Activities
- Sharbaka: Entanglement/Attunement Exhibition
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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 PolicyFor 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: Performing the Exhibition
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Date: June 7, 2022
Time: 6:30-8:00 pm GST
Internal to NYUAD Community
Facilitator: Ghazi Al-Mulaifi
Event type: Sharbaka exhibition program
In collaboration with the NYUAD Arts Center, 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.
- The Tinkerer in the Archive
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Date: May 11, 2022
Time: 12:00-1:00 pm GST
Online Event: Internal to NYUAD Community
Speaker: Anneka Lenssen
Event type: Plurilogue Talks
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.
Watch the event here.
- Back to the Drawing Board II
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Date: April 26, 2022
Time: 5:00-6:00 pm GST
Online Event: Internal to NYUAD Community
Speakers: Vikram Divecha, Gyatri Gopinath, and Deepak Unnikrishnan
Event type: Sharbaka Exhibition Program
This conversation takes the form of an ‘open critique’ in which reflections and questions are shared by Gayatri Gopinath and Deepak Unnikrishnan 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.
- History and Policies of Bahrain and Kuwait (1960s-1970s)
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Date: April 20, 2022
Time: 12:00-1:00 pm GST
Online Event: Internal to NYUAD Community
Speaker: Wafa Alsayed
Event type: Plurilogue Talks
Wafa Alsayed discusses the difference between Bahrain and Kuwait’s foreign policy behaviors resulting from their respective processes of state formation, which led to the emergence of divergent identities. This Plurilogue Talk illustrates how the archival material and ideational domestic structures that emerged throughout each country’s history played an instrumental role in shaping their foreign policies.
Watch the event here.
- Alumni panel: What we (Un)learned
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Date: April 15, 2022
Time: 4:30-6:00 pm GST
Online Event: Internal to NYUAD Community
Event type: Sharbaka exhibition program
A panel of four NYUAD alumni majoring in Social Research and Public Policy respond to the themes of artist Alaa Edris’s video artwork School featured in Haraka Lab’s Exhibition, Sharbaka: Entanglement/Attunement. This discussion explores the panelists’ lived experiences with education and the constant processes of learning and unlearning. Through reflections on their individual journeys, the panel unpacks questions of power, positionality, and process in educational institutions.
Watch the event here.
- وتوالت الأحداث عاصفة - A Storm of Events
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Date: April 13, 2022
Time: 12:00-1:00 pm GST
Online Event: Internal to NYUAD Community
Speaker: Ala Younis
Event type: Sharbaka exhibition program
A plurilogue in Arabic language with artist Ala Younis to learn more about Ajman Independent Studios, commissioned artwork made specifically for Haraka Lab’s exhibition Sharbaka: Entanglement/Attunement. Ajman Independent Studios is the first studio set up in the UAE’s northern emirate Ajman, and has produced several Arabic language television series since its founding in 1975.
Watch the event here.
- Back to the Drawing Board I
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Date: March 31, 2022
Time: 5:00-6:00 pm GST
Online Event: Internal to NYUAD Community
Speakers: Vikram Divecha, Surabhi Sharma, and George Jose
Event type: Sharbaka exhibition program
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.
- Theorizing Up: Impermanence
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Date: December 16, 2021
Online Event: Internal to NYUAD Community
Speaker: May Al-Dabbagh
Event type: Sharbaka exhibition program
In this talk, May Al-Dabbagh, Assistant Professor of Social Research and Public Policy at NYU Abu Dhabi, shares her ongoing research for her book project titled The Messy Middle, which moves beyond the binary of migrant and expat to explore how middle-class serial migrant mothers navigate their home and work environments in Dubai.
Watch the event here.
- Theorizing Up: Mobility
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Date: November 25, 2021
Online Event: Internal to NYUAD Community
Speaker: Nidhi Mahajan
Event type: Sharbaka exhibition program
In this talk, Nidhi Mahajan, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC Santa Cruz, shares her research for her ongoing book project titled Moorings: The Dhow Trade, States and Capitalism on the Indian Ocean, which focuses on the social fabric of a mobile maritime seafaring community from Kutch in Western India.
Watch the event here.
- Theorizing Up: Authenticity
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Date: November 11, 2021
Online Event: Internal to NYUAD Community
Speaker: Rana AlMutawa
Event type: Sharbaka exhibition program
In this talk, Rana AlMutawa, Assistant Professor Emerging Scholar of Social Research and Public Policy at NYU Abu Dhabi, shares her ongoing research about discourses of authenticity that circulate about spectacular and illiberal cities such as Dubai.
Watch the event here.
- Theorizing Up: Belonging
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Date: November 4, 2021
Online Event: Internal to NYUAD Community
Speaker: Laure Assaf
Event type: Sharbaka exhibition program
In this talk, Laure Assaf, Assistant Professor of Arab Crossroads Studies and Anthropology at NYU Abu Dhabi, shares her ongoing research about how Arab youths form attachments and a sense of belonging along the lines of age and generation in the diverse, stratified urban environment of Abu Dhabi.
Watch the event here.
- Theorizing Up: Labor
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Date: October 28, 2021
Online Event: Internal to NYUAD Community
Speaker: John O'Brien
Event type: Sharbaka exhibition program
In this talk, John O'Brien, Associate Professor of Social Research and Public Policy at NYU Abu Dhabi, shares how he arrived at his current research topic: how white, western expats in the UAE talk about employing domestic workers.
Watch the event here.
- Pearl Diving Music as Decolonial Gulf Archive
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Date: April 29, 2021
Time: 4:00-5:00 pm GST
Online Event - Internal to NYUAD Community
Speaker: Ghazi Al-Mulaifi
Event type: Plurilogue Talks
Academic critiques of manufactured Gulf heritage focus on the privileging of certain practices and traditions by national narratives. In much of these critiques, “Arab” is constructed as a category that is contrasted with others. Yet, what kinds of alternative conceptualization might we gain by paying close attention to musical practices such as pearl diving music? How do Khaleeji musicians understand the contemporary appropriation of their culture, and how does the transnational history of their practice resist ossification or erasure?
- Excavating the Global South in the Gulf
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Date: April 15, 2021
Time: 4:00-5:00 pm GST
Online Event: Internal to NYUAD Community
Speaker: Cláudio Costa Pinheiro
Event type: Plurilogue Talks
Global South is a polysemic concept. The term has many origins, related meanings and developments. What are the local histories of the concept of ‘South’ in the Gulf region? How can this concept help us explore the intellectual connections between the Gulf and Latin America for critically addressing modes of knowledge production in the social sciences and challenging the limitations imposed by area studies frameworks, without engaging with the overdetermined idea of ‘de-colonization’?