People

A student of Syrian master calligrapher Badawi Al Dirany, Mouneer Alshaarani has worked as a calligrapher and book designer since 1968 and has developed several Arabic typefaces.

Hani Al Shaibani is a filmmaker whose work includes both short and feature-length films.

Alia Al Shamsi is an author, poet, curator and photographer with extensive experience in numerous creative fields.

Working between cinema, photography and installation, Basma al-Sharif de-territorialises a singular perspective through a more subjective, fallible vision of history in the present.

Conceptual artist Mounira Al Solh employs a humorous and playful approach in her work to highlight gender issues, politics and the role of art in Arab society.

Noor Al Suwaidi is a visual artist, working primarily in painting and drawing.

Walid Al Wawi is concerned with the contemporary hybridisation of Middle Eastern identity and the implication of its geopolitical claustrophobia upon cultural naturalisation.

Hala Al-Ani graduated in 2009 with a Bachelor in Visual Communication from the School of Architecture and Design, American University of Sharjah.

Jananne Al-Ani works in photography, film and video. Her early work focuses on Orientalist representations of the Middle East in Western visual culture.

Thuraya Al-Baqsami is a visual artist, journalist and writer whose work engages with poetics and politics, feminism and the feminine.

Mohamed Al-Daradji’s films address both the terrible suffering and the hopefulness for the future felt by many Iraqis.

She received a BFA in Sculpture, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio and an MFA in Sculpture, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia. In 2007 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine.

Noura Al-Sayeh is an architect currently working at the Ministry of Culture of the Kingdom of Bahrain as Head of Architectural Affairs.

Born in Turkey, Nevin Aladağ moved with her family to Germany in 1973. Her study of sculpture heightened her sense of the limits and boundaries of objects and the identity of forms.

Rita Alaoui is a visual artist whose work encompasses many genres. Utilising objects from the surrounding environment, she creates paintings, drawings, sculpture and photography as well as art installations and video performances.