This performance tour is a curated, interpretative walkthrough of the Youth Takeover 2025 exhibition, Spoon Spade Shovel, reimagined through the lens of live poetic performance. This guided tour will feature six poets from outside the current Assembly cohort, who will together respond to chosen artworks and installations across the space. Through site-specific spoken word and poetic interpretation, the tour invites audiences to experience the exhibition not only through visual means but through the auditory and emotional textures of language.

The poets are: Ahmed Gihad Hamad, Dania Dawn, Malavika Suresh, Pankaj Kanchandani, Sarah Afaneh, Shania Laude and Assembly members Jared Maxilom and Syed Haider.

This programme happens in conjunction with the durational performance lorem ipsum 9-to-5 by artist Andres Ugartechea. Participants are highly encouraged to stay on after the tour to watch the performance, running from 11am to 7pm. Register your interest through the above link.

This programme is organised by the Assembly 2024-2025 member Jared Maxilom as part of the 2025 Youth Takeover.

Ahmed Gihad Hamad is a multidisciplinary artist and designer whose work sparks meaningful conversations. His writing explores themes of identity, resilience and conflict. Poetry has long been his way of processing the world — a space where he invites readers to pause, reflect, and engage.

Dania Dawn is a Syrian multidisciplinary artist who extends her craft onto poetry, film and the performing arts. Her main obsessions include her mother tongue, nonsensical line breaks and turning conversations with lovers into poetry, so to highlight her process of reclamation, she creates.

Jared Maxilom is a Dubai-based multidisciplinary artist and poet. His work, inspired by the Filipino migrant experience, spans poetry, photography, tech, and product design. Jared’s creative projects explore themes of identity, memory, and culture, blending traditional and digital mediums to tell compelling narratives.

Malavika Suresh is an interdisciplinary researcher and spoken word poet. She holds a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE). In her work, she aims to put a microscope on the mundane and question its normalcy. She has been featured as a poet at multiple local art festivals and has had her academic research featured in several local and international publications and conferences. Malavika was a member of the 2023-2024 cohort of The Assembly.

Pankaj Khanchandani is a Business Administration and Film Direction graduate. He has directed short films, advertisements, and music videos. Apart from films, he has directed and performed in several amateur and professional theatre productions in India and has been exploring various forms of performing arts over the past seven years.

Sarah Afaneh is a Palestinian writer and artist dedicated to decolonizing modes of knowledge production. Her creative process is rooted in a desire for aliveness, interrogating the dichotomies of love and grief in the Arab World. Sarah is currently a fellow in the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship (SEAF) 2024.

Shania Cavalida Laude is from Cebu, Philippines. Her artistry extends through mixed media paintings and sketches engrossed with figurative art and impressionist landscapes. She translates her visions and storytelling further through prose, poetry, and lately, short stories. Shania is currently a psychology student and training as a nurse assistant.

Syed Haider, a Pakistani multidisciplinary artist, is an award-winning poet and author. His writing explores themes of love, grief, nostalgia, culture and identity. Haider blends his creativity through mediums of poetry, filmmaking, visual art and spoken word. At the heart of his work is community: he hosts open mic events, which continue to pave the way for performance artists to express their capabilities.