Salwa Mikdadi
Associate Professor Practice of Art History at NYU Abu Dhabi. Prior to joining NYUAD, Mikdadi was a lecturer in Art History at Paris-Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, and held leading positions at Art and Culture institutions in the Arab World and in the US. Mikdadi was the founding director of the Cultural & Visual Arts Resource/ICWA (1988-2006). She curated several exhibitions in the US and in Arab countries, including the ground-breaking Forces of Change (1994) and the first Palestinian Exhibition at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) and recently co-curated Permanent Temporariness at NYUAD Gallery (2018). She is the author and co-editor of several publications, among them Cities and Legends: Elias Zayat (Skira 2017), New Visions: Arab Contemporary Art of the 21st Century (co-editor with Nada Shabout, Thames & Hudson 2009), Palestine c/o Venice (2009), In/Visible: Arab American Artists (2005), Rhythm and Form: Visual Reflections on Arabic Poetry (1998) and Forces of Change (1994).

Mandy Merzaban
Founding curator of the Barjeel Art Foundation, for whom she has curated and organised seventeen local exhibitions and numerous international exhibitions, including Terms and Conditions at the Singapore Art Museum (2013), as co-curator, Modern Art From the Middle East at Yale University Art Gallery (2017) and advised for The Sea Suspended (2016) at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and No to the Invasion: Breakdowns and Side Effects (2017) at CCS Bard College. She received her BFA from the University of British Columbia (2008) and her MA in Cultural Translation from the American University of Paris (2015) with the thesis project titled An Unknown Lover’s Discourse; an on-going research art project on themes of subjectivity, love, tarab music and film.

Karim Sultan
Director and a curator at Barjeel Art Foundation. He has recently curated a number of exhibitions such as Between two rounds of fire, the exile of the sea at the American University Museum in Washington D.C., The Sea Suspended at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and The Short Century (co-curated with Suheyla Takesh) at the Sharjah Art Museum, an exhibition of contemporary and modern art from the Barjeel collection at Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris (co-curated with Philippe van Cauteren), and Ishara: signs, symbols, and shared languages at Concrete (Alserkal Avenue) for UAE Unlimited, a platform for emerging artists. Karim has participated in talks and public programming around the interpretation and presentation of Arab modern art histories, contemporary cultural production, literature, and music. He is also a practicing and performing artist.