From a six-floor Fitzrovia townhouse to a Tunisian café and a radical bookshop, Ibraaz is building a new kind of cultural home at 93 Mortimer Street.
London has a new address for Arab arts and Global Majority thinking. Ibraaz has opened its permanent home at 93 Mortimer Street in Fitzrovia, taking over a Grade II-listed building that spans 10,000 square feet across six floors.
The name comes from the Arabic meaning “to shine a light,” and the mission is clear: to platform artists, writers, and cultural workers from the Middle East, North Africa, and the wider Global South, while reshaping what a cultural institution can look and feel like in 2026. Led by the Tunisia-based Kamel Lazaar Foundation, the project builds on Ibraaz’s influential editorial legacy, now made physical for the first time.
Architecturally, the transformation has been steered by Architect-in-Residence Sumayya Vally (with her studio Counterspace), framing the building as a place designed for gathering, experimentation and accessibility, including step-free support via a lift across parts of the programme.
The launch moment arrives with Parliament of Ghosts by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama, marking the venue's inauguration with an installation that positions the space as a living archive, attuned to histories of empire, migration, and collective assembly. As Mahama puts it: “What interests me most is the question of repair: how do we bring things back to life, how do we excavate histories through material forms?” Alongside the opening exhibition, The Otolith Group takes on the inaugural Library-in-Residence, expanding the institution’s research-led ambitions beyond the gallery walls.
Away from exhibitions, Ibraaz leans into the rituals that make a cultural centre actually feel lived-in. OULA, the Café-in-Residence led by Boutheina Ben Salem, brings Tunisian flavours into the mix, while the Bookshop-in-Residence, curated by the Palestine Festival of Literature and operated by Burley Fisher Books, champions underrepresented voices and radical writing.
GO: Visit ibraaz.org for more information.