HOMEPAGE
Supported by Tashkeel’s Critical Practices Programme, "Homepage" reinterprets early Khaleeji cyberspace's digital ephemera into a tangible, immersive experience. This exhibition bridges the virtual and physical worlds, capturing the impact of Khaleeji cyberspace as it entered modern culture. By bringing these digital relics into the real world, Al Hamrani celebrates the online anonymity afforded during a time when the GCC was wary of the World Wide Web. The exhibition explores questions such as: How did this foreign technology affect a conservative culture? What does it signify when digital artifacts are removed from their original context? How does viewing them outside their intended space change their meaning? How did people express themselves while remaining anonymous?
To read more about the exhibition, click here.
theperformer.gif
Which version of you is the real you?
Inspired by sociologist Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, theperformer.gif is an interactive installation that questions the nature of social performance. The work projects a distorted version of the viewer behind a jolly, crudely assembled character—rendering their physical self overshadowed and fragmented. Everyone holds a different version of you in their mind, but is there a true self beneath all these layered performances?
You may read more about the installation here.
Image courtesy of Sheikha Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation
MA7MOOOM
You’re a 12 year old child who has been sent to sleep with a fever. You’re sweaty, uncomfortable, you keep tossing and turning all night and wake up after the most vivid unexplainable set of imagery that your subconscious stitched together under some sort of influence. It was probably the antihistamines paired with some stories you heard of Yaathum. Ma7mooom is but a small audio-visual translation of that feeling, made by an adult who now views these fever dreams as a curious yet amusing source of wonder. Ma7mooom is sprinkled with subtle nods to childhood, from the figure climbing the door frame to glow-in-the-dark stars wall stickers, paired with rectangular creatures carrying conflicting emotions as you navigate a confusing dream.
Oyoun Ajman
Homepages of the Khaleej: Once considered virtual homes, these websites are now relics of a bygone era. A single website could fulfill all your desires: download a specific Quranic verse? Done. Chat with people you weren’t supposed to? Absolutely. Find Bin Rogha’s lost tracks? Of course. All accompanied by a side of clunky Flash games.
Enter Shabakat Oyoun Ajman—a fictional website parodying those all-in-one Khaleeji platforms I cherished so deeply. This imagined site pays homage to a time when the internet felt limitless, personal, and distinctly ours. It doesn’t exist, yet it stands as a tribute to what once was.
Oyoun Ajman was commissioned by Manarat Al Saadiyat in collaboration with Mobius Design Studio for Design Dispatch - Neon Neon.
Photo courtesy of Manarat Al Saadiyat
SLOW AGAIN
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation for the second edition of its collaborative comic book anthology, Corniche, Slow Again is a comic reflecting on the concept of time and how irrelevant it became during the 2020 pandemic. It entertains many what-ifs, had we had more control over time.
شوية قلق - A BIT OF ANXIETY
شوية قلق (Shwayet Qalaq - A bit of anxiety) is a zine compiling a collection of uncomfortable and awkward situations artists come across in their careers. This was made in the lead up to FOCAL POINT 2019, an art book fair presented by Sharjah Art Foundation.
You can read the zine here
اسم على مسمّى (Aptly named)
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation for the fourth edition of the comic book anthology Corniche, إسم على مسمى (Aptly Named) is a short comic that explores the artist’s own relationship with her given name, diving into the variations to that name that she eventually adapted as she aged and the backstories behind them. It raises the question of how names can turn into self-fulfilling prophecies, while touching on the phenomenon of people physically resembling their names.
You can read the full comic here.
