Manar Abu Dhabi - Jubail Island
- Benjamin Brostian
- Dec 7, 2025
- 3 min read
A visit at Manar in Abu Dhabi
I visited Manar Abu Dhabi in early December, about a month after the festival opened on Jubail Island. It runs through late January, and I tied the visit in with the Formula 1 race weekend in Abu Dhabi. Since I work on media-based projects myself, I was curious to see how this format translates to the city's specific urban and climatic context.
Orientation and Route
The route starts near the waterfront and winds through several zones across the island—specifically, on sand and through the desert. The distances between installations are long enough to grab a drink or sit down for a moment. The pace sets itself almost naturally. The installations are chosen in a way that they don't relate to each other, so you can skip one or two if you want.
The Opening
Gateway — Lachlan Turczan
The festival opens with Gateway by Lachlan Turczan, a combination of water mist and lasers that generates constantly shifting light patterns. In the evening warmth, the mist feels good, not just atmospheric. It cools the air while simultaneously shaping the space. Visitors move more slowly, stop, walk through. It's a nice opening gesture that creates great visuals and feels mystical.
Restraint Over Monumentality
What convinced me about the overall layout was the fact that this is a light and media festival built in the middle of the desert—free and outdoors. Getting so many different artists, styles, and artworks together in one place without it feeling like a flea market or chaotic—they did that well. Most works operate within comparatively modest physical boundaries. There's no attempt to overwhelm or overpower through sheer size.
This kind of restraint makes sense—Jubail Island doesn't have the dense urban fabric or historic old town that many European light festivals build on. The spaces are wider, more open.
Visitor flow varied noticeably. Some installations drew larger groups, others were passed more quickly. Apparently, visibility from the main paths also plays a decisive role—a familiar dynamic in open festival formats. What I also noticed: paths leading to artworks that were better lit attracted more visitors.
Selected Moments
Alcove Ltd — ENCOR Studio
The installation that held my attention longest was Alcove Ltd by ENCOR Studio. Housed in a structure reminiscent of a shipping container, it forms a clearly defined shape—compact, practical, familiar. And then the show begins. Inside, light installations meet switchable glass. The object transforms completely when the glass shifts between transparent and opaque states, changing the light behavior and the feeling of openness, transparency, and enclosure. I stood here the longest and was genuinely fascinated by how these transitions shifted the overall visual impression.
As Water Falls & Faces — Iregular
As Water Falls and Faces by Iregular also proved to be a crowd magnet when I was there. The work combines a digital waterfall effect on LED surfaces with facial recognition and face distortion. While visitors spent most of their time at one of the waterfalls, changing the digital water flow by touching the LED wall, I found the face distortion installation coolest. It shows how different the "catch effect" can be. What holds a practitioner's eye isn't necessarily what resonates with a broader audience.
Skyward — Ezequiel Pini
Skyward by Ezequiel Pini was one of the works that was already an eye-catcher through its construction alone. An angled LED wall points toward the sky while a kind of meteor/moon is positioned on the upper edge. The installation looks cool through its construction, and the star movements create a nice overall picture on the exhibit.
Execution and Development
The technical execution across the festival is good, though not entirely uniform. Some works felt complete and coherent to me, others still have room for development in my opinion. That's not meant as criticism—openness can be part of a concept, and that's just my personal view. The fact of building such a festival in the middle of the desert on sand was already a new experience, and I'm glad I went.
Location and Media Culture
Manar fits into Abu Dhabi's growing media and culture calendar in its own way. It's not trying to copy Noor Riyadh or the Sharjah Light Festival. In this sense, it's as much about creating a place as it is about presenting art and technology works in a location you wouldn't necessarily expect.
Closing Impressions
I'm curious how the festival will develop in future editions. First-time events often test multiple directions simultaneously. This one seems to be finding its range—neither overambitious nor too cautious.
I left with an impression of individual, distinct moments rather than a feeling of one cohesive whole. Some works will stay in my memory—the container with the switchable glass, the opening mist, the lasers. The experience there is simultaneously cumulative and yet fragmented. Not everything needs to connect completely—still, a nice evening in the desert.
