Art Dubai 2016: A.i.R Dubai

Art Dubai partners with Delfina Foundation, Dubai Culture and Arts Authority and Tashkeel to run Artists-in-Residence (A.i.R) Dubai, an annual residency programme for international and UAE-based artists and curators. A.i.R Dubai supports artists by providing a platform to develop their practice and create new work, while facilitating exchange between the artists, the local communities, and the broader cultural landscape. Through the course of the programme, participating artists are commissioned to produce site-specific works for Art Dubai Projects, and take part in a series of artists’ talks, workshops, Open Studios, and other outreach and community programmes at Tashkeel, in Al Fahidi and in the city at large.

Congratulations to the 2016 A.i.R. Dubai selected artists.

UAE-based and international artists taking part in A.i.R. Dubai 2016 include:
Areej Kaoud (UAE)
Moza Almatrooshi (UAE)
Jumairy (UAE)
Lydia Ourahmane (UK/Algeria)

These four selected artists will spend two months in-residence in Dubai, from January to March 2016, working with Art Dubai Projects Curator Yasmina Reggad. Their residencies will culminate in the creation of site-specific works, as part of Art Dubai Projects.

Areej Kaoud is a Palestinian artist raised in Montreal, Canada. She started producing art in Toronto where she worked and completed a Visual Arts bachelors degree at York University specializing in printmaking and drama theatre. She then moved to London where she completed a Fine Art masters at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, and later a second masters in Fine Art Curating at Goldsmiths College. As a young artist, Kaoud has maintained a practice in silkscreening, sculpture and conceptual art. Her first significant exhibition was at Propeller gallery in Toronto, Canada, and later on at Tashkeel, Dubai, Bargehouse Gallery in London, UK, Stockholm Culture Center in Sweden, Goldsmiths College in London, ART LAB in Berne, Switzerland, Nomas Foundation in Rome, Italy, and Desert Design Art Gallery in Khobar, KSA. In March 2015, Kaoud’s work was part of the group exhibition ArtLab2/ FamaFame at the ASC Gallery in London, UK, and the first exhibition Sculptural Perspectives in her new curatorial project CollaCurating was showing at Tashkeel AlFahidi Galleries. She is currently part of the group exhibition Vantage Point Sharjah 3 at Sharjah Art Foundation, she produces work from a private studio in Dubai, UAE.

Moza Almatrooshi is a BA holder of the Fine Arts and Creative Enterprises degree in Zayed University, Dubai, specialized in Interior Design (2013). From then Almatrooshi developed an interest in human relationships with different spatial conditions in the UAE. With an interest for art as well as design Almatrooshi worked in both fields; and gained experiences in architecture, design, event planning, art exhibitions, and wrote for several independent publications. Moza Almatrooshi’s current role being an exhibition coordinator in 1971 – Design Space in Sharjah, as well as developing her own artistic practice through the Sheikha Salama Emerging Artist Fellowship.

Jumairy is an Emirati artist and musician based in Dubai. He describes himself as an experimentalist that employs a diverse dance of new media engaging the viewer’s sensory and aesthetic perception through auditory, visual and tactile strategies. Jumairy actively uses social networking sites to exhibit his work, challenging the boundary between the physical and the online – sustaining a level of attention, sharing, contextualisation, discussion and feedback that much net art involves.

Lydia Ourahmane (b. 1992 Saïda, Algeria) lives in London and works between the UK and Algeria. She graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London and her artistic practice spans new media, video, public interventions, lecture-performance, sculptures and found objects. Ourahmane’s work explores youth and transitional existences, surveillance and complex social and political structures. She has presented works at Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2014 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and World Museum, Liverpool, John Jones Project Space, London Delfina Foundation, London, Ellis King Gallery, Dublin among others. Her work will be included in the group exhibition Territoires Arabes at Constantine Capital of Arab Culture 2015 and group exhibition Natural Instincts at the Espace Arlaud in Lausanne, Switzerland – curated by Samuel Leuenberger. Ourahmane was awarded The Nicholas and Andrei Tooth Travelling Scholarship 2014