Biographies

Sam Green

Sam Green (Director | Writer | Editor) is a New York-based documentary filmmaker. Green’s most recent live documentaries include A Thousand Thoughts (with the Kronos Quartet) (2018), The Measure of All Things (2014), The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller (with Yo La Tengo) (2012), and Utopia in Four Movements (2010). With all of these works, Green narrates the film in-person while musicians perform a live soundtrack. Green’s 2004 feature-length film, The Weather Underground, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was nominated for an Academy Award, was included in the Whitney Biennial, and has screened widely around the world.

Learn more about Sam: https://samgreen.to

JD Samson

JD Samson (Composer | Performer) is best known as leader of the band MEN and for being one-third of the electronic-feminist-punk band and performance project, Le Tigre. For more than a decade JD’s career as a visual artist, musician, producer and DJ has landed her at the intersection of music, art, activism, and fashion. During that time she has toured the world, produced songs for Grammy award winning artists, written for publications such as Huffington Post, Talkhouse, and Creative Time Review, created multi-media artwork, hosted documentary programs, acted, modeled, and engaged in direct support with a wide-range of progressive social and political causes. JD is now an Assistant Arts Professor at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.

Learn more about JD: http://www.jdsamson.info/

Zeinab Alhashemi

Zeinab Alhashemi is an Emirati conceptual artist based in Dubai. Having graduated from Zayed University with a BA in Arts and Science, the artist specialized in Multimedia Design, and has since become known for her large scale contemporary sight-specific installations. Alhashemi is fascinated with capturing the transformation of the UAE following the country’s construction and industrial booms from her own perspective. She examines the contrast as well as interdependence that came to exist between the abstract, geometric shapes of urbanism and the organic form associated with her country’s natural landscape. Since Alhashemi’s childhood, the familiarity of traditional scenery and nature was largely disturbed to facilitate the rise of the man-made. In her experimental installations, in search of a new identity appropriate to the modern condition, the artist deconstructs the viewer’s understanding of their surroundings and introduces an alternative point of view, creating a new perception of the reality. Drawing inspiration from the natural topography of the UAE, Alhashemi experiments with a variety of materials to position the viewer over the intangible boundary between the natural and artificial. While her work is reminiscent of the traditional landscape due to color and textures, such familiarity is quickly disturbed by the striking contrast arising from the use of industrial materials such as mesh metal – suddenly reminding of human interference. Alhashemi’s work in itself, is a true representation of her homeland today which strikes a delicate balance between modernism and tradition in an unexpectedly harmonious coexistence.

In her short career, the young artist has participated in numerous art fairs and festivals such as Sikka Art Fair and Dubai Design Week. Alhashemi’s work was featured in exhibitions at prominent galleries around the world as well as Sharjah Biennial 11. Her recent project Alhashemi was commissioned by the Institute de France and DCT Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi to showcase at the inauguration of the Louvre Abu Dhabi and was part of the Co-Lab Show in 2018. Currently the artist is one of the Artists in Residence for SETI-Institute in San Fransisco, an Art and Science residency that encourages an engagement and research between artists and scientists. Her recent commissions “Takween” is currently showing at EXPO2020 Dubai at the Sustainability pavilion “Terra”.