Open Studios | Spring 2025 Residency

Spend the morning at the Alserkal Arts Foundation studios with our Spring 2025 residents: artist Essa Grayeb, curator Rana Anani, and researcher Idil Akinci.

In their research, archives emerge not as static records of the past, but as fluid sites of negotiation, shaping our everyday social and political landscapes. Through a constellation of film footage, WhatsApp audio notes, photographs, found materials, postal stamps, and media clippings, the residents invite us to reflect on memory—both personal and collective.
Date: Sunday, 13 April 2025
Venue: WH51, Alserkal Arts Foundation
Drop in between 11AM - 1PM
About the Residents
Essa Grayeb is a Palestinian visual artist and scholar whose practice spans video, photography, and installation. He works with existing objects, footage, and sounds, weaving between reality and fiction. A fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (2025–2026), Grayeb’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at De Appel in Amsterdam, the Jakarta Biennale (2024), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ljubljana and The Mosaic Rooms in London (2024), and the Palestinian Museum (2021). His films have screened at festivals and institutions such as the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris (2024), the Arab Film Festival in San Diego (2021), and more.
Rana Anani is a curator, writer, and researcher on visual arts and culture. Her articles are published in several forums in Palestine and the region. She was the Head of Communication of the Palestinian Museum, the Project Manager of Qalandiya International 2018, the coordinator of the Palestinian Pavilion at Cannes Film Festival, and an Associate Curator of Sharjah Biennale 13 off-site project “Shifting Grounds” in Ramallah. Currently, she is the editor of the website of the Institute of Palestine Studies, Ramallah/Beirut.
İdil Akıncı joined the University of Edinburgh in September 2019 as an Assistant Professor. Her research interests and experience centre around the issues of national identity, citizenship and belonging in multicultural societies, with a focus on the Arab Gulf States. She holds a PhD in Migration Studies from the University of Sussex, where she explored the everyday experiences of national identity and citizenship by young Arab migrant communities and Emirati citizens in Dubai. İdil has taught a number of undergraduate courses in sociology, migration, human geography, and social anthropology both at the University of Sussex and Zayed University in Dubai.

Host or Publisher Alserkal Arts Foundation