Shamma Alkaabi

To create is not just to produce, but to insist on existence, to pull something from thought into form, to leave a trace that resists erasure. I have never known how to be still in the face of that urgency. At NYUAD, the act of making was never passive; it was an ongoing negotiation between control and surrender, between what could be shaped and what refused to be tamed.

I have burned words into wood, not to destroy but to make permanent. I have painted frustration into color, written text that fractures instead of explains, and let film blur the line between seeing and knowing. Each medium held its own resistance, its own demand for something more. And still, I am left wanting. Not for answers, not for resolution, but for the next mark, the next surface, the next impossible thing to create. The next idea that refuses to stay still.