Muna Amareen is a multidisciplinary artist. She earned a BFA in Printmaking from the University of Jordan (2008). She has participated in several cultural programmes, art residencies and group exhibitions globally. Muna is co-founder of The Studio Amman, Jordan, and is currently a full-time artist at Al Jalila Cultural Centre for Children in Dubai.
Noush Anand’s area of research, and her multidisciplinary work, seeks to explore questions of belonging, intersections of technology, culture, myth and fairytale. She combines her personal practice of mural painting, installation and video, with commissions between Mumbai, Montreal/Toronto and Dubai, where she has resided intermittently since 1984.
Waqas Farid currently designs exhibitions for museums and cultural institutions. At the same time, he works to continue his artistic practice, which revolves around photography and installation. In 2010, Farid received his MFA from Bard College. In 2011 he joined Qatar Museums and helped design and build their contemporary art exhibitions for five years. In 2016 he completed a nine-month residency at the Fire Station in Doha.
Chafa Ghaddar was born in Lebanon and currently lives in Dubai. She graduated in Fine Arts from ALBA, Beirut and later attended an intensive course in fresco and traditional painting in Florence, Italy. While developing a career in wall painting and surface finishing, she explores the use of fresco as well as traditional painting techniques in contemporary practices, and works equally with murals, painting, drawing, photography and mixed media. She was awarded the Boghossian Art Prize for painting in 2014.
Chaitanya Krishna Kumar is an architect currently practicing with a consultancy in Dubai. She also co-founded the architectural blog The Tryptic Note, which aims to contextualise architecture in the Middle East, by studying socially and environmentally sustainable architecture. Her areas of interest include writing, sustainability, trekking and volunteering.
Sara Masinaei is a multidisciplinary artist; the development of Masinaei’s projects draws on socio-political and gendered paradigms in the Middle East, attempting to question contexts and presuppositions of cultural narratives. She completed her BFA at American University of Dubai (2004) and received her MFA from Central St. Martins, University of the Arts London (2011).
Augustine Paredes is a Filipino artist working as a photographer, graphic designer, and copy writer in the UAE. At 19, he started gaining experience and training from multimedia agencies while travelling to Manila, Singapore, Stockholm, and Dubai. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions, and his works have also been published in print and online platforms locally and internationally.
Lujaine Rezk is a designer and producer based in Dubai. She has worked on projects that observe the natural creations of spontaneous and informal communities in public places as a means to reclaim and belong. This interest in investigating and responding to space, place, community and culture has become the heart of her emerging practice and work.
Amal Shiyas is a writer, editor and aspiring teacher. A graduate of Media Studies with a major in Film and TV, and a minor in Journalism, she seeks to work on research and projects at the intersections of education, urban studies and the sociology of media, arts and culture.
Katie Venner-Woodbridge interrogates the ways in which rhythm and routine simultaneously facilitate and complicate human life, and how disruption from routine can provide both opportunity and discontent. Using the transient nature of the UAE, she questions the ease of communication and daily practices, and how this discord is managed.
Qutouf Yahia is a millennial writer and poet. A pharmacist by profession and an arts enthusiast by will, interest and pursuit. Qutouf is the co-founder of Backyard Poetry, a spoken word community in Abu Dhabi created to introduce poetry to anyone who has not yet experienced the full magnitude or realised the power of writing. Qutouf is also one of the founders of Locale, a Sudanese initiative for the development of creative effort and local talent through cultural advocacy.
Moylin Yuan is a self-taught designer and animation graduate in Dubai. She enjoys working with paper in all formats (such as print publications and modular origami), and feels very superstitious these days.
