We take you through the UAE-based designers to look out for.
Anjali Srinivasan
The designer Anjali Srinivasan directs the UAE’s only artist-run, handcrafted glassmaking enterprise, ChoChoMa Studios, in Dubai. Her installation, Untitled (Archway), is a transparent arch built from weblike glass filaments. Its design is guided by the principles of indeterminate inflorescence – a process of unending growth mimicking the rules that determine the arrangement of flowers on a plant’s stem.
Where? D3.
Aljoud Lootah
Aljoud Lootah is a Dubai-based multidisciplinary designer whose work interprets Emirati culture, traditional craftsmanship and contemporary design. Her installation, Yaroof, is a geometric piece inspired by the traditional shore-fishing technique of the same name, which uses beach seine netting. Fishermen wade into the sea holding a half-circle of netting that catches fish when it’s pulled ashore. With complex Arabesque motifs, the installation’s half-open structure provides shade for beachgoers.
Where? The Beach, JBR.
Zeinab Al Hashemi
Unfolding is a series of abstract shapes made from scaffolding poles and inspired by boat sails. The piece is influenced by the designer Zeinab Al Hashemi’s upbringing in Dubai, as she watched the city grow around her. Using the idea of negative space in sculpture, Al Hashemi expresses the artist’s exploration for a concept as a piece in itself – elevating the unfinished to the status of finished work.
Where? City Walk in Jumeirah.
Latifa Saeed and Talin Hazbar
Latifa Saeed and Talin Hazbar were inspired by life in the UAE to explore the craft of pottery, its geometry and the artisanal process of shaping it on a wheel. Their outdoor installation Earth Hives re-examines the potter’s craft within the region. With lighting embedded in terracotta hemispheres, beehive cones juxtapose the primitive, delicate and fragile against Dubai’s urban landscape.
Where? The Beach, JBR.
Raudha Al Ghurair
Inspired by the integration between art, architecture and social psychology, Raudha Al Ghurair’s LOT36587 is part of a body of work that examines objects in space and containment. Drawing on perishable materials that allude to the ephemeral nature of life and cells, embryos and the womb, her objects make repetitive motions, exploring the boundary between the container and the contained.
Where? D3, Atrium 5.
Ali Al-Sammarraie
Ali Al-Sammarraie uses wood and cardboard leftovers to construct dynamic furniture pieces and installations that provide sound and visual barriers. Detritus Wall takes waste material and reassembles it with Cad software to create an object that rekindles its beauty. Born in 1991 in Iraq, Al-Sammarraie graduated as an architect and an urban designer from the American University of Sharjah and Louisiana State University in the United States.
Where? Al Fahidi Historical District, House 16.
Sawsan Al Bahar
Sawsan Al Bahar is a Syrian architect and artist living in Sharjah who was shortlisted for this year’s Christo & Jeanne-Claude Award. Her installation, LUZ, re-contextualises the geometry of the Alhambra Muqarnas in Spain. The function of the geometry of the muqarnas, or honeycomb vault, was analysed and inverted, so that each piece became the physical manifestation of a surface. The light source is also inverted, with the light in the core of the pieces instead of an external source. The regular halftone pattern on the object surface turns into projected light, becoming organic, ethereal, and fluid.
Where? Al Fahidi Historical District, House 16.
