DRIFT Illuminates Manar Abu Dhabi with New Outdoor Installations

Summary

• Artist duo and studio DRIFT has debuted three, large-scale immersive installations as a part of Manar Abu Dhabi light festival
• On view through January 4, “Whispers,” “Unfold” and “Wind of Change” fuses data, art and nature to foreground the raw landscape of Jubail Island

Amsterdam-based studio DRIFT has unveiled new, large-scale artworks as a part of Manar Abu Dhabi, the emirate’s annual public light art festival, running through January 4, 2026. Now in its second edition, the event features a constellation of light-based sculptures and immersive installations planted within mangroves, tidal inlets and open sky, revealing the natural rhythms of Jubail Island through encounters of movement and scale.

Debuts include “Whispers,” a living field of light made up of 500 glowing elements, dispersed throughout the dense Guinea grass. The piece invites viewers to lose themselves amid the tall grass and surrender to the natural forces larger than oneself. Another work, “Unfold,” beckons the viewer into the system, converting real-time heartbeats into generative audio and floral blooms.

Suspended above the island, “Wind of Change,” uses 2,000 drones to map wind patterns and ocean currents into an aerial dance of light. The choreography culminates as a falcon, the centerpiece of the Abu Dhabi crest, before dissolving into a luminous vortex where glowing “seeds” scatter across the sky, a testament to the cycles of movement, transformation and renewal that characterize the island itself.

“Wind of Change” will be on view daily at 9PM on Jubail Island. For more information on the festival, head to Manar Abu Dhabi’s website.