Promoting Environmental Awareness through Art

Unsurprisingly and as outlined in the 2022 Joint Communication on a 'Strategic Partnership with the Gulf', Climate Change is one of the key areas of future cooperation of the European Union (EU) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and its member countries:

“Given the magnitude of climate change challenges and the opportunities that the green transition can offer, joining forces is paramount for the EU and the Gulf region”

As climate action and climate justice are heavily intertwined with social and cultural developments worldwide, FES aims to strengthen dialogue and understanding between all stakeholders in this field.

Through the kaleidoscope of art, this project contributes to a mutual understanding of the challenges ahead and to establishing and expanding dialogue and networks for action between cultural practitioners from the Gulf States and Germany. In the GCC states and Germany, questions of origin, demography, and the relationship between “Us” and “Others” are highly relevant and inspire many artists, particularly in how they view their surroundings and environment. In turn, arts and culture offer unique space to address social discourses around identity, gender justice, and environmental awareness.

In times of socio-economic transformations and fundamental perceived change, cultural work takes on a meaning-creating and identity-shaping function.

The project brings together German and Gulf Arab cultural workers through a joint art production on topics such as environmental awareness, climate justice, environmental sustainability, climate action, nostalgia and solastalgia, hybrid identity constructions and sense of belonging. The project also explicitly promotes female cultural workers and their role in intercultural discourses. The participants will present their artwork in a public event in Dubai to an international audience representing culture, media, and politics.

Mariam Alkatheeri is an Abu Dhabi-based photographer andhas been honing her skills in portrait, documentary, and editorial photography for the past several years. Mariam blended her photography skills with storytelling, bringing two of her passions together. Mariam’s evolution authorized her to introduce another element to this region and extend the range of her expressive talent even further. Her use of emotions allows Mariam to challenge the boundaries of people photography, using a narrative approach that explores the depths of composition and stills.

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Raya Saleh Al Maskari is a visual artist and graphic designer from Oman, known for her versatile artistic style. Raya's artwork encompasses various art styles, including bilingual cartoons that depict social and cultural aspects of life. She also explores different mediums, with a particular focus on portraying faces and emotions. Raya's passion for art developed in her early childhood and has grown over the years through consistent practice and learning experiences. Her artistic themes largely revolve around social and societal topics. She draws inspiration from observing everyday life as a global citizen. Raya believes that despite our diversity, we share common challenges such as pollution, traffic, and the need for good mental health. In her artwork, Raya aims to shed light on these global issues, stimulate conversations and discussions, bridge cultural gaps, and promote understanding among people from different backgrounds. Raya's work serves as a visual representation of the shared human experiences and the interconnectedness of our world.

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Amani Al-Tawash is an artist, writer and short film maker, known for drawing portraits that express the complexities of women and conservative society in Middle Eastern countries. The artist was influenced by her studies of interior design at Al-Ahlia University to use straight lines in her drawings to express the conflict of ideas in primitive or traditional societies. She uses the physical and psychological suffering of women as inspiration in her works. She recently applied the idea of that suffering in writing the novel"بنات جلنار" “Daughters of Our Generation,” and added an exhibition to the book containing pictures, documents, and a short film, to present important issues to society, discuss them, and find solutions, even if they are temporary. The artist's first concern is to contribute to raising awareness of Bahraini or Gulf women, and to help them get rid of the remnants of old ideas that affected their self-confidence and the way they react.

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Amani Al-Thuwaini is a Kuwaiti artist, born in Ukraine in 1989. She holds a BA in Architecture from Kuwait University and an MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London. She was shortlisted for the Warsteiner BLOOOM Award in 2017, and in 2018, she was selected to attend the International Designer’s Workshop at the V&A Museum, London. She has exhibited throughout London, Kuwait, and internationally. She aims to push the boundaries of multi-disciplinarity through the exploration of art, craft, and design. Amani established Dazzalab to challenge the limited standing of accumulated objects and precious crafts. She believes that the cultural duality she inherited through her Kuwaiti and Ukrainian roots greatly influenced her awareness of identity and culture, impelling her to explore this in her work. This duality offers a unique perspective, whereby she can often see through the eyes of the ‘other,’ consciously becoming the spectator. Amani combines individual and collective narratives with symbols open to differing cultural interpretations and exposes rituals often taken for granted. Employing mixed media and two-dimensional forms within her work, she aims to expose this cultural collision by incorporating insinuations of modernism, superficial display, commodity fetishism, and gender. Her resulting works are a candid response to the commodification and changes of traditions and customs, hybrids representing a far more globalized ritual.

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Maryam Faraj AlSuwaidi is a Qatari Artist, designer, and a Doctorand in Urban Planning and Design, concentrating on the influence of Art as a medium of development, from economic, environmental, and social to psychological. As an artist, Maryam takes a critical view of social and cultural matters using the philosophy of conceptualism as the primary muse and tool. She analyzes and utilizes diverse aspects of human evolution of Cultural representations and expressions to form visuals of metaphors or iconologies, establish new conceptually layered installations, and create an abstract dialogue that only the viewer can comprehend through their interpretation. Maryam is also taking the path of researching the psychological and perceptual influence of artistic matters on the human perceptual experience, which have a vital role in most of her developed artworks. As a creative thinker and researcher, Maryam seeks to expand the artists' understanding by initiating and curating workshops and research publications that support her ideology and perception of Art.

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Ghada Da is from Saudi Arabia and is currently based in Dubai, UAE. Her multi-disciplinary practice focuses mainly on performative sculpture and video installations that investigate the body and its relationship to its environment. She uses her own body and its functions to dismantle the parameters of gender norms and deconstruct form and language to establish a new understanding. Her work is a form of questioning- How does the performative nature of a material and its varied surfaces change the translation of an image? How can the performative process translate form? How can action allow the architectural space to become introspective and allow space for the Abject? Ghada holds an MFA in Fine Arts, Glass from The Rhode Island School of Design, and a BFA in Fine Arts, Sculpture from Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design.

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Sarah Meyers & Laura Fügmann founded in 2015 a studio for textile, product design, and research, which is based in Berlin and Luxembourg. Their work unites craft and industrial production through color, technique, and material. In their approach, materials always lead the way. Sarah and Laura look for solutions that respect the inherent qualities and natural properties of the resources they work with. They find new ideas by using their hands, questioning, and shaping substance. They call this thinking through making. Sarah and Laura advocate for slow consumerism and believe that the objects we use in our daily lives should consider the geographical origins of materials, the social value of production processes, and the environmental impact of a product’s life cycle. The paths along which products travel, from farm to factory, from studio to shop, become tangible in the objects we design. By embedding traces of making, creating new value chains, and preserving specific knowledge and crafts, they forge new connections between production, design, and consumption.

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Razan Nassreddine, born 1987 in Damascus to Lebanese parents, is a German-Lebanese visual artist, singer, and experimental performer.  She lives and works in Berlin. Razan Nassreddine studied French Literature at the University of Damascus, Theater at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts, and got a degree in Visual Arts at the Adham Ismail Art Institute in Damascus. 2012 Nassreddine earned a Master degree in Inter-Mediterranean Mediation from universities in Barcelona, Venice, and Montpellier. 2015 she was among the first directors of the Multaka project in the Museum of Islamic Art at the Pergamon Museum, the Bode Museum, and the German Historical Museum in Berlin. Razan Nassreddine was working as a part of the teams responsible for the new conception of the reopening of the Museum of Islamic Art in the year 2027. In her artistic practice, Razan Nassreddine focuses on mixed media, works on paper, organic objects, and sound performances, experimenting with voice, narration, and music.  As an independent artist and curator, she accompanies and directs various projects in the Berlin art scene,  co-curated, e.g., the international show Lady Dada Kalam with House of Taswir in Berlin, 2017, Nassreddine is also a participating artist in the collective art space Meine Kleine Mnemosyne / MKM Gallery in Berlin.

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Rebecca Raue is an artist and educator, active across many media. She has conceived and produced various projects in institutions and public spaces over the last 20 years. As part of her artistic practice, she develops strategies of collective healing. Through the independent organization Ephra, which she founded in 2013, she has worked with institutions like The Gropius Bau, The Jewish Museum Berlin, and Kunsthaus Dahlem. For Rebecca, developing experimental programs and engagement strategies for children and young people is a crucial part of serving today's (art) world. Her goal is to create collective experiences – in museums, studios, public spaces, painting, or performance– that allow the meta-structure of life to become visible, tangible, and explorable.  By curating the milestones exhibition GEDANKEN SPIELEN VERSTECKEN in 2023, she started a new paradigm for how to engage with important contemporary artists and children.  As part of her commitment to art, youth, and democracy, she has come up with a visionary, philosophical concept for being on earth, which she calls CARDIOCRACY. Rebecca has shown her paintings in galleries around the world (including Japan, the United States, Greece, and Turkey).

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