Building a Life as an Artist

In our continuing series on building a life as an artist, this conversation delves into the current opportunities and challenges that artists are facing with their careers in the country. Join musician, playwright, and educator Noush Anand; Palestinian poet and performer Farah Chamma; Moroccan actor, dancer, and singer Karim Ennoury; and visual artist Alla Abdunabi for a chat about their experience as artists in the UAE. The talk will be moderated by NYUAD senior student Clara Juong.

Noush Anand

Noush Anand is a Dubai-based musician, playwright, and educator whose interdisciplinary practice spans music, theatre, video, and embodied storytelling. At the heart of her work is songwriting — blending voice, double bass, and experimental lyricism to create performances grounded in groove, feeling, and collective presence. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College (2022). A part of Dubai’s independent arts scene since 2010, Noush’s creative life is rooted in collaboration, shaped by long-standing relationships with artists and ensembles across the UAE, Mumbai, and Toronto. Her work is guided by a commitment to non-centralized leadership and somatic sovereignty — trusting the intelligence of the body as a compass for creative decision-making. She weaves together her roles as performer, writer, and facilitator to build sustainable, intuitive systems of making, where ensemble practice becomes a lived model for community: interdependent, emergent, grounded in care and shared authorship.

Farah Chamma

Palestinian poet and performer Farah Chamma is known for her spoken-word performances, in which she combines orality, acting, and live music. She’s participated in many different events and festivals around the world, including Palestine en Campagne (France), Wilde Möhre (Germany), Bradford Literature Festival (UK), Karama Film Festival (Jordan), Faladura (Portugal), Requiem for Justice (Mexico), Le Guess Who? (Holland) and many more. In February 2021, she and Brazilian music producer Liev launched chamæleon, a poetry and electronic music duo. Besides her native Arabic, she also writes and performs in English and French. She holds a Master’s degree in Performance and Culture from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BA in Philosophy and Sociology from the Sorbonne in Paris. She is currently an actress in training at Sharjah Performing Arts Academy.

Karim Ennoury

Karim Ennoury is a Moroccan actor, dancer, and singer based in the United Arab Emirates. He is a graduate of the Sharjah Performing Arts Academy (SPAA) and the High Institute of Dramatic Arts, with seven years of formal training at a ballet conservatory.

Karim has participated in numerous festivals, theatre companies, and television films in Morocco as an actor, and has worked extensively in the UAE as a dancer and singer on major projects, including Expo 2020 Dubai, performances at the Royal Opera House in Oman, Dubai Opera, and various regional festivals.

Alongside his performance career, Karim teaches Acting Diploma students (in Arabic) at the Sharjah Performing Arts Academy, sharing his academic and professional experience with the next generation of performers. He is currently stepping into the role of Creative Director at The Only Dandy Entertainment, marking a new chapter in his creative leadership journey.

Alla Abdunabi

Alla Abdunabi (b. 2001, Freiburg) is a visual artist working in sculpture and installation.

Her practice explores the material afterlives of objects through a mode of storytelling that merges the auto-ethnographical, historical, and fictional. Considering the relationship between material culture and the natural world, she observes how nature is mediated through objects: stylised, symbolised, or abstracted into form. So what begins as a tactile engagement with an object evolves, inevitably, into a negotiation with its narrative construction.

Her position within the Libyan diaspora and her movements between the global North and South inform this inquiry, mirroring the shifting trajectories of the objects and histories she engages.