I am currently a first-year MFA student at NYUAD. I graduated from my BA in Art Practice in 2022 (also from NYUAD), and afterwards worked as a curator at Gulf Photo Plus for a year. Over the past year, my own works were featured in five exhibits at Alserkal Avenue (with Engage101), Manarat Al Saadiyat, Riga Photography Biennial, Gulf Photo Plus, and in Tokyo (with the UAE Embassy & Dirwaza Curatorial Lab). I learned a lot from all these experiences for which I am grateful, and feel like I know the UAE arts ecosystem relatively well, having been based here for the past 7 years, but I long to be more and more strongly embedded in the local/regional arts community through participation in discussions, conversations, events. In the long term, I hope to teach arts practice at university level in the UAE and create conceptually and technically strong work that would make meaningful contribution to the country’s art ecosystem and beyond. There is nothing but dedicated work and practice that can help me with that. However, building social connections, talking to others with shared interests and commitments and thus being exposed to new knowledge as well as sharing would also be immensely helpful.

I would wish to become a member because I feel like it could allow me to build stronger, more meaningful working relationships with individuals with whom I share interests and a dedication to the same field. I want to be in a space where ideas and experiences are generated and discussed, to actively participate in 1833’s events, and to learn from other, more experienced community members. To be perfectly honest, wishing to have an increasingly stronger sense of belonging and contribution to the arts here is the main reason why. From my side, right after my graduation, in 2022-2023, I was thrown into a pretty rapid work environment in which I had to design and curate 7 exhibitions for my workplace at the time, and also participated in multiple exhibits with my own work. During this time, I quietly observed, tried to absorb as much knowledge as possible, and reflected a lot on what is the the UAE’s arts ecosystem like, what it is excelling at, in what ways could it grow further, what are different institutions that I worked with like, what do artists’ need, etc. I feel like I could add a good, thinking, engaged mind to the community. If need be, also technical / practical knowledge about exhibition design, curation and management of artist agreements and editions (from my former job at Gulf Photo). As a Master’s student, I am currently taking many rigorous courses on arts criticism, art markets and key discourses in contemporary art (with Reema Salha Fadda, Tina Sherwell and others). Intellectually, I hope that I could be a valuable person to have onboard. When I do participate in something, I have a tendency to really go all-in and to care. I really value care. And straight-forwardness & truthfulness in communication. Maybe those are good additions too, I hope.

As of now, I spend most of my time in my studio in Abu Dhabi, preparing for an upcoming MFA mid-program exhibition and making new work. My art practice, rooted in photography and drawing, takes strong interest in landscape, placemaking and modes of tracing time. I spend my free time reading a lot (poetry, philosophy, photography books, and much else), wandering around Abu Dhabi and observing buildings, cycling, swimming, and attending exhibitions and other art events / workshops.