This workshop was conceived as part of the Assembly 2020 Youth Takeover public programme and is delivered by artists Mariam alZayani and Nasser Alzayani. Limited capacity, first-come first-serve basis. Kindly RSVP to the workshop and successful registrations will receive details and instructions for joining the session.

Memory cannot be objective. But it can be deeply associated to objects. Through an exercise exploring relationships between lived experience and material, participants will free-write in pairs of family members (brother and sister, mother and daughter, etc.).

Responding to our prompts, they will start forming connections between a recalled object and an experience shared between the pair. The pair will then exchange texts and respond to one another’s remembrances by re-experiencing, re-writing, re-acting, re-assembling, etc. While keeping the original text intact, these additions produce a hybrid text representing a shared memory, whether they confirm the sequence of events or contradict them. These co-existing accounts blend together to form one single, subjective, flawed instance of remembrance.

Participants will then be invited to share their memories and participate collectively in discussion. The results of the workshop will be compiled into a mini-publication of anonymous recollections.

Mariam AlZayani is a Bahraini-American designer and artist (b.1996, Manama, Bahrain)
currently based in Sharjah as a Graphic Designer at Fikra Design Studio. She is a
graduate of the American University of Sharjah with a degree in Visual Communication.
Mariam has been featured in various art exhibitions including Sikka Art Fair, Art Jameel,
and Fikra’s Graphic Design Biennial. Her work is rooted in strong concepts and is
constantly drawing inspiration from her surroundings and interests. She is fascinated by
the ‘what if’s’ of design and the potential for design to manifest into different and evolving
ways. Mariam aims to pursue a Master’s degree in the future and eventually teach in her
field.

Nasser Alzayani is a Bahraini-American artist (b. 1991, Manama, Bahrain) practicing in Abu Dhabi. Nasser’s practice expresses an obsessive documentation of time and place through drawings and writings, as well as found and cast objects. Incorporating themes of both factual and fictional archaeology, his most recent works explore lost landscapes and their preservation through memory.
He has an MFA in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design and is a graduate of the
American University of Sharjah with a degree in Architecture.