Cartier Is Bringing The Region's Storytellers Into Its World, From Shamma Al Bastaki To Salim Azzam

From poetry in Dubai to hand embroidery in Bodrum, Cartier continues to find new ways to connect its world with the region’s creative voices.

Cartier has long looked beyond jewellery to build connections with the worlds of art, culture and design. Now, two collaborations with regional creatives show just how differently that can take shape. From the written world to centuries-old craft.

In the UAE, Emirati poet and artist Shamma Al Bastaki collaborated with Cartier on Sowing Legacies, a poem created in celebration of Emirati Women’s Day. The piece was presented at an intimate gathering at Etihad Museum, bringing together women working across the UAE’s arts and cultural landscape. Shamma performed the poem at the event, which also featured work by artist Latifa Said, Emirati artisans through Al Ghadeer, and a performance by Firdaus Orchestra, the UAE’s first all-female orchestra.

It was a fitting collaboration for Al Bastaki, whose practice often centers on language, memory, and the details of everyday Emirati life. Her approach to poetry is particularly rooted in the specificity of place. Rather than translating the UAE into something more familiar for an international audience, she has spoken about allowing distinctly local details and stories to speak for themselves. Her poetry collection House to House (بیت لبیت), for instance, draws on oral histories and collective memories from Dubai Creek communities between the 1940s and 1980s.

That same interest in heritage taking on new forms can be seen in Cartier’s latest collaboration with Lebanese designer and visual storyteller Salim Azzam.

For the opening of Cartier’s new flagship in Bodrum, Azzam created a collection of handcrafted pieces for the Maison, bringing his signature embroidery practice into Cartier’s universe. Among them is a hand-embroidered charm featuring Cartier’s iconic panther, created exclusively for the brand with skilled artisans.

Azzam’s connection to embroidery is deeply personal. Raised in Lebanon’s Chouf mountains, he grew up surrounded by traditional embroidery practices passed down through generations. His eponymous label, founded in 2016, has built its identity around preserving these techniques while giving them a contemporary expression.

The Cartier project extends beyond the finished pieces, too. Azzam also designed an exclusive embroidery kit for the Bodrum boutique, inviting visitors to engage with the craft themselves. It turns something traditionally passed from one generation to the next into a more immediate, hands-on experience; one that visitors can take with them.

There is something particularly interesting about the two collaborations sitting alongside each other. Al Bastaki works with language to preserve and reinterpret stories, while Azzam works with thread, translating craft and memory into something tangible. Neither approach treats heritage as something fixed in the past. Instead, both use it as material for creating something new.

And perhaps that is where Cartier’s regional collaborations feel most relevant. Rather than simply borrowing from the region’s visual codes, these projects put the creative process in the hands of people whose practices are already shaped by its histories, materials and stories.