In celebration of artists Afra Al Dhaheri’ and Zeinab Alhashemi participating in The Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial, we are hosting a live music session in Abu Dhabi on the final night of Art Abu Dhabi.

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Afra Al Dhaheri’s work is rooted in her experiences growing up in Abu Dhabi and the wider UAE – a place of recent and rapid change. Working across various mediums including mixed media, sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, photography, and printmaking, she draws out notions of. time and adaptation, rigor and fragility. With each experiment, there is a new phase, each new phenomenon or actualization plucked from her unique vocabulary of references – repetition acts as a method for prolonging time as much as a tool through which to truly experience or realize each stage of a work.
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Born in 1988 in Abu Dhabi, UAE, Al Dhaheri obtained her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island in 2017 and had her residencies from The Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship, in partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design in 2014, Porthmeor Studios, St. Ives, Cornwall, UK (2019) and a VIR Viafarini-in-residence in Viafarini, Milan (2022). Al Dhaheri is among the finalists for the Richard Mille Art Prize 2022.

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Zeinab Alhashemi is an Emirati conceptual artist known for her large-scale, site-specific installations and public art. Alhashemi is fascinated by the transformation of the UAE following the country's construction and industrial booms, and her experimental installations aim to create a new perception of reality by deconstructing the viewer's understanding of their surroundings. Alhashemi uses a variety of materials to position the viewer between the natural and artificial, suddenly reminding of human interference.

Alhashemi’s art has been exhibited at prestigious events and venues, including the Richard Mille Art Prize at Louvre Abu Dhabi, There May Exist at Theseus Temple in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum (2024), Art D’Egypt at the Pyramids of Giza (2022), Mirage at Desert X AlUla in Saudi Arabia (2022), and Takween at Expo2020 Dubai’s Sustainability Pavilion (2021). She was also an Artist in Residence at the SETI Institute and Montalvo Art Center in San Francisco (2018).

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