"Intimaa: Belonging" can now be experienced online

This exhibition is the first-ever collaboration between UAE Unlimited and The NYUAD Art Gallery, supported by the Ministry of Culture and Knowledge Development

Press Release

The NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Art Gallery is offering an online experience of its last Project Space exhibition, Intimaa: Belonging. In the new video, The Art Gallery’s inaugural David Webb Museum Fellow, Tala Nassar, gives a tour of the exhibition. The video showcases the commissioned artworks on display, and features excerpts of poems being recited by the exhibition’s four Emirati poets.

This marks the sixth in a series of annual exhibitions organized by UAE Unlimited throughout the UAE, this time in collaboration with The NYUAD Art Gallery, and supported by the Ministry of Culture and Knowledge Development. This exhibition unveils a number of works and four new commissions by UAE-based emerging artists who question their place in an era of globalization and how, through the rise of technological advancements, society has formed a unified existence that can be referred to as a ‘universal identity’.

Curated by Emirati arts researcher Nasser Abdullah, participating artists include Saeed AlMadani, multimedia artist Sarah AlMehairi, cultural cartographer Sofiane Si Merabet, and multimedia artist Majd Alloush. Every edition includes an established artist as a mentor and guest artist, this year’s guest is Dana Awartani. In addition to Awartani’s mentorship, these  artists have received guidance from artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian throughout the process.

In a unique development, Intimaa: Belonging features newly commissioned bilingual poems by rising Emirati poets Ahmed Al Mannai, Ali Al Mazmy, Hassan Al Najjar, and Shamma Al Bastaki, all of whom have been mentored by the award-winning poet, writer, and presenter Khalid Albudoor.


About NYU Abu Dhabi

NYU Abu Dhabi is the first comprehensive liberal arts and research campus in the Middle East to be operated abroad by a major American research university. NYU Abu Dhabi has integrated a highly selective undergraduate curriculum across the disciplines with a world center for advanced research and scholarship. The university enables its students in the sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, and arts to succeed in an increasingly interdependent world and advance cooperation and progress on humanity’s shared challenges. NYU Abu Dhabi’s high-achieving students have come from over 115 countries and speak over 115 languages. Together, NYU's campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai form the backbone of a unique global university, giving faculty and students opportunities to experience varied learning environments and immersion in other cultures at one or more of the numerous study-abroad sites NYU maintains on six continents.