New site-specific commissions by Fahd Burki (Grey Noise), Ala Ebtekar and Sahand Hesamiyan (The Third Line) have taken shape within the public realm at Alserkal Avenue. Their ideas inspired a wider curatorial framework, The Follower, which encourages keener observation of the natural elements - the wind, the sun and the stars - as a means of wayfinding and regaining cultural knowledge.

Join us for a tour of the public art commissions with curator Nada Raza, illuminating the thinking behind each artwork.

The tour will start in The Yard

Biographies

Nada Raza is a curator and researcher whose work focuses on contemporary art from Southwest Asia. Raza is the director of Alserkal Arts Foundation and the founding artistic director of Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai, where her curatorial projects include Altered Inheritances: Home is a Foreign Place (2019); and Body Building, a thematic exhibition of lens-based work (2019).

Prior to this, Raza was Research Curator at Tate Research Centre: Asia, with a particular focus on South Asian art. She co-curated Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please All (2016) and organised presentations of work by international artists, including Meshac Gaba, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Zarina Hashmi, Sheela Gowda, Amar Kanwar and Mrinalini Mukherjee. She was guest curator of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize (2014) and curated The Missing One, for the Dhaka Art Summit and the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (2016).

She has also worked on international art at the Institute for International Visual Art (Iniva) and at Green Cardamom in London. Raza holds an MA from the Chelsea College of Art and Design and is a doctoral candidate at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Image: Installation view of Zenith by Ala Ebtekar as part of The Follower, supported by Alserkal Arts Foundation. Photo credit: Ismail Noor / Seeing Things