The Assembly invites you to the annual Youth Takeover at the Jameel Arts Centre starting Saturday, May 10 and running until Monday, June 2, 2025.

The Assembly 2024 – 2025 cohort members are: multimedia graphic designer Abrar Kebaili, visual artist and designer Ayesha Fernandes, multimedia designer and writer Desirée Barreto, literary artist Ioanna Orphanide, poet Jared Maxilom, researcher and writer Manal Nadeem, architect and researcher Omar Darwish, exhibition designer Sanjushrree Subash, and poet Syed Haider. 

The Youth Takeover manifests as a physical takeover of liminal spaces within Jameel Arts Centre’s ground floor, featuring multiple audiovisual and artwork interventions both indoors and outdoors. You will find things in corridors and courtyards, in glass, in gravel and sonic spill. The Takeover is further complemented by a rich public programme spanning the duration of the exhibition.

This year’s theme, titled Spoon Spade Shovel, experiments with how the Assembly members dig, sift and stir through the world, offering a network of creative experiences as tools for excavation, reflection and play. The exhibition presents a range of interdisciplinary works that use tools – literal and metaphorical – to question how we make and remake meaning. 

For this Takeover, the exhibited works and newly commissioned pieces come together to produce new intersections, adding more nodes to the network. The artists are:

Ayesha Fernandes with Svabhu Kohli
Desirée Barreto with Angie Pais and Mouza Al Hamrani
Ioanna Orphanide with Danae Orphanide and Ilya Akimov
Jared Maxilom with Halo-Halo Experiment, Vinyl Souk and memoryall
Manal Nadeem with Khaled Esguerra and Jed Bacason
Omar Darwish with Fatma Al Ali and Maitha Ali 
Sanjushrree Subash with Danutė Vaitekūnaitė and Farheen Fatima
Syed Haider with Hessa Lootah, Souldier and Aqib Anwar 

The exhibition’s visual identity and scenographic elements have been conceptualised and designed by Abrar Kebaili.

Spoon Spade Shovel offers a plurality of possibilities. These works sit uneasily beside one another, refusing to settle into silos or fixed categories. But, like the tools that frame this exhibition, their differences are invitations, not obstacles. Whether you sift or stir, extract or excavate, your experience will be shaped by the tool you reach for: its size, scale, heft and intent. You are invited to inhabit this instability and co-compose the meanings that emerge. Rest and rave, sound and spirit, creek and concrete–what you take from this exhibition depends on what you bring to it. Here, a spoon can become a spade, can become a shovel.

Besides the commissioned artworks, the Youth Takeover 2025 features public programmes that offer visitors the opportunity to construct and deconstruct, assemble and disassemble through a series of performances, talks, workshops and more. The public programmes include:

Saturday, May 10:
–   Opening Preview and Spoon Spade Shovel panel discussion with the Assembly 2024-2025 members and programme curators Abhirami Suresh and Nabeeha Sajjad
–   Musical Activation: Translating Oscillations by artist Mckie Alvarez
–   Musical Performance: ABRI and the Everlasting

Sunday, May 11:
–   Workshop: Synthesising Landscapes (Part 1) with Assembly members Ayesha Fernandes and Ioanna Orphanide

Saturday, May 17:
–   Tour: Assembly-led Youth Takeover 2025 tour
–   Workshop: Portable Beats: DIY Music with Pocket Operators music production workshop by artist PHO, in collaboration with Vinyl Souk
–   Gathering: Storytelling: The Journey of Design by graphic designer Poorvaja Subramanian and Assembly member Abrar Kebaili
–   Musical Activation: Translating Oscillations by artist Madam Void

Sunday, May 18:
–   Workshop: You may now sleep? by artist Henry Tan
–   Themed activation: me.me con by artist Fatima Raza and Assembly member Desiree Barreto

Saturday, May 24:
–   Performance Tour: And the Tools Begin to Speak: Poets in Response to Spoon Spade Shovel by poets Ahmed Gihad Hamad, Dania Dawn, Jared Maxilom, Malavika Suresh, Pankaj Kanchandani, Sarah Afaneh, Shania Laude and Syed Haider
–   Performance: lorem ipsum 9-to-5 by artist Andres Ugartechea
–   Musical activation: Translating Oscillations by artist Joe Najm

Sunday, May 25:
–   Tour: Assembly-led Youth Takeover 2025 tour
–   Workshop: Between the Gesture and the Ground by artists Aya Afaneh and Yoonsik Chico Park
–   Workshop: Dwelling in the In-between: A Workshop of Waiting, Devotion and Movement by writer and performance artist Faraz Ali

Saturday, May 31:
–   Tour and workshop: Family Saturdays at the Jameel by Assembly member Ayesha Fernandes
–   Workshop: Monuments and Enchantment: Inhabiting Urban Space by artist-researcher Maitha Ali
–   Musical activation: Translating Oscillations by artist PHO

Sunday, June 1:
–   Interactive performance: Synthesising Landscapes (Part 2) by artists Aakarsh Singh and Ahmed Bilal
–   Musical activation: Feedback Loops: A Sunset Sound Gathering by artists Cyrill Reaidy and Kirill Zhan of Moist Paper Party

All events are free and open to the public. Register your space by clicking through the links above.

The Assembly is an annual experimental learning programme designed to foster creative leaders aged 18 to 24 in the UAE, inviting the creation and curation of projects reflective of their generation’s areas of interest. The learning programme was designed, curated and facilitated by Abhirami Suresh, Curatorial Projects Coordinator at Art Jameel, in collaboration with Nabeeha Sajjad, Communications Assistant at Art Jameel and alumnus of The Assembly 2023-2024.