Gulf Homes: Material Cultures, Migration, and the Family

“Gulf Homes. Material Cultures, Migration, and the Family” is a proposed series of events and a research program organized around the exhibition Being Borrowed. On Egyptian Migration to the Gulf, which was first presented in Cairo in 2022 (see the list of media coverage in Annex). The exhibition will be hosted at NYUAD’s Project Space from January 11 to February 7, 2024.

Being Borrowed is a grassroots collaborative project about Egyptian migration to the Gulf – an understudied and underrepresented phenomenon. The exhibition features mixed-media artworks that engage creatively with different aspects of this experience, and participate in anthropological, visual, and sensory knowledge production on this
“temporary” migration. Through both collective and deeply personal narratives, it explores the themes of migrant aspirations, social class, temporality, family dynamics, memory, home, death, and belonging.

By bringing this exhibition to NYU Abu Dhabi, we aim to put it in conversation with scholars and artists working on migrant communities in the region, as well as with the broader UAE community. While Gulf countries are hubs
of international and regional migration, reflections on this shared experience tend to take place along national or ethnic lines, in the countries of origin of migrants; and too rarely across communities or in dialogue with Gulf citizenries.

Both the exhibition and events are intended to bridge these divides, and to elicit comparative and collaborative research and conversations around the material and immaterial traces of migration to the Gulf. They bring together
interdisciplinary scholars of migration and material cultures, artists who are engaging with these topics through a diversity of art forms (film, literature, visual arts), and members of the community whose lived experiences embody
these themes. One of the main objectives of these events is to initiate dialogues which extend beyond the NYUAD campus to the broader UAE society, and to the transnational communities that compose this society. Just like the artworks and installations presented in the Being Borrowed exhibition, these conversations weave intimate archives, personal narratives, and collective experiences.

Project Researchers