Majlis Talks: Crit Club

The Majlis Talks, curated by Stephanie Bailey, will host a special edition of Crit Club, a performance project conceived by Cem A. of @freeze_magazine. Designed to spark debate and dialogue, the talks are envisioned by the artist as a sports tournament, inviting participants into a site-specific environment to tackle unrealistic questions and impossible positions—drawn from discussions within the UAE art scene that rarely find a voice.

About the Curator

Stephanie Bailey is an art writer, curator, editor, educator, and strategist from Hong Kong. An ART PAPERS contributing editor and regular contributor to Art Review, e-flux Criticism, and Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, among others, she served as Conversations Curator and Curatorial and Content Strategist for Art Basel Hong Kong from 2014-2025; Editor, Asia, Art Basel, from 2021-2024; Managing Editor for Podium by M+ from 2018-2024; and Ocula Editor-in-Chief from 2017-2023. From 2012-2017, she was Senior Editor of Ibraaz, founded in 2011 by Kamel Lazaar Foundation, for whom she curated the symposium 'What Can We Learn and Unlearn When We Speak Together?’ as part of the 2022 edition of JAOU in Tunis.

A PhD candidate in Birkbeck’s Department of Law, Stephanie is exploring globalisation’s histories and counter-histories through the interconnected prisms of the art-fair-biennial industrial complex and the post-war international order, and has participated in symposia organised by Athens Biennale, Asia Society, Duke University, India Art Fair, Iuav University of Venice, Paul Mellon Centre, Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts, and Tsinghua University, among others. Between 2009 and 2012, she designed and implemented the first BTEC-accredited Foundation Diploma in Art and Design in Greece for Doukas Education, has served as a mentor for Digital Earth and The Double Negative, and more recently co-organised Small Acts / New Flows, Para Site’s 2024 Alternative School / Workshops for Emerging Arts Professionals, which included a symposium hosted by Hong Kong University with speakers including Sakiya and BOLOHO.

About Cem A.

Cem A. is an artist with a background in anthropology. He is known for running the art meme page @freeze_magazine and for his site-specific installations. His work explores themes such as virality and performativity, often through collaborative projects.

Cem A.’s selected solo exhibitions and interventions include Barbican Centre, ZKM Karlsruhe, Berlinische Galerie, Louisiana Museum, Künstlerhaus Bethanien and Museum Wiesbaden. His work was also included in documenta fifteen, Istanbul Modern, Mudam Luxembourg, Klima Biennale Vienna, Temporary Gallery and 14. Biennial of Young Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje. He has held lectures at Royal College of Art London, HEAD Geneva, KASK Ghent and Universität der Künste Berlin.

Sessions & Speakers

Can art really decolonise?

Adelita Husni-Bey & Gary Zhexi Zheng

About the Speakers

Adelita Husni-Bey is an artist and pedagogue whose practice is grounded in anarcho-collectivism, theatre and legal anthropology. Through workshops and artworks rooted in noncompetitive pedagogical models, she engages a broad spectrum of participants, including activists, architects, jurists, schoolchildren, poets, actors and urbanists. Her practice emphasises collective experimentation and critical reflection on sociopolitical systems and structures.

The artist’s work has been exhibited at various institutional and non-institutional venues, including the Italian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017). As a Vera List Center Fellow (2020–2022), she investigated the social transformations prompted by pandemics through a purpose-built maze structure that served as a dynamic space for workshops and lectures.

For Sharjah Biennial 16, she collaborated with researcher Shehrazade Mahassini on a film installation that explores water extraction, infrastructure and the politics of adaptability, addressing environmental crises shaped by contemporary economic systems and their histories.

Gary Zhexi Zhang's works explore systemic connections between cosmology, technology and economy. He operates individually, collaboratively and with organisations in various modalities, including installation, film, performance, writing, teaching as well as research with cultural institutions and think tanks.

He recently edited a book of fictions, essays and interviews about finance and time, Catastrophe Time! (Strange Attractor Press, 2023). Dead Cat Bounce, the opera he co-created with Waste Paper Opera, premiered at Somerset House in 2022 and toured in 2024. Recent exhibitions included his solo presentation METAMERS at EPFL Pavilions, Lausanne and participation in the 9th Asian Art Biennial, Taichung.

He has taught as a Lecturer in Critical Studies at Goldsmiths MFA and Adjunct Lecturer at Parsons School of Design in New York, where he also co-founded design studio, Foreign Objects. Books and chapters include Against Reduction (chapter, MIT Press, 2021), Incomputable Earth (chapter, Bloomsbury, upcoming), Platforms: Around, In Between and Through (Singapore Biennale, 2023); Future Art Ecosystems III & VI (co-author; Serpentine, 2022 & 2024).

Can aesthetics ever be separated from social responsibility?

Lawrence Abu Hamdan & Urok Shirhan

About the Speakers

Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a researcher, filmmaker, artist and activist— or as he puts it a ‘Private Ear’. Abu Hamdan has over a decade of experience investigating audio and a doctorate from the University of London on the role of sound in legal investigations and political discourse. In 2023, he founded Earshot, the world’s first not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the study of audio for human rights and environmental advocacy. His work has been presented in the form of forensic reports, lectures and live performances, films, publications, and exhibitions all over the world.

His investigative work has been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and in a formal request to the International Criminal Court. His research in sound and acoustic events has played a central role in advocacy campaigns for organisations, such as the Defence for Children International, al Haq, Human Rights Watch, Btselem, Forbidden Stories, Forensic Architecture, and Amnesty International. His work with Earshot regularly furnishes journalists at the Washington Post, Sky News, AlJazeera and others with the information they need to produce the most accurate reporting they can.

Abu Hamdan has held fellowships and guest professorships at the University of Chicago, the New School, New York and the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. His cultural projects reflecting on the political and cultural context of sound and listening have been presented at the MoMA New York, MUAC Mexico, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, the 58th Venice Biennale, the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the 13th and 14th Sharjah Biennial, the 34th Biennial of São Paulo, the Tate Modern, Hammer Museum L.A and the Hamburger Banhnof, Berlin. His works are part of collections at Reina Sofia, MoMA, Guggenheim, Hamburger Bahnhof, Van AbbeMuseum, Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern.

Abu Hamdan has been widely recognized internationally with awards such as the Grand Prix at Winterthur International Film Festival, the 2020 Toronto Biennial Audience Award, the 2019 Edvard Munch Art Award, the award for best short film at the 2017 Rotterdam International Film Festival and the 2016 Nam June Paik Award for New Media. For the 2019 Turner Prize, Abu Hamdan, together with nominated artists Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani, formed a temporary collective in order to be jointly granted the award.

About Urok Shirhan

Urok Shirhan (NL/Iraq) is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of performance, visual arts, and critical theory. Her practice explores the politics and poetics of sound, image and speech in relation to power and affect. Her projects often emerge from questions informed by her biography and familyʼs history of political struggle and perpetual (forced) migrations. Urokʼs latest body of research considers the role of sound (and the voice in particular) in relation to forms of collectivity, dissidence and belonging.

Urok holds an MA (Hons.) in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths University in London. She has been in residence at the Delfina Foundation in London and held research fellowships at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht; the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam; Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, and Ashkal Alwan in Beirut.

In 2020 and 2021, Urok hosted the monthly live radio show ʻSound Without Imageʼ on Radio Alhara broadcasting from Bethlehem, Palestine. Her texts have been published with Infrasonica; The Derivative at the Beirut Art Center; Sonic Continuum at Nottingham Contemporary; and PrintRoom in Rotterdam.

Recent presentations include Onassis Foundation (Athens); Pickle Bar (Berlin); Tavros (Athens); Gallery TPW (Toronto); Stroom (Den Haag); The Contemporary Art Museum of Crete (Rethymno); e-flux Film & Video platform; Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons (Utrecht); MoMA PS1 (New York); TENT (Rotterdam); and the 38th Drodesera Festival (Dro, Italy).She is currently a 2024/25 Onassis AiR Fellow in Athens, Greece.

Are art fairs relevant?

Umer Butt & Kabir Jhala

About the Speakers

Umer Butt is the founder and co-director of Grey Noise, a Dubai-based contemporary art gallery. The gallery’s programme is rooted in a commitment to contemporaneity, with an emphasis on distinctive and often experimental practices. Eschewing geographical limitations, Grey Noise represents both emerging and established artists whose work is grounded in strong conceptual frameworks.

A regular speaker on platforms dedicated to critical art discourse, Butt has also served as adjunct faculty at the National College of Arts and Beaconhouse National University in Lahore. In 2018, he was a guest researcher at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, where he wrote about his mentor, the late artist Lala Rukh (1948–2017). Born in 1979, Butt earned an MA in Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Art and Design at the University of the Arts London in 2003, after completing a BA in Fine Arts with a focus on Printmaking from the National College of Arts in Lahore in 2001.