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Aala Oni is a Sacramento-raised mixed-media artist whose large, saturated canvases explore ancestral messages and unconscious emotion through raw, unfiltered expression. Her distinctive style features dismembered limbs, floating heads, and dissolving faces that confront viewers with chaotic, dream-like truths.
→ Found in The Sky Appears In You
abdelghani alnahawi is Palestinian artist from the UAE. His practice investigates materiality through site-specific interventions, drawing on found objects, urban residue, and fleeting environmental conditions. Rooted in walking and biking, he treats these encounters as collaborators—listening to how they shift, mark, or resist the spaces they inhabit. Guided by peripheral attention and chance, his work responds to overlooked textures and quiet urban performances, forming spatial sketches—marks that question form; invite us to slow down and experience time differently; and reveal the natural infrastructures shaping urban life.
→ Found in 1604 Crit Sessions
Alisa Gorshenina (Alice Hualice) is a multidisciplinary artist. She has participated in Russian and international exhibitions since 2013. Founder and member of the art group Second Hand (2013–2016). She works in accordance with her own concept of “self-artification”—the convergence of life and art. The personal in her practice grows into the mythological, becoming a way of communicating with the outside world.
Her main media include masquerade practices and techniques of decorative and applied arts, particularly textiles and ceramics, as well as classical painting and drawing. In addition, the artist works with photography, video art, and animation.
→ Found in Tender Ruin of My Body
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Basel El Maqosui, a founder of Windows for Gaza for Contemporary Art, explores the theme of the Gaza blockade in his work. He uses his art to reflect on the impact of the siege on the artistic community.
→ Found in Smile Through the Pain
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Dina Mattar’s work adds hope and joy to her paintings, as she believes the color she uses are the spirit of the paintings. She also finds strength in the Palestinian woman, whom she sees a symbol of struggle for a better life.
→ Found in Smile Through the Pain
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Elham Shafaei is an Iranian artist and curator currently based in the United Arab Emirates. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Painting from the School of Arts at the University of Science and Culture in Tehran, as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Universiti Sains Malaysia. Elham’s work and research focus on experimental processes, exploring diverse mediums such as painting, papermaking, photography, installation, textile art, sound, and video art to express her concepts. Her artistic practice often delves into human existential conditions, including themes of loneliness, emptiness, and freedom. Additionally, she explores the connections between these themes and ideas of home, memory, displacement, and diaspora.
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Gulf Coffee House is an art collective consisting of Shahad Hamwi, Anant Singh, and Andrés Ugartechea, a group of socially engaged artists whose interdisciplinary practices explore the nuances of existence and the dynamics of social ecosystems. United by a shared commitment to fostering dialogue through the arts, they seek to push the boundaries of creative expression by experimenting with new mediums and approaches.
Shahad, a visual artist and filmmaker, draws from her Arab identity to create immersive works that examine the intersections of the personal and political, transforming research-led inquiry into accessible, communal experiences. Anant, a writer and filmmaker, crafts bold narratives inspired by his Indian upbringing, turning everyday moments into profound reflections on identity and self-realization. Andrés, a multidisciplinary artist, uses digital and traditional media to delve into the intersectionality of his Mexican-American, first-generation identity. Together, they aim to reimagine public spaces as platforms for shared exploration, creating art that inspires collective reflection and meaningful connection.
→ Found in This Is Not A Gallery
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Jonathan Edora Sarmiento Jr., known as Jayr, is an architecture student, artist, and photographer based in Dubai. The artist’s practice draws from the lived conditions that shape memory and time. His work is structured as a dialogue between the past and the present, where visual mediums and stills showcase the transformation of Deira, one of Dubai’s oldest districts, through the eyes of its migrant inhabitants. While the cityscape changes, the emotions, struggles, and aspirations of those who move through it remain constant.
→ Found in Still Moving
Joumana Mortada, a Syrian artist, creates contemporary abstract art that reflects the emotions and turmoil of the Syrian war. Her work is a testament to her resilience and is deeply personal.
→ Found in Smile Through the Pain
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Khalid Al Amimi (b. 1996) is a Dubai-based artist-writer whose work explores masculinity, memory, and cultural inheritance. Featured in The Boys Are Alright (2025) at Bayt Al Mamzar—and profiled by GQ Middle East, The Sandy Times, and Canvas Magazine—he is now dipping his toe into contemporary art, expanding his practice beyond writing into performance and image-making. He also appears in Talal Al Najjar’s video projects, blending text, body, and narrative gestures.
→ Found in Lux In Dhalaam
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Laura Xenopol (b. 1999, Romania) is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher living and working in Abu Dhabi. Her work features an evolving system of symbols that emerge through an intuitive, automatic process, manifesting in paintings, drawings, and site-specific installations. Xenopol investigates her own mental process, which she likens to an aperture that adjusts to allow new perceptions of the unseen. Xenopol’s research bridges archaeological references, personal experience, and a holistic understanding of knowledge to shape a space for contemplation.
→ Found in Lux In Dhalaam
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Margarita Louka is an illustrator from Cyprus currently based in Dubai, UAE. Her visual illustration work and her research explore themes such as migration, (de)colonization, physical or emotional journeys, what it means to “belong” to a place and the unreliability of memory. Her creative process centres around collecting and assembling; she starts a project by collecting and making fragments which represent the theme she is working with. She then collages them together digitally, embracing an element of ambiguity, while constantly exploring the intersection between abstract and figurative illustration. She has worked within the publishing and editorial sectors.
→ Found in [Re]Arranging Fragments
Majd Henawi is a Syrian artist whose work explores the connection between people and their homeland. Using bold techniques, his art document Syria’s conflict while also symbolizing hope and cultural revival.
→ Found in Smile Through the Pain
Majid Majidi is a Sharjah-raised Afghani wearable art designer whose clothing transforms the human form into a canvas for meaning-making. His unconventional shapes and muted tones blend streetwear sensibility with sculptural expression, creating pieces that explore vulnerability as liberation and transparency as defiance.
→ Found in The Sky Appears In You
Metha Naser Alsaeedi (b. 1998, UAE) is a poet and curator based in Abu Dhabi. She is the founder and creative director of Nathir Arts (نَثْر للفنون), an Abu Dhabi consultancy and creative platform working at the intersections of language, art, and futures thinking. Through Nathir, she leads projects that blend curatorial research, literary inquiry, and technology. Writing under the pen name نَثْر (Nathir), Metha explores Nabati, Classical Arabic, and prose poetry, alongside short fiction and dramaturgical texts that bridge heritage with contemporary thought.
→ Found in Lux In Dhalaam
Mohamed Abusal is an artist from Gaza who uses different art forms like painting, video, and photography to create his work. He blends imaginative, fantastical elements with scenes from daily life to offer social commentary on what it’s like to live in Gaza today.
→ Found in Smile Through the Pain
Mohamed Al Hawajri is a Palestinian artist whose work blends satire, memory, and resilience, turning everyday objects into powerful reflections of survival. He uses painting, video, and unconventional materials to critique political realities.
→ Found in Smile Through the Pain
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Natalya Konforti is a French-American artist and cultural program facilitator with an undergraduate degree in Fashion Design from ESMOD International. A decade in the garment industry cultivated her attunement to color palettes, a fascination with patterns, as well as a deep appreciation for textile craftsmanship. Her process-driven, introspective practice is grounded in what we leave behind, channeling themes of memory, community, and sustainability. Through a variety of mixed mediums including photography, paint and textile, her work pays homage to a meaningful technique, material, or location.
→ Found in Weaving a Third Space
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Rabia Javed is a Pakistani printmaker who carves intricate linoleum, wood, zinc, and silk plates to create intricate monochromatic prints exploring migrant experiences, economic systems, and ancestral wisdom. Her meticulous process questions existing structural systems while honoring the dignity of migrant labour.
→ Found in The Sky Appears In You
Raisam Mariam Rajan, a Guinness World Record Holder, is a multi-talented architect, entrepreneur, and artist hailing from the UAE. As one of the pioneering figures in sustainable art within the region, she has played a crucial role in promoting awareness around sustainability in both the art and business sectors.
Her innovative, sustainable artworks have been showcased at prestigious events, including COP28, UNESCO Heritage Sites in Italy and Spain, the Cannes Art Biennale during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, the Qatar International Art Festival, the Forbes Middle East Sustainability Leaders’ Summit 2024, and many other international platforms. Representing the UAE’s Year of Sustainability, her work has been exhibited across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Through her art, Raisa explores the geometry of nature, transforming everyday materials into powerful messages about preservation, human connection, and environmental responsibility.
→ Found in A Reflection of Nature
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Sana Waqar is a multidisciplinary artist from Pakistan, based in Dubai. With over ten years of training and experience in textile, fashion and visual arts, Sana has exhibited her work both locally and internationally including UAE, Pakistan, Iran and Venice.
→ Found in Echoform
Sara Almaazmi (b. 1999, UAE) is a visual artist whose practice explores the sacred qualities of beauty through the human experience. And the act of witnessing across lived, relational, and metaphysical states. With a background in engineering and visual art, she works across painting and stained glass, centering the motif of the sun. In Almaazmi’s philosophy, the sun acts as a symbol of the eternal witness to human existence. Through this motif, her work channels the sublime, resulting in contemplations of beauty, balance, and infinity that merges her love of light and color.
→ Found in Lux In Dhalaam
Shareef Sarhan is a Palestinian artist from Gaza who works with photography, sculpture, and installations. His art often mixes Arabic calligraphy with images of the city, showing themes of hope and resilience despite conflict.
→ Found in Smile Through the Pain
Spencer Hogg is a multidisciplinary Artist with an established practice in Sculpture, Sound, Performance, Moving Image, and Photography.
→ Found in Echoform
Sulafa Mohammed is an Emirati artist exploring the intersection between crochet, numbers and personal history through textile techniques and crocheting. Her practice draws inspiration from strategies of archiving and documentation, aiming to transform seemingly overlooked and insignificant details from daily life into meaningful artworks.
→ Found in Weaving a Third Space
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Yoonsik Chico Park (b. 1998, Seoul) is an artist working across performance, installation, sculpture, and image. His practice examines individual agency and various tensions in human experience to explore how we could craft a more meaningful existence. Utilizing everyday spaces, found objects, ritual, and gesture, his works play on opposites and scale, often presented as site-specific stagings or scenarios responding to personal and current affairs.
→ Found in Lux In Dhalaam
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Zohreh Mohammadhosseinpour is a London-based Iranian photographer whose archival triple exposures and urban photography explore diasporic identity and renewal. Her work finds glimmers of hope in urban decay, layering salvaged printer ink over monochrome abandoned bicycles to reveal possibility through ruin.
→ Found in The Sky Appears In You