CNN published Dubai artist highlights tradition amid the glitz on 13 December 2012, a first person profile of Zeinab Alhashemi from its Human to Hero series. The editor's note introduces her as one of six artists in residence at Art Dubai 2012, a 25 year old who had specialised in multimedia design at Zayed University and who works closely with the city's craftsmen.
Alhashemi describes growing up as Dubai changed rapidly, and her interest in the balance between its modern and traditional sides. She explains that she likes to work one to one with artisans, taking a traditional material and reworking it in a new way. For her Art Dubai residency in the old district of Bastakiya, she collected around 50 cardboard fabric tubes a day from textile shops she remembered from childhood and made modular stools and chairs. She then persuaded one of the hand barrow men who carry fabric between shops to wheel a cardboard tube sculpture through the narrow streets as a performance, a work she called Prayer on a Wheel. Another piece, Present, Perfect and Continuous, joined metal gargour fish traps into a full sphere with the help of craftsmen. "Emirati artists are trying to invent their identity and create a regional style for Dubai," she tells CNN.
Zeinab Alhashemi is an Emirati artist represented by Tabari. Her The Nut and Bolt is at Frieze Sculpture Abu Dhabi, Mamsha Beach, from 16 November to 16 December 2026.
