Campus Art Dubai (CAD) held a 6-month seminar and residency programme for Emirati and UAE-based artists which took place from October 2019 to March 2020. The eighth edition of Campus Art Dubai provided practitioners with a comprehensive understanding of the local art scene through a rigorous curriculum comprised of seminars, group critiques, field trips and a production residency allowing participants opportunities for their career development as practicing artists and curators.

Dubai Culture & Arts Authority is the Strategic Partner of Campus Art Dubai. A.R.M. Holding is the home of Campus Art Dubai.

As the growing urgency of the climate crisis and related calls for sustainability take center stage in global politics, the need to better understand the relationships between and among the many ways of being and forms of life on this planet has become critical. Do emerging models for living-in-relation provide us with pathways through which to forestall our inevitable extinction? What solutions do these new ontologies and epistemologies offer for the predicaments that anthropocentric biases have produced? Can we attune ourselves to hear what artists Allora and Calzadilla have called “the great silence” that alienates us from our environment? How has and is nature understood, produced and reproduced within the hyperstatic urban formations of the twenty-first century Gulf?

Artists, curators, and other creative professionals have had a key role in investigating these interconnections and entanglements, often laying the groundwork for future policy action. CAD 8.0 draws on this history, opening up the fields of feminist and decolonial critical theory for participants to think through where and how kin-making and art-making may overlap.

Ameena Aljarman, born in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE, earned her double majors bachelor of Fine Arts and International Studies at Zayed University in 2014. Her current artistic endeavors include exploring and re-producing conceptual works of familiar visual and social elements . She has been exhibited at Sikka Art Fair 2019- Emirates Fine Art Society Annual Exhibition, The Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship (SEAF) Exhibition 2018 , World Art Dubai- Emirati Emerging Artist, Video category 2017 , The Sheikha Manal Art Prize 2015 , The Cultural Exchange program Exhibition 2015 , The Big Picture Exhibition 2014.

Layan Attari lives and works in the UAE. Her research spans diverse media, frequently using photography and her graphic design practice to inform her artwork. Her work has been featured in several group exhibitions in the UAE including Campus Art Dubai Open Studio at Project Space Art Jameel, Cry Me a River by Office Run and Design House by Mobius Design Studio. She received her BSc in Multimedia Design from the American University of Sharjah in 2011.

Nahla Al Tabbaa is a Jordanian Bangladeshi multidisciplinary artist. She earned her MA in Curatorial Practice from the Bath School of Art and Design (2012), and her BFA in Sculpture from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design (2009). Tabbaa has experience and interests in art pedagogy, socially engaged practices, the culinary arts, and energy healing. Her main scopes of institutional work are in community programming, education and urban research with Frying Pan Adventures, Art Jameel, Daftar Asfar and previously Sharjah Art Foundation.

Zahra Jewanjee is an artist and educator living and working in the UAE. She received her BFA from the National College of Arts and MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design. She is a recipient of the Salama Bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Fellowship, Abu Dhabi. Zahra has shown in Lahore, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, London, Gdansk, New York and Providence. Her work has been featured in ‘Dimensions of Citizenship’ for the Venice Architecture Biennial – US Pavilion 2018, RISD NatureLab, Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, MAS Context Chicago, Guernica Magazine and other publications.

Zena Adhami is a Syrian graphic artist currently working as an Assistant Visiting Professor in the Department of Art and Design at the American University of Sharjah (AUS). She earned her Masters in Fine Arts from California College of the Arts (CCA) San Francisco, and her B.S in Multimedia Design from the American University of Sharjah (AUS). Adhami taught and practiced design in Jordan, Dubai and Sharjah. Her work explores experimentation as a research method, and is concerned with creating a critical discourse on the meaning of space. Adhami’s work revolves around constructing narratives around space through communication design, and design in the discourse of memories and nostalgia.

Murtaza Vali is a Brooklyn and Sharjah-based critic and curator. He regularly publishes in various international art periodicals and has presented exhibitions at and contributed to publications for non-profit institutions, art fairs and commercial galleries around the globe. He is a Visiting Instructor at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and a member of Art Jameel’s Curatorial Council.

Uzma Z. Rizvi is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Urban Studies at the Pratt Institute of Art and Design, Brooklyn, where she teaches anthropology, ancient urbanism, critical heritage studies, art and social change and the postcolonial critique. Rizvi is also a Visiting Researcher in the Department of International Studies at the American University of Sharjah. Rizvi (w/ Amal Khalaf) directed Art Dubai’s 2016 Global Art Forum, The Future Was.

Munira Al Sayegh holds an undergraduate degree from University of London’s School of African and Oriental Studies in History of Art and Archaeology, with a focus on the Middle East. Al Sayegh worked on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi project from 2015 – 2017 and curated several sections at Art Dubai 2019.