Afra Al Dhaheri (Knot - Artistic Direction, Installation)
Afra Al Dhaheri’s work is rooted in her experiences growing up in Abu Dhabi and the wider UAE – a place of recent and rapid change. Working across various mediums including mixed media, sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, photography, and printmaking, she draws out notions of time and adaptation, rigor and fragility. With each experiment, there is a new phase, each new phenomenon or actualization plucked from her unique vocabulary of references – repetition acts as a method for prolonging time as much as a tool through which to truly experience or realize each stage of a work.
Born in 1988 in Abu Dhabi, UAE, Afra Al Dhaheri obtained her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island in 2017. She had residencies from The Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship, in partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design (2014); Porthmeor Studios, St. Ives, Cornwall, UK (2019); Viafarini, Milan (2022); and The Watermill Center, NY (2023). She was among the finalists for the Richard Mille Art Prize 2022. Photo by Greg Adamski Al Dhaheri is the Creator and Artistic lead for the project Collective Exhaustion (2024), with the inaugural production supported by the National Grant for Culture and Creativity at the Ministry of Culture and Youth of the United Arab Emirates. Public commissioned works include: Union of Artists, commissioned by Dubai Culture in collaboration with Art Dubai (with artists Khalid Albanna, Shaikha Al Mazrou, Asma Belhamar and Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim) (2024); and Pillow Fort Playground, Public Art Programme, Expo 2020, Dubai, UAE (2021).
Solo exhibitions include: National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC (forthcoming); Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE (2025); Give Your Weight To The Ground, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2023); Split Ends, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2021) and Inevitable Ephemera, T + H Gallery, Boston, MA (2016).
Selected group exhibitions include: Whispers on the Horizon, Taipei Biennial 2025, Taiwan (forthcoming); A Time Between Ashes and Roses, Aichi Triennale 2025, Japan (2025); Public Matter, Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2024); Between the Tides: A Gulf Quinquennial, NYUAD Art Gallery, Abu Dhabi (2024); On Ma, Galleria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, Portugal (2024); Acacia Seeds, Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris, France (2024); Icon. Iconic., Art Here 2022 x Richard Mille Art Prize, Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAE (2022); Portrait of a Nation II: Beyond Narratives, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2022); Zemanna, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2022); Tadaroj (Gradation), Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival, Sharjah, UAE (2021); Between the Sky and the Earth: Contemporary Art from the UAE, Middle East Institute, Washington, DC (2021); Under Construction, Misk Art Institute, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2021); Hair Mapping Body; Body Mapping Land, ICD Brookfield Place, Dubai, UAE (2021); Beyond: Emerging Artists, Cromwell Place, London, UK (2021); Conscious Becoming, Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, Belgium (2021); Beyond: Emerging Artist, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2020); From Within, Riyadh, KSA (2019); Avoid Bad Dreams, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2019); Barcelona to Abu Dhabi, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2018); and Emirati Expressions, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2011 and 2015) amongst others.
Based in Abu Dhabi, Al Dhaheri also works as an Assistant Professor at Zayed University - Abu Dhabi.
Dovydas Stramaitis (Knot - Artistic Direction, Choreography)
Dovydas Stramaitis is a Lithuanian choreographer living and working in France. He graduated in 2019 from the Bachelor of Dance program at Codarts in Rotterdam, where he also initiated his choreographic research. After completing his internship year with Jitti Chompee, Jan Martens, and Marina Mascarell, he danced with the Ballet National de Marseille from 2019 to 2022, where he worked with the choreographers Peeping Tom, Alessandro Sciarroni, Lucinda Childs, Lasseindra Ninja, Tânia Carvalho, and Oona Doherty, among others. Since 2022, he has been a freelance dancer, working notably with Dalila Belaza and Korsia.
In 2021, he premiered his first professional solo, The Art of Making Dances, at the New Baltic Dance festival in Vilnius. In 2022, Strimaitis founded his company Still Waiting. His piece, A Duet, premiered in 2023 at the ArtDanThé festival at Théâtre de Vanves and received the Golden Stage Cross in Lithuania for the Best Choreography of the year.
His work, Hairy, was selected as a finalist for the Danse Élargie competition organized by Théâtre de la Ville in 2022. The same year, he created a solo version of Hairy, which led to the full-evening group version that premiered in 2024 at the New Baltic Dance festival in Vilnius. This full-evening piece has toured internationally in such places as Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), festival Actoral (Marseille), RomaEuropa, and Madrid en Danza, among others.
Strimaitis’ works are characterized by rigorous structures, a minimalist yet physically demanding vocabulary, and detailed musicality. Although they are often not narrative-driven, they unfold a line of thought shaped by his experience of growing up in Lithuania, a country positioned between Western and Eastern imaginaries. This context, marked by a society in transition after Soviet occupation and engaged in an accelerated process of Westernization, has heightened his sensitivity to ambiguity and identities in formation. His pieces explore the tensions between determinism and individual freedom, between what shapes us and what we choose to become, as well as the role of the gaze of others in constructing identity. For Strimaitis, contemporary dance is a phenomenological field in which the moving body – site of experience, perception, and contradiction – allows these dynamics to be examined with sensitivity and precision, exemplified by the recurring motif of hair: an integral part of the body, an identity marker, yet an almost external element that resists control.
Islam Elarabi (Just One Tile - Creator, Performer)
Islam Elarabi is a professional dancer, choreographer, and instructor certified by CID UNESCO. A graduate of MAAT | Cairo Contemporary Dance Center, he specializes in Mahraganat and contemporary dance, creating work that bridges culture, identity, and movement. His teaching has helped formalize Mahraganat as a teachable dance form, presented in workshops across the Middle East and Europe. Elarabi has performed internationally, including at D-CAF Festival (Cairo), Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, Biennale Tanzausbildung (Berlin), and the UN|Controlled Gestures Residency Programme. His works include Again and Again (2018), Herding (2019), The Illusory Parade (2021), and Just One Tile (2024–ongoing).
