The Jameel Library Reading Groups return with Reading the Street: Voice, Aesthetics, and Meaning Across Regions, led by Priyanka Mehra. This three-part program approaches the street as a medium, a surface of inscription and a living archive. The series will compare how urban surfaces operate across Australia, India and West Asia under distinct cultural, legal and historical frameworks.

In the final session, participants examine the controlled visual fields of the Gulf and the complexities lying beneath an apparent order. The discussion will explore the aesthetics of cleanliness, the politics of visibility in regulated public space and how histories of migrant-majority urbanism are inscribed or removed. This session challenges assumptions about absence, asking participants to read subtleties and silences as active forms of expression. Reading material includes texts on Street Art and the Arab Spring, the Banksy Effect and Beirut Street Art.

Reading groups are free and open to all. Registration is required, as space is limited. Registered participants are expected to commit to all the sessions and reading material, attend the session they have registered for and contribute to a respectful and open discursive environment.

About Priyanka Mehra

Priyanka Mehra is a curator and cultural producer whose practice explores site-specificity and the street as both medium and subject, navigating the intersections of public art, institutions and urban space. She has worked across India, the UAE and KSA and served as the Exhibitions Manager and Programmes Curator at Ishara Art Foundation apart from working on large-scale public art interventions. Based in Dubai, her interdisciplinary research and curatorial practice examines the public sphere through the lens of the Global South.