The Alumni Return (2019)
Postgraduate works by 8 invited artists, returning to the UAE after acquiring their MA/MFA
Enough (2018) by Azim Al GhusseinTashkeel
Azim Al Ghussein
"I am compelled by the Rule of the Desert: If one were to spend three days and three nights with a tribe, eating, drinking and sleeping as they do, then one becomes part of the tribe."
"Referencing acts of hospitality practiced in the Middle East, I share with the audience the things that I make and consume and consequently, through consumption of the same things, we become kin."
Hadeyeh Badri
"A sick body submerged in chaos tries to find a moment for itself. Anxiety of erasure creates this urgency to make work about the sick body. For the past four years, I have been invested in making work to help me think of a loved one lost."
"The bodies (or lack thereof) I weave are sites of tragedy. I ask myself how a standardised condition can be countered by representing the sick
body as a phenomenological and subjective/personal experience."
Capes Make The Man: King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, Dancer (2018) by Khalid MezainaTashkeel
Khalid Mezaina
"Over the two years at Rhode Island School of Design, I frequently asked myself questions about my place and role as a man in the United Arab Emirates, and what awaits when I move back after graduating."
"Using personal narratives and cultural symbols from home, I bring to life the archetypes I carry as a mature masculine – my king, warrior, magician, lover and dancer."
"Through a combination of screen printing, dyeing and embroidery techniques, the capes visually contextualise these archetypes, what they personally mean to me and the characters I embody when caped."
"Not Your Grandad depicts the burial process and accompanying rituals for the recently deceased, told from the perspective of my brother almost in a new journalistic sense. My thesis discussed the possibility of using New Journalism (as popularised by Gay Talese and Truman Capote) in comic books; the concept of telling a story of a real individual through the first person by an external agent."
Saeed Al Madani
"The body of work looks at how corners are seen as borders, as places of refuge – and how language and pieces of personal writing sometimes express the truest form of a mental state resonating profoundly with the human self."
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