The Domesticity of Wanderers

Why and how must we share our stories with the general public? Workshops co-run by the research collective on the 24th of November are self-reflexive and subversive to traditional forms of ‘presenting’ research projects in visual and material anthropology. A series of four consecutive workshops running from x PM to x PM, the four collaborators weave the ethos of protection in (auto)ethnographic research through recreation of children's games, linguistic explorations, floorplanning exercises, and zine-making. They will be joined by research grantee Lubnah Ansari, who will offer learnings from their project Tracing Temple Ties.

Please be prepared for floor-seating during all the workshops. Accessible seating will be available.

Programme Schedule

Session 1: Floor-planning in the Dark

led by Khaled Esguerra and Maitha Ali (3:00 PM to 3:30 PM)

Building up on the early stages of the research grant, Maitha and Khaled invite participants to floor-plan a room in their domestic space from memory, thinking of the ways in which stories emerge through a creative exercise of recalling built environments. This workshop insists on the importance of safeguarding such stories using tactile materials and tools.

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Session 2: Language in Motion

led by Hassana Arif (3:30 PM to 4:00 PM)

This workshop offers participants a peek into one dialect of the Ajami language. Through quick drawing exercises and collaborative activities, we will explore words and expressions from a language that, while undocumented in textbooks, has been preserved through generations of oral tradition.

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Session 3: Paper Paths, Memory Maps

led by Al Reem Al Beshr (4:00 PM to 4:30 PM)

Al Reem invites participants to engage in the creation of a simple, interactive paper game designed to playfully map and trace memory. This childlike approach to recalling history encourages dialogue and opens brief portals to stories of family, movement, and landscapes.

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Session 4: The Reverse(d) Zine

led by Maitha Ali with support from Lubnah Ansari (4:30 PM to 5:00 PM)

Maitha and Lubnah spent the duration of the research grant corresponding and reflecting together on their positionality in their respective research projects. Known to be subversive and protective in practice, zines were a medium within which they found solace when sharing their stories and how they embodied them. This workshop creatively reverses the process of zine making so as to further cushion and protect stories. Through fragmentation and visual obstruction, we challenge the idea that stories must be complete or linear in order to be shared or witnessed.

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Biographies

Maitha Ali is a performance artist, researcher, and art educator exploring intersectional/interdisciplinary themes within the ecosystems she exists and has existed in. She works with creative methodologies on topics including urbanism, human and non-human conviviality, and the domestic built environment. Maitha synthesizes her postgraduate studies in visual, material, and museum anthropology and a prior education in politics and public policy in her art and research practice.

Al Reem Al Beshr is an Abu Dhabi based filmmaker and writer whose work engages with cultural myths and religious misconceptions in the Gulf. Her practice involves fiction, documentary, and experimental film and video work grounded in an auto-ethnographic research approach. She enjoys exploring themes of family and memory, merging personal and collective histories in imagined stories, to further push and play with narratives under absurdist and comedic guises. As a current fellow at the Salama Bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Fellowship, she is interested in the fictionalization of local spaces and character archetypes.

Khaled Esguerra is a photographer, visual artist and designer from Abu Dhabi. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Visual Communication from the American University of Sharjah. His artistic practice tackles the complexities and nuances of migrant identity, urban narratives and claiming space in the Gulf, situated by his experience in growing up and living in Abu Dhabi. He primarily works with photography and other image-based methods on research-driven, long-term projects that examine, document and archive the dynamics between the city and the inhabitant. Inherent to his practice is the act of walking, as a means to explore, unveil and investigate. He has exhibited in local UAE institutions like Alserkal Avenue, Jameel Arts Centre and Bayt AlMamzar, and his work has been listed in news outlets and regional magazines such as The National, Arab News, Canvas Mag, and more.

Hassana Arif (b. 1995, Dubai) is an artist with an ongoing multidisciplinary practice that hinges on the study of gender and identity politics. She explores societal structures and the dualities and nuances of a collective identity by examining patterns of behavior and borrowing from nature and ecology. More recently, she has been observing the parallels between communication in fungi and humans. She has participated in multiple group exhibitions and residencies, and holds a BFA in Visual Arts from Zayed University. She is an Alumnus of the 8th Cohort of the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Fellowship, and is a current recipient of the Ministry of Culture’s Grant for Culture & Creativity.

Lubnah Ansari is an artist, researcher, and community facilitator. Engaging in feminist ethnography and the politics of image-making, she explores silences, intimacies and agencies in India and the Gulf. She is currently pursuing an M.A. at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts.