Teaching Artist Fellowship

PROGRAMME OVERVIEW

The Teaching Artist Fellowship is a structured five-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.

Check out available workshops

Meet the Fellows

AYA AFANEH

Aya Afaneh (b. 1999) is a Palestinian artist, with an interdisciplinary visual practice spanning performance, printmaking, sculpture, and writing. Her practice is dedicated to creating living, breathing ecologies in her work. She investigates what it means to be in an animate relationship with the living world, as a reciprocal participant rather than an observer. Aya learns from the trees, the soils, the seas, the ants, and all that live beneath, above, around and inside. Her research relates to the matriarchal, generational tools for reconciliation and connection, with the body sitting at the core of these knowledge systems. Aya’s work is a space for processing, reflecting, and pausing.

She is a graduate of New York University Abu Dhabi, receiving her Bachelor's degree in Art and Art History and in Theater, with a minor in Creative Writing. She is an alumna of the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Emerging Artists Fellowship (SEAF, 2023), Rewilding the Kitchen (2023), Samt (2022), and Numoo (2021). Her work has been displayed at Alserkal Arts Foundation, Tashkeel, Bayt Al Mamzar, Satellite (Dubai,UAE) as well as internationally.

SARAH AHMED

Sarah Ahmed is a Networking & Security graduate, and a creative based in Abu Dhabi. She is the founder of Jaffat El Aqlam, co-founder of 7ijra Waraqa Miqas and AlReesha Studio Resident. You can find her urging every single person she ever meets to make zines, which she eventually heart-warmly adds to her collection. When she's not stressing out about meeting self-made deadlines, she experiments with different mediums of art, film photography, glitch art, sends postcards to strangers and publishes zines. Sarah enjoys storytelling and writing what she shamelessly calls children lit for grown-ups.

Sarah’s work has been featured in Jaffat El Aqlam, Kayfa Ta, Mizna, Daftar Asfar, Focal Point, Brownbook, Banat Collective, Corniche publication, Al Tashkeel magazine and Souq Bawa. She has conducted workshops in Sharjah Art Foundation, Dubai Design Week, Cultural Foundation, Miza, 421, Safha, Diriyah Biennale and impromptu workshops with strangers whenever she felt like it.

TAREK ELKASSOUF

Tarek Elkassouf is a Lebanese-Australian artist based in the UAE. He explores the concept of balance after transformation. He explains how he understands the concept of the invisible, through what is not there; the empty, and its exchange with the full.

His work was commissioned and acquired by International Museums such as the Institute of the Arab World in France, Ithra and the Royal Commission for AlUla [RCU] in Saudi Arabia. He’s interested in the space between the words and in the silence in the music which is as important as the notes themselves for him. Tarek Elkassouf is consistently pushing the boundaries of what is possible within the realm of sculpture. His latest Exhibition ‘The Future is Near’ developed a unique visual language that translates complex concepts into tangible, and intangible forms.

Mentors & Faculty

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.

PEER MENTORSHIP BY CRISTIANA DE MARCHI

Cristiana de Marchi is a visual artist and writer based in Dubai. She received her MFA with honours in Archaeology from The University of Turin, Italy and is currently a PhD candidate in the Artistic Research Programme at the University of applied Arts, Vienna.

An artist, curator and writer, she has lectured widely on art and, in addition to publishing articles and essays in catalogues and magazines devoted to contemporary art, she conducts personal artistic and literary research. Cristiana works with video and textiles as her privileged medium to explore issues related to identity, displacement, belonging and the porous borders that separate regions, while allowing contact.

Her work has been featured in the Textile Biennale (2023), Yinchuan Biennale (2016), Santa Cruz Biennale (2016), Biennale Donna (2021), Culture of Peace Biennial (2016), and in parallel events to the Singapore Biennial (2013) and to the Istanbul Biennale (2022). Among many other museums and institutions, her work has been presented at the Louvre Abu Dhabi (UAE), Mathaf, Museum of Modern Art (Qatar), Villa Romana (Italy), Sursock Museum (Lebanon), Langgeng Art Foundation (Indonesia), The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (USA), Villa Vassilieff (France), Sharjah Art Museum and Maraya Art Centre (both UAE).

AGAINST METHODOLOGY SEMINAR BY SABIH AHMED

‘Against Methodology’ is a theory-intensive workshop conceived and led by curator Sabih Ahmed, comprising lectures and open discussions. The programme explores concepts and tools that redefine artistic and curatorial practices in the 21st century and considers art for the novel possibilities it offers to society against institutional and disciplinary forms. The term ‘against’ is used with double intentions that suggest an opposition to, while also signifying standing against the backdrop of, established methods of the art industry that are taken for granted, such as dominant exhibitionary models, classificatory systems, and economic value production.

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.