SHF announces its upcoming Community and Critique

Abu Dhabi – :

The Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation (SHF) announces the return of the Community and Critique: Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship (SEAF) 2019/2020 Show at Warehouse421 on November 14. The exhibition showcases the works of 16 UAE-based artists after a year-long program in partnership with Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

The show showcases works that mediate the public and private realms, embracing a site-specificity and urbanity framed in our current world. SEAF fellows draw from diverse backgrounds in visual art, design, sculpture, performance, and literature. Their ages and careers vary widely, with some fellow within only a year of their graduation while others balance active work lives with their demanding studio practice.

Khulood Al Atiyat, Arts, Culture and Heritage Senior Program Manager at Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation said:“7 years ago, when the SEAF program was inaugurated, it was in response to some of the needs that emerging UAE-based artists expressed. Today, we are excited by the strides that the country’s arts ecosystem has taken and to continuously see our alumni play an integral role in this progress.”

She also commented on the changing circumstances caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, saying: ‘Since the new rules around quarantine and the travel restrictions, we have introduced additional remote learning sessions and workshops in addition to studio sessions in the final few months of the program. Challenges will always be part of one’s practice and we have to develop abilities to respond to them, perhaps even use them as sources of inspiration for our own work. Learning comes in many forms, and we have taken this opportunity to look at different ways of working to ensure a quality learning environment to support our exhibiting batch of Fellows while welcoming in the next wave.

SEAF has always been a blended learning experience, based on block teaching weeks and including

an online component that allows fellows to work on prompts available through a private online platform. This platform has become indispensable in the current moment, with participants making the most of an at-home experience that provided them with every resource, exposure, and educational opportunity they would have had on their two-week study trip abroad.

Fellowship alumni conducted workshops with resources delivered directly to fellow’s doorsteps. Zoom sessions with SEAF partners from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) faculty also ensued, augmenting online studio visits with artists and museum curators. Fellows thrived in this environment, the circumstances boosting their creativity as they spent large parts of the program working solely from home before the gradual, limited reopening of SEAF’s facilities.

This outcome is consistent with SEAF’S mission to bolster each Fellow’s academic and professional understanding along with their ability to analyze, evaluate and discuss their work in preparation for post-graduate studies and a life-long professional career in the arts.

The participating SEAF Fellows include artists from UAE, Kuwait, Palestine, Libya, India, Philippines, Sudan and more.

The Artists talk program include:

November 16: Artist Talks: Community & Critique Panel with SEAF Cohort 7 Fellows- Sarah Almehairi, Sari Al Taher and Faissal El-Malak, Moderated by Nadine Khalil and Nasser Alzayani

November 30: Artist Talks: SEAF Cohort 7 Fellows- Sara Ahli, Fatma Al-Ali and Zainab Imad Eldin, Moderated by Sarah Almehairi and Nasser Alzayani

Title: Process & Repetition

The conversation will explore how exhaustive experimentation developed as a method of generating a body of work. The artists’ use of repetition materializes both formally and conceptually in their final works.

December 14: Artist Talks: SEAF Cohort 7 Fellows- Athoub Albusaily, Malak Elghuel and Nabla Yahya, Moderated by Sarah Almehairi and Nasser Alzayani

Title: The Poetics of Performance

This final talk will showcase unexhibited supplemental elements to the artists’ final artwork alongside poetry readings, recorded process footage, and performances.

The exhibition will open its doors on November 14 until December 20, at the Warehouse421.

For more information about SEAF visit www.shf.ae