Events

Lecture

The Challenges & Pitfalls of Collecting Art in the Arab World

Speaker: Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, Founder of the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, UAE.

Date: Monday, February 2, 2026

Time: 6:30PM GST

Location: NYUAD Campus Center, West Forum

This event is organized in collaboration with The Art Club at NYUAD.

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi's lecture will discuss the challenges of collecting art from the Arab World and beyond over nearly a quarter century. During this time, technological advances have greatly facilitated easier communication and acquisition, but equally the reproduction of forged artworks. The lecture will highlight aspects and challenges of acquiring Arab art in the 21st century, from the pitfalls of encountering non-original and stolen pieces to the excitement of the discovery and exploration of unknown Arab artists.

Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi is an Emirati columnist and researcher on social, political and cultural affairs in the Arab Gulf States. He is also the founder of the Barjeel Art Foundation, an independent initiative established in 2010 to contribute to the intellectual development of the art scene in the Arab region. He has taught 'Politics of Modern Middle Eastern Art' at Yale University, Georgetown University, Columbia University, Bard College Berlin and the American University of Sharjah amongst others. In 2023, Sultan completed a Fellowship at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and he was a Research Associate at SOAS Middle East Institute, London between 2023-2025. Sultan is currently pursuing his Master of Studies in History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of Cambridge.

Poster for a Lecture by Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi

Exhibition

All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group

This exhibition is organized by the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery.

Duration: February 12–June 7, 2026

Location: NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery

Active in the mid-20th Century, the Baghdad Modern Art Group was established in 1951 by two of Iraq’s most influential artists, Jewad Selim (1919–1961) and Shakir Hassan Al Said (1925–2004), and grew to engage many of Iraq’s leading artists, architects, poets, and more. Together, they sought to develop a new art form, one that negotiated a time of globally inflected modernism from Baghdad, an Abbasid city (est. 762 CE) that traces its lineage to the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia. In this exhibition, Dr. Shabout brings together the artists from this circle, as well as those whom its work influenced, both at the time and in the following generations.

Poster for the Exhibition All Manner of Experiments

The following question will linger in the artist’s mind: by what means will this new art be realized? Various answers will tempt his thoughts, and he will carry out all manner of experiments, as his head, eyes, and hands dictate. —Baghdad Modern Art Group manifesto

Curated by Nada Shabout, All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group will be on view in the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery through June 7. Active in the mid-20th Century, the Baghdad Modern Art Group was established in 1951 by two of Iraq’s most influential artists, Jewad Selim (1919–1961) and Shakir Hassan Al Said (1925–2004), and grew to engage many of Iraq’s leading artists, architects, poets, and more. Together, they sought to develop a new art form, one that negotiated a time of globally inflected modernism from Baghdad, an Abbasid city (est. 762 CE) that traces its lineage to the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia. In this exhibition, Dr. Shabout brings together the artists from this circle, as well as those whom its work influenced, both at the time and in the following generations.

After the Kingdom of Iraq’s formation in 1932 as an independent state, Iraqi artists explored the new parameters of the secularized, modern society that was emerging following Britain’s maneuvering to dismantle the Ottoman Empire. Artists questioned the ability of traditional “Islamic art” practices to present their contemporary realities, searching for a more effective visual language. In this context, modern art provided a conduit for exploration and was perceived by Iraqi artists as a global space of shared humanity.

Following their studies at art academies, mostly in Western Europe, where they viewed their own ancient heritage in European museums, Iraqi artists understood modernism’s roots in many non-Western cultures and became eager to make their own contributions to its development. At the same time, they were conscious of their role in their newly formed nation, alongside broader decolonization processes. Their practices thus also involved unpacking the nation’s history, seeking to identify a collective “Iraqiness” among the diverse factions of society. Various artist groups launched initiatives to convey the importance of national representation through culture, which included promoting the modern art movement in Iraq. This period set the stage for Iraq’s so-called golden age of the 1950s: a time of maturation for a generation of artists pivotal in initiating rigorous standards of art theory and practice, thus charting new possibilities for future generations.

The experimental ethos of the group continue to resonate today beyond Baghdad to direct and connect contemporary Iraqi artists around the world to each other.
Dr. Nada Shabout is a Visiting Professor of Art History and a Senior Investigator at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of art at NYUAD. She is the founding president of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art from the Arab World, Iran and Turkey (AMCA) and founding director of Modern Art Iraq Archive (MAIA). Shabout has published widely on modern and contemporary Arab and Iraqi art. She is the author of Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics, University of Florida Press, 2007; co-editor with Salwa Mikdadi of New Vision: Arab Art in the 21st Century, Thames & Hudson, 2009; and co-editor with Anneka Lenssen and Sarah Rogers of Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2018. Notable among exhibitions she has curated: All Manner of Experiment: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group, Hessle Museum, CCS Bard, 2025; A Banquette for Seaweed: Snapshots from the Arab 1980s, 2022-2023; Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art, 2010; traveling exhibition, Dafatir: Contemporary Iraqi Book Art, 2005-2009; and co-curator, Modernism and Iraq, 2009. Major awards of her research include Getty Foundation Grant, 2019; Writers Grant, Andy Warhol Foundation 2018; The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TAARII) fellow 2006, 2007, Fulbright Senior Scholar Program, 2008. She received the Presidential Excellency Award, UNT 2018 and the 2020 Kuwait Prize for Arts and Literature from the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences. Shabout was the Project Advisor for the Saudi National Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2019, and on the Founding Board of Directors, Visual Art Commission, Ministry of Culture, Saudi Arabia (2020-2023 and 2024-2027); she serves on the Board of The Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TARII); and served on the College Art Association (caa) Board of Directors (2020-2024). She is currently co-editing with Anneka Lenssen and Sarah Rogers forthcoming from AUCP: 1980s: Representational Pressures, Departures, and Beginnings in the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey.

Talk

Reclaiming our Narrative: Writing the History of Arab Modernism Through Archives

Speakers: Dr. Nada Shabout, Senior Investigator at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, Visiting Professor of Art History, NYUAD; Dr. Ridha Moumni, Deputy Chair of Middle East and North Africa at Christie's.

Date: Friday, November 21, 2025.

Time: 4—5pm GST

Venue: Theatre, Abu Dhabi Art, Manarat Al Saadiyat.

Type: Open to the public.

Talk

Archiving Through Publishing: Writing the Untold History of Design from the Arab World

Speaker: Dr. Huda AbiFarès, Founding Director of Khatt Foundation and Khatt Books publishers.

Moderator: Dr. Nada Shabout, Senior Investigator at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art; Visiting Professor of Art History, NYUAD.

Date: Thursday, October 23, 2025.

Time: 6:30—8pm GST

Venue: NYUAD, the Conference Center (A6 - 006) and via Zoom

Type: Hybrid. In-person attendance is open to the NYUAD community and by invitation. Virtual attendance is open to the public.

Archiving and publishing on design from the Arab World provides a means to present an untold history and offer new perspectives on Arab societies. Moreover, discovering and uncovering this history helps to visualize a contemporary and unconventional Arab identity and forge new creative trends that engage with local cultural heritage. To illustrate this topic, the lecture will present a selection of publications initiated and published by the Khatt Foundation.

Dr. Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès is the Founding Director of the Khatt Foundation and Khatt Books publishers in Amsterdam. She is an independent curator, researcher, writer, and designer. She holds degrees in graphic design and design history from Leiden University (PhD), Yale University (MFA), and Rhode Island School of Design (BFA).

Join virtually

Exhibition

Opening Reception — Ala Younis: Past of a Temporal Universe

Join NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery for an opening reception.

Date: Tuesday, September 23, 2025

Time: 5PM

Location: NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery

Type: Open to the public.

This exhibition is organized by the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery.

This exhibition spans the last two decades of Ala Younis’ hybrid practice as an artist-researcher-curator. Her archival installations, textiles, murals, mosaics, and drawings make subtle, startling connections among political, social, urban, and popular imaginaries. Informed by her training in architecture and visual cultures, Younis’ projects center on the physical developments and narrative intersections of the Arab geographies in which she grew up, frequently drawing from a wide range of formal and informal archives. The exhibition will debut a series of new commissions alongside iterations of major past projects. Together, these works trace conceptual and formal throughlines in her work, from the tools and skills she developed as she emerged in the art scene of Amman, Jordan, to her experiments in navigating new knowledge as she evolved the unique methods and perspective for which she is renowned today.

Younis’ projects have appeared in exhibitions worldwide. She has participated in the biennials of Dhaka, Istanbul, Venice, Gwangju, Ural, Orléans, Ljubljana, Kaunas, Sharjah, and the Islamic Arts in Jeddah, as well as the New Museum Triennial: The Ungovernables (2012, New York). She curated Kuwait’s first pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2013), served as co-Head of Berlinale’s Forum Expanded (2021-2024), co-Artistic Director of Singapore Biennale 2022, Artistic Director of the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne (2023-2025), and a recent research scholar at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, at New York University Abu Dhabi. She co-founded the independent publishing initiative, Kayfa ta, which researches and publishes on and through independent endeavors. Her work and writings are published in numerous publications, including e-flux, Nafas Art, Mizna Journal, Ibraaz, Creative Time, Camera Austria, Divan Journal, and Flash Art. Younis holds a BSc. in Architecture from the University of Jordan (1997) and MRes in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London (2016).

Younis’ artworks are in several major institutional collections, including: Le Frac Centre-Val de Loire (France); Darat al Funun (Jordan); the Uppsala Art Museum (Sweden); Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah Art Foundation, and Jameel Art Collection (all UAE); and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (US).

Lecture Performance

An Archive of Future Memories: Letters to My Daughter

Speaker: Dr. Dena Al-Adeeb, Resident Fellow, al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Arab Art

Moderator: Maya Allison, Executive Director of The Art Galleries and Senior Research Scholar and Chief Curator at New York University Abu Dhabi

Date: May 5, 2025

Time: 5pm GST

Venue: Art Gallery Reading Room, NYUAD.

Type: In-person, open to the public.

This event is in collaboration with the NYUAD Art Gallery.

An Archive of Future Memories is a multimedia project about a mother-daughter charting the interconnections between a trilogy of displacements and their relationship to pivotal moments in contemporary Iraqi and U.S. histories, and their ever-evolving effect on intergenerational relations. In this lecture-performance, Dena Al-Adeeb weaves performance, biography, letter-writing, video and sound art towards bearing witness to the textures of memories that accompany transnational migration and refugee movement — both the trauma and hope.

Dena Al-Adeeb is an artist, scholar, cultural worker, and educator based between Marrakech and San Francisco. Working across text, performance, video and sound art, installation, digital media, photography, sculpture, painting, and drawing Dena creates participatory, socially engaged projects that bridge art and social movement praxis. Rooted in decolonial frameworks, her practice explores the intersections of war, displacement, and refugeeness through fractured landscapes, architectural spaces, and memory — where intimacy emerges as a form of resistance interwoven with acts of land cultivation, embodied ritual, and insurgent storytelling.

Dena currently serves as a Resident Fellow at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). Dena’s fellowships include a Mellon Artist and Practitioner Fellowship (Yale’s Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration) and a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. She has held research roles as Senior Fellow at Heidelberg University’s Käte Hamburger Center for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies and Visiting Scholar in UC Davis’s Department of American Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (NYU), an M.A. in Anthropology-Sociology (American University in Cairo), and a B.A. in International Relations (San Francisco State University), and has taught at NYU, Pratt Institute, and SFSU.

Her work has been exhibited internationally (Art 13 London, Arab American National Museum, National Veterans Art Museum, Light Work Gallery, Headlands Center for the Arts, Falaki Gallery, Mashrabia Gallery, Darb 1718, Galerie le Violon Bleu) and published widely (Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War anthology, Ibraaz, Light Work Contact Sheet). She has been a resident artist at Light Work, Mana Contemporary, Pro Arts Gallery & Commons, Utopia School by Flux Factory, Dresher Art Ensemble, ARAB.AMP, and CULTUREHUB. Dena founded initiatives such as DIWAN: SWANA Futurisms and is a member of the HEKLER Collective and Palestinian Feminist Collective.

An Archive of Future Memories, Dena Al-Adeeb (portrait)

Talk

The Architecture of an Archive: Modern Arab Art

Speaker: Salwa Mikdadi, Director and PI, al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, NYUAD.

Date: April 10, 2025

Time: 7-8pm GST

Venue: Inloco Gallery, WH 5, 4 19 Street, Al Khayat Avenue, Al Quoz, Dubai, UAE.

Type: Hybrid, open to the public.

This event is organized by Inloco Gallery.

Join us for the lecture ‘The Architecture of an Archive: Modern Arab Art’ with Salwa Mikdadi — art historian, curator, and founding director of al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art at NYU Abu Dhabi. From pioneering research on Arab art institutions to curating the first Palestinian exhibition at the Venice Biennale, her work has helped shape the field.

The lecture will be held in person and streamed on YouTube.

Lecture

I’ve Just Seen a Face: The Preservation of Our Photographic Heritage and Family Treasures

Speaker: Debra Hess Norris, Chair and Professor of the Art Conservation Department at the University of Delaware

Date: April 8, 2025

Time: 6-8pm GST

Venue: Room A6-004, NYU Abu Dhabi

Type: Hybrid, open to the public.

This talk offers essential, practical guidance on preserving both historic and contemporary photographic prints—artifacts that document our world, connect cultures, and celebrate the lives of our ancestors. Understanding preservation factors is vital to ensuring the longevity of photographs, especially those with personal or historical significance. By adopting these best practices, we can protect irreplaceable photographic memories for future generations.

Dena Al-Adeeb is an artist, scholar, cultural worker, and educator based between Marrakech and San Francisco. Working across text, performance, video and sound art, installation, digital media, photography, sculpture, painting, and drawing Dena creates participatory, socially engaged projects that bridge art and social movement praxis. Rooted in decolonial frameworks, her practice explores the intersections of war, displacement, and refugeeness through fractured landscapes, architectural spaces, and memory — where intimacy emerges as a form of resistance interwoven with acts of land cultivation, embodied ritual, and insurgent storytelling.

Dena currently serves as a Resident Fellow at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). Dena’s fellowships include a Mellon Artist and Practitioner Fellowship (Yale’s Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration) and a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. She has held research roles as Senior Fellow at Heidelberg University’s Käte Hamburger Center for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies and Visiting Scholar in UC Davis’s Department of American Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (NYU), an M.A. in Anthropology-Sociology (American University in Cairo), and a B.A. in International Relations (San Francisco State University), and has taught at NYU, Pratt Institute, and SFSU.

Her work has been exhibited internationally (Art 13 London, Arab American National Museum, National Veterans Art Museum, Light Work Gallery, Headlands Center for the Arts, Falaki Gallery, Mashrabia Gallery, Darb 1718, Galerie le Violon Bleu) and published widely (Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War anthology, Ibraaz, Light Work Contact Sheet). She has been a resident artist at Light Work, Mana Contemporary, Pro Arts Gallery & Commons, Utopia School by Flux Factory, Dresher Art Ensemble, ARAB.AMP, and CULTUREHUB. Dena founded initiatives such as DIWAN: SWANA Futurisms and is a member of the HEKLER Collective and Palestinian Feminist Collective.

Join virtually

Watch the recorded event

Lecture

Umsiyya Ramadaniyya: Imagining Baghdad Through the Eyes of Jewad Selim

Speaker: Dr. Nada Shabout, Regents Professor of Art History, University of North Texas

Date: March 12, 2025

Time: 8-10pm GST

Venue: Room C2-329, Campus Center, NYU Abu Dhabi

Type: Open to the NYUAD community and by invitation.

In celebration of the recently launched volume, Jewad Selim: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings and Sculptures, al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art is hosting a talk by UNT Regents Professor of Art History, Dr. Nada Shabout. The talk will delve into a selection of Selim’s 1950s work, like Baghdadiate and Nasb al-Hurriya, that have become iconic of the city and its people to this day.

Dr. Nada Shabout is a Regents Professor of Art History and the Coordinator of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Initiative (CAMCSI) at the University of North Texas. She is the founding president of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art from the Arab World, Iran and Turkey (AMCA) and founding director of Modern Art Iraq Archive (MAIA). Shabout has published widely on modern and contemporary Arab and Iraqi art.

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Virtual Symposium

The Generative Archive II: Art and Transformation

Date: February 26, 2025

Time: 4-9pm GST

Conveners: Salwa Mikdadi, PI, al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art; Ala Younis, Research Scholar, al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art.

Type: Virtual, open to the public.

Continuing the discussions initiated in April 2024, The Generative Archive II: Art and Transformation will focus on conversations with artists who transform archives into artworks, blurring the lines between academic resources and artistic expression. The online symposium is the second iteration of The Generative Archive: Research, Methods, and Practices, which brought together 22 artists and scholars at NYU Abu Dhabi to explore the role of archives in pedagogy, communal memory, and research.

Join the symposium at this link

View the symposium program for more information and to register

Watch the recorded event

Talk

Languages as Tools for Sustainable Development

Date: February 21, 2025

Time: 5pm GST

Venue: The National Library and Archives - Khalifa Bin Zayed Hall

Type: In-person, open to the public.

This event is organized by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centr e in collaboration with ADMAF and the National Library and Archives.

On the occasion of the silver jubilee of International Mother Language Day, celebrating the cultural diversity and linguistic pluralism of the UAE for the Year of Community, the ALC invites you to "Languages as Tools for Sustainable Development", an event that highlights multilingual education as a pillar of intergenerational knowledge development, in collaboration with ADMAF and the NLA.

Cultural Talk

Half a Century of Art Criticism – Samir Gharib

Date: October 10, 2024

Time: 6:30-8pm GST

Location: Cultural Foundation, First Floor

Type: In-person, open to the public. The event will be held in Arabic.

In collaboration with the Cultural Foundation.

Renowned art critic and writer Samir Gharib will discuss art criticism and his writing on Egyptian modernism, particularly his approach to covering exhibitions in Egypt, focusing on two key exhibitions. Join us for an engaging discussion moderated by critic and poet Sameh Kaawach.

Born on February 21, 1954, in Manfalout, Assiut Governorate, Samir Gharib studied there before obtaining a Bachelor's degree in Media from Cairo University in 1975. He worked as a journalist for Al-Akhbar newspaper from 1975 to 1987, then moved to Paris, where he worked for Al-Mustaqbal weekly magazine. After earning a diploma from the International Institute for Journalism in Paris in 1985 and another in Budapest in 1987, he served as a press and artistic advisor to the Minister of Culture between 1987 and 1999 and was the first director of the Cultural Development Fund. He chaired the National Library and Archives from 1999 to 2002 and was the first Egyptian to head the Arab Federation for Documents. He founded the Egyptian Association for Art Critics and was appointed President of the Egyptian Academy of Arts in Rome from 2002 to 2004. Gharib has published 18 books on art and culture, starting with "Surrealism in Egypt.”

Watch the recorded event

al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art Open House

Date: June 10, 2024

Time: 10am-3:30pm GST

Location: NYUAD, Campus Center (C2) – Library

Type: In-person, open to the public

On the occasion of International Archives Week, al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art is hosting an Open House to share the integral role of archives in preserving cultural heritage and memory in the Arab world.

The Open House will consist of a tour and a hands-on session at NYU Abu Dhabi Library hosted by al Mawrid’s researchers and archivists, designed to guide attendees through the development and ethos of a research archive. The tour will be conducted twice, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., with a hands-on session at 12 p.m.

Those interested in attending the hands-on instructional session, Preserving Your Family Memories, will be introduced to the preservation of family archives and will have the opportunity to apply their newly acquired skills with the supervision of al Mawrid’s archivist and conservator. Participants in the hands-on session are encouraged to bring samples from their family archive collections.

Artists' Panel

Felt, Wrapped, Entangled: A Conversation with Artists Rabbia Sukkarieh and Adrian Pepe

Speakers: Rabbia Sukkarieh and Adrian Pepe

Moderated by: Jessica Gerschultz, Senior Humanities Research Fellow

Date: April 25, 2024

Time: 6:30pm GST

Location: NYUAD, Campus Center (C2) – W002 West Forum

Type: Open to the NYUAD community and by invitation.

In collaboration with al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art and Humanities Research Fellowship for the Study of the Arab World.

Looming sculptures of spun wool coils. Braided shearlings dyed with ochre. Fabric wrapping bullet-ridden trees and slaughterhouse pipes. What sensations, memories, and narratives do wool and fiber evoke? How do textiles enact and restore bonds between living beings and their environments? Join artists Rabbia Sukkarieh and Adrian Pepe as they speak about their work with woolen matter and textile-rich performances. Moderated by Jessica Gerschultz, Senior Humanities Research Fellow for the Study of the Arab World. In collaboration with al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art.

Rabbia Sukkarieh, Cube, 2015, Wool, 12x12x12 in. alongside Adrian Pepe, Untitled Braided Shearling, detail, 2021

Book Launch

Making the Modern Turkish Citizen: Vernacular Photography in the Early Republican Era

Date: April 23, 2024

Time: 6:30-8pm GST

Location: NYUAD, Campus Center (C2) - Center for Writing

Type: Book launch open to the NYUAD community and by invitation.

Featuring over 60 color images, this book explores the photographic self-representations of the urban middle classes in Turkey in the 1920s and the 1930s. Examining the relationship between photography and gender, body, space as well as materiality and language, its six chapters explore how the production and circulation of vernacular photographs contributed to the making of the modern Turkish citizen in the formative years of the Turkish Republic, when nation-building, secularization and modernization reforms took centre stage. Based on an extensive photographic archive, the book shows that individuals actively reproduced, circulated and negotiated the ideal citizen-image imposed by the Kemalist regime, reflecting not only state-imposed directives but also their class aspirations and other, wider social and cultural developments of the period, from Western fashion trends and movies to the increasing availability of modern consumer items. Making the Modern Turkish Citizen offers a valuable portrait of how the newly minted Turkish middle classes presented their different selves in and outside the studio setting, revealing the shifting political and social landscape of the time.

Özge Baykan Calafato is Lecturer in Literary and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her research interests lie at the intersection of photography, archives, memory, and cultural identity.

Book cover of Making the Modern Turkish Citizen

Symposium

The Generative Archive: Research, Methods, and Practices

Date: April 19-20, 2024

Location: NYUAD, Campus Center (C2) – E002 East Forum

Type: In-person and on Zoom. Open to the public.

Titled, The Generative Archive: Research, Methods, and Practices, the aims of the symposium emerge from a combination of practical and conceptual challenges involved in archival work – and particularly archival work around Arab art histories in a global context – in the twenty-first century. Specifically, participants in the symposium will explore a set of interrelated queries about archive uses for pedagogy and communal memory as well as research. What needs might archives be able to fulfill for families, communities, and other users of archives outside the narrow confines of academia? What does a collaborative archive look like? What do digital environments enable, and what do they foreclose?

Join the symposium virtually

View the symposium program for more information and to register

Watch the recorded event

The Generative Archive Symposium: Research, Methods, and Practices. NYUAD Campus, East Forum | April 19 - 20, 2024.

Conversation

Sites of Memory, Sites of Amnesia: Glimpses of Abdullah Al Saadi's Solo Exhibition at the National Pavilion UAE – La Biennale di Venezia

Speaker(s): Abdullah Al Saadi and Tarek Abou El Fetouh

Moderator: Salwa Mikdadi

Date: February 15, 2024

Time: 6:30-8pm GST

Location: NYUAD, Humanities Building, Room A6-001

Type: Conversation in Arabic with English translation. Open to the public.

Join a conversation featuring Abdullah Al Saadi, the appointed artist for the National Pavilion UAE at the 60th International Art Exhibition at La Biennale Venezia with the UAE Pavilion curator Tarek Abou El Fetouh. The event is moderated by NYUAD Professor and Director of Al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, Salwa Mikdadi. The speakers will examine Abdullah’s diverse practice and offer insights into his upcoming solo exhibition, ‘Sites of Memory, Sites of Amnesia.’

Image Courtesy of National Pavilion UAE - La Biennale di Venezia. Photo by Ammar Al Attar

On Exhibit

Art Education in Arab Cities (1938-2003)

Duration: Tuesday, November 21 until Thursday, December 21, 2023

Time: All day

Location: NYUAD Arts and Humanities Building A6 Lobby

Selections from the archive of al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art highlight the role of four artists in the development of higher education in the arts at universities in Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad, Amman, and Irbid.

Lecture

Early Arab Art Institutions and the Challenges of Documentation and Historiography

Speaker: Dr. Yasser Mongy

Moderator(s): Salwa Mikdadi and Ala Younis

Date: November 14, 2023

Time: 12:30-2pm GST (lunch served)

Location: al Mawrid Center, C2-350

Type: Lecture by invitation, in person - Arabic language

While writing the history of early Arab art institutions and their relationship with Arab art pioneers, there emerges a reliance on a limited number of credible and well-known sources. With the repeated transfer of information culled from these sources, such material could potentially become immutable facts. The replication of material from these same sources demands constant review, revision, and correction, leaving many important events unreported. How do we identify the challenge of repeated resources, and what does such a phenomenon pose? Can we interpret its causes or monitor its consequences? Supported by images, film clips, and documentary materials, this talk presents historical and research-based examples that highlight the necessity to review past publications by Arab and non-Arab authors. The talk offers examples of documentary, field, and comparative studies that enrich and refine the reference of modern Arab art history.

Dr Yasser Mongy (b. 1972) is an Egyptian academic, critic, and art historian, and Assistant Professor in the Graphic Department at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo. Since 2019, he has been seconded to teach art history and criticism in the Art Education Department at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. In 2014, he worked as a research and documentation consultant at the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha (Mathaf). He authored eighteen publications, mainly in art history, and contributed to the creation of the first glossary of art terminology published by the Arabic Language Academy in Cairo. Dr. Mongy is the recipient of two consecutive Sharjah Awards for Critical Visual Research, and has earned several awards in graphics, painting, and drawing. Furthermore, he has played significant roles in organizing and adjudicating numerous Arab art events. His articles on art, literature, documentation, heritage studies, and museology were published in Arab newspapers, magazines, and online platforms.

Curators Talk

Offstage: On the Less Visible Facets of Collecting Art

Speaker: Suheyla Takesh, al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art Fellow

Moderators: Salwa Mikdadi and Duygu Demir

Date: November 2, 2023

Time: 6:30pm GST

Type: Open to the public. Hybrid (in person and via Zoom)

Location: Reading Room, NYUAD Art Gallery

In collaboration with the NYUAD Art Gallery

Installation view of Barjeel Art Foundation’s exhibition Parallel Histories, currently on view at the Sharjah Art Museum. Photo by Amir Hazim. Image courtesy of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.

What do curators do? "Curators Talk" is a new series of talks by invited curators to discuss their distinct approaches to exhibition-making, research, critical thinking, artistic collaboration, and beyond.

The talk will focus on the Barjeel Art Collection in Sharjah as a case study to investigate the various phases of the collection's evolution, the factors that influenced its transformation, and the role of private art collections in the UAE’s wider cultural ecosystems. Barjeel’s chief curator Suheyla Takesh will take the audience behind the scenes of running the Barjeel Art Foundation, revealing its evolving acquisition strategies over the past decade and discussing the less visible work of preserving an art collection. Discussion will raise questions around the ethics and responsibilities of a collecting institution and its potential influence on the region’s art historical narratives by uncovering forgotten art and by the circulation of its collection and its accompanying publications.

Suheyla Takesh is the Curator at Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah where she works on research, exhibitions, and oversees its publications. Suheyla holds a master’s degree from MIT’s Department of History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art . She is the co-curator of Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s at the Grey Art Gallery, NYU, and the co-editor of its accompanying volume of essays. Her writing has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including Rutgers Art Review, Thresholds, and Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World. During her Fellowship at al Mawrid, Suheyla will use al Mawrid’s archives to expand her research on East-East cultural relations in the mid to late twentieth century Arab art. Her other research interests include critical interrogations around collection building and the use of geometry in the work of modernist Arab artists.

Gender and Leadership Roundtable

Gender and Leadership in Museums, Art History and Fine Arts: Current Trends and Perspectives

Speaker: Salwa Mikdadi, Maya Allison, and Aliyah Alawadhi

Moderator: Saba Karim Khan

Date: October 31, 2023

Time: 12:00-1:30pm GST

Location: A6-005

Type: Open to the NYUAD community and by Invitation

NYUAD Faculty of Arts and Humanities, in collaboration with the Office of Inclusion and Equity.

This roundtable featuring Aliyah Alawadhi, Maya Allison, and Salwa Mikdadi moderated by Saba Karim Khan explores past and present opportunities and challenges of promoting gender equity, diversity, and inclusion within the realms of museums, art history, and fine arts. It discusses the influence of gender, intersectional dynamics, and the persistent structural obstacles within these fields, including gendered professional networks and women’s (under)-representation in leadership roles. The speakers draw on their professional and personal experiences, bridging both academic research and careers in the UAE, the broader Middle East, Asia, and US.

This event is part of the Gender Brown Bag series at NYUAD.

Book Launch & Signing

Story of Water and Fire

Book Launch: Story of Water and Fire (2 events)

In the presence of the book's author, May Muzaffar.
In conversation with Ala Younis

Book Launch
May 24, 2023 at 7pm, 421, Abu Dhabi (in English)

Book Signing
May 25, 2023 at 6pm, Abu Dhabi International Book Fair

Story of Water and Fire is a captivating account of the life of two prominent figures in the Iraqi art scene, poet and art critic May Muzaffar and artist Rafa Nasiri. Through vivid descriptions and rarely seen photographs, this book offers a glimpse into the social and artistic milieu of Baghdad from the 1960s to the 1990s, as well as the couple’s travels during this period and their years of exile in Amman and Manama.

Co-published by al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art and Hatje Cantz.

May Muzaffar (b. 1940, Baghdad) is a poet, short story writer, art critic, and translator. Having graduated with a degree in English literature from Baghdad University in 1961, she has published seven collections of poetry and five collections of short stories in Baghdad, Beirut, and Amman. She has authored books on art and artists, and has also edited several books on Rafa Nasiri’s art.

Ala Younis is an artist and a Research Scholar at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art at New York University Abu Dhabi.

Plurilogue

Scattered Subjects

Speakers: May Al-Dabbagh (Haraka Lab director) and Susan Ossman (anthropologist and artist)

Date: April 27, 2023

Time: 6:30 - 8:00 PM GST

Type: Open to the public

Location: Alserkal Arts Foundation (Warehouse 51) Common Room

What is a subject? A subject is what a song or painting is about; it makes things happen in a sentence and in the world. Yet, to be the subject of a book or a ruler or to law or social conventions limits the choice of verbs that can animate action. Through reflecting on Ossman’s experiences of serial migration and her project that combines practices from the social sciences and the arts, this conversation opens up new possibilities for thinking about knowledge production both within and outside of the academy.

The event will take the form of a Plurilogue, a term that evokes the notion of dialogue that goes beyond two sides. Plurilogue is akin to a roundtable discussion in which the invited speaker shares research, followed by interventions by attendees. All participants are expected to situate their own work in relation to their location in their institutions, geographies, and trajectories, as well as to the speaker’s presentation. The event will be followed by a light dinner.

Talk

Vox Populi: Tahrir Archives

Speaker: Lara Baladi

Date: February 20, 2023

Time: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM GST

Type: Internal to NYUAD Faculty

Location: A6-004

al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art invites you to a talk by al Mawrid's Resident Fellow Lara Baladi. Baladi will present her long-term research Vox Populi: Tahrir Archives (2011 – ongoing) focusing on "the Anatomy of Revolution," a lexicon of language and iconography of protests and revolts. Lara Baladi is a multi-disciplinary artist, archivist and Lecturer at MIT's Art, Culture, and Technology Program.

Lara Baladi is an Egyptian-Lebanese artist, archivist and educator recognized internationally for her multidisciplinary works. Her artistic practice spans from photography, video, sculpture to architecture, multimedia installations, textile and scent. Informed by critical investigations into historical archives and the study of popular visual culture, Baladi’s work questions the theoretical divide between myth, memory, sociopolitical narratives and the cycles inherent to History.

Baladi received fellowships from the Japan Foundation (2003) and MIT’s Open Documentary Lab (2014). She was an artist-in-residence at MIT (Ida Ely Rubin Artist in Residence, 2015), MacDowell (New Hampshire, 2015), Art Omi (Ghent, New York, 2014) and VASL, (Karachi, Pakistan, 2010), amongst others.

Within her artistic practice, she is active in socially engaged projects. For more than twenty years, she has been on the board of directors of the Arab Image Foundation in Lebanon and the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art in Egypt. Ongoing since 2011, her media initiative Vox Populi: Tahrir Archives, includes a series of media initiatives (Tahrir Cinema), artworks, publications and an opensource timeline and portal into web-based archives of the 2011 Egyptian revolution and other global social movements.

Baladi’s work has been published, exhibited and featured internationally—the Centre Pompidou, (Paris, France, 2004), Transmediale, (Berlin, Germany, 2016), the Gwangju Biennial, (South Korea, 2018) to the Hasselblad Foundation, (Gothenburg, Sweden, 2021).

Since 2016, Lara Baladi has been a lecturer in MIT's Program Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT).

Panel

Saloua Raouda Choucair & Mahmoud Hammad – Preserving a Legacy: Custodians of Arab Art

Date: November 18, 2022

Time: 6:00 PM GST

Type: Open to the public

Location: Abu Dhabi Art Fair, Manarat Al Saadiyat

Speakers: Lubna Hammad and Hala Schoukair

al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art presents a panel on the preservation of the archives of two prolific Arab artists Saloua Rouda Choucair and Mahmoud Hammad. As custodians of their parent's collections, the speakers Hala Shoukair and Lubna Hammad will present their experiences in establishing a foundation and an archive for the artists to sustain their legacy and to maintain a record of their parent's artistic practice. al Mawrid is currently digitizing Hammad's archive to make it accessible for researchers and others.

This panel is moderated by al Mawrid Research Scholar and artist Ala Younis.

Watch the recorded event

Portrait of Hala Schoukair with Image of her mother, and the late abstract artist, Saloua Raouda Choucair

Lubna Hammad standign next to a painting by her father, and painter, Mahmoud Hammad

Lubna Hammad studied Architecture at Damascus University, and worked at the General Company for Engineering Studies Consulting in Damascus before moving to Amman, Jordan in 1985. In 2009, she founded the “Family Estate of Mahmoud Hammad” and started working on archiving the complete oeuvre of her father, the late Syrian artist Mahmoud Hammad, as well as documenting historical data and the different stages of the Syrian art movement. Her mother is the Lebanese artist Derrieh Fakhoury.

Hala Schoukair received an MA in Cinematographic Studies from the Sorbonne University, Paris, in 1981, then returned to Beirut in 1983, where she worked in film production.. Schoukair moved to the United States in 1987 and participated in a number of solo/group art exhibitions. She is the founding president of the Saloua Raouda Choucair Foundation.

Ala Younis is an artist with curatorial, film, and publishing projects. She is co-founder of the publishing initiative Kayfa ta, co-Head of Berlinale’s Forum Expanded, member of the Academy of Arts of the World (Cologne), and co-Artistic Director of Singapore Biennale 2022. She is a Research Scholar at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art at New York University Abu Dhabi.

Conference

1980s: Representational Pressures, Departures, and Beginnings

Date: November 03 - 05, 2022

Type: Hybrid

Location: University of North Texas

The organizational sponsors of the conference are al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, NYU Abu Dhabi; Office of the President and Department of Art History, University of North Texas; Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA).

Thursday, November 3, 2022

10-4pm: Graduate Student Workshop (open to participating graduate students only)

Participants:
Pujan Karambeigi, Columbia University, NY
Natasha Gasparian, Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford
Özge Karagöz, Northwestern University, Chicago
Leena Sonbuol, University of North Texas
Derya Acuner, IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca
Elham Shahsavar Zadeh, York University, Toronto
Ahmed Abdelazim, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Flavia Malusardi, Cà Foscari University of Venice, Italy

6pm: Launch Ceremony and Celebration: Salwa Mikdadi Research Travel Grant

Friday, November 4, 2022

10-12 pm: Being Seen: 1980s Exhibition Cultures
-Defne Kırmızı, Boston University, “Conceptualism Localized: Öncü Türk Sanatından Bir Kesit Exhibition Series in the 1980s Istanbul”
-Joan Grandjean, University of Geneva, “How Two Arab Art Students Started an Artistic Revolution in London”
-Rachel Winter, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and University of California, Santa Barbara, “Alterity, Alternative Spaces, and Representation in 1980s London”

12-1:30 pm: How the UAE Became the Artistic Crossroads of the Arab World
Organized by al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, NYU Abu Dhabi
-Ala Younis, al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, NYU Abu Dhabi, “Majid Magazine: how a publishing project in the 1980s shaped the visual culture of the Arab world”
-Dina Taha, al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, NYU Abu Dhabi, “Methods of Self-Mediation in Hassan Sharif’s Practice”
-Sophie Kazan, University of Falmouth, Cornwall, UK and University of Leicester, UK, “Artist Pioneers: Exploring the impact of Art by Emirati artists during the 1980s”

3:45-5:30 pm: Mediated Experience / Media Art
-Anna Levett, Oberlin College, “Ibn ‘Arabi in Sausalito: Etel Adnan in the 1980s”
-Hossein Tavazonizadeh, University of Groningen, “Iranian Interiors in the Narrative Cinema of the 1980s: The Construction of the Memory of Pre-1979 Architecture”
-Anneka Lenssen, University of California, Berkeley, “On Hearing / Not Hearing Houria Niati’s No To Torture”
-Dalia Ibraheem, Rutgers University, “Sha’bi Music in Egypt and the Genres Without History”

6 pm: Keynote Lecture
Sama’an Ashrawi: “The life and times of a Palestinian punk-rocker-turned-hip-hopper in New York City”

Saturday, November 5, 2022

10-12:30 pm: The Decade that Changed Iran: Perspectives from the Visual Arts, Film, Prose, and Poetry in the 1980s
-Blake Atwood, American University of Beirut, “Watching Movies at Home in Iran: Videocassettes and Movie Culture in the 1980s Iran.”
-Pamela Karimi, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, “Sites Unseen: State Censorship and the Rise of Alternative Art Forms in Post-Revolutionary Iran.”
-Orkideh Behrouzan, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), “The Psycho-politics of Coming of Age in 1980s Iran: Perspectives from Pop Culture”
-Amir Moosavi, Rutgers University, “Elegies for Destruction and Moments of Silence: Early Aberrations in Sacred Defense Literature.”
-Fatemeh Shams, University of Pennsylvania, “Writing Outside Borders: Trauma and Alienation in 1980s Exile Persian Poetry”

2-3 pm: National Culture? New Pressures on Afro-Arab Arts
-Chahrazad Zahi, Boston University, “Mohammed Kacimi, 1983-2003: Traversées (Crossings)”
-Cynthia Becker, Boston University, “Seven Walls Revisited (1989): Denis Martinez’s Algeria”

3:15-5:15 pm: Lebanon’s Art World at Home and Abroad in the 1980s: Artistic production and reception in times of war
Organized by LAWHA at the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB)
-Monique Bellan, Orient-Institut Beirut, “Continuity and Beginnings? Reading Lebanon’s 1980s art exhibitions through the press”
-Çiğdem İvren, University of Bamberg, “Off the Mainstream: War motifs and the medium of printmaking”
-Jessica Gerschultz, University of Kansas, “When the Wood is Fragrant, the Bond is Stronger”: Tapestry and Lebanon (late 1970s-1980s)”
-Nadia von Maltzahn, Orient-Institut Beirut, “Fadi Barrage: ‘To think things out in painting’”

1980s: Representational Pressures, Departures and Beginnings Conference

Hybrid Webinar

A Poetics of Presence: Photography, Documentation, and History Colloquium

A day-long hybrid webinar inspired by Yasser Alwan

Date: November 04, 2022

Time: 09:00 AM - 5:00 PM EST

Type: Hybrid

Location: Sarah Lawrence College, Barbara Walters Campus Center BWCC Rooms A and B

This colloquium is co-organized by al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art and Sarah Lawrence College.

Structured around the work of the late Iraqi-American photographer, Yasser Alwan (1964-2022), scholars and practitioners from the arts, humanities and social sciences will come together to address questions of photography, representation, archives, and history making. While the focus will primarily, though not exclusively, be on Egypt and the Middle East, the issues raised will have relevance well beyond those borders.

This hybrid webinar will be of interest to artists, historians, curators, photographers, and archivists, as well as those concerned with social movements. Speakers include scholars and practitioners of documentary photography, art history and visual culture and media studies, social scientists and social activists.

This colloquium is made possible by the generous support of Donald C. Samuel Fund for Politics and Economics, the Mellon Foundation Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement and Education (CFMDE), the various disciplines in the Social Sciences at Sarah Lawrence College, and an anonymous donor. It has been co-organized by Sarah Lawrence College and al Mawrid Arab Center for Art at NYU Abu Dhabi. No less important has been the ongoing support and encouragement of the Yasser Alwan family and friends.

Continental breakfast and a buffet lunch will be provided.

Panel

The Culture of the Image: Challenges and Prospects

Date: October 14, 2022

Time: 6:00 PM GST

Type: In Person, no registration required

Location: Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation - First Floor Hall and VIP room.

This event is sponsored by al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art at NYUAD in collaboration with Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation and will be held in Arabic.

In recent years, Professor Dagher has devoted himself to studying the image in its philosophical and historical contexts, focusing on the challenges with its formal and social reception. In this panel, he will shed light on his preoccupation with the reception of the image within society and public discourse.

Charbel Dagher is an art historian, poet, novelist, translator, and educator. He has published over seventy books in Arabic, English, and French, including several on Islamic Art and modern Arab Art. Dagher holds two doctorate degrees in modern Arabic literature and in the philosophy and history of art, respectively. He is currently a Professor at the University of Balamand in Lebanon.

Exhibition

Sharbaka: Entanglement/Attunement

Dates: December 6, 2021 - August 5, 2022

This inaugural exhibition of al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art at New York University Abu Dhabi was commissioned by New York University’s 19 Washington Square North in New York.

Organized by Haraka: Experimental Lab for Arab Art and Social Thought
Curator: May Al-Dabbagh, Assistant Professor of Social Research and Public Policy

Please visit the website of Haraka: Experimental Lab for Arab Art and Social Thought for more details.

For an overview of Sharbaka: Entanglement/Attunement, the inaugural exhibition of al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, organized by Haraka Lab for 19 WSN in New York, see this brief video:

Workshop

Sharbaka: Performing the Exhibition

Speaker: Ghazi Al-Mulaifi

Date: June 7, 2022

Time: 6:30-8:00 pm GST

Internal to NYUAD Community

A workshop about the rhythms of Gulf waters held in collaboration with the NYUAD Arts Center. This public event is the final one in a year long program for Sharbaka: Entanglement/Attunement, the inaugural exhibition of al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of art organized by Haraka: Experimental Lab for Arab Art and Social Thought.

This workshop invites participants to perform the exhibition by learning how to make music through “sharbaka” clapping, embodying ideas of attunement and entanglement. Led by Ghazi Al-Mulaifi, Applied Ethnomusicologist at NYUAD, this workshop is a campus-wide experiment in the corporeal transmission of knowledge.

https://cms.nyuad.nyu.edu/assetdetails.html/content/dam/nyuad/faculty/arts-and-humanities/ghazi-faisal-al-mulaifi/202109-ghazi-al-mulaifi.jpg

Ghazi Faisal Al-Mulaifi is an applied-ethnomusicologist who received his PhD in ethnomusicology from New York University in 2016. In addition to working as an assistant professor of music, Al-Mulaifi is also a Venice Biennale artist, composer, Khaleeji-jazz musician, and ensemble leader. His research interests include Kuwaiti pearl diving music, the music of the Indian Ocean civilizations trade routes, global-jazz, and heritage production. His current musical efforts include performing with his ensemble Boom.Diwan where he and traditional Kuwaiti pearl diving musicians merge Kuwaiti bahri (sea) rhythms with global jazz traditions for the purpose of creating a new Kuwaiti music and engaging in a global musical dialog.

Nadwa

Seminar with Hanaa Malallah: Reading Documents from the Artist's Archive

Date: May 30, 2022

Time: 10:00 am - 1:00 pm GST

Type: In Person

Location: NYUAD Campus, Room A6-175

For the closing seminar or Nadwa, Dr. Hanaa Malallah will guide a close reading of two documents from her papers. The first document is an unpublished study by Shakir Hassan Al Sa'id (1925-2004), entitled "The Legend of the Spirit-Bird: the Story of the Silent Language of the Nightingale" (1996). The second is an essay Malallah wrote on the occasion of an exhibition held at the National Gallery of Fine Arts in Amman in 1997 entitled "Environment and Ecology in Iraqi Art".

Nadwa Seminar with Hanaa Malallah: Reading Documents from the Artist's Archive

Hanaa Malallah (1958-) is an artist, researcher and educator, based in London. Born in Iraq, she studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad, and later earned an MA and PhD from the University of Baghdad. In her graduate work, she developed a semiotic approach to art, receiving a doctorate in 2005 for a thesis that uses forms of logic elaborated by modern philosophy to examine the art of ancient Mesopotamia. Malallah left Iraq at the end of 2006 for an artist residency at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris; that was followed by fellowships at the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Chelsea College of Art in London. She has lectured at the University of Baghdad and the Royal University for Women in Bahrain.

Since the early 1990s, Malallah has tried to think through destruction as an essential part of the human condition, by treating the material she works with as found objects that she mutilates or disfigures according to what she came to conceptualize in 2007 as a ‘ruins technique’. This reflection on destruction has drawn on Malallah’s research on semiotics, and on the material culture of ancient Mesopotamia, but more recently it has shifted its focus from objects to landscapes, and it has explored the ‘virtual’ aspects of destruction: the temporality of decay, the survival of material, and the paradoxical appearance of invisibility within the visible. Her research on the virtual has led more recently to examine the relationship between spiritualism and technology.

Workshop

Go East, Young Artists: Creative Practice across the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Bloc, 1950s-1980s

Date: May 18, 2022

Time: 09:30 am -7:30 pm GST

Type: In Person

Location: NYUAD Campus, Room A6-010

This workshop is dedicated to examining Cold War-era constellations of “Eastern” and “non-Western” locations–among them the USSR, Eastern Bloc states, the ex-colonial countries of the Middle East and North Africa, and various cultural platforms devoted to socialist culture–as a site of experimental creative practices. Although art historians have begun to uncover the details of Arab artists’ experiences in European art academies (Rome, Paris, and so on), the experiences of the young artists who looked or moved East remain little studied or understood.

Questions to engage include: How to document and interpret the trans-regional mobilities across and between these several “Easts” of the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties? What images, objects, persons, friendships or speculations may be said to have emerged from the decades’ institutional frameworks for East-East exchange? Might we read these entities as tuning forks within that vaster transformations that later delivered the global contemporary art world of the twenty-first century? And what fell out of the system? Which artists forged other friendships, claimed other kinds of art objects, or envisioned other norms, and how?

Co-sponsored by al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art and the Humanities Research Fellowship for the Study of the Arab World.

Thursday, November 3, 2022

10-4pm: Graduate Student Workshop (open to participating graduate students only)

Participants:
Pujan Karambeigi, Columbia University, NY
Natasha Gasparian, Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford
Özge Karagöz, Northwestern University, Chicago
Leena Sonbuol, University of North Texas
Derya Acuner, IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca
Elham Shahsavar Zadeh, York University, Toronto
Ahmed Abdelazim, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Flavia Malusardi, Cà Foscari University of Venice, Italy

6pm: Launch Ceremony and Celebration: Salwa Mikdadi Research Travel Grant

Friday, November 4, 2022

10-12 pm: Being Seen: 1980s Exhibition Cultures
-Defne Kırmızı, Boston University, “Conceptualism Localized: Öncü Türk Sanatından Bir Kesit Exhibition Series in the 1980s Istanbul”
-Joan Grandjean, University of Geneva, “How Two Arab Art Students Started an Artistic Revolution in London”
-Rachel Winter, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and University of California, Santa Barbara, “Alterity, Alternative Spaces, and Representation in 1980s London”

12-1:30 pm: How the UAE Became the Artistic Crossroads of the Arab World
Organized by al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, NYU Abu Dhabi
-Ala Younis, al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, NYU Abu Dhabi, “Majid Magazine: how a publishing project in the 1980s shaped the visual culture of the Arab world”
-Dina Taha, al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, NYU Abu Dhabi, “Methods of Self-Mediation in Hassan Sharif’s Practice”
-Sophie Kazan, University of Falmouth, Cornwall, UK and University of Leicester, UK, “Artist Pioneers: Exploring the impact of Art by Emirati artists during the 1980s”

3:45-5:30 pm: Mediated Experience / Media Art
-Anna Levett, Oberlin College, “Ibn ‘Arabi in Sausalito: Etel Adnan in the 1980s”
-Hossein Tavazonizadeh, University of Groningen, “Iranian Interiors in the Narrative Cinema of the 1980s: The Construction of the Memory of Pre-1979 Architecture”
-Anneka Lenssen, University of California, Berkeley, “On Hearing / Not Hearing Houria Niati’s No To Torture”
-Dalia Ibraheem, Rutgers University, “Sha’bi Music in Egypt and the Genres Without History”

6 pm: Keynote Lecture
Sama’an Ashrawi: “The life and times of a Palestinian punk-rocker-turned-hip-hopper in New York City”

Saturday, November 5, 2022

10-12:30 pm: The Decade that Changed Iran: Perspectives from the Visual Arts, Film, Prose, and Poetry in the 1980s
-Blake Atwood, American University of Beirut, “Watching Movies at Home in Iran: Videocassettes and Movie Culture in the 1980s Iran.”
-Pamela Karimi, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, “Sites Unseen: State Censorship and the Rise of Alternative Art Forms in Post-Revolutionary Iran.”
-Orkideh Behrouzan, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), “The Psycho-politics of Coming of Age in 1980s Iran: Perspectives from Pop Culture”
-Amir Moosavi, Rutgers University, “Elegies for Destruction and Moments of Silence: Early Aberrations in Sacred Defense Literature.”
-Fatemeh Shams, University of Pennsylvania, “Writing Outside Borders: Trauma and Alienation in 1980s Exile Persian Poetry”

2-3 pm: National Culture? New Pressures on Afro-Arab Arts
-Chahrazad Zahi, Boston University, “Mohammed Kacimi, 1983-2003: Traversées (Crossings)”
-Cynthia Becker, Boston University, “Seven Walls Revisited (1989): Denis Martinez’s Algeria”

3:15-5:15 pm: Lebanon’s Art World at Home and Abroad in the 1980s: Artistic production and reception in times of war
Organized by LAWHA at the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB)
-Monique Bellan, Orient-Institut Beirut, “Continuity and Beginnings? Reading Lebanon’s 1980s art exhibitions through the press”
-Çiğdem İvren, University of Bamberg, “Off the Mainstream: War motifs and the medium of printmaking”
-Jessica Gerschultz, University of Kansas, “When the Wood is Fragrant, the Bond is Stronger”: Tapestry and Lebanon (late 1970s-1980s)”
-Nadia von Maltzahn, Orient-Institut Beirut, “Fadi Barrage: ‘To think things out in painting’”
For the second day and final session of the workshop, NYUAD visiting professors, fellows and guests visited The Africa Institute in Sharjah.

Thanks to Dr. Anneka Lenssen for being the lead facilitator of this visit and Salwa Mikdadi from al Mawrid for being a co-convener of this workshop.

Image below courtesy of The Africa Institute. Read More.

For the second day and final session of the "Go East, Young Artists: Creative Practice across the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Bloc, 1950s-1980s" workshop, NYUAD visiting professors, fellows and guests visited The Africa Institute in Sharjah.

Haraka Lab Plurilogue Talk

The Tinkerer in the Archive

Date: May 11, 2022

Time: 12:00-1:00 pm GST

Online Event - Internal to NYUAD Community

In this event, Anneka Lenssen shares her new research tracking a figure she proposes to designate a “tinkerer,” an artist who works in a labor-intensive experimental manner, and is most commonly associated in the Arab art archive with women artists, aristocratic artists, and/or design entrepreneurs who apply art to non-artistic ends. Taking the work of artists Celine Chalem, Nadia Saikali, Saloua Raouda Choucair, and Najat Makki as examples, the conversation will pay particularly close attention to descriptions and attitudes appearing in Arabic-language materials.

Detail of Celine Chalem, Only You, white marble, late 1960s. From exhibition catalogue to Celine Chalem: G.M.T. Art: tables you can eat on, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, Sept. 19 - October 7, 1967

What relationship to laborious productivity—personal or national—do we expect an Arab artist to claim? In the postcolonial context of Arab countries in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, an aesthetic of roughly elaborated self-expression often reigned supreme. Guided by theories of decolonization and modern psychology, many artists performed a supposedly authentic relationship between self and production by means of apparently effortless automatic sketches and intuitive compositions. By contrast, artists who opted to create highly elaborated forms with experimental materials often seemed to slip outside official projects of subject formation in the period. Anneka Lenssen will share her new research tracking a figure she proposes to designate a “tinkerer,” meaning an artist who works in a labor-intensive experimental manner. Appearing in many ways opposed to national developmentalist sensibilities, the ambivalent figure of the tinkerer is most commonly associated in the Arab art archive with women artists, aristocratic artists, and/or design entrepreneurs who apply art to non-artistic ends. Why, and with what impact on methods and historiography? As part of a moderated discussion of narratives around laborious production in art, we will consider the work of artists Celine Chalem, Nadia Saikali, Saloua Raouda Choucair, and Najat Makki. All these women trained and exhibited in international settings and multiple languages; our conversation will pay particularly close attention to descriptions and attitudes appearing in Arabic-language materials.
Anneka Lenssen is an Associate Professor of Global Modern Art at the University of California, Berkeley. She is co-editor of Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2018) and author of Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics in Syria (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020), which won the Syrian Studies Association Best Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize. She is currently an art editor for the journal Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory (Duke University Press). Here at NYU Abu Dhabi, she is a Senior Fellow (Spring 22) in the Humanities Research Fellowship for the Study of the Arab World and a proud member of the Advisory Board to al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art.

Faculty Talk

On Ruins and Rubble

Speaker: Dr. Hanaa Malallah

Date: May 10, 2022

Time: 12:00-2:00 pm GST

Hybrid Event - Internal to NYUAD Faculty

Since her first exhibition, in 1991, two months after the Gulf War, Dr. Hanaa Malallah's practice has dealt with the subject of ruins, whether the archaeological ruins of ancient Mesopotamia or the modern ruins produced by war. In this talk, Malallah develops a new hypothesis about the difference between these two kinds of ruins by distinguishing the regenerative energy of ruins produced by time from the lethal energy of rubble produced by war.

Watch the recorded event

Floor installation of biohazard sign dusts at second floor of a very toxic exploded building in Baghdad in 2016. The work was executed by special pigment (powder substance), 2016, Baghdad.

Hanaa Malallah (1958-) is an artist, researcher and educator, based in London. Born in Iraq, she studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad, and later earned an MA and PhD from the University of Baghdad. In her graduate work, she developed a semiotic approach to art, receiving a doctorate in 2005 for a thesis that uses forms of logic elaborated by modern philosophy to examine the art of ancient Mesopotamia. Malallah left Iraq at the end of 2006 for an artist residency at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris; that was followed by fellowships at the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Chelsea College of Art in London. She has lectured at the University of Baghdad and the Royal University for Women in Bahrain.

Since the early 1990s, Malallah has tried to think through destruction as an essential part of the human condition, by treating the material she works with as found objects that she mutilates or disfigures according to what she came to conceptualize in 2007 as a ‘ruins technique’. This reflection on destruction has drawn on Malallah’s research on semiotics, and on the material culture of ancient Mesopotamia, but more recently it has shifted its focus from objects to landscapes, and it has explored the ‘virtual’ aspects of destruction: the temporality of decay, the survival of material, and the paradoxical appearance of invisibility within the visible. Her research on the virtual has led more recently to examine the relationship between spiritualism and technology.

Sharbaka Exhibition Programming

Back to the Drawing Board II

Date: March 31, 2022

Time: 5:00-6:00 pm GST

Online Event - Internal to NYUAD Community

Speakers: Vikram Divecha, Syrabhi Sharma, and George Jose

The conversation takes the form of an ‘open critique’ in which reflections and questions are shared by Surabhi Sharma and George Jose with Sharbaka exhibition artist Vikram Divecha, as he reconsiders his exhibition work titled Veedu and how he would like to develop it further. Through this exchange, the artist goes back to the drawing board, both literally - as one would when designing a house - and metaphorically for this project.

As part of al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, Haraka Lab’s exhibition Sharbaka: Entanglement/Attunement features the work of artist Vikram Divecha titled Veedu (“house” in Malayalam), an inquiry into the structures that some migrants design and build in anticipation of their eventual return to India. The film documents the experience of a Keralite migrant family residing in Sharjah as members negotiate the ideals of an aspirational future home in Kerala. Divecha’s work, part of an ongoing project, unravels how negotiations over the house’s AutoCAD design are shaped by the complex intersections of gender, class, caste, ethnicity, and migration.

Back to the Drawing Board is a program designed to engage Vikram Divecha in a public conversation with Surabhi Sharma (Film), George Jose (Anthropology), Gayatri Gopinath (Gender Studies) and Deepak Unnikrishnan (Literature). The conversation takes the form of an ‘open critique’ in which reflections and questions are shared with the artist as he reconsiders this work and how he would like to develop it further. Through this exchange, the artist goes back to the drawing board, both literally — as one would when designing a house — and metaphorically for this project. By centring process in this interdisciplinary exchange, Sharbaka: Entanglement/Attunement aims to be a place in which artistic work gets reinvented and reconfigured rather than simply shown and disseminated.
Beirut-born, Mumbai-bred, Vikram Divecha is an artist based in Dubai. His practice raises questions about time, value, and authorship by engaging people across urban and social spheres, and working with available material and space. Divecha terms this approach as ‘found processes’, which often sees him intervene within public and social systems. From wholesale exporters to municipal gardeners, architectural consultants to railway traffic managers, Divecha’s participants inform and shape his projects in various ways, at times for sustained durations. These attempts translate into public art, site-specific interventions, workshops, installations, moving images, paintings, surfaces, drawings, photographs, performances and text.

Surabhi Sharma has been an independent filmmaker making feature-length documentaries and short films since 2000. Her documentaries, fiction, and video installations engage with cities in transition using the lens of labor, music, and migration. Her works have been screened at International Film Festivals like Dubai International Film Festival, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, and MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, amongst others. She has also created video installations that have been exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery, London; nGbK, Berlin, Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture and the 11th Shanghai Biennale (2016). Her films have been recognized and awarded at the 8th Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Brisbane 2016; Eco-Cinema, Greece 2003 (The Ramsar-Medwet Award), Film South Asia, Kathmandu 2001; Karachi Film Festival 2002; and The Festival of Three Continents, Buenos Aires 2002. Surabhi is currently teaching and the Program Head, Film and NewMedia at New York University Abu Dhabi.

George Jose is Visiting Associate Professor of Anthropology in New York University Abu Dhabi. He was Dean of the Jyoti Dalal School of Liberal Arts, NMIMS University, Mumbai; Program Director for Asia Society India; Program Executive with India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), Bengaluru; and was Research Fellow at Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. He has directed programs in the field of arts and culture for international and regional organizations, and has taught in architecture, design, and management institutes. George maintains a strong interest in art practice across disciplines, and serves collaborative projects in an advisory capacity.

Master Class

Reading the Art and Ethos of Fateh al-Moudarres

Webinar

Date: March 24, 2022

Time: 12‐2 PM GST

Register to attend this “master class” on the art and ethos of Fateh al-Moudarres (1920-1999)—one of Syria’s most beloved modernist painters, and a deeply complex thinker and educator with a far-reaching yet little understood legacy. Led by artist Issam Kourbaj and art historians Anneka Lenssen and Ambra D’Antone, the class will provide a series of lessons in ways to read the different guises of al-Moudarres. We will incorporate close readings of works, writing, recollections of his teaching, and concepts derived from the artist’s ongoing discussions with Adonis and other cultural figures.

Fateh al-Moudarres, The Lady of the Night, 1983, oil on canvas, 75x55cm. Scanned slide from Atassi Foundation archive

Register to attend this “master class” on the art and ethos of Fateh al-Moudarres (1920-1999)—one of Syria’s most beloved modernist painters, and a deeply complex thinker and educator with a far-reaching yet little understood legacy. Led by artist Issam Kourbaj and art historians Anneka Lenssen and Ambra D’Antone, the class will provide a series of lessons in ways to read the different guises of al-Moudarres. We will incorporate close readings of works, writing, recollections of his teaching, and concepts derived from the artist’s ongoing discussions with Adonis and other cultural figures.

Ambra D'Antone (Research Associate Bilderfahrzeuge, Max Weber Stiftung) will explore the relationship between word and image in al-Moudarres’s work, presenting examples of his distinctive approach to questions of meaning, form and intelligibility.

Issam Kourbaj (Former artist-in-residence, bye-fellow, and lector in art, Christ’s College, Cambridge University) will draw on his experience as a student of al-Moudarres at the College of Fine Arts, Damascus, as well as has own extensive experience teaching artists in the UK, UAE, and elsewhere, to discuss the artist’s different attitudes toward creative being, everyday life, and aesthetic judgment.

Anneka Lenssen (Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley / Senior Humanities Fellow, NYU Abu Dhabi) will lead the group through an analysis of al-Moudarres’s selection and use of particular media (paint, sand, ash, other) with a particular focus on the element of chance in his oil painting practice.

Email nyuad.almawrid@nyu.edu for more details.

This is one of two events organized to mark the publication of Fateh-Adonis: Sense and Intuition, the English translation of the famous dialogues between poet Adonis and painter Fateh al-Moudarres first hosted by gallerist Mouna Atassi in Damascus in 1998.

Conversation

Sense and Intuition: A Conversation with Adonis

Sense and Intuition: A Conversation with Adonis الحس والحدس: حوار مع الشاعر الكبير أدونيس

Date: March 23, 2022 (in person)

Time: 6‐8pm GST

This conversation with Adonis, one of the great living poets of the Arab world, focuses on questions regarding the intersection of visual art and poetry in theory and practice.

The event will be in Arabic with simultaneous translation and is open to the public (limited capacity).

Watch the recorded event

Adonis, Mouna Atassi, and Fateh al-Moudarres at the artist’s studio (c. mid-1990s.). Image courtesy of Atassi Foundation for Art and Culture

This conversation with Adonis, the greatest living poet of the Arab world, focuses on questions regarding the intersection of visual art and poetry in theory and practice. This gathering is timed to coincide with the publication of a new English-language translation of a remarkable series of dialogues between Adonis and Syrian artist Fateh al-Moudarres (trans. Rula Baalbaki) hosted by Mouna Atassi in Damascus in 1998. There will be a screening of rare archival video footage from that dialogue, followed by commentary from Mouna Atassi and the Research Scholar and Artist Ala Younis, and an extended discussion with Adonis about the keywords of sense and intuition in literature, art, and his own life and work.

In-Person:

Please present a standard Al Hosn app green pass

Zoom Link, click here

Simultaneous English Interpretation will be provided.

تستضيف هذه الأمسية المميزة التي تقام برعاية مشتركة من المورد "المركز العربي لدراسة الفن" ومؤسسة "أتاسي" و معهد جامعة نيويورك أبوظبي، أيقونة الشعر المعاصر أدونيس في حوار حي ومباشر حول جوانب التقاطع بين الفن التشكيلي والشعر من المنظورين النظري والعملي. يأتي هذا اللقاء بالتزامن مع صدور النسخة الإنجليزية للحوار بين أدونيس والفنان التشكيلي السوري الراحل فاتح المدرس (ترجمة رولا بعلبكي)، والذي أدارت جلسته السيدة منى أتاسي في دمشق عام 1998. وستعرض في الأمسية لقطات فيديو أرشيفية نادرة من حوارات أخرى بين الفنان والشاعر، تليها تعليقات من منى أتاسي والفنانة والباحثة ألاء يونس، بالإضافة لشرح مفصل مع أدونيس حول الكلمات المفتاحية لكتاب "فاتح – أدونيس: الحس والحدس" في الأدب والشعر وفي حياته ومختلف أعماله، ليجيب بعدها في الختام على أسئلة الحضور.

للحضور الشخصي | الرجاء إبراز تصريح المرور الأخضر عبر تطبيق الحصن

للزوم | سيتم إرسال الرابط يوم المحاضرة

Speakers
أدونيس Adonis, Poet
Mouna Atassi, Founder of Atassi Foundation

In conversation with
Ala Younis, Artist; Research Scholar, Al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art

In collaboration with NYUAD Institute and the Atassi Foundation for Arts and Culture.

Talk

Faculties of Perception: On the Ex-Colonial Art School (Sudan, Syria, Algeria)

Talk

Date: February 07, 2022
Time: 5:00 - 6:00 PM GST

Speaker: Anneka Lenssen - Senior Humanities Research Fellow, NYUAD

This event is open to the NYU community and by invitation.

Detail of studio workspace in the College of Fine Arts, Damascus, c. 1964. From photograph in the collection of the estate of Mahmoud Hammad.

A scene plays out across the liberation imaginaries of 1960s art worlds. Teachers and students smash the plaster casts of the “models” granted to them by colonial occupiers and break the frames of academic oil painting. In Algiers, this destructive work came as a terrible collaboration with the occupying French military, which in the final years of the Algerian War for independence took back French art and bombed the museum. Henceforth, the FLN took responsibility for (re)filling the building with revolutionary displays. In Damascus, the effort took a conceptual guise as teachers returned from study in Italy and Eastern Europe and, under the sponsorship of a newly powerful Ba’th Party, announced plans to write an all-new experimental curriculum based on Bauhaus-style sensory exercises. In this talk, Anneka Lenssen introduces aspects of her research on how, exactly, artist-pedagogues set about repairing mind-body relationships following dramatic breaks with academic convention. Once makers claim to abandon the curricular standards of a bygone colonial era, what is made? With what materials, forming what sensibilities? And for what audience? Using examples from Syria and Algeria, with reference to other pedagogical initiatives from ex-colonial settings, Lenssen examines the place of the art school—a site of both praxis and proclamation—in several different collective efforts to realize a future free society by accommodating a fuller spectrum of creative practices and sensory perceptions. Which subjects and abilities were allotted space to survive, which were not, and how might we understand the stakes of such thwarted projects today?
Anneka Lenssen is Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics in Syria (UC Press, 2020), which won the 2021 Syrian Studies Association Book Prize, and co-editor with Nada Shabout and Sarah Rogers of Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (MoMA, 2018). On her home campus she is an art editor for Critical Times and a member of the advisory board to UC Berkeley's Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Talk

Natq: A Live Audiovisual Essay About Impossible Speech

Date: November 23, 2021

Time: 7 - 8:30 pm

Artist: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, al Mawrid’s Resident Fellow (November 2021), Artist, Audio Investigator & 2019 Turner Prize Joint-Winner

Event in collaboration with the NYUAD Institute.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan presents "Natq," a live audiovisual essay on the politics and possibilities of reincarnation. Through listening closely to “xenoglossy” (the impossible speech of reincarnated subjects), this performance explores a collectivity of lives who use reincarnation to negotiate their condition at the threshold of the law—people for whom injustices and violence have escaped the historical record due to colonial subjugation, corruption, rural lawlessness, and legal amnesty. In the piece, reincarnation is not a question of belief but a medium for justice.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan with a Microphone on the Side