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DUBAI: In his first interview since leading chants against the Israeli Defence Forces in support of Palestine at the Glastonbury music festival, Bobby Vylan, the frontman of UK punk duo Bob Vylan, spoke to The Louis Theroux Podcast about the controversy and its fallout.

Following their performance, the band was dropped by its agency, UTA, and the US State Department revoked the band members’ visas, leading to the cancellation of their planned tour of North America.

But if he had the chance, Vylan says he would do it all again.

“If I was to go on Glastonbury again tomorrow, yes, I would do it again. I’m not regretful of it. I’d do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays. I’m not regretful of it at all,” the rapper said.

“The subsequent backlash that I’ve faced. It’s minimal. It’s minimal compared to what people in Palestine are going through. (What) is there to regret? Oh, because I’ve upset some right-wing politician or some right-wing media?”

Vylan told Theroux the backlash was “so disproportionate,” arguing that it turned public attention away from Gaza. “My whole issue with this thing is that the chant is so unimportant,” he said.

“What is important is the conditions that exist to allow that chant to even take place on that stage. And I mean, the conditions that exist in Palestine. Where the Palestinian people are being killed at an alarming rate. Who cares about the chant?”

DUBAI: Abu Dhabi’s 421 Arts Campus will celebrate its 10th anniversary on Nov. 15 after supporting more than 1,500 creative practitioners, commissioning hundreds of new works, and delivering about 2,000 programs, residencies, grants, and exhibitions in the city.

To mark the milestone, 421 Arts Campus is presenting “Rays, Ripples, Residue,” which is set to run from Nov. 1 to April 16. The exhibition is curated by Emirati Munira Al-Sayegh, Lebanese editor Nadine Khalil, and Sharjah-born Indian writer Murtaza Vali, and explores how artistic practices and exhibition-making in the UAE have evolved over the past decade.

Faisal Al-Hassan, director of the arts hub and commissioning institution, spoke to Arab News about the showcase, explaining that it features new commissions as well as previously presented works, or new iterations of those works.

The exhibition unfolds in three chapters, with Al-Sayegh’s chapter titled “Leading to the Middle.” It “looks at how minor moments that can be easily overlooked — which she views as ‘ripples’ — create opportunities for a younger generation of artists to flourish,” Al-Hassan explained.

Al-Sayegh examines the practices of established artists like Emirati Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim and the late Kuwaiti creative Tarek Al-Ghoussein.

Then, Khalil presents “Ghosts of Arrival,” described by Al-Hassan as “an intimate look at what it feels like to arrive after the moment has passed.”

Artists featured in the section include Hashel Al-Lamki, Mona Ayyash, and Nadine Ghandour.

Al-Hassan said: “She brings to the fore the practices of artists from the past 10 years who were influenced by work that was created a decade prior. It is both an analysis of artmaking in the UAE and a personal reflection of her own arrival in the country in 2017.”

“SUN” is curated by Vali and presents a survey of the last 10 years to highlight the preoccupation of artists in the country with the sun. According to Al-Hassan, Vali selected “works made between 2015 and today that are focused on the sun as both a symbolic and physical presence in our everyday lives — presented visually and metaphorically — to convey and investigate environmental degradation, hyper-commodification, and urban development.”