Teaching Artist Fellowship

TEACHING ARTIST FELLOWSHIP 

The Teaching Artist Fellowship is a structured six-month residency based in Art Studio, Manarat Al Saadiyat. The Fellowship is designed for artists who value community engagement within their artistic practice and are interested in honing their teaching skills. The programme offers three teaching artists the opportunity to set up their studio within a vibrant learning environment, while developing their creative and teaching practice through chosen areas of research. Selected fellows participate in professional development seminars delivered by leading regional and international partners and are provided training on designing meaningful learning experiences while learning how to effectively communicate their practice to various audiences. At the end of the fellowship, artists can expect to build effective communication skills, facilitation experience as well as a robust teaching portfolio.

EMAN AL HASHEMI

Eman Al Hashemi (b. Dubai, 1993) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice revolves around impossible tasks, waiting, repetition, productivity, and reimagined spaces through ceramics, prints, artist books and drawings. Inspired by the ideas surrounding mass production, value, community, consumerism, and sentimental value, the artist questions what it means for mundane everyday practices and objects to exist in a world of speed and noise. Eman holds a bachelor’s degree from University of Sharjah’s College of Fine Arts and Design and a master’s degree in ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design. She was also part of the 5th cohort of the Salama Bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Fellowship.

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MAJD ALLOUSH

Majd Alloush is a Syrian artist whose work spans multiple disciplines including printmaking, sculpture, photography, moving image, installation and performance. His creative practice challenges the notion of borders in concept, content, and medium, by exploring geopolitics, and social and environmental issues such as the ramifications of war and displacement. Alloush strategically creates work wherein multiple interpretations are possible, requiring the viewer’s own worldview to inform the meaning. His work is situated within contemporary hybrid practice, at the intersection of traditional processes and innovative methodology. Alloush holds a BFA from the University of Sharjah, Class of 2018, and has an MFA in Art and Media from New York University Abu Dhabi.

NASSER ALZAYANI

Nasser Alzayani is a Bahraini-American artist (b.1991, Manama, Bahrain) living and working in Abu Dhabi. Nasser’s practice expresses a research-driven documentation of time and place through text and image, as well as found and cast objects. Incorporating themes of factual and fictional archaeology, his most recent work explores alternative narratives of collective experience.

Nasser’s recent group exhibitions include And The Mirrors Are Many, 421, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2023);The Memory In Our Bones, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2022); Re-appearing Imaginaries, Misk Art Institute, Riyadh, KSA (2022); Post Fiction: Manama, Alriwaq Art Space, Bahrain (2022); Art Here 2021, Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAE (2021); So Different, So Appealing, Warehouse421, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2021); and Kissing Through A Curtain, MASS MoCA, North Adams, USA (2020). Nasser is a recipient of the Louvre Abu Dhabi Richard Mille Art Prize (2021). He has an MFA in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design (2019) and a BArch from American University of Sharjah (2015).

Professional Development Seminars by Focus 5

Focus 5 provides high-quality, professional learning opportunities and program consulting focused on aligning arts integration, best instructional practices, and current thinking in the field of arts and education. We collaborate and consult with teachers, teaching artists, schools, school districts, arts organizations, arts commissions, arts councils, and museums around the country. We are in classrooms on a daily basis to keep our work refined, relevant, and effective in the ever-growing and evolving field of arts integration and education. 

We seek to be a national leader in the field of arts integration and educational consulting with a team of personable experts dedicated to high-quality education for all young people. 

Our consulting staff includes National Board Certified teachers, professional artists, teaching artists, arts integration specialists, a technology specialist, and a reading specialist. 

Against Methodology Seminar by Sabih Ahmed

Sabih Ahmed is the Director of Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai. His curatorial work and research move between exhibitions, infra-/para-/axial-institutional appearances, archives, pedagogy and theory.  

Prior to Ishara, Ahmed was a Senior Researcher and Projects Manager at Asia Art Archive from 2009 to 2019, a visiting faculty at the Ambedkar University Delhi from 2014 to 2019, and involved in several curatorial projects that include being a curatorial collegiate member of the 11th Shanghai Biennale curated by Raqs Media Collective. At Ishara, he has catalysed artist-led curations, curated Navjot Altaf: Pattern, and co-curated Notations on Time with Sandhini Poddar.

Ahmed has led a number digitisation projects of artist archives, creation of multi-lingual bibliographies of art, and has organised colloquia and seminars around educational resources. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation in Delhi and his writings have been featured in a number of publications and journals. He is the co-author of ‘Mass Traffic’ with Lantian Xie, published by Kunsthalle Bern and Mousse Publishing, 2023. 

Peer Mentorship by Jumana Emil Abboud

Jumana Emil Abboud’s creative practice engages with Indigenous heritage and measures of resilience amidst hostile environments. Through drawings, spoken-word, video and workshops, Jumana’s 20-year journey is grounded in folk tales, water-lore, and collective imaginaries, where human and more-than-human narratives are interconnected and traversed through oral knowledge that is equally charged with spiritual legacy and material trajectory of care and entitlement.  

Her work has been presented at Seoul Museum of Art – SeMA, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Temporary Gallery Cologne, BMW Tate Live, at Biennales in Lyon, Sharjah, Venice, Istanbul, and Sydney; with solo exhibitions at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Bildmuseum Umea, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, Ramallah, Darat al Funun, Amman, and Locus Athens. More recently, her work was exhibited at Documenta fifteen, Kassel, and Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (2022-2023).  

She currently lives and works in Jerusalem and London where she is pursuing her practice-led PhD at Slade School of Fine Art, University College of London.