The UAE is contributing to the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale international art exhibition with a unique concept called the Safina Radio Project.

The Safina Radio Project is a boat transformed into a recording studio that will navigate the waterways of Venice for three days during the start of the Biennale from May 6 to 8.

It will transport passengers from one place to another and act as a roving platform for conversations and performances which will be uploaded onto safinaradioproject.org within 24 hours, allowing anyone in the world to experience the project.

Safina in Arabic means vessel or ship, with literary roots in reference to Noah’s Ark and in Persian use, ‘safineh’ is a synonym for ‘jong’ which means a collection of essays or poems.

In the case of the Safina Radio Project, it represents a vessel as an incubator for experimental and progressive approaches.

According to the project’s curator, Anabelle de Gersigny, the starting point for the project was her idea to launch an online cultural-radio station in the UAE, where artists, thinkers, writers and creative people could pool ideas and topics that they considered pressing and express themselves freely through dialogue, sound or music.

Speaking to The National, de Gersigny said: “We will be bringing up subjects that are pertinent to the region and offering artists the freedom to respond to them.”