lifted to position the glowing lamps at chest height. Walking among them, visitors encounter a quiet interplay of light, form, and shadow—each lamp a suspended relic that bridges past and future, memory and possibility.