Artists in the region have returned in hordes to these forgotten spaces; to their own parent’s and grandparent’s homes, to the stories and memories carried in the walls of neighborhoods skimming the outskirts of cities and small rural communities. It’s perhaps why so much inspiring, original artwork is erupting from the region; it isn’t a simple return to physicality, as common an urge as the city man’s obsession with returning to nature - we are witnessing a collective search for home and identity; a search for the little things that make up routines and the everydays, individually trivial, but when strung up and taken in their entirety reveal life as humanity innately and intuitively understands it – authentic, chaotic, immense, insignificant, small.

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"Countries in the region are expanding their contours to make room for the new and take their place among the world’s economic superpowers, a formidable congregation of larger than life misfits racing for a seat among kings. A few decades from now, the place of my memory will be transformed into something future and alien. Even now there are talks of tearing down the old town of Dubai where I grew up – the generation after ours will be raised in immaculate steel and glass. Soon, the beautiful chaos of streets lined with tightly packed shops and cafés will exist only in images, in the work of a growing number of creatives that felt compelled to map the entire iconography of a region and pour it into offline digital archives, to document everything in the hopes of capturing the essence of what they feel they are slowly losing." - Chantal