Abu Dhabi Art has announced the Beyond Emerging Artists for the 2023 edition of the event which will take place next month.
Almaha Jaralla
Those who will be exhibiting include Palestinian-Egyptian Samo Shalaby who trained at Central Saint Martins and specialises in fine art. Emirati conceptual artist, Almaha Jaralla, who observes living environments to create highly personal portraits and Dubai-based multidisciplinary artist Latifa Saeed. The exhibition will be curated by Morad Montazam, who has previously curated exhibitions at the Tate Modern in London.
Samo Shalaby
Samo Shalaby is a Palestinian-Egyptian fine artist based between Dubai and London. Growing up in Cairo and Dubai before pursuing his artistic education at Central Saint Martins, Samo was exposed to a myriad of artistic expressions, styles, and forms of art-making that have shaped his unique creative oeuvre. Exploring fields such as stage design, costume design, and jewellery, Samo began integrating strands of theatrical essence into his work, infused with a distinct dramatic flair. His artistic explorations traverse the styles of antiquity, surrealism, and the grotesque, filtered through his own contemporary and personal lens. His work embodies an inherent fascination with blurring the boundaries between identity, culture, and high fashion, often through dichotomous narratives that lurk behind beautiful facades. Combining a range of aesthetics and motifs from various decades, Samo crafts new worlds that are familiar yet so far away. Whether on camera or canvas, symbolism, and storytelling are crucial elements for conjuring Samo‘s vision into existence.
Almaha Jaralla
Emirati conceptual artist, Almaha Jaralla, observes living environments as highly personal portraits. The Abu Dhabi-based artist places the focus of her paintings and photographs on the modern history of her local surroundings. Jaralla is preoccupied with the local architectural vernacular and the generational shifts that she has observed in the constructed environment. The artist often works from her own documentary photography as well as archival materials that offer insight into the Gulf at various moments in time. Jaralla uses colour theory to negotiate the complex sociocultural dynamics and ancestral histories that have contributed to her lived experience. Questions of identities – individual and collective – are interwoven throughout her output.
Latifa Saeed
Latifa Saeed is a Dubai-based multidisciplinary artist who graduated from Zayed University with a bachelor’s degree in Arts and Sciences in 2007. She obtained the Emerging Artist Fellowship by Abu Dhabi’s Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation, in partnership with Rhode Island School of Design, in 2019. In 2021 Saeed received a grant from the Misk Art Institute in Riyadh and participated in the group show “Under Construction” at The Prince Faisal bin Fahd Fine Arts Hall. She was also a finalist of the Richard Mille Art Prize, hosted by Louvre Abu Dhabi alongside its ‘Art Here’ exhibition in 2021, and participated in their group show “Memory, Time, Territory”. Saeed was recently the first Emirati artist to showcase work in Almaty, Kazakhstan with her solo exhibition “Black Silhouette”, curated by the renowned art historian, critic, and author Valeria Ibraeva.
Morad Montazam
Beyond Emerging Artists Curator Morad Montazami is an art historian, publisher and curator. After working at the Tate Modern (London) between 2014 and 2019 as a curator for the Middle East and North Africa, he developed the publishing and curatorial platform Zamân Books & Curating, exploring Arab, African and Asianmodernities. He has written numerous essays on artists such as Zineb Sedira, Walid Raad, Latif Al Ani, Faouzi Laatiris, Michael Rakowitz, Mehdi Moutashar, andBehjat Sadr, and curated exhibitionsincludingBaghdad Mon Amour, Institut des cultures d’Islam (Paris, 2018); NewWaves: Mohamed Melehi and the Casablanca ArtSchool, The Mosaic Rooms (London), MACCAL (Marrakech) and Alserkal ArtsFoundation (Dubai, 2019-2020); Douglas Abdell: Reconstructed Traphouse, Cromwell Space (London, 2021); Monaco-Alexandrie: Le Grand détour.Villes-mondes et surréalisme cosmopolite, NewNational Museum of Monaco (2021-2022).
