Building a Life as an Artist

In our continuing series on building a life as an artist, this conversation delves into current opportunities and challenges faced by locally based artists. Hear from locally based artists: writer and multi-disciplinary artist, Shereen Saif; art and performance-maker, Jomel Reyes; interdisciplinary performing artist, Noush Like Sploosh; along with multidisciplinary artist, Simrin Mehra Agarwal. The conversation is moderated by Gaya Menon, a senior at NYUAD studying Political Science and Literature and Creative Writing. 

Jomel Reyes

Jomel Duran Reyes is a Theatre and performance-maker based in Abu Dhabi, dedicated to promoting Filipino culture through the lens of the migrant experience. He is a co-founder of 63Kolektib, an all-Filipino theatre and performance group in the UAE that provides a platform for Filipino artists in the region. Since 2018, he has produced and contributed to numerous performance projects across both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, including Ang Pambansang Litanya ng mga Inang Wala sa Bayan (National Litany of Mothers Away from the Motherland) and the Tipon: Artists Round Up Series, among others. His most recent project, as a producer, was the December 2023 production of Mga Kwento ni Lola Basyang (Tales of Grandma Basyang), a cherished Filipino literary classic. This production reimagined the tales through the lens of Filipino migrant and second-generation experiences, exploring themes of identity, heritage, and belonging. Jomel is also a proud member of the inaugural cohort of The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi’s Numoo Arts Program, where he further developed his knowledge in performance and arts leadership within the UAE setting.

Noush Like Sploosh

Noush Like Sploosh is an interdisciplinary performing artist residing in Dubai. Her practice includes music, video, theatre, and sound art. She has produced performance work in Dubai, Mumbai, and  Montreal and holds an MFAIA (Performance Concentration) from Goddard College, Vermont. Noush’s work is driven by how the body lives within its surroundings. Her songs explore how emotions reside in the body, often trapped in viscera and tissue. She uses expressive vocal layering and cinematic arrangements that bend genre, analogous to a punk orchestra. Lyrical wordplay works as a double exposure photograph, exposing multiple levels of story at once.

She is a student of double bass and Hindustani voice, and blends folk, blues, and jazz influences together. She performs in a gypsy jazz trio, The Gypsy Swing project, featuring Alexandre Valls and Niki Mukhi, and as a double bassist in the ensemble for musical artist Gaya.

Shereen Saif

Shereen Saif is an Indian-born, UAE-bred writer and multi-disciplinary artist with a practice that spans dance, theatre, storytelling, voice acting, and conceptual art. Her foundation is diverse and has deep roots in Dance, Theatre, and Architecture. Her movement vocabulary is shaped by her training in the Indian classical traditions of Bharatanatyam, Mohiniyattam and Kathak while her craft as an actor draws from her training in India at Natanakairali and Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Art Research. Trained at Kathalaya International Academy of storytelling (Bangalore, India) and mentored by master storytellers Paola Balbi and Michael Harvey, Shereen is known for her physical storytelling style that integrates elements of music, dance and theatre. Her solo “A Woman’s Mind” won grants from Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation and Wales Arts International, and is currently on tour.

Shereen is interested in the interplay between disciplines. Marrying intuition and method, her practice in the realm of conceptual art explores the relationship between body, time, material, and space. Her multidisciplinary arts practice has resulted in creative collaborations that combine movement, performance, music, video art, and technology. Most notable include her presentation at the Jean-Paul Najar Foundation in collaboration with American painter and video artist Judy Rifka (INTERactive 2016) and the work she has shown at Dubai Culture’s Sikka Art Fair: Silent Conversations (2019), a photo-video-AR project inspired from her association with the Deaf community in the UAE, We Are (2018) a VR installation with conceptual artist Patrick Lichty and site-specific video installations with Lumiere Collective co-founder and filmmaker Swapna Kurup (The Unmanifested 2014, Amorphous 2016).

More recently, her practice in urban foraging has led to research projects with Alserkal Arts Foundation and 421 Arts Campus, combining art, writing, food, and ecology. An alumna of the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship (SEAF, 2021-22) and The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi’s second cohort of the Numoo Artist Development Initiative (2023), Shereen is a founding member of Star Too – Dubai’s first experimental theatre project and was an artist collaborator in Trance-Forms, an initiative of the Emirati-French Cultural Programme: Dialogue with the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Simrin Mehra Agarwal

Simrin Mehra Agarwal is a multidisciplinary artist based in Abu Dhabi whose work questions our understanding of nature in the context of histories of war, neglect, and climate change. Simrin holds an MFA in Painting, graduating with a Gold Medal from University of Delhi and Sculpture from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. Her accolades include being a finalist for the prestigious Louvre Abu Dhabi Richard Mille Art Prize (2022) and exhibition Art Here Icon: Iconic; Winner of the Ras-Al-Khaimah Fine Arts Festival Award (2023); finalist for the ADNOC Art Awards (2021) for Public Art; French Government Scholarship and Residency, Paris and National Winner Nokia Arts Award Asia Pacific, Seoul. Her institutional programmes include Abu Dhabi Art and Galleria Continua’s collaborative project: Beyond Emerging Artists (2024) where she showcased her solo exhibition Precarious Place; her exhibit at Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial (2004-5); participation in Art Dubai’s CAD 10.0 x Public Art (2023) and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi: In the Studio (2021). Former resident artist at Manarat Al Saadiyat’s Artist Fellowship (2021) and Cultural Foundation Art Residency (2020-21), Abu Dhabi, Simrin has exhibited in solo shows at Sharjah Art Museum; Laboratorio Arte Contemporanea and Studio Medico Boscovich, Milan selected by (AMACI) Association of Italian Museums of Contemporary Art; Artspace, Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation and 1x1 Art Gallery, Dubai. Her group shows and projects have been held transnationally at the Tate Modern, London; Sharjah Art Museum; One Minute Foundation, Amsterdam; Palais Bruener, Vienna; Luxe Museum, Singapore; Today Art Museum, Beijing; National Gallery of Modern Art and Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai; Hong Kong Visual Art Center; Insa Art Center, Seoul and Design and Craft Center, Johannesburg. She has participated in the Asia Triennial, Manchester; collateral exhibitions of Kochi Muziris Biennial and in art fairs including Art Dubai, India Art Fair, Abu Dhabi Art, Art Bahrain, and Art Melbourne: Asia Pacific Contemporary. Her works have been showcased in Rossi and Rossi, London; The Guild, New York; Galerie Christian Hosp, Berlin; Lukas-Feitchner Gallerie, Vienna; Museum Gallery, Mumbai and H Gallery Bangkok. Simrin’s works are in many private and public collections in the UAE and abroad, notably the Abu Dhabi Executive Office.