As part of al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, Haraka Lab’s exhibition Sharbaka: Entanglement/Attunement features a student panel of four NYUAD alumni majoring in SRPP – Nandini Kochar, Sobha Gadi, Laura Assanmal and Lubnah Ansari – responding to the themes of artist Alaa Edris’s video artwork School featured in the exhibition, hosted in 19WSN.
Moderated by Kaashif Hajee, this discussion explores the panelists’ lived experiences with education and the constant processes of learning and unlearning. Through reflections on individual journeys, the panel unpacks questions of power, positionality, and process in educational institutions.
About the Artist
Alaa Edris uses photography, film and performance to enact experimental mappings and manipulations of her social and urban environment. Acting as anthropologist, cartographer and sci-fi voyager, she contends with dominant issues from the field of Arab artistic research, including the construction of gender, the relationship between tradition and progress, and language as a medium for identifying, shaping and articulating a culture. Born in Sharjah, Edris currently lives and works between Sharjah and Abu Dhabi.
About the Moderator
Kaashif Hajee graduated from NYU Abu Dhabi in 2021 with a double-major in Social Research and Public Policy and Film and New Media. For his capstone, Kaashif wrote, directed, and edited a short narrative film titled Gair, which follows an Indian teenager and a Pakistani taxi driver in Abu Dhabi. At NYU Abu Dhabi, Kaashif wrote extensively about issues of social justice and Eurocentrism in the curriculum for The Gazelle, which he eventually led as co-Editor-in-Chief. An aspiring journalist, filmmaker and reluctant anthropologist, Kaashif wants to study Hindu nationalism and its effects on minorities and cultural production in India. Currently, he is working as a Research Assistant to Dr. May Al-Dabbagh at Haraka Experimental Lab in the NYUAD Social Science Department. He calls Bombay home.
About the Panelists
Nandini Kochar is an NYU Abu Dhabi Alumna who graduated with a double-degree in Social Research and Public Policy and Film and New Media in 2021. During her time at NYU Abu Dhabi, Nandini extensively studied and documented the migrant experience in the UAE, with a particular focus on expanding and problematizing reductive dominant narratives. She founded Humans of Abu Dhabi and served as UAE Columnist for The Gazelle. Her work has featured in The National and she was a recipient of the 2020 Shukran Cultural Appreciation Award. Nandini's capstone documentary explored the intersections of leisure, labor, and love in the lives of migrant mothers in Abu Dhabi. She is presently pursuing a fellowship with Teach For India, where she teaches 67 students in the 10th grade in a low-income public school in Bombay.
Lubnah Ansari dissects notions of personal and political questions with fervent curiosity. Utilizing her multidisciplinary skills, the artist and researcher engages with Hindu-Muslim households using feminist ethnographic frameworks. The NYU Abu Dhabi graduate has immersed herself in the roles of both the insider and the outsider, which gives her work a refreshing angle that urges you to tap into your compassion. She is currently part of The Assembly at Jameel Arts Center and is a post-graduate research fellow at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Sobha Gadi is an MPhil student in Politics (Comparative Government) at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, with a primary research interest in the long-run political consequences of disruptive historical events. He also maintains an interest in the study of political violence and ethnic politics. Sobha’s previous research has focused on the impact of sectarian violence on electoral outcomes for sectarian parties. He has also worked on a project investigating the relationship between democracy and violence, and on a project investigating nativist populism. His work is supported by the Clarendon Scholarship and a Nuffield College Award. Prior to his time at Nuffield College, Sobha majored in Social Research and Public Policy at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Born and raised in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and an aspiring New Yorker, Laura Assanmal graduated from NYU Abu Dhabi in 2021 with a degree in Social Research & Public Policy, and is now pursuing a PhD in Sociology of Education at NYU Steinhardt. During her time as an undergraduate, Laura engaged with on-campus ongoing efforts for consent education, facilitated interfaith and intercultural dialogue as part of NYUAD’s office of Spiritual Life and Intercultural Education, and served as co-Editor-in-Chief of The Gazelle, where she wrote extensively about consent, intimacy, and issues of income and class. As a culmination of her work, Laura’s capstone centered the experiences of survivors of sexual harm at NYU Abu Dhabi, where she explored how they conceptualize justice and accountability through interview-based qualitative work. She currently dwells on issues of research ethics, participatory action research, restorative justice, sexual and intimate violence, Title IX, and non-carceral responses to sexual harm.