Library Circles: Maryam Wissam Al Dabbagh

Library Circles feature research, talks and experimental interventions by UAE practitioners in the Jameel Library and Jameel Arts Centre. The programme explores alternative research methodologies and representations with a focus on ‘thinking in public’.

For the fall iteration of Library Circles, Jameel Library presents an audio piece by writer and researcher Maryam Wissam Al Dabbagh. The commissioned work reflects on the conversations around belonging; revisiting relationships with our cities through bureaucracy, administration and the long-prophesied age of retirement. Through personal narratives, Al Dabbagh examines complex round histories that continue to reimagine their beginnings and abruptly ending.  

Accompanying the audio piece is a text installation. Meant for slow reading and chance encounters, the writing starts from the library and grows outwards across various spaces throughout the Jameel Arts Centre.

Click here to listen to the audio piece.

Maryam Wissam Al Dabbagh

Born and raised in the UAE, Maryam Wissam Al Dabbagh is an Iraqi writer, researcher, and cultural communications consultant.

She received a BA in Journalism, from the American University of Sharjah, and an MA in Global Media and Postnational Communications from SOAS, London. Her research is focused on the Arab Diaspora in the Gulf, and exile, especially through the lens of belonging and return.