Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath are Founders of Art Reoriented, a multidisciplinary curatorial platform launched in 2009 in New York and Munich. They are curators of the Lyon Biennale in 2022, and affiliate curators at Gropius Bau in Berlin. 

As an independent voice, Bardaouil and Fellrath have collaborated with more than 70 institutions worldwide, including Centre Pompidou, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Tate Liverpool, Moderna Museet, Reina Sofia, ARTER, and the Montblanc Cultural Foundation. They are internationally recognised curators and award-winning authors whose practice is rooted in global Contemporary art, as well as in the field of Modernist studies.

In 2016 they were part of the team of curatorial attachés of the 20th Biennale of Sydney. At the Venice Biennale, they were curators of the National Pavilions of Lebanon in 2013 and the United Arab Emirates in 2019, and they are curators of the French Pavilion in 2022. 

Born in 1989, mixed media artist Maitha Abdalla oscillates between the diaphanous, vibrant and surreal; her art is always marked by an atmosphere of reminiscence and nostalgia. Her paintings and mixed-media work often evolve into series and articulate strong cultural narratives; they are assemblages of memory, travel and human interactions. Informed by exchanges and experiences, her socially driven commentaries on the human condition reveal astute, intuitive observations on the world around her in a narrative form. A particularly influential encounter was with children at an orphanage where Abdallah taught English and art. The motifs of childhood began to permeate her work after this time, becoming an eloquent vernacular in which she further explores the difference between the imaginary and the real; mapping the liminal space between these interconnected worlds, she plays out many questions of social and cultural identity.

Abdalla is a graduate of the Salama Bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship, in partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design, and is also one of the founders of Bait 15, an artist-run gallery and studio in Abu Dhabi, and plays an active role in the Contemporary art scene in the UAE. She participated in Abu Dhabi Festival 2019 Visual Arts Residency Programme in Vaduz, Liechtenstein and Vienna, Austria.

Maitha Abdalla is a represented by Tabari Artspace and commissioned artist for Beyond: Emerging Artists curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, Abu Dhabi Art 2021.

Born in 1986. An Emirati painter and multi-disciplinary artist, Hashel Al Lamki’s art unpacks the relationship between humankind and its habitat, the wild and constructed. Born in the shadow of the monumental Jebel Hafit mountain in Al Ain, Al Lamki bore witness to the complex social and spatial dynamics that followed exponential development in the Gulf. Al Ain’s Bedouin culture and distinct social values, its archaeological sites and rugged terrain, formed a stark contrast to the rapid industrial and architectural growth that Al Lamki observed in the neighbouring Emirates. In 2011 Al Lamki received his BFA from Parsons School of Design at The New School, New York City. He went on to contribute to several philanthropic collaborative projects in Central and North America. Al Lamki worked in disaster-stricken Guatemala and Haiti and within low income communities in the US, where his cultural projects were united by a focus upon sustainable practices and social cohesion. After seven years in New York, Al Lamki went on to live between Amsterdam, Netherlands and Taos, New Mexico where he immersed himself in solution-finding for post-consumerism waste. Upon returning to Abu Dhabi in 2014 Al Lamki was awarded the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship. Post-fellowship, in 2018 he joined forces with artists in the UAE who shared a common cause. Together they established Bait 15, a community centred around contemporary art in the Emirates. The artist-run gallery provided a space for local artists to engage in critical dialogue. These interdisciplinary and cross-cultural experiences have contributed to Al Lamki’s artistic practice conceptually and technically. His paintings and sculptural works are concerned with the legacies of the landscapes that surrounded him in Al Ain and beyond, the breathtaking and the banal. Al Lamki’s approach follows Edward T. Hall’s suggestion that the relationship between man and the cultural dimension is dialogical and “one in which both man and his environment participate in moulding each other”. Al Lamki’s compositions chart towering mountain ranges, pristine golf courses and architectural feats. They survey shifts in the ecosystem as much as they divulge changes in the social world, tracing intersecting stories of human migration, climate change, colonisation and evolution. Al Lamki refuses the separation of man and nature, his practice underscoring the dependency of mankind on natural resources and its subsequent responsibility for the environmental catastrophe that looms. His approach to art fuses social innovation, sustainability, and environmental consciousness. Inspired by scientific methodologies and local artisanal processes, Al Lamki’s palette comprises freshly formed pigments derived from natural resources in the MENA region. Through this process of alchemy, Al Lamki articulates the fragility and scarcity of these elements as well as their immense natural powers. Al Lamki insists that community engagement remains central to his practice. He regularly engages local artisans and practitioners in his processes in order to feedback into local economies and unite seemingly disparate individuals and institutions.

Hashel Al Lamki is a commissioned artist for Beyond: Emerging Artists curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, Abu Dhabi Art 2021.

Christopher Joshua Benton (b. 1988) is a UAE-based American artist working across sculpture, photography, and film. Benton works closely with communities and neighbourhoods to instigate collaboration and share stories of power, labour, and hope. His practice explores how the working-class uses culture and innovation to stage resistance to post-colonial and neo-liberal forces. Past work has been presented at Dubai Design Week, the Fikra Graphic Design Biennial, and Jameel Arts Centre.  He is currently pursuing his MS in Art, Culture, and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, through the support of Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation.

Christopher Benton is a commissioned artist for Beyond: Emerging Artists curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, Abu Dhabi Art 2021.