making room

What can we preserve from the built environment once we strip away its visible, material manifestations? What shapes our relationship with spaces we call home; spaces we move swiftly through?

An homage to the overlaying narratives of our shared ground, this workshop invites participants to use collage and assemblage of images and found objects as a way to re-imagine space and provide a visual vocabulary to the incommunicable.

Shama Nair:

Shama Nair is a multidisciplinary curator and researcher. Drawn to the intersection between urbanity and visual culture, her work investigates our spatial, temporal, and aesthetic relationship with an ever-expanding neoliberal metropolis. She is based in Dubai where she collaborates with arts, culture, and architecture institutions between South Asia and the Gulf.

Zawyeh Gallery:

Zawyeh Gallery is an independent Visual Art Gallery founded in Ramallah, Palestine, in 2013. Since March 2020, the gallery has expanded by opening in a second location at Alserkal Avenue in Dubai, UAE.

Zawyeh’s mission is to promote emerging and established Palestinian artists – from Palestine and the Diaspora – through various thematic exhibitions at home and aboard. In the past few years, the gallery organized several solo and collective exhibitions, showcasing artworks based on a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, installation, video, and photography.

Zawyeh aims at supporting young artists and showcasing contemporary and modern Palestinian art internationally through the participation in art fairs, exhibitions, and specific art projects. Zawyeh Gallery has participated in a number of art fairs including Paris Contemporary Art Show P/CAS (2019), Contemporary Istanbul (2019), Galleries at MAS Abu Dhabi (2019), Art Dubai (2021, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016), Abu Dhabi Art (2019, 2018), and Beirut Art Fair (2018, 2017).

Zawyeh believes in investing in creativity and artistic talents in Palestine, as a way of resilience in the face of adversaries.