Warehouse421 and Art Dubai are delighted to announce a new partnership that focuses on bringing nascent topics from the UAE and the region’s creative production to the global conversation.
In the first edition of this partnership, the Abu Dhabi-based art & design centre presents an exhibition that will take place at the fair, unpacking the parallel visual and literary practices of six UAE-based artists and collectives.
Each artist in the show attempts to create spaces of stillness, looking past the idea that change is either an inevitability or bankruptcy, a tension that is difficult to examine through a singular mode.The result is a set of practices that maneuver between poetry and didactics, working through charged and dynamic relationships between text and visuals; some artists conceive of one as a container for the other, while others work through a non-hierarchical relationship of call-and-response. The exhibition ultimately raises questions about the relationship between materiality and literature. It examines how spaces can stage literary exhibits as works of art, and reinstate them as witnesses to cultural history.
The works on display range from sculpture, photography, performance, process studies, textile and video, each with strong engagement with literary elements. The exhibition is curated by Maryam Al Dabbagh and Mays Albaik.
Mays Albaik is the Program Manager at Warehouse421. She leads on conceptualizing and structuring the center’s programs for its various audiences. Her focus at Warehouse421 is on the broader vision as she sets the five-year strategy, drawing plans for exhibitions, general public offerings, and capacity-building programs that target the local and regional creative community.
Before joining Warehouse421, Mays worked with the Sharjah Art Foundation’s architecture and production team, designing venues, coordinating exhibitions, and facilitating art production. In 2018, she worked with the contemporary art curatorial department at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in Rhode Island, USA.
She recently concluded Tashkeel’s Critical Practice Program, a year-long studio residency supporting research-based studio practices, which has culminated in a solo exhibition and publication titled “A Terranean Love Note”.
Mays is a graduate of the American University of Sharjah; she received her Bachelor’s degree in Architecture with a graduation project that received several awards, including a medal from the Architecture Research Centers Consortium. Recently, she obtained her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Mays is an alumna of the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Emerging Artists Fellowship (SEAF).
A writer, researcher and co-founder of Rouya Consultancy, specialising in cultural communications and public relations. She received a BA in Journalism, from the American University of Sharjah, and an MA in Global Media and Postnational Communications from SOAS, London. She has worked in the arts and cultural scene in the region since 2004, and has founded several initiatives and published specialised art and culture publications. Her essays and articles have been published numerous times, and has recently been commissioned by the Jameel Arts Centre to display her work at the Centre, through the Jameel Library Circles.
Her research interests are the Arab Diaspora in the Gulf and post-national Arabic language and literature.
