Events

  • 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).


    Exhibition

    Ala Younis: Past of a Temporal Universe

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

    Duration: September 23, 2025 - January 18, 2026

    Location: 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.