Press Release

04.02.2019

Sharing Worlds – The Nobel Prize in Literature
Exhibition in Dubai opened

Literature as an interactive experience: From 4 February onwards, the exhibition entitled "Sharing Worlds – The Nobel Prize in Literature" can be seen in La Mer in Dubai. The bilingual travelling exhibition (English and Arabic) was designed by ATELIER BRÜCKNER. It presents the Nobel Prize in literature and offers a variegated and imaginative means of access to the world of writers.

Four star-shaped steles reach up to the ceiling and endow the occupied space with its own individual character. They present the Nobel Prize in literature and selected literary themes: Tolerance, Peace, Love, Fairytales, City, Family, Human Condition and Life. With each theme, visitors get to know corresponding Nobel Prize winners, including for example William Golding, Naguib Mahfouz and also Selma Lagerlöf, who received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1909 as the very first woman to do so. At media stations, they can obtain information and background knowledge about authors and their literary works. The media stations react to contact with appropriately selected books that the visitors hold in their hands. New worlds to contemplate and explore are opened up.

Art objects make it possible to experience the narrated stories visually as well. Kabuki Herada from Japan devotes himself to the famous adventures of Nils Holgersson, for example, and designed a kinetic object for the Fairytales theme. The other artists include Zim & Zou from France, Manal Aldowayan from England and Nix & Gerber from the USA. They show their independently artistic approach to literature, created out of diverse materials such as wood and coloured paper.

In the "Write your story" and "Share a poem" sections, the visitors are at last able to become creative themselves. At screens, they choose protagonists, objects and landscapes, and develop their own narratives. And they record well-known and less known poems, including extracts from "In the Egg and other poems" by Günter Grass, for example. They then send the finished works to friends by e-mail and share them with other visitors, whereby they can be experienced three-dimensionally on the steles. The result is an electronic library that can be accessed at any time.

The visitors to the exhibition are readers and writers alike. "Sharing Worlds – The Nobel Prize in Literature" sends them on a journey through the never-ending worlds of literature, accompanied by the best-known and most eminent writers of the modern age.

The exhibition is part of a long-term cooperative undertaking between the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation and the Nobel Museum Stockholm. It is the fourth exhibition of its kind that ATELIER BRÜCKNER has designed. The previous years were dedicated to the Nobel Prize in chemistry, physics and physiology or medicine.