How have Gulf artists expressed themselves over the last half-century and where is the artistic community headed? What art movements and trends are we witnessing today? This panel was part of the Gulf Creatives Conference at Harvard University, organized by The Diwan, a student-run organization at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

 Video courtesy of The Diwan.

Speakers 

Ghada Al Khater, Multidisciplinary Artist 

Ghada Al Khater is a Qatari multidisciplinary artist, the term that aptly captures her zealous approach to combining art, politics and social matters in cartoons, illustrations and sculptures. Her work tackles satirical socio/political commentaries on GCC matters and other relevant international affairs. Al Khater is new to the profession of political cartoons. Her leap into “Artooning” came as a result of an illegal blockade imposed on Qatar by three neighboring countries and Egypt. Her works are a creative outlet that tackle subjects such as freedom of speech, which have been exploited as vehicles to drive and justify the blockade on Qatar, as well as current issues facing the middle east and the international community.

Some of her renowned works include “Energy Drink” and “A blessing in Disguise” (public installation), that have gained recognition and appreciation throughout social media outlets in Qatar and featured in blogs.
Since then, Al Khater has constantly found ways to push the boundaries of conventional art pedagogy into a new field of Artooning. Through her works she hopes to inspire present and future generations to continue experimenting with the “subtle” and “subversive”, in all fields and issues connected to art.

Roberto Fabbri, Zayed University, Associate Professor – College of Arts and Creative Enterprises

Roberto Fabbri is an architect and associate professor at the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi. He graduated from the University of Florence and received his PhD from the University of Bologna, where he taught studio classes. From 2016 to 2021, Fabbri was a faculty member at the Department of Arts, Architecture, and Design at the University of Monterrey, Mexico. As a United Nations Development Programme consultant, he contributed to heritage rehabilitation projects in Kuwait and is a member of the Modern Heritage Technical Committee in the United Arab Emirates. His research interests focus on urban development, architecture, and heritage in Gulf cities. Fabbri has published extensively on this subject and recently received the Professor Hasan-Uddin Khan Paper Award for the article “The Contextual Linkage,” published in the Journal of Architecture. He co-authored the double volume “Modern Architecture Kuwait 1949-89” (2016 and 2017), “Urban Modernity in the Contemporary Gulf” (2021), and “Impatient Cities of the Gulf” (2022). In 2024, Fabbri is the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture Fellow at MIT. 

Moderator 

Nada Ammagui, Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, Associate – Arts, Culture, and Social Trends