Mitra Abbaspour served as an Associate Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art and an Assistant Curator at the California Museum of Photography, in addition to having served as a guest curator for a number of exhibitions at various institutions.

At MoMA, she led the curatorial branch of an interdisciplinary research initiative that resulted in the print and digital publications Object: Photo: Modern Photographs 1909-1945. She has authored numerous essays on contemporary artists in this field, most recently contributing to monographs of Reza Aramesh, Lalla Essaydi, Dor Guez, Hassan Hajjaj, and Shirin Neshat and has also taught courses both in her specialization, the modern and contemporary Middle East and, general area specializations—Islamic art, modern art, and the history of photography—at The Cooper Union, Hunter College, and Brooklyn College.

Instagram: @mma221

Ruba Al-Sweel is an arts and culture writer and researcher with words in Art Asia Pacific, Vogue, VICE, MOUSSE magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail, among others. She holds a Master's degree in Media and Creative Industries from SciencesPo, Paris, and takes particular interest in the emergence of internet subcultures.

Instagram: @rrrrrruuuuuubbbbbbzzzzzz

Leena Aboutaleb is an Egyptian and Palestinian writer based in Amman. Her writing appears in Third Text, Mizna, LIFTA Volumes, Strange Horizons, FIYAH Lit Magazine, The Boiler, and others. She holds an MA in Media and Strategic Communications from the George Washington University, where she focused on Palestinian temporality and language-making.

Instagram: @leena.jpeg

Saira Ansari is an independent writer, researcher and editor who employs creative non-fiction to think about art practice and criticism, feminist histories, gardens, grief, science fiction, and South Asia and its real and imagined peripheries.

Instagram: @sairaansari

Katrina Weber Ashour is an arts strategy and communications specialist. Her extensive experience in the Middle East spans cultural organizations from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Lebanon and Palestine, as well as global institutions from Belgium, Canada, Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, Switzerland and across the United States. She graduated with honors from Wellesley College and is currently based in Washington, D.C.

Instagram: @katrinaweberashour

Nayrouz Abu Hatoum is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University, Montreal. Her research explores visual politics in Palestine and focuses on alternative imaginations, people’s place-making, and dwelling practices in contexts of settler-colonialism. 

Munira Al Sayegh is an independent curator and cultural instigator based in the United Arab Emirates. She is the founder of Dirwaza Curatorial lab, an Abu Dhabi-based creative incubator and projects partner. Al Sayegh is a published author and prominent voice in the region on the importance of non-institutional thinking to build regional art movements from the bottom-up. In 2012, she joined NYU Abu Dhabi’s FIND project (2012) and currently sits on the advisory board for the university’s art gallery. From 2014 she has joined and pioneered curatorial initiatives across Art Dubai where she curated the Residents section (2019) and started the Now series, looking at non-government funded creative platforms in the region. She recently served as lead tutor and curator for Campus Art Dubai. Her curatorial solo debut was Bayn: the in-between (2017), at the third edition of UAE Unlimited. That same year, she curated and developed the program series for the Guggenheim’s The Creative Act: Performance, Process, Presence. Later, she curated the Talks Program in Abu Dhabi Art. In 2020, she premiered The Cup and The Saucer commissioned by 421 (Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan Foundation), where she has also led in-house public programs. She has advised sculptural commissions for Expo Dubai 2020 Public Art Programme. Al Sayegh is part of the UAE Ministry of Culture Visual Arts Committee as well as Dubai Collection’s Steering and Curatorial Committee.

Instagram: @munira.alsayegh

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Kriti Bajaj is a writer and editor focusing on history, genealogy and visual culture. She studied literature at the University of Delhi and social anthropology at SOAS, University of London. Kriti has worked with international publications, auction houses and independent clients, and is based in India. 

Instagram: @wildirisgenealogy

Janet Bellotto is from Toronto, and is currently working in Dubai. She graduated from the Sculpture/Installation program at the Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, and received an MFA from Concordia University, Montreal.

Her practice encompasses sculpture, installation, photography, video and performance. Water flows through her work: oceans and waves, submersion and reflections, in-between states that are fluid and aqueous. Bellotto has initiated various artist collectives based on producing site-specific work or using spaces outside of gallery walls and creating cultural art exchanges. She has exhibited in various cities including Beijing, Dubai, New York, Mexico City and Venice. Recent solo and group exhibitions include: (2010) Drowning Ophelia, Stratford Gallery, Stratford, Canada; (2009) Point of Encounter, Tashkeel, Dubai, UAE; (2008) WAVE, The LAB, New York City, USA; Chinese Character Biennial, KU Art Center, Beijing, China; (2007) Dehisce, kkprojects, New Orleans, USA. She splits her time between Toronto, Dubai and Venice.

Instagram: @janetbellotto

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Juliet Cestar is a photographer and art historian specialising in contemporary art from the Middle East. She has collaborated on several publications and exhibitions with Rose Issa, including Arabicity: Contemporary Arab Art and Signs of our Times: From Calligraphy to Calligraffiti.

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Aimee Dawson is the associate digital editor at The Art Newspaper. She specializes in art and culture from the Middle East and North Africa having a BA in Arabic and Middle East Studies and an MA in Contemporary African and Asian art. She has contributed to a number of publications including Harper’s Bazaar, Ibraaz and MOJEH, and was the writer-in-residence for Shubbak Festival of Arab Culture and Nour Festival of Arts in 2015.

Instagram: @amldawson

Anabelle de Gersigny is the founder and curator of the Safina Radio Project (safinaradioproject.org). She also works the Programming Manager at Tashkeel, a non-profit studio site in Dubai, developing residency, design and critical practice programmes. Previously, de Gersigny worked for TCA Abu Dhabi on the Saadiyat Cultural District initiatives including Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi and Zayed National Museum from 2011 to 2013. Anabelle was the founder and director of the Tram Depot, an artist run project space in London from 2005 to 2009 and has worked in various positions within contemporary art including research and editorial positions with Hauser & Wirth (London), Phaidon Press (London) and CAPHouse Studios (Japan). She has curated numerous art and design exhibitions and is a freelance writer and editor, working through publications, online platforms, magazines and directly with artists and designers. She is the co-founder of FNND.

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Laura Egerton is part of the founding team behind Art Dubai, curating art projects during the inaugural edition and going on to manage important educational aspects of the art fair such as the Global Art Forum, Art Week, the Abraaj Group Art Prize and the art fair’s internship program. She regularly contributes to The National, Canvas, Selections and Open Skies, among others. She has also edited publications for Akkadia Press, Jameel Arts Centre and private galleries.

Instagram: @lauralouiseegerton

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Reem Farah is a freelance writer with a keen interest in art, politics, and their intersections.

Instagram: @reemfarahwho

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Lamya Gargash is an Emirati artist. After graduating from the American University of Sharjah in 2004, she moved to London to pursue a postgraduate degree in Communication Design at Central Saint Martins. Gargash is heavily inspired by inhabited and abandoned spaces and cultural heritage in contexts of rapid change. Exploring modernity, mortality, identity, and the banal, Gargash captures the beauty of human traces and the value of the mundane. Her work is part of the permanent collection at the Barjeel Art Foundation and Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE. Gargash currently lives and works in Dubai.

Instagram: @lamya_gargash

Carl Gough was born in Durban, South Africa. His career as a copywriter started at Leo Burnett, Dubai, and he has been churning out words ever since.

Instagram: @carldanielgough

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Dalia Hashim is a writer, editor, and linguist based in London, United Kingdom. She holds a BA in Modern Languages from UCL and an MSc in Culture and Society from the LSE. Her interests include narratology and creative expressions of sociocultural pathologies.

Hashim is Tribe’s associate editor, copy editor, and web editor.

Instagram: @ailadmihsah

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Dalya Islam is an advisor in Contemporary art with a specialist knowledge of middle-eastern art. An art historian by discipline she began her career at Sotheby’s Auction House in London in 2003 as a specialist and went on to become Director of the Middle East Department.

Since establishing Madder Red Dalya has advised collectors from all over the world including Europe, America, Turkey, the Middle East and India, on international contemporary art. Her advice has directed collectors towards painting, sculpture, installation, photography and video. Dalya has also advised privately on museum collections and curates exhibitions for institutions and galleries.

Instagram: @dalya_madder_red

Emily Jacir’s work, as poetic as it is political and biographical, investigates translation, transformation, resistance, and movement. Jacir has built a complex and compelling oeuvre through a diverse range of media and methodologies that include unearthing historical material, performative gestures, and in-depth research. Her works have been widely exhibited all over the world since 1994, and she is the recipient of several awards, including a Golden Lion at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); a Prince Claus Award (2007); the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum (2008); the Alpert Award (2011) from the Herb Alpert Foundation; and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome (2015), among others. Solo exhibitions include the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2016-17); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015); Darat il Funun, Amman (2014-2015); Beirut Art Center (2010); Guggenheim Museum, New York (2009). She is the founder and Director of Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research in Bethlehem, Palestine. She teaches at NABA - Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome and The Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation in Abu Dhabi.

Instagram: @emilyjacir 

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Mysa Kafil-Hussain is an art historian, archivist, researcher, and writer based in London, specialising in modern Arab art with a particular focus on Iraqi art and photography. Following an undergraduate degree in Arabic and History at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, Mysa spent several years working in the charity sector before completing an MA in History of Art & Architecture of the Islamic Middle East. Mysa currently works in the London studio of Dia al-Azzawi, managing his extensive library and archive; and as a freelance writer and researcher for numerous international organisations, artists, and publications.

Instagram: @my_sa

Rula Khoury is an art curator, historian and critic. In 2011, she received a Masters degree in Art History from Haifa University, and an additional Masters degree in Writing Art Criticism from the New York School of Visual Arts in 2017.

Khoury was the General Director of the Arab Culture Association in Haifa. Her curating experience includes: It’s as if, O Badr, we never came and never left in Haifa in 2018, Sensorial Immunity in Ramallah in 2017, A Black Hole in the Sun in Jerusalem in 2016. Moreover, Khoury curated a street exhibition in Haifa titled Wisdom of the Crowd. In 2014, while holding her position as the Artistic Director of Khalil Sakakini Culture Center in the same year. Within the Qalandiya International Biennale (2014), she managed and curated two major projects: Manam exhibition in Haifa, and Mapping Procession a happening in the streets of Ramallah. 

Additionally, Khoury has published critic pieces for Independent Online Art Magazine, Tohu Magazine, Arab 48, and Tribe Photo Magazine. She has also been an instructor and advisor in higher education institutions since 2010, teaching at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, International Academy of Art in Ramallah.

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Flounder Lee is an artist/curator and postgraduate researcher in Art & Media at the University of Plymouth, UK pursuing his PhD in art and curatorial practice. He grew up on a farm in the US where he learned many skills that he still uses. He was raised on the ancestral lands of the Yuchi, Shawnee, Muscogee/Creek, and Cherokee peoples. Many of these peoples were forcibly removed in the 1800s to make way for settlers such as his ancestors who were from Europe.

He received his BFA from the University of Florida and his MFA from California State University Long Beach—both in studio art and photography.  His group exhibitions include: From Within in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Ishara: Signs, Symbols, and Shared Languages at Concrete in Dubai; and Tashkent Biennale VIII in Uzbekistan. He’s had solo shows in Serbia, the US, China, and Cambodia.

Exhibitions curated include: The Future is…Ordinary? at the Shangyuan Art Museum, Beijing, China; On this night, for the first time, something will happen… at the Jean Paul Najar Foundation, Dubai, and Aerospacial at Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis. He founded and co-ran SpaceCamp MicroGallery, a tiny project space in Indianapolis. He has written several essays including for Tribe: Photography and New Media in the Arab World. He co-directs the More Just, More Sustainable Futures: Artistic Symposium for PhD Students.

Several overlapping themes run throughout his work: decolonialism, mapping, science, the future, and environmental change. He is media agnostic, using various media such as photo, video, performance, sound, and installation to create work that touches on these topics. Many of the same themes and media are also part of his curatorial practice, but it is broader than his art practice. His PhD project deals with a quotidian, decolonial future through both an artistic and curatorial perspective. He works using anti-oppressive practices—anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal, anti-heteronormative, inclusive, and intersectional with decolonial, resistance-based, and curatorial activism approaches.

Twitter: @photoflounder

Barbara Lounder is a visual artist and educator living in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. She has a BFA from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, and an MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), where she now teaches.

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Ahmed Mater, a physician turned artist, is one of the most significant cultural voices documenting and scrutinising the realities of contemporary Saudi Arabia. Forging an ongoing, complex mapping of the country, his practice explores collective memories to uncover and record unofficial histories. The historical, geographical and topical breadth of his research-led inquiries are sharpened by the incisive actions of his conceptual works. With this scope, Mater imagines possible prognoses for a land of unprecedented religious, social, economic, and political influence.

Instagram: @ahmedmater

Anna Maydanik is a writer from Washington, DC. She is currently working on a documentary film that follows Ukrainian theatre artists onto the zero line.

Kevin Mitchell teaches courses in architecture, interior design and the Foundations Year at the American University of Sharjah (AUS), in the UAE, where he has served in a number of administrative positions, including leading the university as Chancellor. In 2022, the AUS Board of Trustees appointed Professor Mitchell as the university’s first Trustees Professor in recognition of his contributions to the institution and to advancing design education. Professional work focuses on design for climate and context through projects in the UAE and Europe. Mitchell has published widely on architecture, design and urbanism in the Gulf.

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Lila Nazemian is an independent curator and the Special Projects Curator at ArteEast. She is a part-time faculty at NYU in Steinhardt’s Department of Art & Art Professions. Her research and curatorial practice is focused on reimagining approaches to early modern and medieval history from the SWANASA region in an effort to counter narrative revisionism and collective amnesia in the present. Recent curatorial projects include: Now That We Have Established a Common Ground, as part of Protocinema’s Emerging Curator Series at and in partnership with the Clemente, New York (2022); A Few In Many Places in New York, Protocinema, Governors Island New York, (2021); I open my eyes and see myself under a tree laden with fruit that I cannot name, Center for Book Arts, New York (2020). She received a B.A. in History from Scripps College and an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from NYU. She was a QAYYEM 2019 Curatorial Fellow, was among the inaugural participants of the 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in New York and participated in ICI’s 2018 Curatorial Intensive in Bangkok.

Instagram: @just.lila

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Stella Peisch is a researcher and consultant with a focus on post-conflict, memory, and dynamics around death in the Middle East. She is a PhD candidate in the International History and Politics Department at the Graduate Institute in Geneva (IHEID). She speaks English, Italian, and French, and her Arabic is a continuous work in progress. She has a BA from Georgetown University and an MSc from the LSE. 

Twitter: @stellamnla

Venetia Porter was Senior Curator for Islamic and Contemporary Middle East art at the British Museum (1989-2022) where she is now Honorary Research Fellow. She studied Arabic and Persian and Islamic Art at the University of Oxford, and her PhD from the University of Durham is on the history and architecture of Medieval Yemen. She was the lead curator for the Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World, opened 2018. Her research and publications range from Islamic tiles, Yemeni history, Arabic inscriptions and amulets to contemporary art, and include her mother’s autobiography Thea Porter’s scrapbook which she edited (Unicorn Press 2019). Her exhibitions include Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East (London 2006, Dubai 2008), Hajj: journey to the heart of Islam (2012), Reflections: contemporary art of the Middle East and North Africa (2021) and Amakin, 21,39 Jeddah Arts, 9th edition, (Jeddah and Dahran 2022).  Artists making books: poetry to politics, published by British Museum Press will be out in August 2023 and accompanies an exhibition at the British Museum which is on until the end of 2023.

Twitter: @venetia_porter

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Roï Saade is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the intersectionality between graphic design, photography, and the arts.
Roi’s process-based practice centers on a close collaboration between artist, designer, and curator. His approach is complemented by comprehensive visual research and creative exchange. He is interested in finding and creating ways to resist systems of domination and inequality.
Through photography, Roi investigates collective memory, both past and present. By documenting personal encounters and the social fabric of the community, Roi aims to shed light on the shared experiences and histories that shape our understanding of the world.
Saade designs and curates photography exhibitions, film festivals, magazines and specializes in book design, where he blends his passion for visual culture and explores the social and cultural meanings of images.
Saade holds an MFA in Graphic Design from USEK University in Lebanon. He is currently a Research Associate and executive board member at Access in the Making research lab at Concordia University, Montreal.

Instagram: @roisaade

Veeranganakumari Solanki is an independent curator, writer and researcher based in Mumbai, India. Her interest lies in the manner in which interdisciplinary forms merge with art to create dialogues that travel from public spaces into private ones and the way curatorial research can be structured around artistic practices that expand the idea of medium specificity through dialogue and story-telling. She has contributed papers and articles to several international art journals and publications. She has curated exhibitions, lectured on curating and art practices, and conducted workshops internatioxnally at prestigious institutes and galleries. Solanki was recently the Curatorial Brooks International Research Fellow at the Tate Modern, and a resident at the Delfina Foundation (2019), and is the Programme Director for Space Studio, Baroda. 

Instagram: @veequine 

Aisha Mazin Stoby is a curator and researcher whose work centres around modern and contemporary art.

Her curatorial projects include Nuh Al Ethihad (Spirit of the Union), New York Public Library (2014); City Senses, Open Space Istanbul and Blackall Studios, London (2014); Fragments, Royal College of Art Pavilion, London (2014); Oman et La Mer, National Maritime Museum, Paris (2013–2014); Salon Oman Nour, Leighton House Museum, London (2013); and Bodies without Organs and Bodies in Motion, Hackney Picturehouse, London (2013). Among her publications are the catalogue for Becoming Landscape (Krinzinger Gallery, Vienna, 2017) and But We Cannot See Them: Tracing a UAE Underground, 1988–2008 (New York University Abu Dhabi, 2017).

She recently served as a tutor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and has worked independently, and with Oman's Ministry of Culture, as a curator specialising in modern art from the Middle East.

Instagram: @aisha_stoby 

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Sara Raza is an award winning global contemporary art historian, curator and writer based in New York City. She is the author of the  Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion published by Black Dog Press  London,  2022. Sara is a Red Burns Fellow  awarded by the New York University’s Tisch School of the Art’s Interactive Telecommunications Program for distinguished researchers and scholars, and teaches courses on the Masters program specializing in critical thought from a post-colonial and post-Soviet perspective, and is an adjunct faculty member in Media, Cultures and Communications at NYU Steinhart where she teaches on the undergraduate program. She is also faculty at School of Visual Arts  for the MA Curatorial Studies Program focusing on 21st century collecting practices. She has also served as a guest critic for MA programs’ thesis panels at MIT, RISD and Yale.

Instagram: @punkorientalism

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Lara Tabbara is Lebanese New-Yorker raised in Geneva, Switzerland. She is a freelance writer who covers art galleries in the Middle East. With a B.A. in Journalism and Art History from NYU, she now holds a Master’s from Christie’s Education. Tabbara is the founder of Art and The City, a blog documenting her experiences in the New York art scene, chronicling gallery openings, museum exhibitions, and artist retrospectives. 

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Michelle Woodward lives in Beirut. She is the photo editor for the magazine Middle East Report and editor of the Photography for Jadaliyya. She is an experienced photography researcher, pursuing historical research into photography of the Middle East.

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Ala Younis is an artist with curatorial, film and publishing projects. She curated Kuwait’s first Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2013) and Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence (2012-2014). She is co-head of the Berlinale’s Forum Expanded, member of the Academy of Arts and the World, and co-Artistic Director of Singapore Biennale 2022. In 2012, she co-founded Kayfa ta, a publishing intiative that researches and publishes on indepedent publishing efforts. She is currently a Research Scholar at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of art at New York University Abu Dhabi.

Instagram: @alayounis

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Camille Zakharia left Lebanon in 1985 during the Civil War. Since then, he has spent time living in the USA, Greece, Turkey and Canada, before moving to Bahrain in 1999. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from NSCAD University (Nova Scotia College of Fine Art & Design), Halifax, Canada in 1997 and a Bachelor of Engineering from the American University in Beirut in 1985. 

Camille uses his camera to document the journey taken since his departure from Lebanon. Through photo-montage, collage and print, he both reveals and reconstructs his encounters with people and places, exteriors and interiors. Within this process is an exploration of home, identity and belonging in the context of a globalised condition. A particular source of fascination is urban landscape and what is represneted socially and culturally by changes in the shape and size of cities. 

Instagram: @camillezakharia