The 2025-2026 Assembly cohort comprises: Ahmed Bilal, Andres Ugartechea, Dina Barqawi, Mahasin Ismail, Poorvaja Subramanian, Rei Co, Saiki Padhy, Saina Bidshahri and Vaishnavi Pramodh. The programme is designed, curated and facilitated by Abhirami Suresh, Curatorial Projects Coordinator at Art Jameel, in collaboration with Sanjushrree Subash, alumnus of The Assembly 2024-2025. 

Abhirami Suresh is the Curatorial Projects Coordinator at Art Jameel. She is the curator of the Youth Assembly and works with the Learning, Exhibitions and Programming teams to shape special learning projects at Art Jameel, prioritising youth communities, engagement and research-collaborations. Her work focuses on creating space for emerging voices and experimental forms of knowledge. Abhirami’s research and curatorial practice has been presented at the Karama Arts Club (2025), Curatorial Fellowship with Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2022), the Young Curator Residency for Ras Al Khaimah Fine Arts Festival (2022), the London Design Biennale (2021) and the Ford Foundation Grant (2020).

Sanjushrree Subash is the Assembly Peer Curator for 2025-2026 and an alumnus of the 2024-2025 cohort. She is a Dubai-based exhibition designer and visual artist. Her practice explores the intersection of design with fields such as literature and anthropology and incorporates concepts of play and worldbuilding. Sanjushrree’s work is inspired by the mundane and ordinary things to create immersive spaces that prompt deeper questions.

Ahmed Bilal is a Pakistani installation artist and creative technologist based in Abu Dhabi. His work is driven by a fascination with perceiving the world in new, unconventional and often uncomfortable ways. He creates immersive experiences inspired by esoteric philosophies and experimental art movements, hoping to peer through the veil of the visible.

Andrés Ugartechea is a multidisciplinary fine arts and interactive media artist specialising in VR and 3D sculpting. His identity factors describe him as a Mexican-American first-generation individual. Each of these aspects plays a pivotal role in shaping his concepts, centering on migration, labour and the representation of minorities.

Dina Barqawi is an architect whose practice maps narrative cartographies and the quiet dialogues of land. Through cultural memory made material, she translates design through narration, creating experimental forms and curatorial gestures that frame space as a site of encounter and reimagine how architecture might hold memory and shape possibility.

Mahasin Ismail is a curator, art writer, and MFA Producing student for Theatre and Live Performances. Based between Sharjah and Nairobi, she works at the crossroads of visual art and performance, exploring overlooked global narratives and experimenting with new ways that technology and design can shape exhibitions and audience experiences.

Poorvaja Subramanian is a graphic designer whose work spans brand identities, visual systems, exhibition identity and publications. Through narrative and storytelling, she explores the essence of each project, exploring how personal and collective histories take shape through time, often using play and experimentation as her primary tool.

Rei Co is a professional dancer and teacher who began training at age six and has performed internationally with major companies and brands. As an aspiring choreographer, she creates work exploring memory and connection and teaches contemporary dance and hip-hop to inspire audiences through movement.

Saiki Padhy is an artist-researcher and sound designer from India. His work explores the interplay between emerging technologies, urban policy and the top-down structures that shape urban spaces. He currently works on arts programming for Alserkal Avenue.

Saina Bidshahri is an Iranian storyteller who found purpose and individuality through the camera. Whether photography or film, her work draws from identity, memory and culture. What began as a means of self-understanding has become a calling to discover hope amid the complexities of the world.

Vaishnavi Pramodh is an Indian-born, UAE-raised filmmaker and art director, whose works use humour and irony to explore the complex and transient nature of immigrant life. Influenced by her background in the visual arts, she uses surreal narratives and satirised visual motifs to explore identity, fear and loss of the self under rigid societal frameworks.

The Assembly engages with Art Jameel’s exhibitions and programmes, resources and the Art Jameel team to explore concepts driven by broadening ways of seeing, ways of perceiving and challenging methods on interpretation. Over the programme, the Assembly’s activities and engagements will work towards contributing to discourse around exploring cartographic processes as acts of curatorial thinking and making through a series of experimental, co-creative and participatory activities. The programme continues to empower young creatives within institutional spaces and nurture spaces of care, communication and collaboration as creative enablers.

The Assembly will result in the Youth Takeover of the Jameel Arts Centre in May to June 2026.