Opening on 3rd October 2025, Ibraaz is a platform dedicated to highlighting art, culture and ideas from the Global Majority.
Rooted in London yet globally attuned, the programme will take place across six floors of a striking 10,000 square foot Grade II listed building at 93 Mortimer Street in the heart of the capital. Ibraaz means ‘to shine a light on’ in Arabic and offers a bold model as a cultural institution championing forthright expression, critical discourse, and collective imagination.
Launching in October, Ibraaz will be housed in a historic 10,000-square-foot Grade II listed building in the heart of London presenting a year-round programme of exhibitions and events with a focus on the Global Majority
An initiative of the Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Ibraaz builds on its legacy as a groundbreaking online platform for visual culture in and around North Africa and the Middle East
With a building reimagined by Architect-in-Residence Sumayya Vally, Ibraaz launches with Ibrahim Mahama’s exhibition Parliament of Ghosts and The Otolith Collective as first Library-in-Residence, as well as a Bookshop-in-Residence and Café-in-Residence – anchoring an ambitious public programme and online editorial platform.
Drawing inspiration from the creative energies of the Global Majority and its diasporas, Ibraaz is committed to creating a generative environment grounded in curiosity – where art serves as a means of rethinking systems, telling new stories, and forging connections across borders.
Ibraaz will also extend a culture of hospitality and hosting – into its institutional practice by embedding care, generosity, and welcome at the core of its operations and audience engagement.
Through dynamic, multidisciplinary programming including exhibitions, talks, screenings, music nights, and a residency structure for its library, café and bookshop, Ibraaz will bring communities and ideas together underpinned by a politics of joy.
Bridging local and global conversations to create a “world of many worlds” within one vibrant space, Ibraaz will also reimagine and reconfigure the relationships between the digital and physical, with an online platform hosting original, multiform commissions alongside content and documentation produced from the building.
“Our ambition has always been to expand beyond regional framings and build a truly global platform,”
says Lina Lazaar, Founder of Ibraaz and Vice President of the Kamel Lazaar Foundation.
“At a time when so many are seeking safe spaces, our aim is to go one step further – to build a brave space that offers cultural experiences which not only address the issues of our time but also envision the futures we can create together.”
Architectural Vision
The architectural transformation of Ibraaz London is led by Architect-in-Residence Sumayya Vally, founder of the studio Counterspace and the youngest architect commissioned for the Serpentine Pavilion. Her vision reimagines 93 Mortimer Street as an evolving structure, shaped by its communities and the ideas it hosts— a living space that will continue to grow and transform over time.
The design and build will unfold incrementally, allowing the team to be immersed in, and to respond to the context as they learn from it, alongside collaborators and the audiences’ experience of the spaces. Following a similar conceptual thread to Sumayya’s Vally’s celebrated 2021 Serpentine Pavilion, the architectural language of the building’s transformation is informed by diasporic gathering spaces across London, many of which are often overlooked but have been a core part of the city’s social fabric.
Opening Programme
Rooted in a culture of hospitality and hosting, Ibraaz is collaborating with a diverse group of artists, curators, writers, and cultural practitioners to shape its multidisciplinary programme.
The opening exhibition, Parliament of Ghosts (3rd October 2025 – 15th February 2026) by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama, presents a site-specific adaptation of an ongoing, long-term research and production project. Featuring newly commissioned and previously unseen works, the installation transforms the main space into a powerful space of reflection.
Repurposing colonial era furniture and jute sacks, positioned alongside newly crafted elements, Parliament of Ghosts stands as a poignant meditation on memory, restitution, and the poetics of reclaimed materials, narrating Ghana’s post-independence journey. Initiated in 2016, the project was presented at The Whitworth for the 2019 Manchester International Festival and later featured at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.
The first Library-in-Residence programme will be launched with The Otolith Collective who will activate the space in Ibraaz’s first year, platforming intergenerational dialogue, experimental practice, and deep research.
The opening Public Programme convened by Shumon Basar will include talks, performances, screenings, salons and gatherings around the histories, ideas, technologies and politics shaping our planetary present.
The Music Programme curated by Imed Alibi will spotlight talents from across the Global Majority, weaving together tradition and innovation. From the classical mastery of Naseer Shamma, a virtuoso of the oud, to the boundary-pushing electro-Arabic fusion of Zeid Hamdan, the lineup reflects both heritage and reinvention. The programme will also feature Kallemi with Rasha Nahas, blending poetic lyricism with alternative soundscapes among other established and emerging voices.
OULA, the Café-in-Residence led by Boutheina Ben Salem, will bring Tunisian culinary heritage to London, celebrating storytelling through food. With traditional dishes and seasonal ingredients, it is a space for creating shared rituals, rooted in family and community.
The Bookshop-in-Residence curated by the Palestine Festival of Literature and operated by Burley Fisher Books will feature a selection of books and printed matter in dialogue with Ibraaz’s programming – spanning critical theory, literature, and art from across the world.
The Ibraaz Editorial Platform developed by Stephanie Bailey is a journal in the expanded sense: a multidisciplinary space extending Ibraaz’s legacy of supporting illuminating writing, incisive research, artist commissions, and experimental formats, across generations and geographies.
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