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DUBAI: US rap superstar Cardi B has been confirmed for Soundstorm 2025, the highly anticipated music festival returning to Riyadh this December.

The Grammy-winning artist will perform alongside stars including Lil Yachty, Miguel, Pitbull, Swedish House Mafia, Tyla, Young Thug, Ava Max, Black Coffee and Halsey, with additional acts expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

The news follows the release last month of her long-awaited sophomore album “Am I the Drama?”

Fans are anticipating performances from her latest 23-track album, which features collaborations with Janet Jackson, Lizzo, Selena Gomez, Megan Thee Stallion, Cash Cobain, Kehlani, Summer Walker and Tyla.

DUBAI: ATHR Gallery’s latest exhibition in AlUla, “Afterschool” showcases works that capture the hours after the school day finished, “bringing back memories of activities, scenery, experiences, interactions, rituals, and daily routines,” according to the show catalogue. Using media including photography, video games, painting, textiles, collage, and installations, five Gulf artists — Ahaad Almoudi, Basmah Felemban, Mohammad Alfaraj, Rami Farook, and Sara Abu Abdallah — depict “shared collective routines and memories across generations around ����ֱ��.”  

The show, curated by Rania Majinyan, is divided into three ‘paths’: Street, Park, and Home. It is, the catalogue states, “an invitation to take a journey down memory lane … reflecting on practices that we once felt free to do and others that felt restricted. Reminding us of small details and changes we experienced within a particular timeline, urging us to return to ourselves, to turn inward, and to hold onto moments of stillness despite being consumed by outer distractions.” 

Sarah Abu Abdallah 

‘Blanket No. 36’ and ‘Blanket No. 57’ 

The Street section of the exhibition includes two works from Abdallah’s “Blanket” series — a collection of digital images on woven cotton textiles — both of which show scenes of leisure time “acting as a reminder of the sudden, freeing, energizing activities we do after school … evoking an intimate dialogue.” “Blanket No. 36” displays a photograph taken in Abdallah’s hometown of Sanabes, in which a group of children gather round a barrel they’ve found in the street, “sparking investigative playfulness.” In “Blanket No. 57” a young boy and a man stand on the shoreline of the Red Sea off the Jeddah corniche, escaping their daily routines for a moment in nature. 

Rami Farook  

‘I Love You In God (only)’ 

Also in the Street section stands the Emirati artist’s large-scale painting of a piece of street art found in Jeddah, which shows a man in traditional dress alongside the words “I love you in the name of God.” The show catalogue says that Farook’s painting “represents the school’s brick walls, portraying expressive graffiti made by rebellious teens — marks you pass as you walk in and out of school.” Passing by such graffiti every day makes it seem routine — it becomes almost unnoticed over time. Indeed, the catalogue notes, “you don’t remember how powerful the imagery is until it’s provoked unannounced.” 

Mohammad Alfaraj   

‘The Last Session’ 

Al-Ahsa native Alfaraj contributes “The Last Session,” a series of photographs, to the show’s Park section. In June of this year, Alfaraj told Arab News of his work in general: “I’m always looking for metaphors and different ways of looking at the world and trying to piece it together as an enormous complex mosaic that I’m lucky to experience and be part of.” That’s instructive of “The Last Session” in which some of the images are simple shots of kids playing football or hanging on climbing frames, photographs that carry echoes of a time before so much of our lives were spent online or in front of various screens, while others are more abstract — “ghostly,” the catalogues suggests — “embodying the absence of playing (outside) … as part of our culture nowadays, especially after school.”  

Ahaad Alamoudi 

‘Winning Eagle’ 

“If I’m not having fun creating then there’s nothing in it for me,” Alamoudi told Arab News in a 2018 interview. “I use a lot of comedy in my work as a form of addressing serious topics.” That approach is clear in “Winning Eagle,” which is displayed in the exhibition’s Home section, where it is accompanied by another work from Sarah Abu Abdallah’s “Blanket” series. “Both prints are of album covers made in the late 90s and early 2000s,” the catalogue says. “These works trigger a random stream of music that we often listened to in our childhoods, symbolizing how music can carry you inward towards a constructed imaginative reality that (remains) with you.” Alamoudi’s collage features the cover of Saudi musician Rabah Sagar’s 1995 album “Empty of Feelings.”