Born in Beirut, currently lives in Oxford, UK.

Maya El-Khalil is an independent curator, who for the last decade has been working locally, regionally and internationally with artists, collectors and institutions to develop the identity and ideas that have defined the contemporary art scene in Saudi Arabia. From its inception in 2009 until 2016, she was the Founding Director of Athr, a leading contemporary art gallery based in Jeddah. She is the curator of the 7th Edition of 21,39 Jeddah Arts. El Khalil holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from the American University of Beirut. She is currently enrolled in an MA Program in Art and Politics at Goldsmiths University.

Maya El-Khalil is Curator of the programme “Beyond: Emerging Artists”, Abu Dhabi Art 2020

Born and works in Dubai.

Hind Mezaina's work delves into themes of collective memory, the notion of heritage, and the representation of Dubai and the UAE in the media. Her work is a continuous development of what she describe as a ‘visual archaeology’ through research, observation, collecting and preserving memories.

Working primarily in photography, and most recently in video and collage, her work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions in the UAE and abroad, , including ‘Made in Tashkeel’ (Tashkeel, 2018); Sharjah Biennial 13: Tamawuj (2017); ‘Al Haraka Baraka: In Movement There Is Blessing’ (Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, 2016). She has also worked on various commissioned projects, including ‘The Wedding Project’ (Art Dubai, 2016); ‘In the Meanwhile’ (Global Art Forum, Art Dubai, 2014); ‘Cassette Project’ (Red Bull Music Academy Bass Camp, Dubai, 2013) and ‘Mass Medium: Emirati TV on Home Video’, (Global Art Forum, Art Dubai, 2012). Hind curates film screenings for Louvre Abu Dhabi, is the Founder of The Culturist blog and the Co-Founder of Tea with Culture podcast. She participated in the 2016 Autumn Programme residency at Delfina Foundation, supported by Maraya Art Centre. She is a graduate of the 2015–2016 Salama Emerging Artist Fellowship (SEAF) and was selected for A.i.R Dubai 2015, a partnership between Delfina Foundation, Dubai Culture and Arts Authority and Tashkeel.

Hind Mezaina is a commissioned artist for the programme “Beyond: Emerging Artists”, Abu Dhabi Art 2020 curated by Maya El-Khalil

Born and works in Abu Dhabi.

Afra Al Dhaheri’s work is rooted in her experiences growing up in Abu Dhabi and the wider UAE – a place of recent and rapid change. Working across various mediums including mixed media, sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, photography, and printmaking, she draws out notions of time and adaptation, rigor and fragility.

With each experiment, there is a new phase, each new phenomenon or actualization plucked from her unique vocabulary of references – repetition acts as a method for prolonging time as much as a tool through which to truly experience or realize each stage of a work.

Born in 1988 in Abu Dhabi, UAE, Al Dhaheri obtained her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, USA in 2017 and completed residencies with The Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship, in partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design in 2014 and Porthmeor Studios, St. Ives, Cornwall, UK (2019). Her first solo exhibition ‘Inevitable Ephemera’ was hosted by T + H Gallery in Boston, USA in 2016. Selected group exhibitions include ‘Avoid Bad Dreams’, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2019); ‘Barcelona to Abu Dhabi’, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2018) and ‘Emirati Expressions’, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2011 and 2015). She works as an Assistant Professor in Visual Arts at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Afra Al Dhaheri is a commissioned artist for the programme “Beyond: Emerging Artists”, Abu Dhabi Art 2020 curated by Maya El-Khalil

Born and works in Abu Dhabi.

Emirati artist Afra Salman Al Suwaidi was born in 1992. She specialized in fine arts and received a BA Degree from Zayed University in 2016. Al Suwaidi participated in a number of shows locally and internationally. In 2015 she participated in an exhibition at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center in New York and at Lessedra World Art Print Annual Exhibition in Sofia, Bulgaria. In 2017 she participated in Imago Mundi in Treviso, Italy. Locally Al Suwaidi presented her work in the French Alliance Art Exhibition In Abu Dhabi and in ‘Guggenheim Abu Dhabi: Do Art Do It Now’, Manarat Al Saadiyat in 2017. Most recently she participated in the 35th Annual Exhibition of the Emirates Fine Arts Society in Sharjah, UAE.

Al Suwaidi is currently participating in the Cultural Foundation Art Residency 2020.

Afra Al Suwaidi is a commissioned artist for the programme “Beyond: Emerging Artists”, Abu Dhabi Art 2020 curated by Maya El-Khalil

Khorfakkan-based Emirati artist Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim (b. 1962, Khorfakkan, UAE) is part of the UAE’s first generation of contemporary artists from the 1980s and 2000s, an avant-garde that included Hassan Sharif, Abdullah Al Saadi, Hussein Sharif, and Mohammed Kazem.

Ibrahim has exhibited internationally including at the Venice Biennale (2009), the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2005); the Sharjah Art Museum (2005 and 1996); the Dhaka Biennial (2002 and 1993); the Ludwig Forum (2002), the Havana Biennial (2000); the Cairo Biennial (1998); the Institut du Monde Arabe (1998); Kunstscentrum Sittard (1995). Significant group exhibitions within the UAE include But We Cannot See Them: Tracing a UAE Art Community, 1988-2008 at The NYUAD Art Gallery (2017) and the Sharjah Biennial (1993- 2003 and 2007). 

Ibrahim’s public works include: Falling Stones Garden (2020), Al Ula, Saudi Arabia, commissioned by the Royal Commission for Al Ula and Desert X; Grocery (2019), Madinat Zayed Market, Abu Dhabi, UAE, commissioned by Ghadan 21, Government of Abu Dhabi as part of the For Abu Dhabi initiative;Untitled (2019), Reem Central Park, Al Reem Island, Abu Dhabi, UAE, commissioned by Aldar Properties PJSC in partnership with Abu Dhabi Art; Kids' Garden (2019), Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, Abu Dhabi, UAE, commissioned by Abu Dhabi Health Services Company; and Bait Al Hurma (2018), Al MureijahSquare, Sharjah, commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation as part of the exhibition Elements.

His works are in significant international collections, including the Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), the Sharjah Art Museum (UAE); Art Jameel (UAE); Arab Museum of Modern Art (Qatar); Kunstcentrum Sittard (Netherlands), the British Museum (London) and The Centre Pompidou (Paris). 

Ibrahim works and lives in Khorfakkan, United Arab Emirates. In 2022 Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim will present a solo exhibition at the National Pavilion of the UAE at the 59th Venice Biennale.

Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim represented by Lawrie Shabibi.

b.1989.  Mixed media artist Maitha Abdallah oscillates between the diaphanous, vibrant and surreal; her art is always marked by an atmosphere of reminiscence and nostalgia. Her paintings and mixed media works 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 Maitha 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.

Abdallah 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 represented by Tabari Artspace.

Based between Spain and Morocco, Anuar’s works examine identity and traverse worlds, both real and imaginary, as do his protagonists. They appear of this world, depicted in manner akin to models posing in the artist’s studio, but they are in fact born out of the artist’s mind. Perhaps versions of himself, rendering the works unintentionally autobiographical. His own depiction may be altered or obstructed, but the figures still share visible traces of his original form such as gender, age, background; thus acting as palimpsests.

Anuar Khalifi is represented by The Third Line.

Based between Spain and Morocco, Anuar’s works examine identity and traverse worlds, both real and imaginary, as do his protagonists. They appear of this world, depicted in manner akin to models posing in the artist’s studio, but they are in fact born out of the artist’s mind. Perhaps versions of himself, rendering the works unintentionally autobiographical. His own depiction may be altered or obstructed, but the figures still share visible traces of his original form such as gender, age, background; thus acting as palimpsests.

Anuar Khalifi is represented by The Third Line.

Sophia Al Maria is an artist, writer, and filmmaker. She grew up between the United States and Qatar before moving to Egypt to study comparative literature at the American University in Cairo. She next completed a graduate degree in aural and visual cultures at Goldsmiths, London. The seemingly disparate sources of inspiration for Al Maria’s multidisciplinary practice include pop culture, anime, Arabic poetry, sci-fi, and her personal experience of pollution and climate change. Working primarily with film and narrative text, the artist weaves captivating tales as a way to process her thoughts and feelings about the future, particularly in the current extinction climate. Her recent work focuses increasingly on the isolation of individuals via technology, consumerism as proxy religion, and how agency and chance play in the blinding approach of an uncertain future.

Sophia Al Maria is represented by The Third Line.

Born in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1973, AlDowayan currently lives and works between London, Dhahran and Dubai.
She holds a master’s degree in Systems Analysis and Design and MA in Contemporary Art Practice in Public Spheres from the Royal College of Art, London. 
AlDowayan’s work has been exhibited regionally and internationally in such institutions as the Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE (2016); Santander Art Gallery, Madrid (2016); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA (2015); the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada (2015); Prospect New Orleans, American Biennial, USA (2014), Gwangju Museum of Art, South Korea (2014); Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2014), the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2013), in collateral shows at the Venice Biennale (2009/11), among others. Her works can be found in the collections of the British Museum, London; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha. She participated in the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, Captiva, USA (2015) and the artist-in-residence program at the Delfina Foundation, London (2009). She also received a research fellowship from New York University Abu Dhabi (2014). 

Manal AlDowayan is represented by Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde.