This exhibition presents new works by 3 emerging artists from the UAE, Sarah Al Mehairi, Majd Alloush and Mohammed Khalid.
About the artists
Sarah Al Mehairi was born in Abu Dhabi in 1998, where she currently lives and works. She received her BA in Art and Art History from New York University Abu Dhabi.
Al Mehairi's overarching body of work explores materiality, systems and interrelations, memory, and language through the intuitive and poetic examination of narrative and abstraction. By engaging with geometric forms, she extracts and defines a structural language read time and time again to suggest a form other than its own, such as a map, sentence, or puzzle piece. Through the process, they are broken down, built and reassembled as continuous iterations of themselves. Working primarily within an investigative range of media, she explores the push and pull of material to evoke a story that both conceals and reveals itself.
Al Mehairi was part of the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship’s 7th Cohort (2019-2020). She is the creator of the Artist Talks series and co-founder of the JARA Collective.She is represented by Carbon12.
Majd Alloush is a Syrian artist whose work spans multiple disciplines including printmaking, sculpture, photography, moving image, installation and performance. His creative practice challenges the notion of borders in concept, content, and medium, by exploring geopolitics, and social and environmental issues such as the ramifications of war and displacement. Alloush strategically creates work wherein multiple interpretations are possible, requiring the viewer’s own worldview to inform the meaning. His work is situated within contemporary hybrid practice, at the intersection of traditional processes and innovative methodology.
Alloush holds a BFA from the University of Sharjah, Class of 2018, and is currently pursuing his MFA in Art and Media at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Mohammed Khalid examines the materiality of everyday objects and coaxes out their metaphorical potential. Through fabricating receipts, playing with street cats, composing fictional tours and stealing corporate pens, he dissects ironies embedded in his everyday surroundings. What begins as an arbitrary flânerie, develops into a methodical formula that addresses philosophical and phenomenological, revealing the spatial, poetic relationships between his subjects and their correlation to human beings.
Khalid is an alumnus of the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship and Campus Art Dubai 7.0, with previous group shows at Art Dubai, Warehouse421 and Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
The works on view were commissioned by Abu Dhabi Art for Beyond: Emerging Artists 2022.
Beyond: Emerging Artists is supported by the Friends of Abu Dhabi Art.
Abu Dhabi Art is organised by the Department of Culture and Tourism - Abu Dhabi.
About Friends of Abu Dhabi Art
Launched in 2021, Friends of Abu Dhabi Art is made up of individuals who are actively committed to supporting art and culture in Abu Dhabi.
The initiative is co-headed by Nadine Maalouf and Nadia Sehweil and comprises the following members:
Aysha Hareb
Alina El Solh and Karim El Solh
Asma Al Fahim
Amna Al Nowais
Asma Seddeq Al Motawa
Barbara Farahnick-Mathonet
Buthaina Al Mazroui
Christina Aboyoun
Dany Farha and Tanya Farha
Fairouz Villain and Jean Paul Villain
Haif Zamzam
Haifa Ahmed Alobeidli
Ibrahim Al Manaee
Khadijah Al Kudsi and Hashim Al Kudsi
Lizeth Maalouf
Maysoon Barber
Mary Habib
Mimi Merhebi
Mohammed Afkhami
Dr. Mona Hammami
Namrata Shroff
Nesrine Maalouf
Nisreen Bajis
Nisreen Shocair
Olivier Georges Mestelan
Rana Asfour
Rana Kuzayli El-Khoury
Rasha Al Mubarak
Salama Khalfan
Salvatore Lavallo
Samia Bouazza
Saood Al Nuaimi
Serena Carnevale
Shafeena Yussuf Ali
Sima Ved
Tala Gharagozlou
Tarek Hourani
Tarek Miknas and Ventzi Naydenova
Tatiana Karam
Thomas Young
